Bali in Nigeria is pronounced Bæli.
For first time in long time I didn’t wake up by myself at 5am but an alarm clock woke me up at 5:30am. I was so sleepy I kept snoozing it until 6am.
I took okada to the junction outside Ogoja, the one on the main road, N300. When I told the men at the motor park I was going to Gembu they immediately said I should go to Katsina Ala, from there I should take a car to Takum and from there a car will take me to Gembu. It was N1000 to Katsina Ala and of course there was a short discussion whether I was taking two seats in front but I wasn’t.
We waited 3 hours. Cars to other, further destinations, had left, including to Jalingo, which was the city Africa the day before told me to use. But Jalingo is further North and going via Takum seemed more logical.
The local transport coordinator (or he seemed to be such) advised me to go for tea. I went for coffee instead. Of course it was nescafé, a sachet for N50, I took two and the man serving me had enough conscience to pour not even half of cup of water and even then the coffee was diluted. I also took an omelette (here known as fried egg), paid N220 for everything and returned to waiting.
Actually many people came for Katsina Ala but they were coming in groups ready to occupy the whole car but they all wanted to get a lower price (N800) and none of the transport men agreed. The groups would all enter the car, either in 2+4 combination or 2+4+3 combination and then some time later they would leave and go somewhere. I wondered where.
A tiny woman arrived, going somewhere else and boy, she could speak. First she made noise about how I should pay for her transport just because I can. Then she made a noise because the men asked to pay for luggage, here known as “load.” “Do you have load?” is a common question on motor parks.
And wow. People had load. 50kg bags of rice. 50kg bags of flour. And they all had to pay for it, or at least there were heated discussions around because they refused to pay for it. Noone asked me to pay anything, my 20+kg rucksack was so light and small.
I asked one of the transport men what’s up with Katsina Ala, that it didn’t seem a safe town. People don’t like to talk about their local problems. First the man said the town had “little problems”. Then he mentioned “cultists”, which have descended on the city. Then he mentioned politics and from what I understood some people got guns – from politicians? – before elections and after elections they didn’t want to return the guns. And now they are spreading havoc in town. But I was assured I won’t enter town, that the vehicle I needed is on one of the junctions outside Katsina Ala.
Three hours of waiting for the car to fill up. Then endless loading of the load into the boot. Tying the bags so that they don’t fall off. Waiting for extra rope to tie the back door because the load was so much that the door wouldn’t close.
And after not even 30mins of driving the car stops because the engine doesn’t work well. And the driver looks for cars going to Katsina Ala, hands part of our money to the other drivers to take us there. It’s called “handover.”
I just thought that the driver knew his car was full of shit but just wanted to make the partial money he kept after driving us for a bit. But also I was a bit happy because in the process of loading the car with load they pushed the back seats so much to the front that I barely fit into the car. I couldn’t even keep my neck upright.
Luckily, I was the first one for whom the car was found. I sat on front and the driver obviously asked me if I was paying for two seats. I said no, that if he found more passengers I’d be happy to sit in the back. And I did and at the end the driver had three passenger in front, a young man was sitting on the driver’s seat with the driver. The man had paid only N200 for his ride. Żądza pieniądza à la Nigeria.
In Katsina Ala, or rather on one of its junctions on the main road between Cross River State (Calabar) and the North, more waiting. I was taken to a car that would take me to Bali. Bali seemed also North of where I was going but the transport men insisted it’s the way to go and also it was behind Takum. Fare to Bali: N2500.
We waited more than two hours and we didn’t fill the car, the driver still left, I thought in order not to travel too late after dark. I managed to drink 1.5l of water. I had fried yam. 5 big slices of lightly fried yam were delicious on their own but dipped in palm oil with onions and peppers the yam was divine. If cost N100. Children were selling bags of oranges, a bag of 5 or 6 oranges costs N50. That’s 53gr, €0.12, $0.14. Although I find the oranges not juicy enough, they are sweet in taste and yellow in colour, they are sold peeled.
There was even more load to be loaded than in the first car. We left after 2pm. The road to Bali was supposed to be 4 hours.
The first part of the road, to Takum, 60kms away, has a bad reputation. Kidnappings and banditry, here known as armed robbers. At one point it felt like there was a checkpoint every 500m. The police were very friendly and the driver rarely even paid them. One conversation went like this:
Officer: Oga, where you from?
Me: Poland
O: Holland?
Me: Poland
O: It’s a white man’s country?
Me: Yes sah.
O: Oh, many of your tribal people come here even on bicycle.
It’s the only land border open for foreigners by Cameroon so no wonder my tribal people come this way. Sending a car by ferry to Douala from Calabar apparently costs 200,000cfa. That’s 1300zł, $340, €300 for a day’s worth of journey. Add to it passenger ticket of €100? Ha. No wonder kidnapping stories don’t scare people away.
On some checkpoints we had to get off the car and walk to the far end of the checkpoint.
Atmosphere in the car was a bit heavy, a woman was telling all kinds of stories. How her brother didn’t stop on a checkpoint and the police chased him and searches his house. How the road used to be safe but now “armed robbers every day”. Apparently they operate mainly at night and they use children as bait.
One policeman remarked that I must be very rich travelling alone on public transport and that I was not supposed to be there. First I didn’t get the remark about being “very rich”. After all I was on public transport, paying like everyone else but then I think I got it.
The 60km to Takum took us two hours.
After Takum the horror stories woman disembarked, the atmosphere lightened, the checkpoints were still there but they were rarer, my main concern was the driver and his driving. Fine, his car was probably the first one I saw in this trip with a speedometer working, but seeing 80-100kms on it while he tackled the potholes wasn’t reassuring. Without potholes he maintained 120kmh. He was swaying left and right trying to avoid them.
The scenery was green but trees more scarce. And there are mountains on the horizon. Gembu, which I hope to reach tomorrow, is at 1800m asl and nearby there is Gashaka-Gumti National Park with the highest mountain in Nigeria, over 2000m high. Mountains in Cameroon reach 3000m across the border.
We arrived in Bali some time after 7pm. A man sitting behind me offered to show me a lodge, Seven Sisters Guesthouse, which I also found on iOverlander. He tried to convince the driver to take us there but the driver refused so I took the bike, N100 for the maybe 300meters to the lodge. Internet barely works in Bali and Google Maps only shows the main roads anyway.
In the guesthouse the friendly men showed me to a “suit 1”, N5000. A vast two-room-appartment. I asked if they had something cheaper and they showed me a small room for N3000. Well, it’s not bad but the shower isn’t working, there is only a tap and bucket to wash and there is squat toilet. First on this trip but maybe I’ve seen one in Morocco.
I asked for food and I was take to a place where I had garri and egusi. I asked for 2 pieces of meat and got them but they were not meat but something known in Nigeria as “assorted meat”. I think there was skin and stuff there. N400. In that chop joint I met a man named Emmanuel who came here to trade timber, apparently there are Chinese in town who wanted to buy it. Emmanuel is from Calabar.
After dinner I went for a walk but the town was dark so I returned quickly to a bar. The bar was a dingy place, inside not nice, there was no outside seating on the street but inside in a simple courtyard. I wonder if it has to do anything with Islam around us in town.
After I had the beers, I paid and I wanted to buy water but the street was already dark and shut down, I had a weird encounter. It was past 10pm. A man approached me, dressed in Muslim robes and said he saw me walking up and down the street and he was looking for me and in the guesthouse they told him where I was and now he found me, he is from immigration and he’d like to see my passport and why am I here all alone, don’t I have a police escort, it’s dangerous here with all the kidnappings.
He told me to go to guesthouse and he would drive up in his car.
We were standing on the front porch, me the supposedly immigration guy and the two men from the guesthouse. I asked for the man’s ID. He didn’t have any. He pointed to one of the men from the guesthouse and said he was his ID. I said fine, to cut down the bureaucracy can I have your phone number and name so I record it? Oh well, he will leave an bring his ID for me and he will come back “with his officer.” But could he see my passport? No Sir, I need to see your ID first, you are telling me about the security issues and yet you have no uniform and no ID and it’s so late at night, I need to know who you are.
The man sat in his car and left. The guesthouse men were in awe. They said I had played him so well, that next time he would come prepared, he cannot do this to me. They know him but they pretend they don’t so that he could be taught a lesson. They also brought a registration form which I filled and they told me to go to my room and not worry. I also found out that they keep an armed guard, a vigilante, in the guesthouse and that they guy has an ID on him.
10 minutes later they knocked at my door, the immigration man was back, with an officer, also without uniform, but with a gun on his shoulder. The man had the ID, his name’s Charles Alba, immigration. The man who first met me still didn’t have an ID on him. I did show them the passport and they studied my visa and entry stamp and we started chatting. Why am I alone? Public transport, how come? I said I don’t know how to ride a bike, I don’t know how to ride a bike, a car needs two people and I don’t have a proper car for Africa, I also don’t go all the way to South Africa (although I could and I wouldn’t mind to) where all the riders go. But how come I travel without an escort? I said I passed so many checkpoints, noone mentioned an escort, also – that I didn’t say – what can immigration do? It’s the police or army who can provide such. Why am I staying in town not in the national park? I’m limited by where public transport can take me. It all sounded very friendly and the men left.
The guesthouse men said they came here “because of corruption.” That they knew all my papers will be in order, that only black people in Europe are without papers, so all they wanted was a way to get money from me. I’m not sure how they could get money from me, but possibly scaring me to take a police escort and pay for it. I saw drivers on iOverlander being talked into taking and paying for a police escort on the Katsina Ala-Takum road. The guesthouse men told me I played the immigration men very well – although I wasn’t playing anyone – and that if there were issues in town such that I wouldn’t be able to walk around by myself, it’s the guesthouse people’s job to inform me and that I shouldn’t worry.
Coming back to Maman 