Ebolowa, Cameroon to Bitam, Gabon

We rode in a moto for long, I asked him to take me where transport to Ambam leaves. Ambam is the last town before Cameroon ends, about 30kms away from both Gabon and Equatorial Guinea borders. Ebolowa suddenly seemed much larger than it looked. I was dropped on the roadside, no bus agency in sight, the moto driver said this is where I get my transport. And sure enough, a car was there, its driver uniformed, a soldier or a policeman of something like that, 1500cfa to Ambam.Two people in front, four people in the back, just like in good old times. We rode through the forest, about an hour’s drive. Some passengers got off before Ambam so the space in the car wasn’t that tight all the time. The driver was drinking a beer from a can, Bear Beer, 12%. So much for safe driving. One of the passengers, a man from Mali, who lives now in Equatorial Guinea, also bought a beer in a can, San Miguel. I have not seen so many beers in a can in my entire trip and these were all coming from Equatorial Guinea, the San Miguel made in Spain. The man from Mali spoke a bit of English and complained that the music was too loud.He didn’t like Cameroonian music. I agreed that Mali music is much better but he also said that even Congolese music is better than Cameroonian.After the two passengers from the front left, I sat in front. The driver started asking me where I was going, I mentioned Gabon, he told me he could drop me at the border. I said no thank you.In Ambam we stopped at a bus agency and the driver said he could drop me by the border for 5,000cfa. I said no but then other passengers joined telling me that it’s better to go with him and that finding transport would be difficult to the border. There was also a man from the bus agency who talked to us and he kept quiet during the time everyone talked. Next time I will know this is a sign I am being fed bullshit. Because I fell for that talk and I took the car to the border, the Mali man and another woman were inside the car with me, supposedly dropping “in town” but they went all the way to the border town with me and I eventually realised they paid 700cfa each, so that’s the price I should have paid myself. In Kye Ossi of course I saw plenty busses and cars and bus agencies. One can even go all the way to Douala.There are two border crossings with Gabon near town of Ambam, one is in the village of Woleu-Ntem, another in village of Kye-Ossi, the Kye-Ossi being a point where Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea meet. The guidebook really only mentions Woleu-Ntem border crossing , the maps kinda point to it as a major road crossing. So I thought I’d go there. But the driver insisted we should go for Kye Ossi, that it’s easier to find transport on the other side of the border, the Mali man supported him (though this man had an interest in it as he was going to Equatorial Guinea) so I too agreed on going via Kye Ossi. Also, reports on iOverlander mention “a man with glasses” on Gabon side being very strict about having a printed hotel reservation for Gabon and even calling the hotel to check if it’s real and some people managed to avoid this hassle by going via Kye Ossi. I did not have any hotel reservation as no hotel in Bitam, the first town in Gabon, exists on any booking platform and also going by public transport doesn’t really allow for proper planning of “I’ll be here on this day and there on that day”.With all that going in our car, I must admit the driver took care of me, he did explain where we were going. He insisted on going to immigration office in Ambam and getting my exit stamp there. But he had no idea where immigration was, so he found a moto, forces its driver to take us there. The building had no sign, the man sitting on the chair outside was in civilian clothes yet he claimed he was immigration, they took my passport and went inside, coming back to me only to ask about my profession. Asking for profession is a mandatory thing of any registration of personal details by any immigration person in West/Central Africa. There is a word in French describing what I’m doing, formateur, in English I just say I’m a teacher.The immigration man and my driver came back outside and the immigration man said he’d registered me but the exit stamp I should get at the border. Fine.I asked the driver to stop so I can get a taste of that Spanish beer, he told me I’d better not buy the Bear Beer he himself was drinking as it was “too strong.” Right. I bought San Miguel.It was about 30mins to Kye Ossi on a good road. The town was bustling, much bigger than I expected although not much more than a busy market along the main road. The crossing to Equatorial Guinea is right in town, the crossing to Gabon a few kilometres away from town. I chatted a bit to the driver and asked him if he was a soldier or a policeman, he told me to drop the subject. Though he did navigate the checkpoints using his uniform as a bargaining point.But the first checkpoint, just at the beginning, after Ebolowa, where my passport was taken and I went inside to meet the few checkpoint people, including two women, was a sign of things to come. The women and men there insisted that the person who stamped my passport on entry, in that tiny village outside Banyo, had no right to stamp it as he was some ordinary policeman. So now, it was not really my fault that I didn’t have the right entry stamp, they had to register me. And I had to pay for that registration. 3,000cfa. Of course I did refuse to pay and it even took them by surprise that I did and they eventually did let me go, without any “registration.” It made me also wonder if my entry stamp was a right stamp as, true, it didn’t look like the regular border stamps.In Kye Ossi we stopped at the immigration office, the driver keen to lead me but the man sitting outside ignored him and spoke only to me. It took 5 minutes for the officer named Johnson to stamp my passport, he was an English-speaking man, no registration, no problem with my entry stamp. Is as free to go.The driver did ask if I wanted to buy something before we reach the border, no thank you. The Mali man left the car, we drove the maybe 2-3kms to the border. There we negotiated another checkpoint without any questions asked, I got dropped by the border, the driver asked another 10 times if I’m okay. I was okay and he left.One registration in the first booth. 50 metres later another booth, I got registered in two other books. No problems, au revoir Cameroun.The Gabon immigration is across the river, several hundred meters away. The river is quite pretty, surrounded by thick vegetation. The immigration officer welcomed by, bienvenue chez nous. He asked for a passport, looked at the visa, “ah, it’s from the embassy”. As if it could be from somewhere else? And he did ask for hotel reservation. And I said I didn’t have any. And why? Because there are no hotels in Bitam that I can book online. And where will I stay in Bitam? Hotel des voyageurs. Ah yes, there is a hotel like that. And where else will I be in Gabon? Lambaréné, Ndende and on to Gabon. So perhaps I had reservation for Lambaréné. No I didn’t. I use public transport and with public transport I have no idea when I would be able to get to Lambaréné, so I can’t make reservation not knowing the day I will reach there. Which is all true! And if I go to Congo, do I have visa for Congo? Yes I do. And where do I come from? And he made me write down all the countries I visited on my way from Poland. And another immigration man came. They said there was a “small problem” that I didn’t have a hotel reservation because I was supposed to have hotel reservation to enter Gabon. But it’s a small problem right? Ha!The border wasn’t the place I would get my passport entry stamp, the stamp I’d get in Bitam. The men here only decided if I could be allowed in to go further. So they wanted to call their boss in Bitam and ask him if they could let me in. One of them didn’t have enough credit on his phone. The other one didn’t have the boss’s number. They called a Sylvie to find the boss’s number. Then they decided they would send everything first by WhatsApp and call the boss a few minutes later. They took a photo of my passport, my visa “from the embassy”, my Congolese visa, good I had one, and wrote the circumstances of my arrival and that I didn’t have the reservation and even mentioned why. Then some minutes later one of them went outside to make the call.He came back and said “I knew it.” I wouldn’t be allowed in on the grounds that I had no hotel reservation. And I must have one for my own security, because if something would happen to me they would want to know where I was to help me. All that bullshit. And even if I had no reservation for Bitam because no hotel there is online, what about Lambaréné ? And they do understand that planning for public transport is not easy but I must have a hotel reservation. Faced with all that absurdity, I even mocked them a bit, asking if they really need a hotel reservation. No! Not just any, it will be a hotel reservation where I’d go and stay and they were going to verify it.So, thinking a bit about my single entry visa to Cameroon that I just left I walked back to Cameroon. There in the first booth I said what happened, I was waved in. In the next booth I said what happened, I was let in. Aha, I’m not the first one doing that.Two motos fought for my business, I picked one, the driver said 300cfa. We rode back to town to cancel my exit stamp. There was a checkpoint before town which in the car I didn’t even notice but now they were interested in me coming as if from Gabon to Cameroon but one of the guards recognised me and said I was the one with the prison guard before. Ah, the mystery of my driver’s uniform solved.The moto driver insisted I should not pay him when we got to the immigration office, that he’d wait for me and take me further. Okay. But there was a queue to passport office so I went out and told the driver he should not wait and I wanted to pay him. And the driver said it was 500cfa now, and he only had said 300cfa so I picked him at the border. And he wouldn’t take the 300cfa. As if I needed more problems. I dropped the coins on his moto and left.At the immigration office Mr Johnson just asked what I was going to do, cancelling the stamp wasn’t a problem. I told him I’d make a reservation and try again the next day. I did ask him if there was a place I could print in this town, I was afraid I’d have to go back to Ambam. There was, opposite National Security Office, locally known as “tampi”. Mr Johnson also advised to go to a Hotel Golf as it was properly “safe”.I took 300cfa moto all the way across town. The rooms were 7000cfa with fan, 10000cfa with AC. Electricity only at night, water in small buckets only. There was a well onsite in the hotel. No negotiation of price. What to do? I paid and I left for tampi to print the reservation.I had an enormous portion of divine ndole and boiled cassava, 1000cfa. Gorgeous food.There are even two places that can print opposite tampi. There is also a buvette which seemed like a proper place to make the booking. I took a small Guinness, sat down at a table already occupied by three men and started searching.Of course there were no hotels in Lambaréné online. Oh. I mean, Jumia Travel has two, 40kcfa per night wtf and I even though it says it’s free cancellation I have to pay immediately when I make the booking. Oh no. So I turned to Libreville, which I didn’t even plan to go to, hotels expensive, not much to do etc.The men at the table started chatting with me. One of them already a bit drunk, when heard I’m Polish, he started shouting “Lech Walesa Lech Walesa”. The man even knew general Jaruzelski, our last dictator. The man of course remembered the match Poland played against Cameroon in 1982 during World Cup in Spain, we drew 1:1. He knew the names of our football legends Lato and Boniek. Hell, the man even knew our racist government refuses taking any refugees! The man’s name was Abega. The other two men were from Gabon and there was a policeman sitting at the table too but he didn’t drink any alcohol. We soon got into the discussion about my Gabon frontier issues, the men were trying to explain their immigration, “it’s the same when you come to France.” While I agree it’s the same I don’t find it as a valid argument. Unless someone tells me what I went through on the border was a result of what France is doing to the Gabonese (or Poland for that matter, we do that, I had already called one blonde immigration woman in Krakow Airport a racist, somehow a lot of my black friends are asked many questions on arrival and I have to explain myself and them in front of that woman) I find the policy simply stupid.Anyway the men went to great lengths in proving to me that Gabonese are very friendly people. With which I agree, everyone is friendly everywhere really, it’s the dickhead in uniforms which are a problem. One of the men, Patrick, told me to just make a reservation in an expensive hotel and show up with it the next day. Which is what I intended to do, especially that only in expensive hotels I could cancel the booking up to the day of arrival. Patrick also told me about a hotel in Bitam, Benedicta, which possibly could give me a printable booking online. And it was true, I made the booking on the hotel’s website, no obligation, got the email. Great. I told Patrick about my long trousers issue at the embassy. Again, he was justifying his own embassy by saying he too has to dress up by going to any government office. Fine but isn’t it too much of a requirement? People in rags won’t be served by their own government. It’s often amazing how people in Africa won’t say a bad word about their own government. Or maybe it was because there I was, an outsider criticising their own country? Who knows.Patrick bought me a beer and we were chatting idly. Abega in the meantime continued talking and talking and talking, getting ever more drunk. He invited me to his place where apparently he was running a chop joint and he told me to come “no later than 8:30am” for some fish à la Peulhe. The Gabonese men joined in and demanded not just fish but a little bit of everything Abega was serving in his joint. Abega was refusing saying he was just gonna give us fish but now we all demanded tea & coffee & avocado salad & omelette & a soup. It was all jokes but perhaps Abega was too drunk to notice. He claimed he was 71 years old. “I was two years old when Cameroon got independence in 1960.” I would never tell he was that old. As I was telling them how Poland was before Lech Wałęsa rescued us Abega said that revolution like that would not happen in Africa, that Africans are not able to do such. I said that you have a revolution now in Cameroon, the Ambazonia, which I even called Biafra 2. He said it’s not revolution but he didn’t want to discuss it saying that there was a policeman sitting with us so he should keep quiet. Oh well.After the men left, I stayed a bit longer, had a roasted mackerel with baton for 1500cfa and left back for the hotel. There I got my bucket of water and the receptionist cut a plastic bottle in two so I can pour the water over me to wash myself.