This is a particularly long one. Sorry!

Camping was pretty fun. Abdu carried most of the stuff: the three tents and four sleeping bags. The rest of us carried what little personal belongings we needed and food. It took about 15 minutes to walk where we camped which was just off of the trail we took to hike up the mountain a week ago. We got there, set up our tents, cut some firewood, made a fire and ate some sandwiches that Joan made for us. The four of us ended up playing games on my iPod touch for about two hours until eventually we decided to go to bed. Tim and John had their own one man tents while Abdu and I shared a four person tent. I noticed that the moon, which was about half full, seems to disappear (or reappear) at a 45 degree slant. It’s been a while since I last looked up at the moon in America but as I remember it, it seemed to get cut away at with the crescent part of it fully on one side, with both tips of the moon in a somewhat vertical line. I remember in Brazil, the moon, when half full, looked like a boat. The tips were horizontal. Here it’s angled. I’ve heard it has to do with your reference to the equator and such which seems to make sense. Does anyone know anything more about this?

We woke up early, at about 4:30 so we could pack up and get back to the house by 6. John and Sherri had to catch a plane at 8 to go home. The “airport” which is really just a dirt runway is about fifteen or so minutes from the house. I rode on the back of Dayyibu’s motorcycle to get there and Abdu rode the Mitsuba bike there. Everyone else rode in Bob’s Mitsubishi SUV. When I got there, I was able to ride around on Dayyibu’s bike for a little while along the runway (which was much smoother than the dirt roads here). Shortly afterwards the plane arrived and John and Sherri were off. Tim and Bethany then practiced driving around on the two motorcycles while Bob, Abdu and Dayyibu helped coach them. Everyone but Abdu and I left and I got to ride around a little more, take some pictures, etc. Abdu and I left and on our way back we were stopped by a Gendarme, a national Cameroonian soldier in a green military suit with a red beret. Gendarme, when broken down from French to English literally means a “person of arms”. They’re at a lot of check points on the main roads in Cameroon and aren’t really a problem as long as you have a driver’s license, insured vehicle, and any other necessary papers. This guy just stopped us, asked in French, “Wouram se blanche?” or something like that, basically meaning “Are you with the white people from Wouram?” since Bob, Joan, Tim and Bethany had just passed by on the same road a few minutes prior and I was obviously white. Abdu said yes and he waved us on through. Apparently being a white person from Wouram is pretty much a green light for no trouble since we’ve brought some good to the town (the hospital).

Then, a few minutes later we drove by a group of local police from Banyo who asked us to stop. They asked for insurance papers for the motorcycle. I had no idea what was really going on since they were speaking in French. The police officer asked me if I spoke French and I replied “un peu” (a little). They asked for papers and I whipped out a photocopy of my passport and visa which I had on me. Some of them laughed pretty hard. They didn’t care about my passport. They wanted insurance papers. They told me they would take me to the office and I gave Abdu my cell phone to give Bob a call for help. I had no idea what was going on. I thought they were taking me to their police station for questioning. I was motioned to hop on the back of one of the police officer’s motorcycle and he gave me a ride to the Wouram Baptist Hospital office. Duh. They didn’t care about me. The Mitsuba motorcycle Abdu was driving, on the other hand, which had just been fixed (the one I fell off of), had no insurance, so they wanted to impound it. By the time I got to Wouram, Dayyibu was already setting out to try to reason with the police into not impounding it. He came back about 30 minutes later and fortunately, they didn’t impound it or ask for a bribe. Yay! All is well and no harm done; just a minor inconvenience and my first encounter with the local police. I will forever remember them breaking out into laughter as they read the details of my passport in Pigeon English… “Mr. Benjamin Joseph Castria. United States of America.” *Chuckle chuckle chuckle*

By the way, I forgot to mention this in an earlier blog but the auto/motorcycle insurance here is whack! It’s basically an extension of your registration. You have to pay for a yearly registration, which comes out to $20-$100 depending in if it’s a motorcycle, car, truck, whatever. Then you have to pay for insurance which is government run as I understand it and you’re required to have it. It’s in the same range of costs as the registration depending on the vehicle. However, when you actually get into an accident, the insurance company is nowhere to be found. They don’t want to pay up. They never pay for anything apparently. It’s all up to you (or whoever caused the accident) to pay for the accident expenses out of pocket. So like I said, it’s basically an extension of the registration. No actual insurance. Another thing is vehicle inspection: There are no emissions inspections but there are safety and road worthiness inspections that you have to get done on a regular basis. However, no one really does them. If the police or gendarme stop you, and you don’t have a valid inspection sticker, they just demand a bribe. If it’s the kind of police officer that would demand a bribe in the first place, even if you do have a valid inspection sticker, they’ll find something else wrong and demand a bribe anyway. So there’s no point in getting your car inspected. You can just deal with the bribes on the spot, or pay for it to be inspected and get bribed anyway. We are very fortunate in America.

The rest of the day went fine. Bob’s motorcycle has a slow leak in one of the tires. I took it off and Bob, Sulemanu and I worked hard for a while to get the tire off of the rim. The whole time I dreamed of being back at Vespia’s despite how much I hated working there. Removing tires from a rim really is so much easier when you have a machine that does 90% of the work for you. Unfortunately for here, labor is cheap, machinery is expensive. We need a wire wheel to complete the job since the tube keeps going flat due to a rusty inner rim. Doing repairs around here has been harder than I thought it would be. It’s not because the machines themselves are difficult to disassemble or figure out, for the most part. But really, it’s the lack of quality replacement parts available. Motorcycle batteries around here have an average life of 3 months according to Bob. One part of Sulemanu’s bike that is most likely causing his electrical problems is a piece that has already been replaced several times. Each replacement is just a cheap and poorly built as the last. It doesn’t last long before needing to be replaced again.

The internet today is particularly slow but I was able to load a satellite image of Banyo and pinpoint where we are. If you copy and paste +6° 45' 0.10", +11° 49' 44.82" into google maps (or just follow the hyperlink if it shows up in this blog), and click on satellite image, it’ll give you the exact location of where Wouram is. The building that the arrow is directly pointing to is Dayyibu’s house, ten feet from my house. My house is kind of hidden by trees though, just a little bit to the west. +6° 44' 55.95", +11° 49' 50.70" is Dr. Smith’s house, where I am currently using the internet. +6° 44' 58.02", +11° 49' 43.44" is the Lokker’s home and +6° 44' 59.32", +11° 49' 51.28" is the hospital.

I love being in Cameroon and experiencing a new culture but the things I miss the most are the variety of foods, regular speedy internet access and hot showers. The only things that bother me are the dust, which isn’t actually all that bad unless you’re on the road, and occasionally there is a lizard or other large rodent living in the ceiling above me that only seems to come out at night. It scurries along and sometimes can be really loud. It’s fine when I’m already sleeping but creeps me out as I lay in the pitch black darkness waiting to fall asleep, or if I wake up briefly in the night. We’ll eventually set some sort of trap to try and get it out of there. It wouldn’t be good if it started to eat the electrical wires. Despite stereotypical scenes of roosters cockadoodle doing at only 5 in the morning, they actually do it anytime from 4 in the morning until sundown. It’ll be 3 in the afternoon and I just here chickens start to cluck and roosters making noise. It doesn’t bother me but it’s something I never knew before.

Today, Bob picked up some mail from the hospital where it gets delivered and I noticed the postmark date on one envelope from the U.S. said November 18th. Two months is about the expected mail delivery time from the U.S. to here right now I guess. I asked Bob what it costs to send a letter within Cameroon and he had no idea. He said he hasn’t used the postal system in years. If you need to send something to someone, you find someone you know who will be travelling to that town and knows the person. It’s cheaper and much faster. Joan told me one time a few years ago, a friend of theirs from the U.S. sent something via UPS to Banyo. The Lokkers got a call from the UPS office in Younde (the capital) and they said, “we have a package for you. Pick it up within 24 hours or it’s getting thrown out.” Younde is about a 20 hour trip I’m pretty sure. Yikes! They somehow managed to get in anyway, I think through a friend in Younde who picked it up for them and held onto it. It’s hard to deliver goods across country when many of the main roads are unpaved and almost impassable a few months every year. Good roads and good means of transportation is key if a country is to be economically productive and efficient. Yay for the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System of America. If you don’t know what that is, that’s any highway that starts with an I, as in I-95, I-10, I-80, etc. Basically, yay for smooth 65 mph roads with no traffic lights.

The weather here is not as bad as I thought it would be. It’s hottish but not as hot as it is in Texas. The sun is pretty bright but again, not as intense as in Texas. It’s surprising considering I’m closer to the equator here than in Texas. Go figure. The rest of the afternoon I showed Abdu how to do some stuff on the computer: how to type, how to find music, pictures, etc. I let him practice for a bit while I read a magazine. Now I’m posting my blog, will eat dinner in about an hour, probably watch a movie with the Lokkers tonight and have church tomorrow morning.

Until next time…