I am so not in Kansas anymore….
I knew that Africa was going to be awesome. But I was totally unprepared for just how visually intoxicating it would be. I did managed to limp my way through customs with the little French I know (it took a minute and some hand motions to explain that I was not staying in Chad but that I had a friend taking me to Cameroon) and find S. (I’m just going to refer to any people I meet here by their first initial for privacy reasons) and his wife, sister, driver, and friend. We all piled into his jeep and took off through N’Djamena towards the Logone River that separates Chad and Cameroon.
I was awestruck by the amount of activity that seems to be packed into every square inch of what I saw of N’Djamena and of Kousseri. There are people selling gas in old 1.5 l coke bottles, selling awesome looking citrus fruits, bananas, pineapples, people taking naps on the side of the rode, women in bright pagne with babies strapped to their backs (side-note, it was about 75-80 degrees today and some of the babies had stocking hats on)-the concentration of humanity is just crazy. Speaking of crazy, maybe it was the jet lag or maybe I just don’t fear death as much as I thought, but there don’t seem to be any rules when driving in Africa. Cars, motos, taxi vans crammed with people and/or goats, feral donkeys, all just seem to mingle on the road at varying speeds, sometimes in directly opposing directions. I asked S if people in Cameroon drive on the right side or the left side of the road and he smiled saying “we drive on the right BUT as you can see, not everyone follows the rule”.
We thought about driving from Kousseri to Maroua today, but because it’s a seven hour drive (it’s only about 265 km but since the roads are so bad it takes forever according to S) we decided to stay in Kousseri for the night and just leave bright and early tomorrow morning. So this afternoon S showed me around Kousseri and took me on some of his business appointments (the man seems to know everyone).
And even though I was still stuffed from my Ethiopian Air smorgasbord, I ate some awesome fried chicken, salad, and French bread for dinner and washed it down with a bomba** banana, pineapple, powdered milk smoothie. S and his friend, J, were impressed that I used to be a “footballer” and told me to “eat! eat! eat!” “you have to stay strong for contact sport!” Later that evening, I fell in the dirt trying to sit on a stool and J informed me that if I ate more, I would have been strong enough to sit on the stool and not fall, lol. Thus, I have a feeling that the next ten weeks will entail a lot me trying to explain that I no longer play soccer regularly enough to warrant eating three dinners a day.
Bon soir for now more tomorrow about my trek to Maroua!
