certification

The second part of a five-part description of a long walk.

Wednesday 23 December: Abang

16:00

I left Yaoundé (again), this time by moto.  I rode with my driver to Mbalmayo, a small town, dusty and dark and somewhat ghostly, like Rwamagana, where the volunteers in my Peace Corps Rwanda cohort had completed their training four years ago.  The ride took an hour, with the overheats natural for a poorly-maintained motorcycle, for only 5000 CFA.  My driver was good-natured and cautious, and I felt like I was occupying this world and one back in Rwanda simultaneously.  It felt good.

Spent the night in Mbalmayo.  Found a cute family-run motel and slept.  Ate fish and plantains at a local restaurant, and a young guy happily bought me a beer “because I was his father” before knocking his own to the floor and needing to be carried out by his friends.  Went back to sleep soon after.

I left the motel at 5:30 in the morning.  Despite my hang-up with the Gendarmerie, I am determined to continue.  The first hour was dark – the Muslims walked to prayer and the mothers opened up market stands, eager for the business of the first hour.  I stopped for breakfast of bananas and water; the world turned from black to gray and, briefly, to silver.  I walked.  My goal was to reach Abang, 17 km south of Mbalmayo.  The countryside is dense, the vegetation so thick that at times it all surrounds me like a cage of lush green – wide ferns and tall stalks, above which stand thin wiry trunks and pal

[abrupt ending]

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Thursday 24 December: Mengueme

13:20

Impromptu English lesson with the family I stayed with last night.  After lots of walking, I realized that Abang was off the main road.  I couldn’t find it.  About 5km later I found a roadside village, where a mother was offering her beautiful young daughter as my “travel companion.”

18:00

Another interruption.

I refused the woman’s offer but made friends with the daughter, Tatiana.  They gave me plates of cold boiled cassava and vegetable pulp – a considerable offer, considering their living conditions.  Tatiana’s family lived in a two-room mud brick home, the hearth billowing smoke into the shared living space and blackening the walls.  Tatiana has six brothers and five sisters, all younger than her, and they shared two foam-topped wooden tables as beds.  Her mother soon left with her father to join the rest of the village at a Christmas party across the village, and slowly everyone became too drunk to stand.  I missed the first part of that – passing out and taking a nap.

When I woke, every kid was looking at me.  Judging by the knot on my head, at least one had played with my hair while I was sleeping.  Nobody touched my backpack, which probably weighed more than the sum total of the family’s possessions.  I went outside to write, but the kids followed, and an impromptu English lesson began.  I taught Daniella, a 9-year-old sister who seemed to only own her school uniform, how to say a few basic expressions in English.  Soon, her brothers and sisters joined in.  I sat in the dirt and let them play with my phone’s camera while I worked with Daniella and a few others on their expressions.  You can see the work a few pages prior.

Sun sets fast near the equator – I forgot how suddenly and sourcelessly the transformation happens, which is beautiful in a distinctly different way from the North.  The cars and trucks speeding down the road now felt like evil apparitions, so out of place in this primeval squalor, so menacing.  An old lady came to me and the children made space in the dirt next to us before continuing to play with my arm hair.  The grandmother spoke clear and simple French, repeating herself gracefully.  Another mother led me over to her home and fed me a fish stew with boiled plantains, which was immaculate and greasy and perfect.  The women wore dresses made from a fabric advertising the 27-year-in-office president, Paul Biya, with his slogan, “The Force of Experience”, written unironically in a language they couldn’t read.

I verified with the parents of the home, now struggling to stand, that I could sleep in their home.  Inside, I sat on one of those table-beds and watched as other painfully drunk adults and their wide-eyed children came by the home to say good evening.  Once they left – and the single halogen solar light was flicked on for the evening – I fought (think-type-translate-repeat) with Tatiana about where I was sleeping.  She told me that she loved me and that we could spend our first night together, before the wedding.  With her brothers and sisters reading our conversation over her shoulder, I politely refused.  I slept on a plastic sheet on the ground, occasionally startled awake by a roach running across my arm and then loudly scurrying over the tarp.  The family cat slept between my legs.

In the morning, I used the small exterior cubby behind the house to take my first bucket shower in at least three years. I left before dawn, after hugging Daniella and the other children goodbye.

…

19:30

Darkness, and then candlelight.

I passed my first bribery challenge an hour after I left Tatiana’s village.  I came to a large river and a bridge, running parallel to a rusted railroad crossing that had been stripped of its tracks, and waved hello to the boys fishing below.  A makeshift checkpoint was ahead of me – a small wilted wooden kiosk with a rope held taught across the road, let down every few moments for traffic to pass.  A too-lean gendarme, missing most of his teeth, aggressively interrogated me.  I chuckled, asked to sit down, and started smoking.  Not phased.  The gendarme looked through my passport and visa, finding tiny opportunities to challenge me.  Really, they were just interested in my journey.  They called me a mystical man.  As I stood up to leave, they asked for some “joy” on this jeaux noel, to which I started singing a hymn as I walked past them.

I took breakfast, pain chocolat, at one of the many bars in this sad little town.  At 8:30 am, everyone was drunk.  A large woman took me by the hand and led me to the boutique to buy some dejuner, but after a few moments moved a tree trunk-seat invasively close to me and started feeling me up.  She wanted to now if I needed a “companion”, her hands squeezing my biceps and thighs as I tried to eat my stale bread without making eye contact, but then started begging me to have sex with her for money.  At the same time, this frail old grandmother put a drunken young man in a literal headlock and was spanking him for his public displays of incontinence, while children without pants wailed with all their might and my obese courtesan broke down in tears.  I finished my meal and left quickly.

Later – when attempting to relieve yourself in the woods, beware swarms of large black ants.  “Ants in your pants” makes sense.

…

Mengueme opened up along a ridge cleared of jungle like an oasis.  The sun was heavy and I decided to stay in town for the night.  A boy took me to the only room for rent – 2000 CFA, or $4 – and when the matron realized that I wanted to stay for longer than a soiree, I was able to keep her first price.  A pretty young prostitute waited for me at my door – politely refused.  I went to find lunch and met the terribly drunk leader of the Comite du Vigilance (CDV), who after a painful half hour of negotiation (and 3 cigarettes) agreed to let me sleep in his town in peace.  I took a nap in my room, where I had to connect two live wires to charge my phone.  That’s what $4 gets me.

Around 6:00 PM, I left to find dinner.  Family cooking is always superior; I found a young girl selling undercooked chicken and a corn meal loaf.  She didn’t have change, so I sat down to write.  That old drunkard from the CDV approached me and tried to talk to me but was so gone that he couldn’t sit up straight.

Back at the bar, I began writing.  Soon afterwards, a friendly man sat next to me.  Daniel is a lumberjack – short, impossibly muscular, and well-spoken.  He wanted to practice his English on me and I wanted to practice my French, so we talked for an hour.  All seven of his children are in or have graduated from university, despite his own parents being unable to afford his own education.  He works alone, cutting and selling trees, because he has contempt for the lazy and greedy, who spend their children’s future on drink.  Daniel and I shared numbers so that his daughter could practice her English with me.  When the power died and the impossibly loud music next door abated, we cheered with the rest of the village.  Daniel left to tend to his sick wife, and I thoroughly felt that I had just spoken to an angel.

…

Friday 25 December: Ngoule Makong

12:00

Late last night, after the power returned and the music resumed its unholy disturbance, I was awoken to speak to the Gendarmerie.  It seems as though my drunk friend from the CDV failed to express enough conviction regarding m trustworthiness.  So I put on my clothes, grabbed my journal and went to meet them.  The patron of the hotel was silent as we walked through the dark to meet them.  No eye contact.

One of the uniformed men was short and round and yet had the sharpest cheekbones I’ve seen outside Tampa or LA.  The other was slouched, perfectly chill, and didn’t bother speaking to me but observed everything I said while I spoke to his comrade.  Both were dressed in green camouflage fatigues with red berets.  Fat Man admitted that Cameroon is a bilingual country (party line) but that his English was poor, laughing at this fact with a chuckle that seemed half-jolly, half-menacing.  Cool Man just kept looking at my papers.  Fat Man took the lead – who am I, what am I doing, why am I so crazy, the usual.  I was afraid, shifting my weight constantly, dropping my pen and money, like a child.  Fat Man turned on his phone’s blinding flashlight and pointed it directly in my face.

Slowly, I gained control of myself.  The hotel patron verified my story and helped with some of the language difficulties.  A small crowd had gathered around and listened with rapt attention.  I slowly convinced the Fat Man that I had done all that I said I had – travel so much before 26, go on long hikes in other countries, teach English abroad – and as the crowd began to grow I could feel the balance shift in my favor with each “wow” uttered by a small kid.  Cool Man still wasn’t convinced; he knew enough English to ask, “Do you like my gun?” as he reached into the back of his SUV to retrieve their passport log.  I told him that I did.  Of course I did.

After half an hour of this, Fat Man and Cool Man let me go (despite not having a COVID vaccine on my WHO card!) and promised to call ahead to the next Gendarmerie station.  I went to shake their hands – they held up their fists, saying “this is what we do here,” tapping our knuckles together and then tapping our breasts.  Back at the hotel, I smoked a shaky cigarette under the awning outside the hotel and silently lit the gas lamp the matron was struggling to light.  At my door, the family’s young boy stood wide-eyed.  I crushed a scampering roach under my boot as it scurried out from under my door, wiped it on the ledge of my stoop, and said bon nui to the kid with a wink.  It was now Christmas morning.

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