December 29, 2006

Getting to Kribi involves driving Cameroon’s notorious inter-provincial roads. I’ll be honest. Of the many reasons I don’t travel as much as I’d like – distance between locations, days getting away from me, the vain hope that I might have stories to write among them – is the roads scare the bejesus out of me. I still remember one of the veteran correspondents I met in Uganda saying, “Everyone thinks the most dangerous part of reporting in Africa is going to unstable war zones. Really, it’s getting from place to place.”

I’ve written before about the Cameroonian government’s efforts to reduce the blood spilled on its highways. Apparently, it’s not working. I guess they can’t forcefully remove people’s heads from their butts.

Charles heroically did all the driving last weekend. Our first stop was Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital and largest city, to pick up Paul and Laura. They had just arrived from Chicago the night before. We left early Saturday morning to avoid as many of the massive rigs hauling massive logs that slow traffic down and legitimately cause people to try to pass them on the winding two-way roads. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the trucks with the logs that are unbelievably big going unbelievably slow. I’d be far more freaked about the roads if they were trying to pick up speed. And I also don’t have a problem with people passing the tractor-trailers on the two-lane road. If we didn’t, Paul and Laura would probably still be waiting for us in Douala. It’s just that people pick the most inopportune times – on curves, near the crest of a hill – to do this. And that’s where the accidents happen.

Charles for the most part did his passing in a safe manner. Every once in a while, he’d have to jerk back into his lane because someone was coming head-on way too fast, but that was fairly rare.

I sat in the back seat, next to Bec, on the way to Douala. I was safely strapped into a seatbelt and in a relatively comfortable seat. There was traffic getting out of Yaoundé. Most people in Cameroon’s cities – and across much of Africa as well – still have family living in their ancestral villages. So a lot of people take Christmas as chance to get a bit of mom’s home cooking. When we passed by the bus station area, it was a zoo. There was the usual inability to take turns and wait, something I’ve noticed in Cameroon and other parts of Africa, and not just on the roads. There were tour buses backing into spots. There were traffic police in baby blue shirts and white pith helmets trying to get cars to move in an orderly manner, but to no avail. Taxis drove on the shoulder, and then cut off other cars when they could go no further. Jeeps tried to take up the entire road. Pedestrians walked behind the backing-in buses so they couldn’t go. All in all, a traffic nightmare.

As I said, the drive to Douala was a relatively peaceful three hours or so. There were few trucks on the road and only a few maniacs. I noticed black signs that looked a little like stick figures, almost like Keith Harring paintings, but standing still. On the first leg of our journey, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Traffic was snarled again on Douala’s outskirts. Like in Yaoundé, there were many people heading back to the village. But then we saw the real reason for the backup, especially since we were going against traffic. A green Volkswagen pick-up, essentially a VW bus with the passenger section converted into a flatbed, probably attempted to wind his way through the traffic until it met the immovable object of a box truck. The VW had its grill rearranged in such a way that I can’t imagine the driver walked out under his own power. The blue box truck had a few scratches to its paint job. The accident managed to back up traffic for seemingly miles in both directions for hours. Cameroon needs a traffic copter.

I sat in the trunk going from Douala to Kribi, a two-hour jaunt. There were jump seats, unfortunately without seatbelts, so it was a lot like riding in the way back of the Party Wagon, only facing the side. Oh yeah, there was no foot well, so I had to sit in ever more creative positions and still, parts of my lower half that I didn’t know could fall asleep did. But riding in the back did have one benefit: I saw all the stuff we passed after we safely went by. That was a pleasant change.

I also managed to figure out what the black signs were: markers of where people died along the roads. I also started to notice the charred hulks of wrecked cars periodically dotting the landscape. Some were there so long they had been mostly reclaimed by the surrounding forests. The roads in southern Cameroon run through relatively dense rain forest, in various shades of green with rolling hills and a few tree-covered mountains sprouting up. Charles pointed out that much of the forest around the road had been chopped down already, and that these were second-growth plants. We’d occasionally pass patches of scarred landscape where the second growth was clear-cut and burned, with fresh fires still lapping and crackling. It’s sad to see, but people have to eat, right.

I could see the water and beach of Kribi from the side of the car I was facing. It was gorgeous. Stretches of blue pulling out from the white beach, shrouded a bit by swaying palms and other trees. Delicious. We passed a public park with wide expanses of green for people to play football (soccer to you and me) and have picnics, complete with beach access. Many families were out enjoying the sun, an altogether idyllic sight.

I wrote about our trip and won’t bore you anymore. I rode in the trunk again on the way back to Yaoundé. I wanted to sit back and listen to my iPod, mostly Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, since they manage to capture the mood rolling through the Cameroonian countryside better than anyone else. I found this to be the case driving through Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi as well. Plus, there was the benefit of seeing what didn’t hit us after it didn’t hit us.

I noticed one last bit of the Cameroonian campaign to promote road safety. Along with the black signs are smaller ones that say “32 people died here,” or whatever the number was in that spot. And then I thought about why this campaign may not be working as well as the authorities might like. Most likely, people don’t pay attention. Or if they do, they think, that’s too bad, but it won’t happen to me. I think that’s the same for every road safety campaign throughout the world.

But there are some technical problems. The black signs are a little conceptual for most people. You need a second to think about them. Maybe they should be streaked with red or twisted in unnatural positions or missing a leg. And the signs advertising the number of people who died at a particular curve are too small. You have to really look at them to see what they say. Well, that hardly seems safe. It might even explain some of the freshly crumpled cars rolled onto their sides in ditches next to those signs. I think they should be bigger, like American highway road signs or billboards. “SLOW DOWN. THIRTY-TWO PEOPLE DIED IN AN ACCIDENT ON THIS SPOT,” in five-foot tall letters would probably work a lot better.

Maybe I should be the minister of transport. I’ve got the time.

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Apparently, Another Day in Shrimpistan is picked up in Google’s survey of blogs about Cameroon. Who knew my reach was so global. Get more people to come back, because the more hits, the higher I might be in their alert.

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On that happy note, Bonne Annee, mes amis. Don’t worry; we’re staying in Yaoundé to celebrate. Talk to you all next year.

December 28, 2006

Yesterday was an exciting day. I went down to the market and bought new flip-flops. Yup, life in Cameroon is a thrill a minute.

That said, Bec and I returned Tuesday from spending Christmas on the beach. That sentence is a bit misleading. We did have a room, so we were able to get off the beach occasionally. I will say this: it was lovely spending Christmas in flip-flops and shorts rather than freezing my butt off, although it sounds like the New York area is feeling the pleasant effects of global warming this year. I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about.

We went to Kribi, which is on the Gulf of Guinea coast. Since I’ve described Cameroon as the armpit of Africa, Kribi is that pleasant part of the body where armpit gently edges into a person’s side. With us were our friends Charles and Ruth, their son Paul and his wife Laura. Charles and Ruth, if you haven’t guessed, are significantly older than us.

Kribi is delightfully underdeveloped. There’s electricity and paved roads. But there aren’t massive Hilton resorts or Club Meds along the beach. Instead, the hotels are much smaller structures, none more than two or three stories tall and decked out in the whites and pale pastels one expects from a beach community. They’re nicely spaced out and all have the easygoing vibe people want when they’re on vacation. Sure, there isn’t non-stop entertainment. But you aren’t sharing the beach with a thousand strangers either.

Our hotel, the Tara Plage, was just south of Kribi’s town center. It was a cluster of eight rooms spread between two buildings with an open bar area doubling as the reception desk. The bar opened on to a covered verandah, which then led directly to the beach. Despite all the problems with oil extraction, the rigs and platforms and pipeline terminals around 20 miles out provided beautiful lights at night. Jealous yet?

So, what did we do during our three days in the sun? Well, this being Shrimpistan, we ate shrimp. Lots and lots of them, and they were pulled straight from the water and plopped on our plates. We also ate other fish that was fresh-caught, including barracuda. Consider that vengeance for the time you went snorkeling and were confronted by a fleet of them, Dad. I probably have so much mercury in me that you can use my toe to take your temperature. But use your mouth, please.

We competitively lounged. The goal of the game was to see who could do less over the course of the day. I figured that since I have the most expertise at this of the people we were with, I would give everyone a head start. It’s no fun dominating when you know the other players don’t have a chance. I finished one book and read the better part of another. I lounged in a beach chair. I slept in said beach chair. I swam in the gulf.

I spent a great deal of time watching the lizards – Cameroon’s answer to squirrels. These are fascinating creatures, chomping on bugs so I don’t have to squish them. Some are colorful – there’s one especially attractive lizard with a Halloween-orange head, grey to black body and orange tail with a black tip. Others are just green. They don’t run so much as skitter, with short, choppy movements that almost look like stop-motion animation straight out of the original King Kong. They don’t bother people at all. They simply skitter, look for bugs, do what look like push-ups and climb trees, occasionally falling out of them with a splat into the sand and a confused look. I could watch them for hours. Actually, I did.

The Gulf of Guinea waters deserve their own special mention. They are pleasantly warm, like a salty bathtub. Sure, I went running out of the water when seaweed touched me. But I had just been reading about the silent, sudden death of saltwater crocodile attacks and I was a little on edge. Sure, there are no saltwater crocodiles on the west coast of Africa, but you can never be too safe. Fine, I’m a sissy.

We attended a traditional French reveillance on Christmas Eve, hosted by the Tara Plage’s French owner. A traditional French reveillance basically consists of eating. Course after course – ooohhh, squid salad, mmmm, fried shrimp, what’s that? Beef filet, chicken gizzard salad? ewwwwww – came out seemingly without stop. Dinner lasted from 8 to 12:30 and culminated with a beach bonfire.

“Why do they have a bonfire?” Bec asked, somewhat befuddled.

“Because they do,” I said.

The only trouble came to paradise on Christmas Day, when the hotel’s water pump broke. After a relatively long walk on the beach, Bec and I wanted to rinse off our feet before lunch. No luck.

Later in the day, we went for a swim (where I courageously fought off the aforementioned seaweed) and then splayed out on the loungers, sleeping and reading. Paul then came out and said, “They’ve fixed the pump!” I think every guest at the hotel went to his or her showers at once.

I chivalrously let Bec go first. I’ll be honest. She was far more vocally concerned about the lack of showering than I was. So in she went. I thought I heard the water pressure waning a bit, but figured that was from the large number of people showering at once. “You might want to give it a minute before you go in,” she warned. I kept reading.

After a chapter or two, I went to the shower. Figuring that I didn’t want to get all soapy and then be stuck with only toilet water at my disposal, I let the water run for a minute or two. It started with two streams of water, then went down to one, then went down to none. I stepped back out and got dressed, impressively steaming for someone unable to get wet.

“You know, there are times I don’t like being in the developing world,” I said to Bec. She then proceeded to give me helpful bathing tips. “Get one part soapy, then rinse off, then move to the next.” I finally said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
So, we went back out to enjoy one last sunset, which were never as spectacular as we hoped. As I wrote in my journal, I remembered that all life began in the ocean. It felt as if the conditions to create new, single celled organisms were present in the crevices of my body as I sat and stewed. Fortunately, evolution is slow and the mutations stopped at algae by the time I showered after dinner.

I am pleased to report that I did not get sunburned, and even actually picked up a bit of a tan. Take that, sun.

Going to a resort in the developing world is always a fraught experience for me. To be honest, I often feel a little guilty. For the most part, the only locals I see at these resorts are the ones hawking trinkets on the beach, cleaning the rooms or scurrying off to get me another beer. Now, I recognize that all of these are legitimate professions and that these Cameroonians/Khmer/Thais, etc. might not have a job or way to feed their families if I wasn’t enjoying the time at the beach.

To be fair, there were a few well-off Cameroonians hanging out at the beach with us. And the French guy who ran the place all had Cameroonian wives and children. But at the same time, it just feels imperial in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Then again, the beer sometimes comes out slow, and I stop worrying about imperialism.

December 22, 2006

One thing I like about living in the developing world, and this was true in Cambodia and to a lesser extent the Czech Republic, is the level of ingenuity you find on the street. Last Saturday, Rebecca and I were about to walk into a café to get some lunch and pastries for breakfast for the coming days.

As we were walking in, we saw a friend who is a teacher at the American School driving along. She waved. I waved and we walked on. But I didn’t want to make a big fuss because you never want to distract someone’s driving on the roads here. So we kept walking.

And then I noticed that traffic was moving, but our friend’s car wasn’t. Bec and I kept walking because we thought our friend just wasn’t looking. I soon looked up and noticed a group of men pushing her car over to the side and flipping up the hood. So Bec and I went and stayed with her.

The thing that was amazing, and why I’m writing about ingenuity, was that these guys on the side of the road were able to diagnose the problem and, with a few parts they picked up from a garage around the corner, fix it in under an hour. Try that in New York

Of course, they then tried to charge our friend 30,000 francs ($60 or so) for the work. But at that point, our friend’s Cameroonian husband showed up and got the price down to 7,000 francs, which is about $15. The parts turned out costing only around 2,500 or so apiece. I was in the car two nights ago, and can report that it works just fine.

But again, what was interesting was that a couple of guys off the street new how to fix the starter on our friend’s car, and probably around three-quarters of the guys in Yaoundé could do the same. I don’t think that would happen in the developed world, and it is one of those areas where we could learn something.

Of course, this can be taken a little bit too far. Last night, Bec and I were describing the wonders of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Bec was rightly saying how amazing it was that the temples and monuments were built without the aid of cranes or combustion-powered construction equipment.

I reminded her that they were built on the backs of and at the cost of thousands of slaves.

Oh yeah.

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The other day I walked out of the apartment and saw butterflies in the courtyard of our building. This pleased me greatly. It was beautiful.

And then I started walking towards these beautiful butterflies. As I moved towards them, I noticed their wings were brown. No matter. I don’t discriminate. Butterflies are one of those creatures whose mere existence makes life more livable. Even the ugly ones are beautiful.

I drew nearer to the butterflies skittering through the air, trying to see the patterns on their wings and saw that these were the biggest, ugliest, nastiest moths I had ever seen. I fear that not only could they put holes in my clothes, they could put holes in me. They are truly awful. And now, they just seem to be popping up everywhere. Run for your lives!

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Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it. If I don’t write again before January, Happy New Year.

December 18, 2006

Rebecca started a small herb garden on our balcony last week, just a few small pots of coriander, basil and parsley with a few more varieties to come as we get more pots. She has decided that the lack of reliable coriander supplies in Cameroon is a matter that must be dealt with.

Fine. So last weekend we didn’t feel like driving out to the roadside plant sellers to buy the topsoil and fertilizer we needed. Instead, we decided to walk to the construction site behind the house – the one where I frequently, yet inadvertently, invade the privacy of the workers when they go to the bathroom – and take some of the deep red earth that was there for the taking.

I am not a gardener. I like getting dirty, but not by digging into the ground with my bare hands. There are worms and other little beasties there. Eeeeewwwwwww……

But I went down with Bec anyway and, well, watched her dig. As I said, ewwww…

After about 20 minutes or so, we had two small window boxes filled with the squishy red dirt (I’m not that squeamish). We assumed that everyone grew their food in the red dirt, and there is a lot of both dirt and food. This is a country where everyone eats, after all.

So Odelia came by on Tuesday and saw the barren pots. “Are you going to use that soil,” she asked.

“That’s what Rebecca said.”

“Oh, I’ll bring you some fertilizer next time I come.”

I told Rebecca this and she was concerned. We had a few sprouts coming up, but were they the treasured coriander or simply grass or weeds?

Fast forward to Friday. Bec has more sprouts, but we’re still not sure. Odelia shows up with a full plastic bag.

“This is manure. You know what manure is?”

Do I know what manure is? Much of my life centers on the very idea. So a few responses flew through my head. I thought about the Seinfeld where George discusses what an underrated word manure is. MAN-ure. I decided against that.

Then I thought, “Thanks for the steaming bag of poo” would be inappropriate. After all, this was a sweet gesture on Odelia’s part, and she doesn’t always get my sense of humor. I’m sure there are many people nodding in agreement while they read this.

So instead, I just said thanks and that Rebecca appreciated it. I realized that for Odelia, and for many Cameroonians, Ugandans, Rwandans, etc., the United States isn’t a place, it’s an abstract concept. It’s a place where everyone’s rich and no one goes hungry. It’s a place where no one has to farm because all the food is brought in. In fact, to many people, it’s a country of entirely clean streets with no crime and no corruption where everyone is happy. If only she knew.

I think most Americans, Brits, Germans and Japanese assume just the opposite about most of Africa. In some places the stereotypes are truer than others. In Cameroon they are less. In the Central African Republic, unfortunately, they’re more. People are starving and they have no health care. There are violent rebel groups and an abusive military and police attacking civilians. All in all, it’s a tragic place.

Cameroon, on the other hand, has large parts of the country where people can’t get health care and smaller parts where AIDS is on the rise. It has areas of lawlessness and police and government officials who rob from the people. But everyone eats, and, overall, people are content. They see where improvements can be made, and want them made, but know they’re not nearly as bad off as some of the neighbors.

So back to Odelia, asking me if I knew what manure is has nothing to do with saying I don’t know how the world works. She just didn’t think that I’d have any reason to know what manure is and how it helps plants grow. The sprouts have since started in earnest, and they appear to be herbs.

All of these deep thoughts did not stop me from calling Bec and saying, “Odelia brought you a big bag of crap.”

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Yaoundé is a city that knows how to fete. The week running into Christmas is officially called “Yaoundé en Fete” (Yaoundé in Celebration). One of the city’s main traffic circles is strung with white lights, including a bunch in the center that is in the shape of a Christmas tree. They flash joyously at night. By the way, the traffic circle is called Nlongkak, but not pronounced like you’d think.

A Christmas bazaar of striped tents on the parade route in downtown Yaoundé will break up the monotony of signs exhorting the population to support President Biya starting Wednesday. The street hawkers are walking around with inflatable Santas, plastic trees and other Christmas decorations. (Where’s the Hanukkah stuff?)

Sure, a lot of this stuff comes from the give-the-people-bread-and-circuses school of government. But if people can have enough food and a little joy in their lives, I see no problem with bread and circuses every once in a while. Why can’t people just sit back and have a good time rather than constantly being serious?

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Speaking of fetes, Bec and I are spending Christmas at Kribi, Cameroon’s beach resort area. It’s supposed to be spectacular. We’re going with our friends Charles and Ruth and their son and daughter-in-law. It’ll be good to see Cameroon outside of Yaoundé finally. And even if I have intestinal distress, I’m going.

Say what you will about living in Africa, but I'm spending Christmas at the beach. That might compare favorably to Jew day at the movies.

December 15, 2006

At Frisbee the other night, I asked a friend who works at an embassy if I missed anything during my long sojourn to the United States.

“Well, they won the war on corruption. They won the war on poverty. They won the war on AIDS. They won the war on business development. They won the war on investment. And they won the war on homosexuality,” he said.

It’s good to see that things didn’t change too much while I was gone.

Which isn’t to say that things are static in Cameroon. Next week there is a special session of parliament where a new elections law that would set up an independent electoral commission, among other changes, will be introduced. Sure, the Catholic Church and its allies originally brought the bill to the prime minister over the summer, and President Biya said he would push for it when he spoke at his political party conference in August or September. And fine, it looks like the president may be backing out of the changes, according to some newspapers here (others say he’s pushing for it). But at least it’s finally coming before parliament, which may even vote for it.

The question, as always, is whether these new laws will mean anything. I want to believe that they will, mostly because I’m tired of being cynical. I’m a hopeful guy, and I’m comfortable being skeptical. I couldn’t do my job well without being skeptical.

But I’ve noticed that I’ve become cynical. And I can’t do my job well being cynical, either.

So, back to election reform. It remains to be seen whether new laws will allow for free and fair elections. The government has a distinct interest in there not being that sort of electoral process. But at the same time, they have an interest in their appearance. Foreign donors don’t like to see out-and-out fraud. Underhandedness is fine, just not fraud.

Maybe Cameroon gets its new election laws, and somehow the opposition comes out on top in parliamentary elections. What would that mean? Would the new guys be any different than the old guys? And would the ruling party let that happen?

I have doubts on all of those questions, but I’d rather hope that there is a chance for a change while not expecting it. It’s easier to sleep at night. And yes, it’s all about me.

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Meanwhile, every time I try to get out of Rwanda, it pulls me back in. (Cliché alert!) (Exclamation point alert!)

Here’s a CNS story I wrote yesterday, a follow-up to something I wrote last year around this time. Remember that good-hearted priest who ordered his church bulldozed to finish off 2,000 Tutsis seeking refuge? Yeah, well, he was convicted on genocide charges the other day at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Meanwhile, in another example of Cameroon being Africa’s Forest Gump, both of Father Seromba’s defense attorneys were Cameroonian.

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And now for the weather. It’s hot. In fact, dare I say, it’s Africa hot. December and January are the two hottest months in Yaoundé. The sun simply sits in the sky, daring anyone to move. Seriously, when I walk outside I immediately turn red. I’ve got sunscreen and I smear it on each time I go out, but it’s like fighting a battleship with a peashooter.

It’s so hot that Cameroonians have told me it’s hot. The Gold Bond powder is out in force to try to keep up with the sweat. I think we’re losing.

Yaoundé has two wet seasons and two dry seasons. We’re in the less pleasant of the dry seasons (although it still does rain at least once a week).

The weather apparently calms down in February, and then the rains come in soon after.

I’m not sure what the seasons are like in the rest of the country other than Douala is a lot wetter, the extreme northwest is hotter and drier and up near Bamenda, in the English-speaking part, the temperatures I hear are lower.

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And in sports, as the New York Rangers have heated up, so have their counterparts in Yaoundé. I’ve now got a fairly sizeable lead of 59.7 points over my nearest competitor in the Traverse City Ice Association. These things change quickly, and I could be out of first just as fast.

After my performance so far as a general manager in the fantasy hockey league, along with the Stanley Cup I won in NHL 2005 on the Gamecube, I think that I may give up this journalism thing. There is no shrewder GM in imaginary hockey. As a great man once said, at least I’ve got that going for me.

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Finally, Happy Hanukkah. Don’t worry. I’ve got a big plate of latkes with my name on it waiting for me tomorrow night.

December 7, 2006

Happy Pearl Harbor Day! Was that tasteless? Yeah, probably.

But it is now off in cyberspace for ever, part of my lasting contribution.

Speaking of lasting contributions, here's my first contribution to the Sub-Saharan African Roundtable.

After reading my bit, stick around and read what other people are saying. You won't always agree with it, and sometimes you may want to smash something after reading it (I know I do), but you will always be informed on the affairs of this continent when you leave.

December 5, 2006

It’s December in Yaoundé, which means the Christmas season is upon us. In the spirit of giving, the number of specials and sales are up in the French and Indian supermarkets around town. In the spirit of taking, so is street crime.

According to warnings put out by the American embassy and other organizations in Cameroon, every year around this time the amount of robberies, carjackings and other random crime goes up. Just a word of caution about the words of caution put out by the American embassy: they’re for stupid people, not for people who have been doing this for a while. So I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing: keeping my head up; not wearing anything ostentatious (and I dropped a lot on gold chains before we came back); and not walking down empty streets.

The warnings are for tourists who tend to attract attention and do dumb things. I can’t avoid the attention, unless I start taking the pills C. Thomas Howell took in the regrettable movie “Soul Man” (how did they get James Earl Jones for that dog?). But I can avoid doing dumb things. I’m pretty good at that.

The rise in street crime during the holiday season raises the interesting question of why. Is it like the end of the month when the NYPD needs to make its parking ticket quota? Do the thugs have a certain number of crimes they need to commit or risk demotion? Or do they need to pick up a little extra cash for holiday shopping?

I’ll probably never know the answer to this question. But it’s fun to speculate, as long as I’m not in any way part of the statistics.

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Bec and I got back to Yaoundé late Thursday night. The flights were easy enough, but hardly uneventful.

First, the travel agents put me on the wrong flight to Paris, which meant that we had to pay to get Bec and me on the same flight.

Second, the Air France crew went out of their way to be French – which means rude. One of them even told Bec something like, “This isn’t America” when she was waiting for the toilet while the seatbelt signs were on. And for all that they take pride in cuisine, Air France’s food is singularly rancid.

Third, we had to fly through Paris-Charles de Gaulle, possibly the worst airport on Earth. It’s unnecessarily huge, so it’s impossible to make a connection unless you’ve got an hour and a half – at least, and that means from the time you actually get off the plane – to spare. There are buses and trains to take you where you need to go, but they take the longest possible routes even if those routes defy logic. Plus, everyone in charge is French, which as I noted above means they’re rude even if you speak their language.

I think that airports should only accept the number of airplanes as they have parking spaces. That way, the flight from JFK wouldn’t have to park in Montauk, like ours did.

Our flight from Paris left an hour late because the Cameroonians on the plane all tried to bring every piece of luggage as carry-on. So it took all that extra time to get all of it into the cargo hold, and probably to convince the folks to do it.

I sat sitting next to some big, seemingly important Cameroonian guy who had just been to Russia and France on business. He knew half the plane, and they all came to greet my row-mate. I was in the aisle, so they all leaned in right on top of me and didn’t move until they were done. At one point, I turned to Rebecca, who was in the seat across the aisle, and said, “It’s like I’m not even here,” in English. The person who had his elbow in my sternum didn’t move.

My row-mate also managed to drink his orange juice so fast that he was able to ask for a second cup. This is fine and totally within his rights – he actually paid for his seat himself, so he had more of a right to ask for a second OJ than I did – but it apparently threw the flight attendant so much that I didn’t get my bag of snacks.

Because I had the aisle, the guy had to climb over me to get to the bathroom. I appreciate that he climbed rather than wake me up each time he went. But he kept stepping on my feet and on two occasions I received unwanted lap dances. Eww….

But we arrived, hearty and (relatively) healthy.

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Anyway, it’s now time to regain my motivation. That’s a tough one, and I’m not sure it’s going to happen. When I was home, people were telling me how impressed they were that I was able to keep working and stay motivated even though there are no bosses or deadlines or offices hanging over me. It’s a vicious cycle. There are stories I want to do. It’s just a question of getting the editors interested in them.

The days of being highly self-motivated may well be done. But we’ll see after I get back on a regular sleep schedule. Last night, I had my first full night of sleep since we’ve been back.

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I was, however, motivated enough to publish a story for the Catholics while I was away. It’s on a human rights activist detained in Congo-Brazzaville.

I wrote it at Joyce Bakeshop in Brooklyn, so don’t ask me about the dateline. I'm also not sure who this Catholic News Service person is, but he/she took my byline. But I took the money. Ha ha.

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Odelia says the water is too dirty to boil, Britta and drink. Welcome back.

Meanwhile, in another innovation in African democracy, presidential candidates in Madagascar were required to provide their own ballot papers at polling stations last weekend.