Le Voyage au Nord

It’s been a while since I have blogged, but I am currently on vacation and out of my “routine” life in village and have thus been inspired to try to capture some of the absurdities that I begin to view as normal.
The vacation started last week when I left my village in a bush taxi at 6am in the morning. Bush taxis are always fun in that you never know how many passengers you may be crammed in alongside or what type of passengers they may be(co-passengers may include pigs, goats, chickens, large gas tanks that look as though they could explode with too much jostling, and there will definitely be jostling). Typically you will have at least 7 other human passengers than yourself(kids under the age of 10 don’t count as 1 human passenger only if there are 2 of them can they equal 1), then you are jammed in the “car” I also use this term loosely as these are really just old rusted junkers that you wouldn’t imagine could still roll down the road. I should also mention that 2 people share the driver’s seat in the manual cars, this is a feat that I don’t think I could have imagined as possible before this last year but has now become so normal to me I am surprised when the driver is by himself in the seat. I arrived in Nkongsamba, the closest larger town to me where I met up with my friend Ben a fellow PCV with whom I am traveling through the North. He had already loaded the bus and was waiting for me as I arrived taking the spot behind him and next to the a sweet grandma who would provide great entertainment to me throughout the ride with her fabulous singing and dancing skills. Before the bus would take off though we had one last chance for shopping in Nkongsamba, shopping meaning various vendors stepped on the bus with an array of goods perched on their heads. The Grandma next to me bought a classic meal of baton de manioc (a smooshed stick of mashed cassava molded into a banana leaf)and pistache (a blend of dried fish and crushed pumpkin seeds). Soon the driver started the bus and put the world cup songs on repeat Shakira’s This is Africa and the Wave Your Flag song, I felt like we were a soccer team getting pumped to drive to our big game. After hearing that on repeat several times surprisingly some of the Cameroonians got sick of it (this is highly surprising as the music that is played constantly outside my house is the same 4 or 5 Cameroonian songs 20hours a day, no exaggeration!) Those in the back of the bus who were complaining called for Bakosi music traditional music from the area, the driver surprisingly obliged and our bus quickly turned into a dance hall with all the passengers singing along. Another hour down the road a fight errupted in the back of the bus, which was really just a small disagreement between two people but turned into a screaming match between the whole bus (this is quite typical, I don't even remember what this argument was about but often times Southern Cameroonians just like to yell for no reason). Another half hour passed and the same people that were screaming at each other were back to laughing and dancing with one another, and this typifies my average transportation experience, even when taking a short ride from one village to another. Eight hours later the bus pulled into Yaounde where we would stay for the night at the Peace Corps office/transit house to prepare for our train ride the next day.
From Yaounde the only route to make it to the Northern Regions of the country is to take the train and just like everything else the process is made especially difficult. Thankfully we had our friend Justin who lives up north and will be traveling around with us over the next 2 weeks to take care of the tickets for us. The rule is you have to book your tickets 3 days in advance in person not before, not after, then on the day of the voyage you must show up early in the morning to show that you have booked 3 days in advance with your receipt and then you will be assigned a real ticket. Thanks to Justin the process was shortened to us just waiting the Wed. morning by playing musical chairs with the Cameroonians(this was their process of waiting in a line everyone would shift 1 chair forward as 1 person finished the process). Finally that evening we arrived at the train station and were once again en route to the North. Fifteen hours on the train made for a beautiful way to explore the forrested hills of the Center Region, soon though the sun sank below the plains and gave rise to the lights of small villages in the distance, then complete darkness. I woke up several times during the night as the train came to stops and out of the darkness I heard the voices of women and children yelling l'eau, l'eau, l'eau(water, water, water) baton, baton, baton (same food the grandma from the bus enjoyed). The next time I woke up we had already arrived on the lush green plateau that is the Adamaoua Region. The train arrived in Ngoundere late in the morning to pouring down rain. Which brought rise to one of the funnier scenes thus far on my trip as the old lady walking next to me through the rain decided it would be a better idea to just take her clothes off rather than allow them to get soaked by the rain...hmmm is this normal? No one else seemed to be staring at her or finding this as out of the ordinary as I. So, on we continued as we caught the next bus of our trip to the capital of the North Region of Garoua after arriving in the late afternoon we found motos that took us into Justin’s village. Finally Thursday evening at sunset we arrived in Justin’s village of Gashiga after nearly 59 hours of being en route. Gashiga is a small village along a dirt road that leads to Nigeria composed of thatched roofed mud huts sitting in front of red rock mesas…beautiful! I can already see the North is a different world and I am excited about all the opportunities for exploring a new part of this incredibly diverse country!