I was thinking how the travel around here doesn’t get easier. After the day on the bike and the crazy mountain roads I was hoping for a bus ride to N’Gaoundéré being an easy thing. Ha.
It’s 330kms from Banyo to N’Gaoundéré where I was going to pick the night train to Yaoundé on a bad (non-tarred) road or 520kms on partially tarred road. Some passengers in the bus claimed we were going on the longer road just because it’s easier and if the bus breaks down there is no mechanic on the shorter route.
It was raining the whole night and when I walked out of the hotel at 6:30am the rain was reduced to a small drizzle.
The whole fact that the bus had a fixed departure hour – the first of such kind since Morocco – was giving me hope.
By the time I reached the bus terminal it was properly raining. The bus doors were closed, people sat around on benches, some were still waking up from the night, lying on mats. The load was being loaded on top of the vehicle.
I
saw a man with a thermos, I asked him if he was makinf coffee. He said yes and then he showed me it’s tea inside. I asked him if he had boiled water, he said no. A woman next to him was selling nescafé sachets and also baguettes but the choice of filling was meagre: margarine or chocolate spread. She directed me to where the proper food was served but I could not go – the bus departed soon.
We departed at 9:30am. I asked a man who spoke English to me why – he thought it’s because some passengers have not arrived yet because of Ramadan, it’s because the bus in Ramadan likes to arrive after dark so people can get off it and eat but it simply turned out another bus was coming from a town of Bafoussam in the South and people from the bus were joining us.
I saw a man buying nescafé from the woman and getting hot water from the man that before only had tea. I thought maybe the man is now ready for hot water, I saw him busy setting up a fire and generally he looked like he was about to even serve food. I went to him. I asked again if they had hot water. Yes they did. I quickly bought three sachets of nescafé and went to the man. He started pouring the water from the pot but he put sieve on top of the mug. Is that water? No of course it’s an extremely weak tea. I mean the water had barely yellow colour. And I saw the man drinking coffee and I asked him how he got the water. No, he didn’t, he used the tea and added nescafé to it. Oh no, I’m not that desperate.
But I grew hungry and I bought half baguette with chocolate spread for 200cfa. The chocolate spread was quite nice. We left in a rain, a motorbike on the top of the bus. It was raining. The English speaking man told me I should be able to catch the night train but it will be tight and I won’t see N’Gaoundéré. Fine, I have been to N’Gaoundéré in 2010. He even asked me why I didn’t go to Bafoussam in the South and from there to Yaoundé with night bus. I like the train. And my plan was to go to Gabon Embassy for the visa on Friday.
There was quite a stampede to the bus when they opened the door, quite impressive people immediately got stuck in the doors, they were pushing so much. The English speaking man – I never got to know his name – kept the seat for me, just behind the driver. We set off.
Asphalt ended as soon as we left town. I dozed off. 30mins later I woke up, when the bus got stuck in the mud, tilted so much to the left that it looked like it was gonna flip. People were quickly leavinf the bus. When the driver attempted to start the bus, the bus skid down the slope and managed to find the grip on the road. Everyone walked down to the bridge and we boarded again.
Another 30mins later again the bus tilted so much to the left that I instinctively lurched to the right to counterweight the balance. I think I’m overestimating the effect of my size.
We were stopping on the road and taking and dropping passengers. It kept raining. Some villages had asphalt roads. The bus got full, we were again sitting 5 people in a row just like in good old times. A woman next to me came with a small baby and a chicken tied up in a plastic bag. I was wondering what makes her take such an arduous journey. The chicken got free somehow, shat on my foot and eventually even managed to escape the bus. The men chased it down.
The 110kms to the first town, Tibati, we covered in just below 5 hours. There we stopped for food. First all I saw was women selling dry fish so I bought a fresh bread roll from a boy but then I saw a chop joint and there I had corn fou fou and ndole. Ndole was delicious, bitter and nutty. Bradt Guide to Cameroon says it’s a stew of manioc leaves and pistachios. Not sure if what I really had were pistachios, the nuts were well ground but nevertheless it was very good and cost 500cfa.
10mins after Tibati we stopped in a village, apparently the bus had a problem and the driver and his helper were under the bonnet fixing it. In the meantime old Muslim men were peddling “natural medicine” which always cures sexual weakness.
We drove on. Occasionally, in the middle of the bush, we hit a stretch of good asphalt, sometimes even with lines painted, of maybe 1km. I wonder.
At about 6pm we turned left from the main road which meant we wouldn’t go the longer, “better” road. The English speaking man said we would make it by 10pm. Of course I had long forgotten about taking the train the same day.
The road that was supposed to be “very bad” wasn’t that bad. But the bus drove fast and soon it hit something and the car started making a horrible noise. So – again – we stopped and the driver and helper tried to get rid of the noise. We had to push the bus in order to kick-start it.
At 7:30pm we stopped in a village. Some passengers just had to pray. It looked to me like most of the bus stayed on the road, so I don’t know who the prayer people were. Who has it worse? Muslims or those who live among them? We didn’t leave until 8:30pm.
The bus started making noise again. We stopped on one of those mysterious asphalt stretches and waited for the driver and his helper to fix it. The moon was bright, the insects noisy, a magical African night, if only the bus worked.
Apart from the obligatory cattle on the road at night there were many birds sitting on the road. They were owls. I have never seen so many owls in my entire life. Every few hundred meters we scared one or two. I wonder why they sat on the road. One of them flew too slow, or too late and it hit the windscreen, the driver used wipers to bring it down. I hoped the bird would just be in shock.
A spotted animal crossed the road in front of the bus. Could that be leopard? Hyaena?
At 10:45pm a checkpoint. One of the few there were, but they always check everyone’s identity card. In this one, we had to get off the bus and cross the barrier blocking the road and the policeman with a flashlight checked our papers one by one. A man sitting next to me sat at least a checkpoint means we were close to town.
At 11:06pm the bus suddenly stopped, all lights out. People laughed through tears. The bus helper sat in driver’s seat, mobile phone as flashlight in one hand, screwdriver in another and started unscrewing the gearbox cover. He removed it, did something, screwed it back and just said c’est bon.
We arrived in N’Gaoundéré half past midnight, 330km done in 15 hours.
The town was dead and no bikes approached us to take us to our homes and me to my hotel. A man at the bus terminal showed me a room, already crowded with people sleeping on a huge mat spread out and told me I could sleep there and leave in the morning. Oh no. But the bikes finally took notice of our arrival and one by one they started arriving. The one I took also took advantage as much as he could and charged 500cfa for taking me to Hotel de la Gare, not far from train station. I didn’t have strength to object the price.
The hotel cost 8500cfa for an acceptable room, the receptionist slept in the corner on a mat. I lied down and slept.
Coming back to Maman 