Ngaoundere to Yaoundé

I dreamed of sleeping till noon but outside noise woke me up after 7 and I couldn’t fall asleep again.My hotel claimed to have a restaurant and bar, the menu listed café simple. I asked several times if it’s perhaps nescafé or perhaps it’s real coffee. And I thought there would be real coffee. In the courtyard there were two nice thatched buildings for the restaurant and bar but inside there were just a few random chairs and a table. I wonder if this whole enterprise even works.The receptionist asked me to wait while a boy prepared the coffee. I asked if I could extend my stay till evening until the train leaves. Yes I could, for 5000cfa. Pffff. I considered asking them for 2000cfa but I didn’t. A boy showed up with a box of… Lipton tea bags. What is it with those people and tea instead of coffee?? He also had nescafé in hand and said that’s all he could find. No coffee in this hotel.I first was told I should check out by 11am but when I asked for noon, they agreed. 15mins later the receptionist knocked at my door and said I could stay until 2pm for additional 2000cfa. Pfffff.I left before noon and walked to the train station. In the ticket office an obligatorily unfriendly woman said there were no sleeping berths available anymore. So much for comfort. I bought a first class seat, let this one be comfortable at least, the journey is 12 hours long. I paid 17,000cfa, departure at 7:15pm.The luggage storage is a security man keeping bags outside the station building in a space enclosed by security barriers. 300cfa per bag.I took moto to Bar Laitier which according to Bradt Guide and Rough Guide to West Africa has coffee. Bradt’s list of restaurants in N’Gaoundéré from 2017 is a copy of the one from Rough Guide from 2008 and Bradt doesn’t even have a city map.I was dropped for 150cfa strangely around the corner from the bar. They do have coffee but they no longer have a machine that makes espresso from ground coffee, only the machine that uses capsules, so the “expresso” instead of 500cfa in the menu costs 1000cfa. Complicated. I ordered ndole with rice, 1500cfa, but it lacked spices. Coffee was OK.Outside I went for a walk but I soon saw a beer joint. A big and cheerful one, full of people, on Friday early afternoon, Ramadan, Muslim town. Bradt Guide says there are no beer joints in town, I started wondering if they ever been here. Bottles go in 0.65l sizes, I took Isenbeck, 750cfa.There is one attraction in N’Gaoundéré town and that is palace of Lamido, a local ruler. On Fridays and Sundays there is a profession between the palace and the mosque 100m away. I saw one in 2010 and it was splendid. Now unfortunately it turned out I missed it.Because it started raining I took moto to the palace. Immediately by the entry I was approached by a man, who strangely for a black man looked older than his 45 years, named Amadou. He’d be my guide. Will I take photos? It’s all payable, 5000cfa in total. I asked for 4000 and he agreed.There were people in the palace sitting around in all kinds of places seemingly doing nothing. Some areas were nicely decorated, colourful paintings, other areas were dark and dusty. It’s rather the people you see inside that are interesting, dressed in their representative robes, heads covered wirh turbans.I even passed Lamido himself, a man kneeling next to him talking to him fervently. I had to introduce myself and had a little chat. Lamido told Amadou I’m kind. Lamido apparently has an army of ministers and even acts as a Sharia court. They don’t cut hands off the thieves, I asked. I didn’t ask about stoning. I don’t know what’s stoning in French. Now I know. Lapidation and it’s a woman.The rain got stronger and we sat under a thatched roof of one of the Lapido Palace huts. Amadou is going to get married only now, the dowry he paid was 200,000cfa. He insisted that Cameroon is completely safe to visit, including the extreme North, he even met tourists going there but later he admitted that perhaps it’s better to go with escort and with a guide. Not sure what pleasure there is of sightseeing with a police escort. He was also adamant there were Polish people who had visited and showed me his register, which j also signed, so that we could find les polonais. Yeah, they were there, in 2017, a group of 17. Almost like Chinese. Amadou as usual isn’t paid unless by the tourists visiting, he lives in Lamido’s palace, has his own room. In the register the previous visit was recorded 3 days ago.We walked to grand marché, Amadou insisted I should see it. But the marker didn’t seem grand and in the rain it looked a bit sad, I don’t think it was market day. Then Amadou showed me to way to petit marché and I did walk towards it but the rain got heavier so I sat on a moto and evacuated myself towards another beer. This time it was Castel, for 750cfa.I walked around the streets when the rain stopped, popped into some bakeries but my guilty pleasure wasn’t there. There was coffee but I no longer was interested. Juste before 6pm I tried finding food and there even was already roasted fish – tilapia – but it would take time. I looked into another restaurant, prices were high. I mean maybe they weren’t high but once you discover you can eat very well for 500cfa would you be eating the same food for 2500? So I had another ndole with manioc dough (here it’s called couscous, don’t ask me why, it’s a ball of dough) for 700cfa and this time it was delicious though cold. The woman also had a pistachio sauce but it was made gombo style, i.e. it was slimy, so no thanks.I went to the railway station after 6pm. Before entrance there was a ticket and passport check, at the entrance there was an x-ray machine for the bags. I sit next to the door leading up to the toilets and restaurants carriage. The door keeps opening so it’s a bit noisy. The train is full although I have a seat next to me for myself. The restaurant carriage is already full of passengers who could not find a seat. I perhaps was intimidating those who were looking for it, not sure.