June 6, 2006

We’ve moved from the “Land of a Thousand Hills” to the city of seven. Yaoundé is situated among seven hills that, much like the hills in Rwanda, are somewhere between the cul-de-sac that I grew up on and Mt. Everest. These are not hills. But they’re not mountains either. So we’ll just call them hills, because that’s what the people here say they are.*

In many ways, Yaoundé, a city of around 2 million, reminds me of Los Angeles. First, there are the green hills surrounding the city. The hills are spread out over a large geographical area. Every once in a while, I expect to look up and see the Hollywood sign.

Each hill has a different neighborhood, and each of those neighborhoods has a different feel and purpose. One is a government quarter, which is full of architecture that some call experimental, some call interesting and I, for the most part, call ugly. It’s all brown and in bizarre shapes with weird facings on the sides of the buildings. This link (http://crawfurd.dk/photos/cameroon.htm) will give you a good view of what I’m talking about.

My favorite building in the city is not yet finished. It probably will never be finished. It’s a standard tower-block skyscraper, probably about 20 or 30 stories tall. But through a combination of corruption and bad accounting, the firm building it ran out of money. So now there is a hulking shell sitting in the middle of the downtown area. There was no money for the wiring, so there are no lights and probably no plumbing. But that’s okay, because no one lives or works there. Its floors are built, but there are no windows and I’ve been told the walls aren’t there. At the top of the building there is uneven graffiti that I believe says, “Paul Biya Pour La Paix” (Paul Biya for peace). (See it here: http://www.pbase.com/richardmartin/cityshots. Look here http://site.voila.fr/cameroon-discovery/voyager/yaounde.html for more of central Yaoundé.)

Cameroon’s Big Paul took the presidency in a coup in 1986, and he is the ringleader of the corruption. His compound is huge, and the presidential mansion is visible from miles around. It’s good to be the president. The unfinished building, I think, may summarize the way the country is governed. Granted, I’ve only been here about a week, so I’m no expert (although tell me I’m not if I decide I am), but the building does seem rather poetic.

But not all of Yaoundé is like that. We live in a decidedly low-rise area called Bastos that is filled with NGOs, embassies and private homes. It’s very green and the main street up the hill is filled with shops, street food and little bars. It’s a pleasant place to walk, other than the occasional whiff of garbage and poop. I like to say that we live in the Santa Monica of Yaoundé, except for the lack of a pier.

Other neighborhoods are more working class and are usually organized around a major building or gathering spot, either a hospital or market or something. I say working class only because there’s not much of a better way to describe it. I’d say most people who live in those areas are either unemployed or work as street vendors or market workers, sort of the gray economy. I don’t remember the exact unemployment figures in Cameroon, but the five percent or so in the U.S. is nothing in comparison.

Another way that Yaoundé reminds me of Los Angeles is the lack of official public transport. There are no buses, not even the little mini-buses I used to take in Kigali. Instead, everyone takes taxis. There are thousands of little yellow cars that dart in and out of traffic throughout the city. When a person needs a ride, they just stand at the side of the road and the taxis pull up. A prospective passenger tells the driver where to go, and the driver can decide if he wants to take you or not (every driver I’ve seen so far has been a man). A passenger can also wave a driver past as well and wait for the next one.

Often there will be three or four other people in the taxi, and the driver just makes stops in order, like a bus. If a person is in a hurry, or just wants some alone time, he or she can wait for the next empty taxi and say “depot” after the destination to go non-stop. If someone wants to be a jerk, they can call “depot” on a full taxi. If the driver agrees, everyone else has to get out. See what I mean about being a jerk.

There’s a movie theater playing relatively recent American, British and French movies downtown, as well as smaller ones playing Cameroonian and African films around the city.

Shopping is easy. As a friend described it, you can sit out and get a beer at night, and the market will come to you. Bec bought a CD the other night (sorry Amanda, it’s a pirate) and I bought a cell phone charger last night – that actually works – from guys walking down the street. It’s almost like the African and Chinese street vendors in New York, except these guys are mobile and accepted by the authorities. There are also proper grocery stores, where yesterday we found one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. It’s basically a ketchup packet with a double-shot of whiskey in it for 100 francs (about 20 cents).

And then there’s the Score, the French version of Wal-Mart (or Target, if we want to feel a bit better about ourselves). We went there on Sunday to get some towels, and were just floored by the amount of stuff that was available. It’s amazing how a little oil money can increase a city’s shopping opportunities. Once they figure out how to get that money to flow down to the people – ain’t that always the way – then we’ll have something here.

That’s all for now. Bec’s going on a nine-day trip up to Bamenda and the Northwest province tomorrow morning. So I’ll be on my own.

* Some of you who looked at this earlier might have noted this sentence at the beginning: So we’ll just call them hills, because that’s what the people here look like. I changed that because although people here are large, they are not mountainous, nor are they green and covered in vegetation. Sorry for the editing problem.