I didn’t know if I wanted to leave Calabar. I thought I’d have to go to the bank and get some money or find a moneychanger, I didn’t know how long the trip to the border town of Gembu would take me, I reckoned two days if I was lucky, possibly three days, then crossing the border would be another matter. I didn’t know if there was any transport across, so possibly I’d have to take a bike. Whether I could change the remaining naira into cfa around the border was another matter.
And in the end I didn’t find a bank, I didn’t go to a moneychanger, I left Calabar with N50k in my pocket. That’s about three days of life if all goes well.
I walked from the hotel towards a “highway” late, around 10am. I took a shared taxi to MCC/Mobil junction for N50 where I was told cars to Ikom/Ogoja in the North of Cross River State congregate. There were cars, Guinea style. Three rows, two passengers in front, four in the middle, three in the back.
There was a bit of an argument that I should pay for two seats but the price was high: N3000 for a seat to Ogoja, around 5hrs away so I said no. The guys somehow agreed. Then someone said I should pay for the luggage. Deja vu indeed. I did say I’d pay N500 but in the end noone asked for the money.
We made a test if I can sit in the back and I fit quite well, though my head was hitting the roof. We left. As usual, the driver was driving like crazy, very fast. The road wasn’t too good and he would even cross the potholes with speed. We arrived in Ikom and there it turned out he’d hand me over to another car who’d take me further North to Ogoja.
Ikom is 27kms away from Cameroon border but that border is by all accounts closed for foreigners. I did read an article about the separatist movement in Cameroon and it looks like what they did is Biafra 2.0. In 2017 they actually did declare independence from Cameroon calling themselves Republic of Ambazonia. Oh well. War indeed. There are about 34 thousand Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria and internally over half a million people were displaced.
We waited quite a while in Ikom. It was 2pm. I bought a roasted corn as my breakfast but then I saw a man (unusual, it’s normally women) selling rice and beans and I had the bean stew. It was very tasty, N300. There was no bottled water around, children were walking with plastic bowls on their heads selling “pure water” which is water in plastic bags. But there was somehow a shortage of this too and they carried only one-two bags at once. It costs N10 for 0.5l and it’s an environmental disaster. One of the men taking care of the transport bought one for me.
We left for Ogoja, less than 2hrs away, two people in front, me and three women in the back. I was asking around how to continue to Gembu but noone seemed to even hear about it.
We arrived in Ogoja after 4pm and I decided to stay the night. Possibly I could have continued to the next town/junction of Katsina Ala but the reports on iOverlander were quite alarming – hotels refusing foreigners on the grounds of security, people having to camp out on police station – so I thought I’d better stay in Ogoja and continue the next day.
I found some hotels on Jumia Travel but the site is not very useful if you want to know the location of the accommodation. I was dropped at a roundabout and just asked an okada driver for a cheap hotel. He asked if N5000 is fine for me I said yes and for N100 we rode the 300 meters to Maryland Guesthouse. The driver even got serious about the price of the accommodation and went with me to the reception and did all the talking. The price was N3500, which is one of the cheapest I’ve had on this trip after Morocco. The guesthouse has no AC but it was actually quite cool weather, with big storm clouds in the sky and anyway fan is normally fine, I just got used to the AC recently. Generator would run from 6pm to 6am. All good.
I went out to look around. Ogoja isn’t a beautiful town, the main street a collection of shacks but I even found a supermarket where I bought 2 1.5l bottles of water. Thinking there would be no food around, silly me, I bought a bottle of groundnuts for N500 and a slice of watermelon for N100.
I sat down at a shop that was selling beer and I took a bottle of gulder. Despite the cool weather I sweated like crazy. People of course were very curious about me, greeting me, calling oyinbo out. Three men entered a conversation with me about pretty much everything: Gregory, Friday and John. Of course I had to leave them my Polish number. John even walked me back to the guesthouse.
I was still asking about the road to Gembu but still noone knew anything. Finally a man called Africa, Emmanuel Africa, knew where Gembu is and told me the way. Go to the junction by the main road, outside Ogoja, catch a car going North to Jalingo, the capital of Taraba state and then catch a car to Gembu. It’s a long road – to go North and then to go back South/South East but at least there is information. He even said I could do it in a day if I show up at a motor park 6-7am but I doubt it, it’s over 12 hours on the road.
I asked John about food and he told me I could find it in so-called Central Motor Park.
I went out after dark – of course there were no street lights in town – and walked towards the motor park. I asked someone for directions and the man told me to follow him. And indeed there were three busy street kitchens in the park, wooden benches full of people. I had garri (Eastern name for eba) with vegetable soup. Madame doing the cooking threw in three pieces of “cow meat”. Those pieces of meat are charged extra and I didn’t tell her how many or if I want them at all so she did so in order to increase her revenue. I paid N400, including the pure water that’s almost always served after the meal.
I walked back to the guesthouse, the main street was busy after dark with many suya stands on the road. Some of the stands were already Northern style, that is not meat on skewers but roasting large slabs of meat which you choose, name your price and you get them cut and chopped, with onions tomatoes and cucumbers and of course pepper added and wrapped in a newspaper.
I took a bottle of Guinness at a guesthouse. It was nice and cool outside but the generator made a deafening noise. At about 11pm three men came in and started chatting with me. One of them sounded either American or Caribbean and I barely understood him. The other one came to me a bit later, already under influence and he dreamed about going to Poland. Ah, the ticket is $1000-1500 but if he could really get $500 a month, it’s so much naira, he could work for 5 months, any work, any even simplest work and he could return home rich. Or he could go as a student and work in the evenings on a student visa – I’m not even sure it’s possible in my beloved Poland. And I even tried to tell him it’s not that simple but he just kept dreaming. He even asked me if there was work in Cameroon so maybe he could go there and try, as he heard I was going there. And no amount me telling him I’m only passing by, I’m not a businessman, I don’t know anyone, that it’s my first time in Ogoja, would convince him that I am really useless around here.
I slept around midnight.
Coming back to Maman 