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Loving LimbeApr 16, 2009
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Waiting to see the Mayor
With the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Bafut
Bafut Countil
Happy belated Easter everyone. Hope you all enjoyed your bank holiday. Good Friday is the only official holiday here but I and a friend decided to take Monday off as well and travel to the coast for a bit of an Easter break.
Last week was a busy one as I was visiting some of the female mayors that had attended my workshop the previous week. This meant visiting them in the councils and although most of the meetings were a couple of hours the whole day seemed to go, either waiting for people to arrive at the meeting or being taken to lunch afterwards (well to eat as people don't tend to have set meals here, often people eat their biggest meal at the beginning of the day and there is no snacking throughout the day – sometimes it feels awkward to be having my lunch in the office, nobody else eats there except the other international volunteers). It was hard but good work, I was helping the mayors come up with projects that they could implement to increase women's participation in the next election. At Bafut (see the photos) we went to meet the Mayor himself (the women are deputies). We waited while he saw someone else and it was rather like waiting outside the head-teacher's office! He was very welcoming and interested in the Project. Then we went to eat locally (Bafut is about 30mins outside Bamenda and much more rural). There is a picture of me eating Achou (not sure of the spelling). This is a local dish, you eat with your hands. It is made from the same stuff as fou fou corn but made into a paste then served with a soup. I declined the cow hide which is normally stuck in it and managed to avoid the bush meat. It was an event for them as well that I was eating such traditional Cameroon food though – hence the picture ( I know I look a little dubious!).
So it was nice after the busy week to go on a little holiday and see some more of the country. Sherry (another volunteer from Canada) met me at the Amor Mezam bus station at 7am on Friday. The ticket office opened at 6.30am and you want to get there early so you don't get a bad seat – they journey is much more uncomfortable and bumpy at the back of the bus. So I bought us our tickets and chose us some good seats near the front and saw that only about four other people had bought their tickets! So what to do for the next two hours? The bus was 'due' to leave at 9am (however in reality the bus leaves when it is full – so you don't dare go home to relax in case there is a rush and the bus leaves before 9). So we pottered a bit about the bus station, taking photos marveling at how well and how high they pack luggage on top of the buses (see pictures). Then wondered a bit further to get some food and buy some batteries for my camera (which incidentally didn't work and almost broke my camera!). While doing this we spotted a mass gathering on the street that became an Easter parade – hundreds of people walking down the road (through a really busy intersection and the traffic kept going) singing and praying. It was quite an emotional sight, the force of so many people coming together (and mass music always gets me). It was quite interesting that they were as interested in us as us in them – we watched them, and they watched us both as intrigued as each other.
Finally the bus left at 10.45am and we made our way to Limbe, on the coast, near the base of Mount Cameroon, in the South West Region. The journey was long, hot and tiring. You can't drink very much even though it is so hot because there is only one pee stop on the whole of the seven hour journey, so you get a little dehydrated and sleepy. The roads to Limbe were pretty well maintained and the scenery exquisite, dramatic green peaks and valleys with silvery tin roofs clinging to the mountainside and sparkling in the sun – like coins that had been dropped on a lawn. We finally arrived outside Limbe where we were dropped and told to get on a little mini bus which would take us the rest of the way – we were a little dubious as we anticipated having another lengthy wait before we left, but surprisingly it left pretty much straight away (often you are left not knowing what is really happening due to mis-communications and sometimes being told what people think you want to hear rather than what is actually happening). So we were dropped in busy hustling bustling Limbe which immediately enabled us to decide that we wanted to stay out of town by the beach so we took another taxi to Seme beach – finally we arrived at our hotel – 7pm the total journey taking us 12 hours!
It was all worth it though. That evening we bumped into two other volunteers that we had become friends with during our orientation in Yaounde when we arrived. It was great to see them and catch up on their work and experiences. We went for a late night walk on the beach and a paddle in the beautifully warm sea. Saturday we spent at a Primate centre, one of only 20 in the world, where they keep rescued orphaned chimps, gorillas and monkeys. Most of endangered species, some of which were prolific in the forests in Cameroon just ten years ago. We then discovered a wonderful 24 hour bakery! and got very excited about eating fresh sandwiches, croissants, donoughts and smoothies! ( We went back there before we left to stock up) we were incredibly pleased with ourselves and strolled across the road to the botanical gardens to eat ourselves silly. We then walked off our feast wondering round the gardens and found a little used path back into the town which felt like we were walking through the jungle, spotting lots of lizards, butterflies and sculpture like trunks of trees. Limbe is tropical in incredibly hot and humid. We found our selves on the sleepy sea front of the town. We felt very relaxed and content and realised that this was partly due to the fact that we were walking on pavements and weren't having to fight our way down the street against beep beep taxis as normal. We had a drink on the sea front watched the fishermen bring in the last catches for the day. Later we found a great spot to watch the beautiful sunset and ate fresh prawns – divine. The next day we needed to rest as the heat was taking it out of us. We did manage to walk to the lava trails just down the road from our hotel though. In 1999 Mount Cameroon erupted and killed hundreds of people. It is still active. Where the lava flowed is still very visible and we walked up on it – it is a black lunar like landscape – life amazingly is starting to regenerate through the black pumice like rock. The lava crossed a road – so a new one had to be built round it – and stopped just before entering the sea. It was a strange and quite eerie sight. We spent the afternoon on the beach and in the warm Atlantic Ocean! relaxing and gearing up for the journey home the next day! - which actually turned out to be only 9 hours this time.
