Cameroon: Douala

Arrived in Douala on the 8th of May, in the evening.

Everything was pretty straightforward, until we got to the baggage collection area. There is only one exit – the “something to declare”, red doorway. The green “nothing to declare” route is permanently blocked and has some mobile phone sales desk planted infront of it. There were porters everywhere, trying to secure your services. I had been warned about these porters by Sahar, but I forgot to keep change with me – so I tried to refuse all porting aid, to no avail. One ambitious porter managed to grab my bag and made for the exit with me trailing behind. We stopped at the door, where he asked me to pay something for the passage. I kept protesting that I had no change – but finally ended up pulling out an Israeli 50 shekel note, and as I was trying to explain to him what it was the customs officer saw the note in his hand and motioned to him to get moving. Just beyond the exit Reza was waiting for me, so I grabbed my bag from the porter and when I turned around he was gone. I’m not sure what he did with the shekel note, but I hope he didn’t take it to a mosque.

The next morning, after a late breakfast Sima called Manal in Bamenda, who asked “Where’s Lessan? We’re expecting him!”. Realising that I was meant to have travelled to Bamenda that day, we decided to try to make it happen – but it was already 10am. By the time we got ready and to the motor park in Bonaberi, it was 11:30. It was promised that the bus would depart within the next hour, but we finally moved out at 1:45pm. The buses get pretty crammed, with 5 people sitting in a row, but I had a good seat at the front. A girl sat next to me, and it turned out later she didn’t have her ID papers with her so we kept getting stopped at each police/gendarme checkpoint for them to try to coax a bribe out of her, which she was quite adamant she didn’t want to give. We finally arrived in Bamenda around 10pm.

Pictures of the drive to Bonaberi, from the Bushrui’s home. You can see Reza in the front:

Street corner:

Road sign:

The bridge: