January 11, 2007

One dismaying side effect of the prison guard strike I wrote about last week is over 100 prisoners apparently escaped from the Yaoundé Central Prison, which houses the worst of the worst in the city as well as many less serious offenders – the jaywalkers, the ID-less and the public urinators. Actually, only not having an ID can get you arrested, if you can’t pay. If the other two were punishable offenses, I’d be The Fugitive. (Kidding, mostly.)

This does not mean that the worst of the worst escaped from the Yaoundé Central Prison, just that a small group of the over 4,000 prisoners got out. There have been reports of a bump in crime – I hesitate to say crime wave, as friends have described it – although it’s unclear whether the bump is simply an extension of the Christmas rush that usually happens around this time of year.

I’m not totally sure how the prisoners got out. Maybe the gendarmes and police didn’t get there fast enough. If that happened, then probably a lot more would have escaped. Cameroonians are quite industrious. It’s entirely possible that the escapees entered into some sort of agreement with the surrounding police where everybody, except victims, benefits. Have I mentioned that Cameroonians are quite industrious? One other option is the escapees simply slipped through during all the commotion. If I had to, I’d bet the third option.

While some of the increased criminal activity has been the usual for Yaoundé, there has been at least one deadly incident. Burglars murdered a French woman and injured her companion when she discovered them in her house. There were reports of thugs driving around pretending to be supervisors from one of the many private security agencies, attempting to get into an apartment building. Fortunately, the guard on duty didn’t recognize them and wouldn’t open the gate. He was pelted with stones, according to the report, until they were either chased away or gave up.

As I said, I’m not sure whether any of this is tied to the prison break. Only the murder stands out as something out of the ordinary, and that just seems to me like an extremely unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attempted break-in the guard stopped isn’t frequent, but it’s not uncommon either. Sometimes they’re even successful. Bandits will wait for someone to pull up in a car and then follow the car into the gate. We get regular security updates from the American Embassy, and once every couple of months a home invasion, attempted or successful, appears.

The other thing that makes me hesitate to call what’s happening in Yaoundé a crime wave is that the incidents are happening at night. If these sorts of things were happening in the middle of the afternoon, it would be a cause for serious concern. They’re not. We take very good care of ourselves, and will reevaluate our nighttime excursions as needed.

As you can imagine, I was totally calm, cool and collected after I read about the prison break and the potentially accompanying crime bump. I didn’t do anything like make sure the door was locked or think about never going outside again, except to go to the airport. Nope. Not me. Never.

Okay, maybe a little.

“Man, this hardly seems fair,” I said to Rebecca when we spoke on the phone a little while after I read the e-mails with the crime reports.

“What?”

“The prison break.”

“Well, the murder rate and crime rate are higher in New York.”

That’s a good point. The only quibble I had with that statement was the certainty with which it was said, but that’s only because I’ve never seen crime statistics for Cameroon and probably wouldn’t believe them anyway. One never trusts a number put forth by the Cameroonian government (or just about any government, including ours).

When we lived on 83rd Street, someone tried to push his way into our apartment as I closed the door. Fortunately, I knew he was there before he started to push. All those years forcing attackmen outweighing me by 50 pounds away from the goal came in handy. I’ve had my wallet and cell phone stolen from a gym locker in New York. We listened to a podcast the other night about a Park Slope writer who was shocked by being mugged in his island, um, neighborhood.

I feel safe on the streets here, especially during the day. One benefit of having a corrupt and slightly less than competent police force is that the public bands together. Bec says the same thing happened in Uzbekistan. When a known miscreant walked through the market, vendors would start yelling thief. I don’t think that happens here. In fact, Cameroonians have a worrying penchant for mob violence when dealing with thieves and other criminals. It’s not abnormal to hear of a suspected thief being cut to shreds by an angry crowd. I’m reasonably confident that a thief would suffer some horrible fate if he or she went after me in a crowded area.

Stop me if I told you this one before, but I think it’s a good example of what I’m talking about. My friend Blake was in an Internet café in Accra, Ghana’s capital, in the evening. In walked a man with a machete with the intention of robbing the café and everyone in the place. Recognizing this would be bad for business, the staff member at the front desk reached for the panic button – his very own machete. Other staff members pulled out machetes as well. They proceeded to chase the wanna-be thief out and down the street. The customers stayed and paid; whether out of fear or appreciation I can’t say. But do you see what I mean about people staying together?

At the same time, I also know stuff happens. To a certain extent, Bec and I and every other expatriate here is a target. We have a lot more than most Cameroonians (or Rwandans or Ghanaians or Ugandans). Usually what this means is that people try to sell us stuff we don’t want, or be our friends or ask us for stuff we can’t or won’t give. On rare occasions, it might mean something else. So if anyone wants the car or the money or the cell phone, they can have it. We’ll get another. Just stay calm, give up the item and get on with life. I think that’s the same everywhere, though, not something that is unique to most of Africa, especially Cameroon.

But getting back to the crime bump, I’ll concede that the crime rate is higher in New York. However, I guarantee that the prison break rate is far lower in New York.

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The only home invasion we’ve suffered came in the form of wildlife. Remember when I said that the only big animals we’ve seen since we’ve seen in Africa were cockroaches? Well, that was before we saw what we saw crawling around our bathroom the other night.

I was sitting on the couch in the living room while Bec was washing up in the bathroom.

“Umm, there’s a huge spider in the bathroom. I know it’s bad luck to kill them, but this is really big,” she said, gamely attempting to hold it together and her face covered in suds.

“Sure. Let me get the spray.”

I went in and didn’t see anything. I had my doubts about the size of this spider. Bec is one of the bravest people I know, but bugs and spiders aren’t her thing. We’ve set it up so that I take care of insects and the occasional arachnid, while she gets everything else. So that when there’s a cockroach, I usually kill it. When there’s a crocodile, Bec’s on it. This seems fair to me.

After we watched some TV, I went back into the bathroom. And then I saw it. I had never seen anything quite like this spider. I could clearly see the shape of its body – the bulbous rear, the small head, the bends in the legs – without bending over. The light brown markings on its dark brown back were visible. I swear I saw its mouth. To paraphrase George Costanza, it was 10 feet long if it was an inch.

I was afraid that one of us would get caught in the spider’s web and become dinner. I’m sure it could have taken Bec down in one bite. I’m a bit meatier. We were pretty sure it wasn’t poisonous because we didn’t remember reading about venomous spiders in Cameroon. At least that’s what we told ourselves.

Most importantly, something that big should be paying rent. But I was afraid to make the request.

So it had to be dealt with. I unloaded probably a quarter can of bug spray on the spider, and it kept moving. I was afraid that it was angry and advised Bec not to get up to pee in the middle of the night at any cost. We tucked our mosquito net tight to make sure it couldn’t get into the bed.

I’m pleased to report that it worked and we are safe. There was no spider attack over the course of the night, and we didn’t see any yesterday. Now let’s see if our luck holds.