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.