February 2, 2007

Hey there, remember me?

I know at least one person has been asking why there haven’t been any new posts in this space over the last few weeks. While I’d love to say that it’s because I’ve been out traveling around Cameroon, the reality is far different. The truth is I haven’t written anything recently because there hasn’t been much to write about.

That changed today when Bec and I made another attempt to get our residence permits. I know the first question that came to your minds after reading that: Evan, why do you need a residence permit? You’re leaving soon. Why put yourself through the aggravation of dealing with the Cameroonian bureaucracy?

Answer: If I didn’t try to get this done, I wouldn’t have had the chance to go to the Justice Ministry’s Central Index Card Office, clearly a victim of bilingualism gone bad. To be honest, I’m not sure what a better translation would have been. I was so distracted by the Central Index Card Office that I failed to notice the French.

To my disappointment, there were no index cards in the Central Index Card Office. I had envisioned stack upon stack of white and pink cards all around the room, like some pack rat’s apartment. Instead, it was an open room with a few desks and bookshelves stacked with bundled legal documents. “Now we know why the courts are so backlogged,” Bec said.

In theory, we should have had our residency permits within the first three months of our arrival. But then the person at the desk decided (I say decided because the person was actually breaking Cameroon’s agreement with CRS and possibly the country’s laws) we’d have to wait six months. Six months came while we were in New York, so we couldn’t get our cards then. So we’re getting them now.

It’s hard for me to overstate how unnecessarily complex and slow the Cameroonian bureaucracy is. In some ways, it’s the perfect system for low-level flunkies to profit from. “I’m sorry, you needed that document signed at the office in the other ministry. But I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement about how we can make this go faster.” CRS doesn’t have to prostrate itself like that – it’s written in their agreement to work here – which means the organization has to wade through the muck to get anything done.

I think that Mathieu, the driver who has been in charge of getting our documents done, has been to seven offices to get two copies of one document. The reason Bec and I had to go today is that the man at the desk with the hand-written RECEPTION sign – a man with whom I hold one thing in common. I would have run out of room on the small piece of poster board where he wrote the word also – could verify that we were the people whose faces appear in our passports. We didn’t have to sign any papers. We didn’t even have to say hello. We just had to stand there. So we took the chance to discuss, in English, how Cameroon ranks among the world’s worst countries for doing business, the number of steps it takes to get anything official done and how if people are so afraid of Chinese doing better business in Cameroon, maybe Cameroonians should try to compete against them. That last bit will make sense in the second part of this post.

Poor Mathieu had to rewrite a hand-written letter requesting the documents needed to get our pink cards. Apparently, the letter was only in one of our dossiers. Each separate dossier needed its own letter asking for the forms. That it was a joint request hardly mattered. To top it off, there was no paper in the Central Index Card Office, so Mathieu had to go searching for more.

Although we thought we’d be getting our residency cards today, it turns out it’ll be Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m not holding my breath, since we were told we’d be getting our cards two weeks ago. I’ll probably get mine the day I fly home. No worries. It’ll just go in my collection of interesting identification documents, along with the Ugandan and Cambodian press passes.

The only worry I’ve got is that our passports are currently somewhere inside the Central Index Card Office. I have this nightmare vision that they are currently being wrapped up into one of the bundles and slapped onto a bookshelf, never to be seen again.

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As some of you may have known, and most of you probably didn’t, Chinese President Hu Jintao was in Yaoundé earlier this week. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that. It didn’t even make the front pages of most Cameroonian newspapers.

Hu is on an eight-country tour of Africa. Cameroon was his first stop and he left behind $100 million in trade deals, give or take a dollar or two. Unfortunately, he did not sign any trade deals with me.

I pitched this story to a couple of outlets, with, as you can see, no luck. This, of course, led to a new version of the famous Buddhist riddle: If the Chinese president comes to visit Cameroon, and no one outside cares, did he really visit? An American friend who is a photographer tried to get into the events where Biya and Hu would chat, meet and greet, but the Deputy Minister of Information told him, “It’s very late. Maybe we can do some business.” The Deputy Minister then asked for CFA 50,000 (around $100). Ben got up and left.

There are billboards all around Yaoundé showing Biya and Hu shaking hands, probably at a meeting earlier in Beijing. They’re quite buddy-buddy, don’t you know. I’m sure in briefings, Hu asked questions like, “what’s that guy’s name again?” There are also Chinese flags all around town. The streets in our neighborhood were completely shut down on Wednesday, which made walking easier and safer. I didn’t have any complaints, except for the soldiers with their rifles cocked and ready to rock.

What I’ve discovered from talking to people is that many Cameroonians don’t actually like the Chinese presence in their country. It’s not that they have any problems with Chinese because they’re Chinese. It’s because a lot of Chinese fill the same economic niche.

Chinese construction firms bring their own unskilled labor to do a lot of the building, jobs Cameroonians could fill. That’s a legitimate gripe. But Chinese also do a lot of the small trading, down to selling little sugar donuts (which have a proper French name that I can’t spell) in the markets. That’s where I kind of draw the line at legitimate griping. If you don’t like that the Chinese are outselling you in the markets, make a better donut that people want to buy. Compete. Don’t complain.

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The Chinese president’s visit caused my first “Listen, you whippersnapper” moment. That seems appropriate since I’m turning 30 next week. I went into the Internet café with the cappuccinos on Wednesday afternoon to get out of the house. There were some American college students who are studying in Cameroon in the café.

In amongst them was a large redhead. He asked what I was doing in Cameroon. I explained Bec’s job, and my attempts at journalism.

“I’ve got a story for you,” he said.

“Really, what’s that?”

“You know the Chinese president is visiting here today.”

“Get right outta town.”

“Yeah. He is. He’ll be passing by here any minute.”

“I pitched that story already. No one wanted it. It’s really a story when he goes to Liberia, because it’s Liberia, and Sudan, because China’s the only country that can really stop the Darfur violence.” [Did you know that China gets around 85 percent of Sudan’s oil?]

“Yeah, but people will care when the oil in the Bakassi Peninsula starts going to China.”

And that’s when it happened. That’s when I turned into a grumpy old man.

“Listen, I’ve been doing this a little while,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m a political science student.”

“Oh yeah? Trust me, the people that are telling you about this stuff aren’t giving the good information to a poli sci student from Dickinson College. No one knows how much oil is in Bakassi. In fact, no one thinks Cameroon has control of the oil in Bakassi. The rumor is that much of that oil stayed in Nigeria’s possession. And really what matters is what companies are doing the exploration. It looks like French and American companies, so how much of that goes to China? Probably not all that much.”

I didn’t like doing it, but I comfort myself by reminding myself that this guy was really beyond smug.

He then went outside to wait for the Chinese president’s motorcade to pass. It never did. I’m glad I didn’t follow his story lead.

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And finally, I may have gotten to the bottom of the Christmas crime rush in Yaoundé. It turns out, according to a friend who’s lived in Cameroon for nearly four years, that many of Cameroon’s coffee and cocoa brokers live here. For some reason, they get almost all their money at the end of the year. So for a couple of weeks, they’re rich. And within those couple of weeks, almost all of that money gets spent. So, with all of that extra money floating around, it gets tempting for thieves.

Huh. That’s the most logical thing I’ve heard about Cameroon in a while.