Under African Skies

Searching for Diamonds, They're Grabbing at Straws

2008-04-08T03:22:00.000-07:00

Little was known of Sierra Leone
And how it connects to the diamonds we own
The moment we stepped out of the poda-poda, a 1998 Volkswagen Golf hatchback laden with 3 backpacks, 7 humans, 3 chickens and 3 goats, we knew we were in diamond country.
Lining the main street through Bo, beginning with the poda-poda park, virtually every storefront had a diamond painted on its sign. The names on the signs were very telling: "Saleh Fouad, Diamond Expert", "Hamuday's Diamond Office", "Mansour's Diamond Office", "Talib Diamonds". These were not African names, but Muslim names. Lebanese to be exact.

Three of 13 passengers in a VW Golf

The Lebanese civil war, which spanned from 1975 until 1990 led to a widespread diaspora in which many Lebanese wound up in West Africa seeking opportunities to set up business in places that were at least somewhat more stable than their homeland at the time. As the diamond business picked up momentum, the Lebanese were in the right place at the right time and, despite a population reduction during the Sierra Leonean war, the Lebanese enjoy a strong majority as merchants who buy the rough diamonds after they are extracted from the earth.
The Rebel Unified Front (RUF) instigated the war in Sierra Leone, starting in 1991, with the primary objective of seizing control of the country's diamond resources. As if the money to be gained from diamond sales were not sufficient, the RUF kept their costs down by using forced labor, in the form of men and children shoveling mud at gunpoint. The advent of the Kimberly Process after the war attempts to ensure that diamonds are no longer harvested by children, at gunpoint, or used to fund rebel groups or oppressive regimes.
During the war, as now, the Lebanese live in Bo, Kenema, Tongo, and other diamond centers in Sierra Leone to buy rough diamonds. After 9/11 it was revealed that dealers in Sierra Leone sold millions of dollars of diamonds to al Qaeda, enabling the organization to hide vast amounts of funds in the highly portable little stones.
Still today, some of the largely Shiite Lebanese in Sierra Leone funnel a portion of their cash to their favorite political organization, keeping Hezbollah armed and wealthy. Who buys the diamonds from the Lebanese? Often, they are purchased by Jews, the very people Hezbollah is always at odds with. The Lebanese buy the diamonds in Africa, sell them to Jewish businesspeople in Antwerp, New York, and Tel Aviv, who then cut and polish them before selling them to consumers all over the world. So according to the Kimberly Process, Salonean diamonds are no longer "conflict diamonds," but that's simply a technicality.
The Lebanese control over diamond purchasing in Sierra Leone amounts to a cartel where they are able to agree upon low prices that they will pay miners for the rough diamonds. Diamonds are sold to consumers at prices that do not at all reflect their rarity as a stone, first enabled in Sierra Leone by the local cartels, and then on a worldwide scale due to DeBeers' monopolistic control of roughly 70% of the world's diamond production and sales. DeBeers has admitted to price fixing, leveraging their control over the world's diamonds in order to keep prices high.

Diamond country: Bo, Sierra Leone

The Lebanese part of the diamond trade was evident within moments of arriving in Bo and Kenema, the first two cities Aaron and I visited after leaving Mile 91. But I wanted to see the first steps in the diamond chain of production: how the diamonds were acquired. I wanted to know the methods used, the people employed, and the life that surrounds diamonds long before they become the shimmering, mystifying stones we are familiar with. Motorcycles would be required.

Wheeling and Dealing
Somewhere between Bo and Kenema, Aaron and I hopped out of our poda-poda in another tiny in-between town, Blama. Unbeknownst to us at the time, 90% of Blama was destroyed in the war, leaving a tiny settlement roughly 3 blocks long consisting of rotting, uninhabitable buildings and a handful of Saloneans trying to continue life as normal. We tracked down the local motorcycle drivers to propose a multi-day rental of two motorcycles. None of the drivers were willing to release their bikes for multiple days, apparently because they didn't own them. A larger businessman owned all the bikes in the area and rented them out to the individual drivers. They said we'd have better luck asking around in Kenema. We hopped on a bike and were driven back to the nearest junction to catch a poda-poda.
The junction also happened to be a police roadblock, and as we dismounted, we were stopped by a tall, surly policeman in a blue outfit who began to grill us, starting by asking for our passports and driver's licenses. We handed over our American licenses (expired by two years in Aaron's case) and our passports. The officer was silent for a moment as he flipped through our papers.

Blama, Sierra Leone

"What is your name?" the cop demanded, gruffly.
"I'm Aaron," Aaron answered.
"Henry?"
"No, Aaron," Aaron repeated, responding to what had become a common misunderstanding of his name.
"Where from?"
"From America."
"And you?" the officer asked, turning to me.
"I'm Adam, what's your name?" I asked, extending my hand to shake his, I think mostly out of habit from going through the same question-and-answer routine with countless civilians each day for the past 6 weeks. The effect was sudden and impressive: the officer's face softened and he smiled. Just like any other Salonean, he was excited at the opportunity to befriend a couple of foreign strangers, a change from his daily routine.
"Officer K. C. Karebo."
"Nice to meet you!" I gushed, wanting to maintain the momentum of diminishing the officer's authority. I wasn't so concerned about trouble with the law as we'd done nothing wrong, rather, I was concerned we'd be forced into a bribery situation before being released, and I figured that it'd be more difficult for him to ask for a bribe from a friend.
"Uh, nice to meet you too. What is your mission here?" Karebo asked.
"Well, we're tourists, here to learn about your country, to see what life is like here, to meet the people," I explained.
"For how long?"
"About two weeks," Aaron explained. The officer turned to two other cops and a small audience of motorcycle drivers that had congregated, and translated the interview thus far into Krio, the local Pidgin English. When he explained the duration of our trip, I noticed that he used the phrase "two week feasibility study".
"Wait, no, we're not here for a feasibility study!" I said. "We're not here for diamonds, we're tourists, just wanting to learn about life in Sierra Leone!"
"Ookey-ookey-ookey," the officer said, seeming to better understand our intent. No question, we were in diamond territory. Perhaps that was his reason for initially approaching us with such authority.
As we explained our true intentions, the officer warmed up to us and we eventually explained that we were looking to rent a couple motorcycles for a few days.
"Oh, you should contact the Chairman in Kenema. He is the man that controls the motorcycles in the region."
The officer took my notepad and jotted down a phone number, instructing us to call when we arrived. Having had bad experiences with Chairmen earlier in my trip, I figured we'd try our luck with Kenema's motorcycle drivers before calling that guy. In any case, we were gracious to the officer and moments later we were on the next poda-poda, heading to Kenema. No bribe was ever requested.
As we pulled up to the main junction in Kenema, a well-fed man with a shaved head and wearing a bright yellow set of pajamas approached the van.
"That's the Chairman," Aaron said. No words had been exchanged, but it was clear; the Chairman was there, ready to talk business with us. As we stepped onto the chaotic street, and were descended upon by the horde of motorcycle drivers wanting to drive us, the Chairman and his cohort introduced themselves. They had already been debriefed on our mission by the cop in Blama by mobile phone. These are the days of lasers in the jungle.
"We have motorcycles we can rent to you, but we do not know you, so we will need to learn about you to establish…"
"That you can trust us, certainly, I understand," I said. "Let's grab a drink and we can talk it over."
That afternoon we sipped cold Cokes with the Chairman and a few other men as we explained why we were in Sierra Leone.
"You have to understand, in our country, Sierra Leone was in the news only during the war. Once the war ended, no one has heard anything else about your country. We want to know, to see with our own eyes, to take some photos, and when we get home, we will tell our friends and family. That way, people in our country can know about your country and your lives," I explained.
"And how do you find Sierra Leone?"
"It's amazing!" Aaron said. "The people have been so friendly to us, everyone has been helpful, and we've been assisted with anything we need. It's really been an amazing experience to travel here."
The Chairman was getting us. The next morning, Saturday, we drew up a contract in my notebook and signed it, promising that we had no intention to disappear into the bush with his bikes, and that the bikes would be back in his possession at dusk on Sunday.

Fire on the Mountain
We were back on the road, motorcycles blazing across potholed pavement and red washboard dirt roads, jungle greenery flying past us in the punishing sun. The heat dissipated as we picked up speed, as our skin and clothes quickly picked up a thick layer of red dust.
We were headed north from Kenema, aiming to arrive in Tongo a few hours later. Tongo was home to the Tongo Diamond Field, one of the largest fields in Sierra Leone. As a result, it was the main target of the RUF rebels as they wrested control of Sierra Leone and the diamond mines during the war.
The terrain was stunning, as we crested mountain after mountain, each covered in thick green jungle. Strangely, however, we noticed countless expanses that had been razed by recent fires, killing all the foliage and leaving a few charred palm stumps to stand over the charred earth. We assumed they were accidental fires, the results of slash-and-burn agriculture or garbage fires gone out of control. It was disappointing to see the destruction of such unbelievable terrain.
We veered off the main road onto a thin footpath that ran along a fire still blazing, radiating searing heat and crackling loudly, before we came upon a few men carrying machetes. They explained to us that they were in fact setting the fires intentionally. It was the first step in diamond mining.
"First, we burn," the man said. "Then we dig."

Burning before mining

We arrived at the edge of Tonga in the early afternoon. We knew we'd arrived when we reached a police road block. The interrogation followed the exact same pattern as the one in Blama, with Aaron and I charming the cops into submission and including the same brief misunderstanding that our two-week visit was a two-week feasibility study. They insisted on taking us into the police station and logging our presence in their diary, repeatedly explaining that our "safety is paramount." Considering the violent history and the priceless land we were about to tread, it was only fair. We made it out of the police station with a nice group photo, several new friends, and no bribes paid.
We rode into the center of town and hopped off our bikes.
"Look at this place, it's the god damned Wild West," Aaron said. "Every store is selling pickaxes and sieves." All along the dirt road, the small ramshackle buildings carried mining supplies while motorcycles whizzed people from one end of town to the other. While only supporting a relatively small population, Tongo was clearly focused on a singular vocation.
As usual, we approached the motorcycle drivers to get the low-down. We explained that we wanted to see the diamond mines and a moment later we had a guide leading us to Tongo Field.

Diamond mining tools

We could have found the mine unassisted; it actually would have been hard to miss. Just beyond the last homes along the main road, a vast expanse of undulating, lumpy dirt hills stretched as far as the eye could see. Open-pit mines.
We dismounted and took a stroll down to a large pit of yellow dirt, probably 30 feet deep. The bottom of the pit contained a shallow pool of rust-colored water and a handful of muscular men in their underwear busily rinsing small quantities of gravel in handmade sieves. As we stood at the rim of the pit, we received some skeptical glares and finally were called to come down into the pit. We did so and began to chat with the men. It was the same conversation about why we were there, requiring an extra amount of assurance that we weren't there to acquire diamonds, just to see how diamonds were extracted from the earth. The men remained aloof, however, telling us that they would not allow their photographs to be taken. We didn't insist and I hoped we'd be able to warm them up when suddenly a man's voice began to call to us from the rim of the pit.
The man was upset, interrogating us about our "mission" and what business we had at the mines. Apparently he was one of the main supervisors and mobile phone calls had alerted him of our presence. We'd need to go to the mining office and meet the Paramount Chief to get permission to view the mines. The man hopped on the back of my bike and we rode to the office. Along the way, I chatted up the man, knowing I'd need to be on his good side to get to the mines on our own terms. The man turned out to be just as gentle as the rest of the Saloneans. His name was Francis and I had him giving me an impromptu tour within moments.
"Over there, that is the former airport," Francis said, pointing at a stretch of land that had the last disappearing remnants of a pocked asphalt runway. "The rebels destroyed it in the war, and now people just live along it."
"What is that building?" I asked, pointing at a three story tall concrete arch and a few crumbling walls, something that was once a building at least.
"Oh, that used to be the main diamond processing plant, also destroyed in the war. All mining is done manually these days."
Back at the mining office, Francis introduced us to a man in a white ball cap and busy button-down shirt. As it turned out, the Paramount Chief was away on business, as they tend to be, and this man was something like the Deputy Assistant Secondary Lieutenant to the Paramount Chief, but was expectant of all the formalities, power and respect of the Paramount Chief himself, and we generously accorded them to him.
The office was decorated with a giant poster of a Caucasian Jesus, and the desk supported a back-catalog of Jehovah's Witness Awake! magazines and a transistor radio. The discussion was the same as all the others with the police, and the substitute Chief explained that our mission was perfectly acceptable, provided we took a Field Supervisor with us.
"See, many people come here for our diamonds and we need to make sure you aren't here to do business"
"And is it OK if we take some photographs?" I asked.
"Of course! We had two Spanish women come here a few months ago who wanted to and they took thousands of photographs. The Supervisor will make sure that you have no problems. Your safety is paramount!"

Searching for Diamonds, They're Grabbing at Straws
For the evening and the next morning, we were accompanied to the Tongo Fields by a tall man in a Best Buy uniform who had a grating penchant for repetition.
"Over there, that's the dike. Keeps water out of the mine. See the dike? It's in the mine. Snap a photo? Snap! Snap a photo! See the dike? See the dike? That's the dike."
"Got it, thanks."
"Tonight there aren't many workers, they've all gone home. More will be here in the morning. Not many right now. Usually a few hundred. More in the morning. All gone home for tonight. More in the morning. Sometimes hundreds of them. In the morning."
"Wait, let me get this straight," I said, stopping walking. "Right now, there aren't that many workers here because they've gone home for the evening? And tomorrow there will be more?"
"Yes."
"Great, got it."
"There will be more in the morning."
Aside from the mind-numbing repetition, the presence of the Supervisor made life easy. With the Supervisor, we no longer received dirty looks when we arrived. We'd approach each miner, shake hands, introduce ourselves, explain where we were from and why we were in Sierra Leone. Each miner warmed to us and generally was happy to have his photo taken in exchange for cigarettes which I had bought in town. Many of the miners took the cigarette as an opportunity to stop digging for a bit and talk with us. Through these conversations and conversations with the Supervisors, we were able to learn about mining from a miner's perspective.

Tongo Field

Glimmer of hope

The mines in Tongo Field were all alluvial mines, meaning diamonds were acquired by digging through dirt and bedrock to get to gravel which hopefully contains diamond deposits. The mining techniques were artisanal, meaning machines were not employed, just shovels, picks, buckets, sieves and bare hands. It's hot in Sierra Leone if you aren't shoveling mud all day. The miners often stripped down to their underwear, and those who kept their shirts on had varying tides of sweat demarcated on their shirts by visible rings of salt.
After the war, probably part of the Kimberly Process, every miner is required to have a mining license, which is granted through the mining office we'd already visited. The license was supposed to prevent child labor or forced labor in the mines. In our visits to the mines, I'd estimate the youngest person I saw working was about 15 years old.
Since it was the weekend, the mines weren't overrun with workers: on Saturday the Muslims take the day off, and on Sunday the Christians take the day off. Aaron, our guide, and I slowly made our way along the ridges of the pits, and paused at one with rust-red water filling the bottom. The sides of the mine were terraced, sometimes supported by branches pounded into the ground to prevent the terrace from sliding into the water. At 8:00 in the morning, the workers were drenched in sweat.

Terraced open-pit mine

"We're paid a weekly salary," one miner explained. "We get 2,000 Leones a day, plus housing." As we'd learned earlier in the trip, a cup of rice had recently increased to from 500 to 1,000 Leones. A Coke was 1,500 Leones warm and 2,000 Leones refrigerated. A hard-boiled egg was a few hundred, and a skewer of about 5 bites of beef cost between 500 and 1,000 Leones. Aaron and I generally paid 15,000 for a night in a guest house with no running water and electricity from a generator for a couple hours per night.
The mine's supervisor handed out some kola nuts to the workers. I'd tasted them before and had Aaron try one of the caffeine-packed seeds during one of our poda-poda rides. He couldn't comprehend eating something so incredibly bitter voluntarily. "How can you stand those?" he asked.
"They suppress your hunger," one miner responded.
"What happens when you find a diamond?" Aaron asked.
"We share the proceeds equally," the supervisor explained. It was clever; by making it equally profitable whenever anyone found a diamond, it served to ensure that no one would just hide it and try to sell it on their own. The upper supervisors interfaced with the diamond merchants, ensuring that the average miner didn't know the value of the diamond anyway, so they'd probably get a fraction of the local value if they attempted to sell a diamond without assistance. Nonetheless, diamonds are so tiny that it still seemed entirely possible that some people made away with a diamond from time to time, yet no one there agreed with my assertion.
Aaron and I asked numerous times how much money the miners expected to make from each diamond, and the supervisors and miners were intentionally vague in their responses. On average, it sounded like a decent stone could net the team between $25 and $30. You know what a diamond costs on the Western market.
At some of the other sites, the miners were paid only on commission; they would sell the diamond to the owner of the plot.
"We don't have to sell to the owner though, we can take them to town and sell to the merchants," one miner explained. On the surface, that kept the owner from undercutting the merchants, yet my research back home still indicates that the cartel keeps the payout small across the board.

Dig My Grave
As we proceeded from one mine to another, we crossed paths with a train of men hustling across the ridges from one mine to a larger pool of water. They were taking viable gravel from a dry pit to a wet one so they could sift through it to find diamonds.
"We have to dig down to the water level," a miner explained. "We go past the surface dirt, past the bedrock, and into the gravel below. That's where the diamonds are." Since their mine had gravel above the water table, they had to move the gravel to the water to process it.
We came upon a large mine where 8 men were immersed to their knees in heavy wet clay. A constant barrage of splats could be heard as the men heaved shovelfuls of clay up over their heads and onto the next terrace above them.
"They shovel it up to the next level in the terrace," their supervisor explained, "then after it gets to the top we move it out of the way. We need to get it out of the way because this site has a lot of clay to on top of the gravel. When we get the gravel to the top level, we let it dry for a few weeks and then take it down to the water to sift it.

Carrying sacks of gravel

Digging through clay for diamonds

"How long have you been digging at this site?" Aaron asked.
"About 40 days. And we keep hitting clay."
Aaron and I shook our heads, marveling at the amount of labor required to move that much earth.
"Before the war, companies invested more in the mines. We had Caterpillars. With a Caterpillar, we could make the same progress in a weekend. Now it takes us months."
Later we asked how long the supervisor had been working in Tongo. He had begun as a digger like the other men, but was fortunate enough to get to a supervisory position when his body could no longer handle the toil.
"Did your father work in the mines?"
"Yes."
"And your father's father?"
"Yes."
"All the way down the line?"
"Yes. In fact, my family dug here in this exact mine in 1968."
"You dug right here? This same mine?"
"Yeah, there are still some diamonds left..."
The diamonds on planet Earth are between 1 and 1.3 billion years old. New diamonds do not appear in the Tongo mines; these men were digging by hand for diamonds leftover by machines 40 years ago.

Take a Look At These Hands
I got into a conversation with a tall, slender man wearing a blue cap and camouflage underwear named Mohammed.
"How long have you worked at the mine?" I asked.
"This is my first mine," he said. "I used to be a civil servant; I worked for the government. But when 9 months passed without a paycheck, I had to find other work. This is the only option here in Tongo." It was apparent in Sierra Leone that some people in the government were able to earn substantial salaries. Someone was making money, but this man didn't. Was this the fate of the honest civil servant?
"Why don't you move to another city? Try something else?"
"It takes money to move to another city. And there are no jobs in Sierra Leone. This is difficult work, but I am assured of money, even if it is not much," the man said softly as he wrote numbers on a small scrap of paper, which he then tore into tiny pieces, meticulously rolled each one into a ball and then tossed them on the ground. The other miners came over and each man picked up a white ball.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Lottery. We choose numbers to see who digs each plot," he said, counting off the 5x5 foot sections of the mine demarcated by sticks. "Some are harder than others, so we choose numbers for each one."
As the men picked up their shovels and approached their plot, Mohammed showed me his hands. He was a lefty and the entire inside of his left hand had formed into a thick, leathery callous. He let Aaron and I touch it, and I could move the callous layer independently from the rest of his hand.
At our guest house in Tongo we met a South African who worked in the diamond business named Rizzi said that often months would go by before a team found a stone worth even $10.
"They have no foresight," he said. "When they find a diamond that will feed them for a few months, they will stop working for a few months, rather than save and keep working."
The men at Tongo Field have no access to banks, and as a result have no interest to accrue. Six days a week in seemingly bottomless pits of dirt under the punishing sun, their sweating bodies aching and becoming covered in calluses, the men breathe deep and plunge their shovels into the earth again, hoping for the one big find that could make a woman in another world gush or a hip-hop artist boast, and that could bring these men a little time off.

The hand speaks. The hand of a government man.

War, What Is It Good For?

2008-04-08T02:47:00.000-07:00

Salone Hospitality
I had an idea for our next day: that Aaron and I should chat up JDK, our friend the motorcycle driver in Mile 91, and see if he would be willing to let us rent his and another motorcycle for the day. We could just drive and see where the road took us, then return in the afternoon to catch a poda-poda to Bo, the next city heading east across Sierra Leone.In the morning, I awoke at 6:30 and decided to take a short stroll until Aaron emerged from his room. I found Mohamed the hotelier's sons outside the guest house and they accompanied me as we walked through the nearby cropland in the orange light of dawn.
The boys, one of whom was focusing his education on agriculture, pointed out the palm trees which were grown for palm oil and showed me how the pods grew in dark brown bundles, which were then hacked off with machetes and pounded for their oil. They boys showed me how cassava was planted on mounds of soil, between which the farmers would walk. They explained that they did not manually water their crops; they relied solely on the rains. Cassava leaves are a staple food, inedible until they are pounded into a green pulp, and increasingly the only affordable food as the price of rice had risen drastically over the past 6 months, the boys explained. Occasionally, other villagers would walk past, carrying the morning's water in large buckets on their heads.
As we looped back toward the guesthouse, a woman called for my attention behind a house. I came over and as we greeted each other, a gaggle of children formed, excitedly vying for my attention. The woman's name was Adama, very close to my name, and she tried to show me around her back yard while the children begged for me to take their photos. In between shots, Adama explained to me some of the morning activities that were taking place: A gorgeous girl about 18 years old was busily pounding out cassava leaves in a piece of palm trunk hollowed out like a mortar. Another woman was roasting a pot full of nuts over the fire. Nut oil, Adama explained.
More children showed up, followed by Aaron who was smoking a cigarette. He'd taken a walk himself and had gathered his own little posse. We took more photos of the children, and were particularly taken by the braids the little girls wore. In all of Africa, I was impressed by intricately patterned hair braids, but in Sierra Leone they often braided the girls' hair so that the long ends tufted at the top of the head, making the coolest texture sprouting from the top of the beautiful faces that followed us around.

Intricate braids

Adama shared her house with her husband, both of her husband's brothers, and their respective extended families. In all, there were about 15 or 20 living in a concrete-covered mud brick home about the size of a double-wide trailer.
Everyone had a role to play in the morning rituals. Some carried water from the well behind our guest house, one younger girl was responsible for sweeping the dirt yard with a short palm frond broom, one girl washed the dishes in a large plastic bowl. One woman hulled palm kernels with a hand-held stone, while her toddler daughter imitated her and pounded empty palm hulls with a smaller stone.
The cassava-pounding girl called me over and asked me to take a hand at her job for a moment. While I did so, to the entertainment of all in attendance, she walked over to the side of the yard and picked up a large axe. Without any production she began to chop a small log into firewood. Aaron and I agreed that there was something strangely attractive about a woman who would just pick up an axe and start chopping like that.
After a while, Aaron and I told Adama that we needed to get to town to find some breakfast and some motorcycles.
"Let me come with you; I will take you to the market and we will get some food. I will cook it for you!"
"Oh no, we can't do that; you've got your hands full here at home! We'll just find some omelets or something in town."
"No, there isn't anyone that will make good omelets here. Let me come with you and we will get eggs and oil and I will make them for you." Adama was adamant and we eventually acquiesced.

Pounding cassava leaves into something edible

Zen and the Art of African Motorcycles
As we strolled down the dirt road that lined all the homes in Mile 91, children and parents alike hollered at us and waved while we tried to chat about motorcycles.
"So, on a motorcycle, the left hand is the clutch?" Aaron asked. He'd had minimal experiences on two wheels, usually involving scooters that either broke down, or accidentally tossing a monk off the back of one in Asia.
"Yeah, and the brake is on the left hand, along with the throttle."
"Easy enough."
"Well, don't count on that right hand brake though. I don't know if it's the case across Africa, but in the other countries, the hand brake doesn't work, just the foot brake. That's under your right foot."
"Well, that's cool; I suppose the back brake is safer anyway, you won't flip over the handlebars that way, right?"
"Well, not exactly. Motorbikes have an anti-dive mechanism, and stopping power comes from the front brake."
"OK, and the gears?"
"Well, on the bikes I learned on, you stomped down on the shifter until you got to first gear, then clicked up once to get to neutral. All the other gears were clicks up from there."
"Easy enough."
"Well, kinda… Except that the bikes in Benin worked differently: all the way down was neutral and all the way up was first. Or something like that—you know, I'm not sure whether I ever really figured out where neutral was. In any case, you understand how to work a clutch and the idea's the same, we'll just need to figure out which gear is which. Oh, and the two things you should never do: don't drop into too low of a gear while you're going fast or the bike will throw you, and don't suddenly let go of the brake if you lock the rear wheel and start to skid, for the same reason."
Simple, right? I hoped I wasn't getting my friend in over his head.
We were interrupted by an unusual honking sound slowly increasing in volume. We looked over next to a house to see a handful of boys gathered around a bush, each with a long green horn protruding from his mouth. "Honk. Honk. Honk."
We walked over to take a closer look. Adama showed us that the horns were made from the stem of a large leafy plant. The leaves were torn off and a slit was cut in the stem. When blown into, the stem made a satisfying honking sound.
"Ingenious. Who ever would have discovered this?" Aaron asked.
The market was an adventure as well, with our presence and shopping mission providing entertainment and excitement for every vendor in attendance. Slowly we gathered a container of oil, a handful of eggs, some bread, some hot red peppers, onions, a pineapple. Aaron and I headed to the motorcycle drivers at the junction while Adama headed back to the house to begin cooking.
"So we were wondering whether it was possible to rent a couple bikes from you guys today." Aaron told JDK.
"Sure, that's possible. You know how to ride?"
"Of course, we both own bikes back at home," Aaron lied. "How much?"
We agreed to 5000 Leones per hour, about $1.50, a price Adama said she thought was appropriate. No waivers, no contracts, no licenses. We'd pick up the bikes after breakfast.
Back at Adama's house, she prepared our breakfast while we entertained the children. And when she did deliver our omelets, we agreed that they were heads and tails better than any we'd had on the trip so far. Unreasonable hospitality. Adama had plenty of work to do that day to keep her family in order, yet she and her family went out of their way to care for us strangers. They were so kind it made me feel guilty.

Digging a new toilet near Adama's house

Give Peace a Chance
We finally got out of the neighborhood and to the motorcycles in the early afternoon. JDK offered us a Nanfang and a TVS, a Chinese and an Indian 125cc bike. We shared a gallon of gas for 15,000 Leones, about $5. The gasoline was manually pumped into a glass display before being drained into the bikes, proving to us we were getting what we paid for.
"OK, to get to first gear, click up all the way?" I asked JDK.
"No, down down down, always down!" he shouted.
We kick started the bikes and were off. I pulled behind Aaron, allowing him to set a pace he felt comfortable with as he shifted gears on a motorcycle for his first time. He picked it up like a natural, and at least had the appearance of a reasonable amount of confidence. As we began driving down the thinly paved road we just happened to be pointed down, I watched as Aaron drove right through someone's rice which was laid out on the pavement to dry. I didn't say anything; it was more important that he not hit anyone or wind up in the wrong gear.
Aaron cruised through easily 10 families' rice crops before I had the opportunity to give him a head's up that he also needed to watch the road itself, not just the horizon for potholes, chickens, and children. Riding in the third world can be a complicated affair, especially for a first-timer.
The pavement eventually gave way to compacted red dirt, surrounded by tall grasses and large green bushes. Alone on the dirt road, we rode side-by-side, CHIPS style, occasionally screaming out "YEEE-HAW!" We were on the road, totally free, in the middle of Africa, and having an absolute blast.

On the road

Every 15 minutes or so, we'd pass a small village. Each village generally consisted of six or so mud brick houses with thatched roofs. Every village we passed, we'd hear screams of "Opoto! Opoto!" the local word for white man. Children and adults alike went bonkers at the sight of us zipping by with our silly sunglasses and hats, a strange sight instead of the same old poda-poda or local on a motorcycle that they saw every other day of their lives.
"This is the only way to travel!" Aaron declared as we stopped at one of the villages. He was right. After my experience in China, I knew that travel would never be the same now that I knew the freedom and fun to be had in traveling by motorcycle. It was a blessing that we could arrange them so easily in Sierra Leone.
We stopped at most of the villages we passed, entertaining locals by taking their photos and showing them to them on our digital cameras, buying a drink or snack to provide a little commerce in otherwise sleepy communities.
Arriving at one junction with another road, we slowed to a stop at a monument with three empty flagpoles protruding from it. The monument read "PEACE WAS BORN HERE". We didn't have 10 seconds to ponder the meaning before a man called us over to his home across the road where he was sitting with a handful of other men under a mango tree.
The man explained to us that this junction in the road was the exact spot that the RUF rebels first emerged from the bush to meet the Sierra Leone government to begin peace talks which would eventually lead to the end of the war. The man walked with us across the street and read each word of the plaque to us.
"So the rebels hid out near here?" I asked.
"Oh yes, they had taken over many of the villages in this area. With the help of Bangladesh, the government was able to communicate with them and bring them to talk here at this point, where peace was born!"
We had enough time to squeeze out another question or two before word got out that there were two opoto at the junction. "Oooh boy!" Aaron called out, as two dozen women and children ran to us all hollering and asking for us to take their photos.
It was hard to believe that just a handful of years earlier, bloody war took place along that very same road, the very same people who were running to us with enormous smiles on their faces probably running in fear from murderers and rapists carrying automatic weapons and machetes.

Rural village

Lazy River Road
After hanging with the peace junction villagers for a bit, we got back on the bikes and rode down the road marked with a sign that mentioned a ferry. We arrived at a serene, lazy little river. The road continued right down to the water and onto a floating contraption consisting of some steel pontoons and some rickety boards. Two or three locals stood at the river's edge, in their underwear, having just taken a swim. One took us through the general interview, what were our names, what was our "mission", how long we intended to be here.
"The ferry was destroyed in the war, but the government recently fixed it, and I am the operator," the man explained.
The ferry operator invited us onto the ferry and showed us how it operated. A car would drive onto the ferry and he would pull the ferry across the river using a steel cable that stretched across the river. While he showed us the ferry, a motorcycle arrived at the ferry and rather than pulling onto the ferry, stopped at the shore. A small boy in a long dugout canoe helped put the bike in the canoe and then began paddling it across the river. Ostensibly the boy in the canoe charged a slightly lower tariff for a river crossing for people and vehicles he could fit in his canoe.
Meanwhile Aaron and I talked it over and agreed that we were in a safe enough place that we could both leave our cameras and clothes on the shore and take a swim.
As luck would have it, the moment Aaron disrobed and stepped into the river, a poda-poda arrived and a couple families exited, waiting for the van to be arranged on the ferry. Suddenly our semi-private swim was a very public event, bringing stares and huge smiles to the families who had never expected to see a couple of opotos in their skivvies while they made their daily commute.
Again, in the exact location of a horrific war, we were met with curiosity rather than aggression, viewed with smiles rather than anger or jealousy, and our valuables and bikes were never even glanced at as targets of theft. Sierra Leone was proving itself a safe and friendly place to be.

One of these things just doesn't belong

War, What is it Good For?
Our plans to depart Mile 91 by afternoon didn't happen. With the long breakfast in the morning and the countless stops along the way, we arrived back in Mile 91 at dusk. After we returned the bikes, we went for a walk and ran into Mohamed, the guest house owner, at his friend's place, the local palm wine house.
We were treated to a couple glasses of the sweet, milky white tipple and then headed back to the hotel where we said we'd spend the evening with Mohamed again. When he arrived at the hotel, he had another bottle of palm wine with him, a gift from the palm wine purveyor.
As we sat in the dirt lot on wooden chairs illuminated by one bare bulb powered by a growling gas generator, we sipped the palm wine, and relayed our adventure that day.
"We just happened to arrive at a junction near the ferry where there was a peace monument."
"Oh yes, that was the place where the rebels first began talks with the government."
"So the war took place right around here, didn't it?"
"Yes, it did. It went on for years, just here in this neighborhood, making our lives miserable."
"Right here in this neighborhood? Did you stay here?"
"Yes, I stayed here in my house. The fighting often took place right there beyond the trees, every night we would hear the gunfire, the bombs. Sometimes we would leave, but we always had to come back to our homes. The rebels would come here looking for resources. They wanted the diamonds in Tongo and Kono, but they came to the villages for our food and women. They would take what they could find, destroy some things and then disappear into the bush again."
"How did you survive, how did you eat, if they were taking your things?"
"Well, we all had to look out for each other. If my neighbor over there had a little rice, he would share it with me, and if I had some cassava, I would share it with him."
"I can't believe you stayed here. That you lived right here in this house and survived."
"Yes, I didn't have any choice; moving away wasn't an option."
"And you had to somehow continue life through all of the killing and fear."
"Yes, we would spend our evenings sitting right here where we are sitting, listening to the sounds of the killing and wondering, just when will this rubbish end?!"
"And the rebels, what happened with them? I know that some of them even wound up in the government."
"Yes, well at the end of the war, we all had to agree to just forgive and forget. No one talks about who was a rebel, who was a killer. We are all brothers, and we all need each other to survive."
"So are there former rebels here in Mile 91?"
"Oh yes, plenty, but we don't talk about that. Now they are our neighbors, our friends." Mohamed took a pull off his cup of palm wine.
It was beyond my comprehension. How was it possible to just "forgive and forget"? How could someone, let alone an entire country just forget about the wives and daughters raped and killed? The children forced to torture their own parents to death? The innocent civilians who were amputated so the RUF could show their dominance? The homes pillaged and burned?
"We can't dwell on what happened, we need to work together. Alone, I don't have much earning potential, but I have more than some people. We all share. With the guest house, I can make about 150,000 Leones a month ($50)." Aaron and I were each paying 15,000 Leones per night, so I surmised that he filled about 10 room nights per month on average. An annual income of about $600 per year, which he shared with others. "The price of rice has increased since our new president came into office in January. It used to cost 700 Leones for a cup of rice but now it costs 1000 Leones, 100,000 for a bag of rice. I am lucky to have the guest house as my income. How is someone with six children who drives a motorcycle or sells shoes supposed to feed his six children? So we suffer here in Sierra Leone. We can only put fuel in the generator when there are guests in the hotel. We sit in the darkness the other evenings."
But the generator was a nuisance; the noise was so loud it was making conversation difficult. We asked Mohamed to turn it off and we gathered around the table inside the hotel and lit a couple kerosene lanterns. With the cost of a gallon of gas approaching the revenue from a hotel night, and knowing Mohamed's struggle, not to mention the peace and comfort of talking by lantern light, electricity to light the hotel and run our fans seemed so incredibly superfluous.
That night, after finishing the palm wine and retiring under my bug net, my mind was spinning. The things I learned that day were seemingly unfathomable. The serenity, the generosity, the trust, the community, the sharing that the Saloneans exhibited, that they could be the products of such a nightmarish war, it just didn't seem to make sense. How on earth could people just forget the war and become so supportive of one another? Were the Saloneans predisposed to such brotherhood and love, or was that the result of having been dragged through a decade of hellish war?
I can't explain it, but I can testify that it is true. Somehow, moving beyond the years of misery inflicted from the war, the people of Sierra Leone came out of the situation truly believing and living the phrase "forgive and forget". Mixed with a small dose of healthy skepticism, were able to put the atrocities behind them, look to the future with hope, and become some of the gentlest, most wonderful people I have ever encountered. There is a lesson and a bit of hope for humanity as a whole in the Saloneans' triumphant emergence from their war.

A goodwill tour of Sierra Leone

Power Struggle

2008-04-07T09:45:00.001-07:00

When we arrived in Mile 91, it was apparent that the town doesn't see many strangers. Mile 91 is essentially a junction of two roads with a small accompanying village, and anyone going anywhere in Sierra Leone just passes through Mile 91 without stopping. Sierra Leone is sparsely populated outside of Freetown, and this was a typical tiny town.
Our cohorts in the poda-poda asked multiple times whether we were sure this was where we wanted to stop, rather than the larger city of Bo, where the rest of the van was headed. As we took our bags, we were immediately mobbed by the town's dozen or so motorcycle drivers, all seeming to ask the same questions at once:
"Where from?"
"Where going?"
"What is your mission here? NGO? Missionary?"
"American, Mile 91, and tourists, here to see and learn about Sierra Leone," I replied, a mantra that we both were to repeat dozens of times a day for the next week.
We befriended a driver named JDK who took us to the one guest house in town, John Smart Guest House, on John Smart Street, right off of Back Street, down from Old Police Street. JDK's brother Mohamed Kamara owned the house, which was a simple mud brick structure coated in painted cement. There were sinks and toilets in our rooms, but there was no running water serving them. Mohamed, an exceedingly gentle man, said they'd turn on the power generator for a few hours at nightfall so we could use our fans to cool the rooms and for some light.
Sierra Leone had some infrastructure at one time, at least by African standards. The war, corrupt government, and lack of money has caused electricity to be a rare commodity in recent times. In Freetown, one local estimated with pride that there is generally electricity to be found in the capitol for 18-24 hours a day, though that was purely nationalistic pride as far as I could tell. On my last night in Sierra Leone, as I rode the ferry back from Freetown towards the airport, I watched the city and its undulating hills shrink in the darkness. Unlike most cities of 1.5 million, Freetown emitted the equivalent light of a small town. I could count on my fingers the lights coming from each of Freetown's hills. This is a country without electricity for all intents and purposes. Outside of Freetown, we occasionally saw power lines, but they often were missing the wires, or simply didn't carry a current.

Power lines in Port Loko

That night in Mile 91, we headed to the main junction and munched on some grilled meat as the sun set. Each food, drink, or cigarette vendor lit a small kerosene lamp made of an old Nescafe can, creating a warm orange glow around each little table in the hot night. Mile 91, like every other place in Sierra Leone was dark after nightfall; kerosene costs money, candles cost money, and fuel to run a generator is prohibitively expensive.
As we walked through the Mile 91 and eventually made our way back to the darkened John Smart Guest House, the gravel road crunched under our sandals as we passed families clustered on front porches, quietly talking in the darkness. Occasionally, we'd hear someone listening to a quiet transistor radio or chuckling at someone's joke. In the darkness, we were Sierra Leonean as far as anyone could tell, and we were able to quietly soak in the serenity of a world without electricity.
Before experiencing it, the thought of a country without electricity conjured in me emotions ranging from annoyance to fear. But starting that night, it was apparent that without electricity life still goes on.
A phrase that locals constantly said to me in all West African countries, but particularly Sierra Leone was "in Africa, we suffer." Sierra Leoneans generally cited the cost of food, lack of jobs, and lack of electricity as their biggest sources of suffering. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The cost of food and jobs was an justified complaint, but the lack of electricity seemed to me to be a blessing, a gift that few places in the world experience anymore. If power were available and affordable, there would probably also be a television in each of the small homes we passed, the residents would probably be inside, gathered around the TV, cooled by air conditioning, separated from each other like we are at home in the West.

Grilled meat vendors in the center of Bo at night

Instead, in Mile 91 and all of the other places we visited, the only feasible evening activities involved listening to the radio or chatting, selling some food or going for a short stroll. Without light or television inside the house, without babbling newscasters, MTV, and The Apprentice Africa, without video games and the internet, people congregated on front porches enjoying good old-fashioned family time. The communal relaxation, on par with the Jewish or Adventist sabbath could surely seem like suffering if there were infinite options of things to do, but when everyone is in the same boat, when there simply aren't TV shows, restaurants, bars or sports events, people will still make the most of their time.
For our time in Sierra Leone, we were privileged to spend many of our evenings talking with those families, getting to know them as they know each other. Comparing our life experiences with theirs. At the John Smart Guest House, Aaron and I dragged two wooden chairs to the dirt courtyard in front of the porch. The air was cooler outside than it was in our stuffy rooms. We sampled a few local libations we'd picked up in town, such as Bitta Kola, Cock Tail, and some local gin, while the neighborhood children cautiously ventured out of the darkness to take a peek at the strangers. We shook hands, smiled, and when we ran out of English words the kids knew, we resorted to making faces and performing stupid human tricks. When I showed the kids how to fart with their armpits, it seemed to break all the rules; the kids were in stitches. Body humor knows no borders.
"So this is what we bring to Africa, armpit farts!" Aaron sighed.
But after the little children joined their parents in their bedrooms and porches, Mohamed's teenage sons joined us. We listened to their radio, shared with them a few sips of our drinks, and they talked about their schooling. One boy was studying agriculture and farming, another was studying biology. Into the quiet night, they demonstrated to us how the parental generation has instilled the value of education and how the current younger generation has bought into it. Most of the boys didn't drink and a few explained that while they were on Easter holiday, they were still taking extracurricular courses to get ahead in school. As one person on the Freetown Ferry explained to me, "for so many people our lives were so fucked up by the war that we don't care what happens to us; we only care about our children. They are our only hope."
As we felt immediately integrated into the community of Mile 91, we dropped our guard and never even so much as acquired the keys to our rooms. We had no idea what to expect from the rest of Sierra Leone, but so far, any reports of danger or post-traumatic warriors were figments of the imagination. In Sierra Leone, we were finding intelligent, gentle, respectful people who were excited to welcome us strangers into their difficult world. Soon, we'd get some perspective on jobs, money, food, diamonds, the war, and its lasting effects on the people of Sierra Leone.

Dusk on the main road of Mile 91

Danger, I've Been Told To Expect It

2008-04-07T08:14:00.001-07:00

It's safe to say that most Americans haven't heard of Sierra Leone aside from those that remember it peeking into American headlines occasionally between 1991 and 2002 as they suffered from a long and bloody series of civil wars. The final phase of the war was perpetrated by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which worked in conjunction with the presiding warlords in Liberia and the employment of child soldiers to overthrow the government, pillage, rape, torture and murder as they succeeded in taking control of Sierra Leone's vast diamond mining resources.
After a hired peacekeeping militia helped end the war, and a peace accord was signed in Lome, Togo in 2002, Sierra Leone virtually disappeared from the news. When the war ended and Sierra Leone disappeared from the news, the weapons were bought back by the UN, and all former rebels were given complete amnesty and allowed to either participate in the government or find another way to go on with their lives.
The 2006 film, Blood Diamond, accurately portrayed many of the methods used by the RUF including the use of drugged child militias, amputation by machete, and the assault and murder of innocent civilians. Thousands of Sierra Leoneans were forced to either succumb to RUF or become a victim in its wake. The film brought more attention to what had happened in Sierra Leone during the war, yet my reading about West Africa in determining my itinerary for this trip led me to wonder what life was like since the war. What would such a war do to a population? How would former child soldiers reintegrate into society? How would those who were forced to kill, who witnessed killing, or were permanently injured by rebels be affected?
When I told my friends and family of my decision to add Sierra Leone to my itinerary, I know it caused some anxiety. It did for me as well; I really had no idea what to expect. People cited tales of war and murder, risks of theft and worse. One friend even went so far as to ask why I would choose such a place, saying "those people are animals."
I knew I was receiving opinions from people who really had no idea, though. And what few accounts I had read online indicated that while the travel was tough, and the country lacked in typical tourist sights, Sierra Leone was a reasonably safe place to visit. The US Government had no travel warnings against visiting Sierra Leone, and one former UN worker who I met online spoke so lovingly of "Sweet Salone" that I wanted to find out for myself.

Mama Told Me Not To Come
Arriving from Ghana, where I received nothing but exuberant welcome, I steeled my nerves and prepared for the worst. Not having been immune to my mother's genetic propensity for concern, I had to assume that every man on the street would be a deranged former murderer, angling to take what he could from me without any regard for my life. I hoped I would be pleasantly surprised.
The Freetown airport was your typical third-world facility, with luggage being moved from plane to terminal by tractor from the single, slightly decaying runway. As I emerged from the air-conditioned comfort of a Bellview Airlines plane cobbled together from used equipment bearing the names of countless European airlines, I stepped into the searing heat with a handful of African businessmen and was approached by a man in a faded polo shirt asking if I needed a visa. Assuming him to be the first of countless scammers, I firmly shooed him away, though he was persistent. After a few attempts of me declining his assistance, he got frustrated and exclaimed, "but I work here!" Oops, better safe than sorry, I figured.
Through customs, the first order of business was figuring out how to get to Freetown. The Lungi Airport is inconveniently located on a peninsula a wide river's distance from the city. The best information I could find was that the helicopter service, operated by drunk former Russian soldiers, had experienced a recent fatal crash, the hovercraft service had recently experienced a non-fatal fire and sinking, and the aging car ferry was the best remaining bet.

Pulling into the Kissy ferry terminal in Freetown

At the insistence of a police officer, I paid far more than what I knew was a reasonable fare for a "safe" taxi driver, one he assured me would not steal from me or murder me, and we arrived at the ferry just seconds before it was to depart.
On board, I watched the sun set over countless steep hills which comprised Freetown. Hardly developed, but densely populated, Freetown seemed to me what Hong Kong must have looked like 100 years ago. A city of 1.5 million people, many of whom relocated to the city after the war, Freetown appeared to be smeared over a surface as varied as the gyri and sulci of the human brain. Countless small homes piled on top of each other, threatening to collapse and slide down the countless valleys leading to the ocean.

Freetown from Kroo Bay

It was Easter Monday, and a handful of well-heeled Sierra Leoneans were riding the ferry back to the city after a day of relaxing with family. Small children carried platters of grilled meat or fried yam chips on their heads, while slick teens dressed like hip-hop stars hawked knockoff sunglasses and hats. I was chatted up by a few younger guys and the line of questioning was very similar to that of the Ghanians. The conversations were innocuous, essentially a string of questions as to why I would bother to visit their country if I wasn't an NGO volunteer, journalist, or diamond prospector. When I finally conveyed that I was just there to learn about their country and to understand how people live there today, people were excited to chat and tell me their stories. When we arrived in Freetown, my new friends hadn't hassled, scammed, or even hit me up for money. It was a genuine conversation for our mutual benefit.
I hopped into a shared taxi to the Aberdeen neighborhood, which proved to be a lengthy trip due to the day's festivities. In the darkening evening, from the obscured view from the center of a crammed van, I could see thousands upon thousands of people moving though the streets. Loud music seemed to be erupting from every shop and automobile. Several flatbed trucks honked and surged their way through the crowds, laden with shouting revelers dancing to the cacophony of the clashing music. This was definitely not going to be a relaxing city.
When I pulled up to the Family Kingdom hotel complex, my prearranged meeting place with my lifelong friend Aaron, I shouted out the window to him.
"Mistah Aaron! Ow de body (how's the body/how are you)?" I asked, curious to see whether he'd picked up any of the local pidgin, Krio, in the day he'd already spent in Freetown. He looked up from his book, skeptical, and sunburned to all hell. Exactly what I was hoping for. It felt so good to see a familiar face. That night, over cold beers and barracuda we caught up on travel tales, his recent engagement, and chatted about what he'd experienced so far.
"Well, it's too soon to say for sure, but it seems that the only people to watch out for are the ones that tell you to watch out," Aaron said. He'd been befriended by a guy who identified himself as Chuck Norris due to his fighting style in the war. Chuck said he'd protect Aaron from any dangers or hassles amid the chaos of the Easter weekend, and did a reasonable job until Aaron caught Chuck attempting to nab a handful of cash out of a wallet that Aaron had in his hotel room. We'd need to be cautious.

You'll need a graffiti, don't heed and you'll be bleeding
As I told stories from my trip so far, I mentioned that my favorite experiences had tended to take place in the tiny towns off the beaten path, something Aaron had also experienced in his travels. The next morning, we glanced over the map that accompanies the scant 25 pages of information on Sierra Leone in the Lonely Planet, pointed at a town 91 miles away from Freetown, cleverly named Mile 91, and figured we'd hop off the poda-poda (bush taxi) there, and try our luck.
Freetown by daylight was mind-boggling. The city boasts 1.5 million people on a wide expanse of steep hills. The war and economic crisis that Sierra Leone endure has made the place a stunning combination of rotting old wooden homes, crumbling concrete structures, and a few more modern attempts at construction. Definitely favoring the latter, decaying structures, as Aaron pointed out. There is no denying it; while Freetown seems to have some of the more fashionable people I have seen in Africa, the poverty is striking. Countless people are clearly living with just enough to survive the day; their homes and threadbare clothing on the verge of disappearing into thin air.
There was a menacing feeling however as we moved through the streets. Seemingly every single wall was covered in layers of gang-related graffiti. Not nearly as artistic as what one would find in Europe or America, probably due to the expense of paint, and the spelling was often comical, but the turf documented by the tags was duly noted.
The Wesc Side Crew (creepily similar to the ruthless West Side Boys gang from during the war), Black Eyed Pies, Eminent Krew, Terror Unit, Dry Eye Crew, Gees Up Squad, Dip Cent Squad, D12 Boys, and Positive Krew ("Fuck To You") had all staked their claim along the streets and alleys of Freetown. While there were plenty of upstanding citizens roaming the streets, the ominous tags and the throngs of youths dressed to kick it with 50 Cent or Lil Jon made the city feel that much more lawless.
We came upon a set of stone stairs seeming to spiral down into a valley in the bowels of the city and I gestured that Aaron and I should follow them. At the bottom, we found a bizarre little courtyard where some men were lounging, one was getting his haircut, and a few were in a heated debate. The debaters ended their discussion after catching sight of us and gave us a brief tour of the courtyard, explaining that it was the remains of a colonial-era building and the small tunnels leading out of it once funneled slaves out to the Americas. The men gave us a friendly tour to the nearest jetty and up to a market before we parted ways. To our relief, these men didn't warn us to watch out for dangerous people, and thus weren't dangerous themselves. Our walk was concluded without so much as a request for a gift in exchange for the tour we never asked for; they were just being friendly and had nothing better to do with their morning.

Courtyard in Freetown

We later picked up two motorcycle drivers to get a ride through the circuitous city to the Total station that everyone refers to as the Shell station where we were told we'd find a poda-poda heading east. In Sierra Leone, as in the other West African countries, the bush taxis depart when they are full, so we spent a couple hours sampling the snacks being hawked from platters balanced on peoples' heads.
As we waited, we chatted with the hawkers that milled about the waiting poda-podas, and were occasionally asked for change. Most people were content when we'd share some food, a handshake, or a short chat, but one woman was particularly rude and persistent. As she nagged us, a well-dressed man befriended us and began to give us his version of the state of Sierra Leone, at the cost of the woman's pride.
"She is Temene, the largest tribe in Sierra Leone. I am Mende," he explained. "I have been a doctor here in Freetown for 35 years, through all the wars and all of the problems. People here suffer and much of it is the fault of the Temne! They have turned this country upside down! They are lazy and will not work!" The doctor paused, and translated his diatribe into Krio for the benefit of the woman, and then continued.
"The Temene were given enormous amounts of machinery to do construction, an opportunity to fix our country. Instead of working on it, they just sold all of the machinery and took the money! Now we have no progress and they have wasted all the money they made!" Again, he translated to Krio and the woman listened, not arguing with him.
The conversation continued, rather racist, but an interesting glimpse into one man's opinion of things. It was the first of the countless little puzzle pieces we were to pick up as we wound up in conversation with one local after another throughout the trip.
Finally, the poda-poda began honking frantically, indicating it was time to go. The ride was your typical African fare; Aaron and I shared the single bucket seat at the front of the van as the driver tore down the paved roads, bouncing and swerving over potholes and around motorcycles and pedestrians. As Freetown's hills dissipated, the terrain turned immediately to lush, uninhabited greenery. Savannah trees and palms stood tall over thick green underbrush and the occasional farm.
"Wow, the roads here really aren't bad at all," I commented, just a bit too soon. A moment later, the driver suddenly swerved to avoid some potholes and straddled the jagged edge of the pavement, dropping two wheels down into the gravel pedestrian path parallel to the road. "Wooooah!" I hollered as if on a roller coaster, as the van rode at a heavy lean of at least 20 degrees to the right. Branches whipped at me through the open window. A moment later the driver righted the van again, before dropping right back down into the gutter on the other side of the street. Back and forth, the driver continued like this, until Aaron and I agreed that the driver was executing these heavy leans with impressive skill. He was able to drop down into the ditch and then pop back up onto the road with a deftness and rhythm that felt like an amusement park ride. We felt completely confident in our driver.
"When we finally get to Mile 91, I expect this guy to pull the emergency break, spin the van in a donut, hop out, and scream 'ta-daaa!!'" Aaron said, perfectly summing up the feeling.

Poda-poda straddling the edge of the road

You're In Control, Is There Anywhere You Want To Go?

2008-03-23T16:23:00.000-07:00

You're In Control, Is There Anything You Want To Know?
When I began my trip to Africa, my buddy George jokingly encouraged me to rip Africa a new one while I was out here. It sounded feasible enough; under his guidance I felt that's pretty much what we did in China. China, an enormous country of 1.6 billion people and wielding immense potential power as it becomes a developed country, for us was just a puppy that rolled over and allowed us to scratch its belly when we wanted to. It was an amazing realization to slowly realize that as tourists we were just short of untouchable out there. We could do whatever our collective creativity invented, and had free reign as we crossed the country. The experience gave me a dangerous ego.
I knew from my previous visit to Ethiopia and it was reinforced from from my first day in Cameroon that Africa as a continent isn't a tiny animal with big paws. The lion is a common symbol in Africa, and I had to confront Africa with as much caution and skepticism as the lethal savanna animal would require. I had my training wheels on when I traveled with locals in Cameroon, and I was on my own when I moved through Benin and Togo. There, I hit my stride and found that a certain level of daily caution was appropriate to guard me from the occasional chancers, cling-ons, scammers, surly locals and persistent kids. The caution protected me and when I chose to let my guard down, I was able to open up doors and get glimpses into local peoples' lives.
I arrived in Accra, Ghana with my shields still up, and thankfully so. The first things I saw in Ghana were rather shocking to me, considering where I'd been for the past several weeks. I noticed that there existed highway signs, traffic lights, billboards for things such as Blackberry-supporting mobile devices, Canon photocopier suites, Woolworths, and Toyota Camrys. The next day, in the light, I noticed garbage cans on some street corners, and I even saw people standing in a queue waiting for tro-tros (local taxis). There were still the open sewers and hordes of ladies with fish, pineapples, or the fixings for a small restaurant on their heads, but it was apparent that this giant city was pretty modern. It was as if my ears became unclogged after a flight as I began to realize that I could now understand a majority of the conversations around me. For the first time in years, I had arrived in a foreign country where English is the official language.

Boy in James Town

I have this tendency, involuntary a lot of the time, to gravitate to the hardest or poorest part of any city I visit. While I aimed to just explore the central Makola Market, I somehow wandered into Usser Town. Usser Town and the adjacent James Town are the two oldest neighborhoods in in Accra. They are situated on the coast, and somewhere in their bowels house two ancient forts which were crucial in the European gold and slave trade out of Ghana. I suppose it was the increasing number of crumbling colonial buildings, all painted pastel yellows, pinks and greens. Or maybe it was the textures of the cobbled-together homes with rusted tin roofs and walls, benches, and stools made of decades-old planks and rusted and bent nails. In any case, I had inadvertently found myself in a slightly dodgy part of town. The all-too-familiar white-man-in-Africa glare was being thrown my way just as I passed down the street, camera hidden away in my bag. I had become accustomed to these glares, and returned them with smiles. Just passing through, hope ya have a nice day!
When I realized I was in Ghana's poorest urban neighborhoods, where whites are generally treated with derision, it became apparent I would be better off with a little human shield, a friend to protect me and give me license to be there. I wound up allowing myself to be escorted around by a fast-talking chancer who was willing to listen to my rules: I was happy to give him a "gift" in return for his time, but we needed to nail down all the logistics and fees before we got going. American, as he called himself, due to the people of that category being his primary source of revenue, understood where I was coming from and was willing to play by my rules. American turned out to be incredibly knowledgeable about his neighborhood and explained the purposes and stories behind the crumbling buildings. American took me into a few colonial buildings where kids played on the dirt floors while mothers cooked large metal cauldrons of fufu over fires. He pointed out the construction and flourishes that are slowly fading, sometimes crumbling into the sea, often just worn down by the lives that continue on in these ancient structures. These homes also gave me stunning views onto the ports and harbors below. As dusk came on, I ended up chatting with a James Town family, sitting on their wonky wooden benches and talking until long past sun down. As American escorted me back to a taxi, we bellowed Bob Marley together with the music being blasted from one of the neighborhood chop houses. "Don't worry about a thing, 'cause every little thing's gonna be all right!" It was apparent that, just like Cameroon, the locals were tough on the outside, but once the door was open, we could have some great interactions together.

Accra's harbor from Usser Town

Regardless, I wasn't in the mood for the crush of Accra for long. After a day and a half, I headed east along the coast to Cape Coast and made several day trips to even smaller coastal towns such as Apam and Elimina.
Each of these towns are, like Accra, home to forts over 500 years old. First used for gold and spice trading as the European powers sought to combat the wealth previously controlled by traders on the Saharan spice trails, the storerooms in each fort were eventually turned into storerooms for slaves as their value eventually exceeded that of gold and spices. Each fort followed a similar theme: built on the water to facilitate getting product onto ships, lavish living and praying quarters, and horrific nightmarish conditions for humans being sold into servitude down below.
Outside each of these oceanside castles, life goes on with a simplicity that recalls what life could have been like all those hundreds of years ago. In each town, dozens of brightly-painted, hand-made wooden ships and pirogues resided in the harbors or on the shore, tattered flags flying in the wind. This was right up my alley. With my shields still firmly up, I ventured into these harbors, aiming to get an insight into the daily lives of the fishermen, and to get a few photos. It was quickly apparent though that my shields weren't really necessary. Sure, there were dangerous parts of each beach, or so the fishermen told me, but I slowly saw that in Ghana no one really wanted to give me a hard time, and people were generally curious or excited to see me there.

Harbor at Cape Coast

"Obroni (white), where are you going?" I would hear every few minutes, which seemed like a pretty accusatory question at first. Over time, I realized that it was just a difference in manners, that they were genuinely intrigued by where I was walking, and that a simple response such as "this way" with a smile was enough to satisfy most inquiries.
But there were plenty of people that I genuinely wanted to have a longer conversation with. When one woman called from a distance, saying "Obroni, come here; come to mama! Give me a kiss!" how was I supposed to say no? Over the course of a few days, I rode in fishing pirogues, learned about the rules of the fishing world in Ghana, saw how nets are mended, and saw how life proceeds in small, fishy-smelling villages. I sat on front steps, in hair salons, on wooden benches, and chatted with people, explaining what I was seeing in Ghana and how things compare and contrast with my home.

Net repair in Elmina

My time was running short and I wanted to move inland to see another side of Ghana. I knew I would have to go to Kumasi, a large city of over 1million people, and wasn't particularly looking forward to the crush of another huge city. Yet everything I had read said that people tend to love Kumasi, so I told myself I would give it one day. At the center of Kumasi is West Africa's largest open air market. It is in a huge depression in the middle of the city, the size of several sports stadiums, yet entirely contained and even somewhat navigable due to the visibility of the edges of the market up above the chaotic market itself. My first day in the market, I chatted with some ladies selling voodoo medicines, and several men pounding away at sheet metal to fabricate everything from muffin tins to barbecues. Pretty early on, I met a man who was making bags out of old inner tubes. I had seen people use these to carry water from wells in smaller towns and thought it might make a good souvenir. The sight of an obroni cruising through the largest market in West Africa with a water bag under his arm was something the locals couldn't get enough of. Everyone wanted to stop me and ask me what I was going to do with that bag. Carry water? One lady at a sewing machine saw me, drenched in sweat, and yelled out that I must be exhausted, perhaps from carrying water through the market. Before I could protest, she'd thrust her back into my gut and heaved me up onto her back. She carried me in a loop to a few shops near hers, wanting me to see as much of her market as I could.
As one day stretched into three, I became a bit of a fixture at the market. It got to the point that I had a solid map of the market worked out in my head, and had friends in every section. I could visit the slick kid in the used-clothes section, scurry past the fresh beef section, say hi to Amena in the medication section, and Hamza in the livestock section (he told me that the price for a dog was the same as a hen, though dogs are "the sweetest meat you'll ever have"), head west past the bottle-recycling section, check in with the crazy lady who carried me in the dressmaking section, talk hip-hop with the sandal makers, buy another frozen hibiscus tea from Annette near yam town, and then head out to see another part of the city.
What it boiled down to was a realization that I could finally let my guard down. Kumasi is loved by visitors because it is all of the bustle of the wildest city without any of the hustle. They say that Ghana is Africa for beginners, and I see what they are getting at, but it is not just for beginners. I feel I have seen some tough places and grown pretty calloused in the process. Realizing that I could just open up and fully engage with Ghana was relieving. It was a win-win situation with me feeling happy to be there and willing to take some time to share my life and stories with people that were fascinated and curious to learn. Ghana is humanity at it's kindest and most loving. That's something that appeals to anyone.
The ability to let my guard down and be free was something that recalled the feelings in China. I didn't have the ego to feel I had conquered Ghana or ripped it a new one, as I am not sure that a visitor should do that to Africa, but here I had established a great equilibrium with the place I was visiting.

Voodoo fetishes in the Kumasi Market

Everyone's Gone to the Movies
Last night I came across a cinema in a smaller city named Koforidua. In 45 minutes a double feature of Anaconda starring J.Lo and Ice Cube would be followed by Firepower, with some no-name stars. I had no plans for the night, so why not?
I hurried about town and knowing just what I wanted and how to get it, I got outfitted for a night at the movies.
One serving of mysterious grilled meat with chili pepper and onion, wrapped in a newspaper page. One apple. One packet of Mentos. One cold Coke in a can. One packet of orange juice. There is one thing that Africa's got down that we in the west don't have: alcohol packets. Serving the same purpose as mini-bottles, but somehow a lot cooler, I grabbed 4 shots of gin, 2 whiskeys, and one bitters. I was set.
The man that ran the theater was beside himself when I showed up, he couldn't stop grinning, giving me thumbs-up signs and shaking my hand. I got the impression that obroni never catch movies here. It's always been something that sounded like a boring idea when I've seen cinemas listed in my guide books, but in a town where I had nothing else going on, and where the movie would be in English, and in a country where I felt totally at ease, why the hell not?
The theater was dark when I arrived, Ice Cube and J.Lo already realizing that they'd need to survive a dangerous snake. I took my seat among the other metal folding chairs and munched on my mystery meat. The room was about a quarter full, populated solely by men. The movie was shown on a 28-inch TV, whose picture had faded to green in the top corners, using a VHS copy of a Chinese-subtitled version of Anaconda. With the hiss and distortion in the sound, coupled with the large fan struggling to keep the temperature reasonable, I could hardly make out what the actors were saying, and I could only imagine how difficult it would be for people who are supposed to speak English but who are all more proficient at their tribal languages. I didn't see a lot of the upper crust, well-educated types in the theater. But when the movie is simply a snake terrorizing a handful of people on a boat in a jungle, the words are really inconsequential, so as Anaconda and then Firepower carried on, the boys in the theater chatted away, particularly during the dialog.
I imagined that they were talking the same trash I might have with my friends, or that they were guessing at what could happen next. Would the snake sneak up on them? Would the cop have to fight the Swordsman to the death? Who would win?
The gasps of surprise at the most predictable and lackluster climaxes of the movies really made me wish that these people could see a more representative piece of Hollywood's output. Movies can really help one see new ideas or learn about the world, but here we were watching Gary Daniels fight Jim Hellwig. It wasn't meeting the full potential of the art form, but it was certainly serving as entertainment. As boys each returned from their own challenging day tending crops, fixing cars, building cabinets, or hawking clothes, the theater filled to its 65 person capacity and the audience cheered on every moment of action on the wavering TV screen.
And I, the one white man in the room, happily munched down my dinner and got drunk on plastic packets of gin and orange juice. No one made a big deal about my presence, and a couple of my neighbors leaned over to say "crazy movie!" or the equivalent before returning to the action.
I took a moment to reflect on exactly where I was. I've seen a lot so far on this trip, and taken it all in a really nonchalant way. Sure, there have been a few slips, such as the time I inadvertently let out an audible grimace as a fifth, large and sweaty man was added to my seat on a Cameroonian bush taxi, a grimace that became the topic of conversation for the next 15 minutes. And of course when I was tricked into handing over cash to a Chairman who really was just a man on a chair. But on the whole, I've smoothly handled every blow and figured my way through all of the situations I have found myself, to the point that I hardly take the time to realize how amazing some of these moments have been.
I've taken buses to the wrong city and coolly got back to where I wanted to be. I have sat baking in the sun at a tire-fixer's shop waiting for a min-bus I wasn't sure was ever going to come. I have figured out just the right amount and manner of interaction to open up an interaction with a local and get just the conversation or photo I was hoping for. I've turned annoying kids into singing and dancing hilarity. I've tried about every meal or snack available on the street. I've ridden in cars closer to my parents' vintage than to mine, with holes in the floor and sides so large that they actually let in some much-needed ventilation for the passengers that numbered multiple times the car's intended capacity, covering territory in a station wagon meant for a 4x4 with squawking livestock at my feet. I've changed people's understanding of America. I've challenged lying tour guides. I've met a man determined to sneak to the US on a ship. I've gotten over the smell of my own feet, the open sewers, and the incessant mosquitoes and flies. I've received incredible generosity and preformed the same for people I will never see again. I've seen tender, passing moments that no one else will ever see, and I have seen historic monuments that my loved ones will likely never see.
And here I was in a third-world movie theater watching schlock movies halfway around the world from my home, feeling completely at ease and welcome in a world about as different from my own as I could imagine. On the road, moments come at me so quickly that it is too easy to take them for granted, or to forget the details. But for some reason, sitting in that theater gave me the right moment to sit back and realize what I have done so far, and just how cool the world can be.
Tomorrow, I head to Sierra Leone. As with every place I have been, nothing I try to predict or imagine in my mind will ever approach what I will actually see there. I have to expect that it won't be as easy and gentle as Ghana, so tomorrow afternoon the shields will go back on. I am looking forward to having a best friend as a partner on this trip. There's no telling what adventures we will share, but I will do my best to slow down and take every moment in.

Children dancing and singing the "Obroni No (I Won't Give You Money)" song I made up

The Power Of The Voodoo

2008-03-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

Voodoo Lounge
After my experience churning in the machine of Cotonou, Benin, I escaped for a day trip out to Ouidah, a town that was a huge player in the Portuguese slave trade. Ouidah charmed me immediately, colored in pastel yellows, oranges and pinks, countless colonial buildings seemed to quietly decay while life moved slowly along in the surrounding streets.
After repeatedly running into two local men who were seemingly wandering like I was, they suggested that we should wander together. One, named Fredi, spoke a bit of English and the other spoke none at all, so I struggled with French and a bit of English as we continued to walk thought the neighborhood. We were interrupted when the men saw a man wearing the typical African pajamas and a cloth hat. They spoke in a tribal language and the men indicated that we should follow this other man. We approached a white stone wall painted with a few pictures of a man with his legs crossed, a snake, and a few other animals. Fredi, sensing my hesitation, assured me that there was nothing to be concerned about, but didn't tell me where we were going.
We entered a dirt courtyard where some chickens scurried out of the way and a woman stood in the corner fanning a fire with a large cauldron resting on it. Some naked children stopped playing in the dirt as we were led to the doorway of a small white building in the courtyard decorated with more painted snakes and people. I watched as the men took their shoes and then shirts off, and indicated that I should do the same. We were handed a plastic mug full of water that smelled strongly of eucalyptus and I followed as the men rinsed themselves with it. We ducked our heads under the low door and entered a hot, tiled room where the man in the pajamas sat perched on a stone. There was a half-wall that reached from the wall to the man, obscuring a portion of the room that he seemed to speak to and gesture at.
The man spent a lot of time speaking in a language I didn't understand and it seemed inappropriate to ask for translation, so I sat patiently on the white tile bench, drenched in sweat, next to the other two men.
The pajama man took a stone in his hand and repeatedly smacked it against a larger stone on the floor next to him while saying things in the direction of the area obscured by the half-wall. He took a liquid from a bucket and periodically threw it at the area behind the wall. I wondered what was back there. A person? An idol? I began to suspect that I was witnessing my first voodoo ceremony.
I knew that voodoo was a key belief of most Beninese, regardless of whether they had also chosen a more Western religion, but I had not yet seen anything clearly related to voodoo, so I was just guessing.
After a while, the pajama man handed three green kola nuts to the first man. The man grasped them tightly in his left hand and muttered things to them before handing them back to the pajama man. The pajama man pounded on the stone, splashed water, tossed the nuts on the floor and sprinkled powders over them while chanting.
He then picked up the nuts and a couple small shells and tossed them on the floor a few times as if they were dice. Eventually, he turned to Fredi's friend and spoke to him in the tribal language. I watched the man's face as he listened with grave seriousness. The man asked questions, seemed to protest, and eventually, his chin began to quiver and tears began to stream down his cheeks.
The man protested again and the pajama man shouted for an aide who brought in a book full of symbols and showed it to the crying man, confirming whatever it was that he had told him. As the book was passed to Fredi I leaned in and took a look. Some French words were written in there, indicating something about fortunes and astrology. I was definitely witnessing my first voodoo ceremony.
Fredi went through the same process without tears and then three kola nuts were handed to me. Fredi told me to mutter my dreams and wishes to the nuts and then hand them to the man, who I later learned was a Fa, a voodoo practitioner who channels messages from voodoo spirits. The same process was repeated and Fredi translated what the man told me.
My fortune seemed to me to be a bit of a gimme; obviously I was a visitor, so it didn't take a ton of voodoo to know that I was in the middle of a journey. In any case, I the Fa divined that gem of information and then told me that if I did a small task of giving, I would be assured of safety and good fortune for the rest of my trip. The Fa listed off some very specific food items I would need to buy and then hand out to strangers on the street. If I did that, I was in the clear. If I didn't, horrible things were certain to happen. Easy enough.
As we wrapped up the ceremony and were led out of the room, I finally got my glimpse at the area behind the half wall. There was a large wooden object covered in years of melted candle wax, surrounded by once-green plants that were now covered in white powders. Lots of stones, coins, and two dead chickens.
As I walked through the town and handed out candy and bread to strangers, I asked what had been told to Fredi's friend. Apparently his future doesn't look so bright, involving his business partners stealing from him, and necessitating lengthy voodoo ceremonies involving animals, money, oils and herbs or it was destined to occur. That the man was so clearly petrified of his fortune underscored just how real the Beninese consider voodoo to be.

Slime and Snails or Puppy Dogs' Tails?
I never had to seek out voodoo. Voodoo is such a key element in the daily life of the Beninese and Togolese that spending enough time there wandering neighborhoods or markets, I seemed to stumble into it regularly.
In every market in every town, there was at least one person selling the devices or ingredients known as fetishes, which are used in voodoo ceremonies. Strolling through the aisles of smoked fish, yams, spices, and Chinese sandals, a distinct odor would rise above the smoked fish and chili peppers. I knew I was close to fetishes.
Voodoo fetishes seemed to fall into three categories: tools, such as bells, rattles, or iron instruments to hold while dancing; ingredients, such as herbs, tree barks and shells; and finally, animals.
The stench that directed me toward the voodoo stalls were the rotting flesh of birds, mammals and reptiles.
In Abomey, Benin, I met a French-Canadian girl named Marie-Michelle who was working as a Physical Therapist in Togo for a few months. Fluent in French and insistent on total immersion in Africa, we would grab lunches at the roadside stalls and I would watch with wonder as she would drink from the communal water mugs.I was comfortable eating with my fingers, but this was one step I was not keen on taking.
"Oh, I suppose you're still sticking to bottled water?" she'd ask with a smile. Marie didn't hold back. She had come to terms with the sweat, the filth, the daily challenges of power or water shortages. With French as her first language, she was a quick retort to the incessant catcalls her gender and race would attract as we walked down the street.
Having been in Abomey for work for several months, she hadn't done much exploring for it's own sake, so for a few days I would meet her when she finished work and we'd explore the market or neighboring Bohicon.
In Bohicon, I identified that distinct stench of rotting animals and took Marie to see her first voodoo fetishes. As ever, the inventory was highlighted by a brutal array of animals. The main table was a selection of decapitated animal heads, eyes missing, mouths open and teeth exposed, their faces frozen into fearsome grimaces or screams, their missing eyes staring blankly at passing shoppers. Monkeys, leopards, pythons, birds, dogs and cats. Next to the heads were the skulls of cows, donkeys, warthogs, and crocodiles. The rest of the stall displayed woven platters piled high with dead weasels, porcupines, chameleons, and crocodiles. On the ground, woven mats covered in dead birds, ranging from rather ordinary looking birds to vultures, owls, and large horn-bills.
We started haggling with the vendors, as a ploy to get some photos, and also to see if there was anything non-animal that might be interesting to purchase. We each bought a couple fetishes used for protecting the home, as well as two that are used for protection on a journey. One of them required a small ceremony which we were instructed to perform on the spot.
The fetish was a short clay rod with two little clay cups, facing opposite directions on either end. Feathers, goops, and strings adorned the device and we were told to put a dollop of water in one of the cups, suck it into our mouths and then immediately spit it out.
So, in the oven-like heat of the African afternoon, under the shelter of a row of stalls where animals rotted all day long since time immemorial, we poured a little local water into the device and sipped it into our mouths, fleas, disease, stinks and all. But it was all in the effort of making sure I return home safely, mom!

Voodoo Chile
It's a strange phenomenon that has happened to me quite a few times when I have wandered into the fringes of smaller towns: being the first white person that a small child sees. Sometimes there is a clear sense of wonder, and sometimes there is nothing short of abject, unbridled fear. About ten times or so, my whiteness has sent small children screaming and crying, gasping and grasping for their mothers.
At the fetish stall in Bohicon, I noticed that the daughter of one of the sellers was sitting in the dirt, wearing only a t-shirt and a small fetish to protect her. She was pulling the feathers and guts from a dead and flayed bird, and stuffing them into a piece of paper like filling in a burrito. I snapped a photo of the scene and when the parents gestured that I should say hi to the girl, she looked up and noticed me for the first time. Surrounded by frightening dead animals, and holding portions of one in her hand, the little girl took one look at my face and began screaming, scrambling backwards and away from me, tears streaming down her face, with a dead bird in her hand.
Just one of life's little ironies, I guess. Some of the things that horror movies might be made of back home were nothing compared to the face of a stranger in the market in Bohicon.

Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
When I returned to my hotel that night, after having dropped off my fetishes in the early evening, it was apparent that there is an inherent curse that comes with voodoo. One of the items Marie and I each bought was a leather belt-like device that we were to wear as protection on our trips. As I wound it through the loops of my shorts, I realized that the leather too had picked up that stench of rotting flesh. I washed it thoroughly and still could smell that smell. Oh my god, that smell.
Thankfully I brought a few Ziplocks with me, as these artifacts are going to require a good long and strenuous decontamination process before being put on display anywhere back home. Unfortunately, that means that one of my voodoo trip-protection insurance devices is not in its prescribed place around my waist.

Goat's Head Soup
Marie, her colleague and I located another Fa as Marie had never had her fortune read. With her bilingual fluency, I was finally able to get better translations of what was going on.
This Fa was initially very reluctant to perform anything for us yovo. He let us see his shrine where he had recently helped a family that had received a child after conducting a fertility ceremony. The shrine involved another large wooden object covered in wax, feathers, coins, and shells. The walls were spattered with blood and a large pool of blood covered the floor along with a few dead chickens. Apparently upon receipt of the baby, the couple had to return to perform a thank-you ceremony or terrible things would happen to the child.
"He killed a goat, used the blood in the ceremony, and then created a stew out of the goat. He's now put a pot of the stew on the floor here as an offering to the voodoo gods. If it is accepted, everything will be OK," Marie explained.
"OK, can you ask him how he will know whether the voodoo gods accept it?" I asked.
The Fa didn't like that question and I was sternly told not to ask such things. Maybe I wouldn't be getting all the answers I had hoped for after all.
When she thought the Fa wasn't looking, Marie's colleague took a photo of the scene. Unfortunately, the Fa saw and was upset. When a local arrived and asked for a reading, we offered a few extra Francs, and were allowed to watch the man's reading before having ours performed.
This room was vastly different than the one I saw in Ouidah. Dead and dying chickens were strewn everywhere, attracting a formidable army of flies who incessantly expressed their interest in us. Three "shrunken heads", which I am guessing were made out of wood, sat in dried gourd bowls. Again, that stench of rotting animals. The Fa divined the local man's fortune through pieces of metal hanging from chains. He performed similar chants as the Ouidah Fa, and paused to yawn, readjust his genitals, or answer his mobile phone while he told the man of how the future will affect his business, wife, and children. For something so serious and real to the recipient, this Fa certainly didn't seem to give the process a lot of reverence.
My fortune this time involved the Fa explaining that a deceased relative of mine watches over me while I travel, and he conjured my mother's spirit to have her join us in the reading. My fortune involved my previous success in the working world and sibling competition from my sister. He told me that I needed to perform two ceremonies or my sister would take all of my success and luck in the working world. I wanted to know what the ceremonies would involve. The Fa listed and Marie translated.
"Buy 7 eggs, 7 needles, some red palm oil, and some palm nuts. Put these in a dried calabash and mix them together." Easy enough; I could find all of these items at any market out here. "Place red flower petals on your body. Do this twice." Sure thing, I could do that in my hotel that night.
"That's the first ceremony. Here is the second: take 2 red roosters and 2 carrion birds and place them in a calabash. Buy one goat. Kill the goat and pour its blood over the other items. Place the calabash at a cross-roads to open up your future."
Uh, no.
So, if I get laid off when I come home and Maya really starts taking off in her new position, I just might need to return to Benin to kill a few goats.
The Fa remembered the surreptitious photo again as we prepared to leave. He became upset again and said we would need to give him a few things to make the situation better. Somehow I remembered that I had one of Mike Barkelew's passport photos in my wallet, which he had given me on the motorcycle trip. I gave the photo to the Fa, implying it was a photo of me (us yovo all look the same to them), and told the Fa to go ahead and perform a ritual on it. I snapped an amazing picture of the Fa holding the photo and one of his dead chickens. Mike, if things really start to go wrong in your life, I apologize; we'll need to make a trip out to Benin. If things start going really well, you owe me one!

The Power of The Voodoo
Working as a physical therapist in Benin, Marie was witness to many of the affects of voodoo. Since voodoo is trusted and much more affordable than medical care, the Beninese will generally turn to voodoo first.
Marie had a lengthy list of such stories, but one was the man who had smashed his arm and shoulder in a motorcycle accident and was unable to use the arm. The voodoo doctor performed a ceremony involving further agitating and pummeling the injury over the course of a month. When the man arrived at the hospital after having seen no improvement after the voodoo treatment, Marie had the man x-rayed. Due most likely to the pummeling, the bone fragments were now pointing every-which-way and would never heal in anything approximating the natural state of the bones without major surgery.
There was the story of the man who survived a stroke yet whose arms were involuntarily tensed afterwards. The voodoo procedure to treat this painful condition involved
making countless cuts in the arms, and briskly rubbing a variety of voodoo powders into the cuts. Worse than lemon juice on a paper cut, in my mind.
Time after time, patients would be sent to Marie and she just wished she could have intercepted them before they went to voodoo treatment. Countless patients would have faced better prognoses without the voodoo procedures, yet who is she to challenge their deeply-held beliefs? Without an education involving the sciences, medical strategies and devices must seem just as dubious as feathers, bones and goat blood must to us.
And then there was the story of the melted girl. She was brought into the clinic with her legs clenched so her feet touched her rear. The skin near her knees appeared as if it had melted, fusing her legs in this position. Her parents explained that she had been normal all her life until one night she was walking home and saw a ghost-like apparition on a darkened trail. She called her brother to see it and he couldn't see anything. The next day, the skin was melted like this.
I could understand, from a psychological perspective, how a traumatic event could lead to the girl fixating in that position and something eventually happening to the skin, but the parents insisted that it happened overnight.
There, at the Swiss-sponsored and quite modern hospital, the general manager declared that this was in fact the work of voodoo. Rather than cut the flesh and begin physical therapy, she was directed back to a voodoo doctor who declared that the only way to fix her was to
find the person who had originally had the hex placed on her, and then to perform some voodoo rituals. Marie has yet to work on fixing this girl's problem.
Voodoo doesn't just reared its head in medical situations. From the neighborhood shrines, to the larger fortune telling houses, I saw it daily.
In Kara, Togo, I crossed paths with two German students who were running the same circuit I was. We happened upon the local district football championships and joined a few hundred screaming and drumming Togolese in their local stadium.
In the midst of the game, a nasty fight erupted, involving someone on the underdog team being tripped, and then erupting in countless shouting and shoving matches and a lengthy delay of game.
We chatted up a few of the guys on the field through the fence and eventually were filled in on the true cause of the disruption: the winning underdogs had been accused of dropping a voodoo charm on the field prior to their goal. Who is to say that rubbing powders in one's arms might not help relax flexed muscles? Who is to say that a fetish might not allow the underdogs to win a football game? There is a lot to be said for the placebo effect. In medicine, sports, and in most aspects of life, one's mentality may have just as much affect on an outcome as exercise or medical treatment. If a voodoo charm or procedure causes the person to believe they can overcome, it has worked in a way.
My trip has been going well and I have largely had good fortune, possibly as a result of the giving I did at the Fa's instruction in Ouidah, or perhaps as a result of the spit procedure Marie and I did in Bohicon. Yet when the most devastating thing yet to happen to me on one of my trips occurred, I had to wonder.
In Accra, Ghana, I plugged in my portable hard drive to write this blog entry and post some photos of the stories I have just told. When I opened the drive's main folder, alongside the internet cafe's attendant, I noticed that all but the previous day's pictures were gone.
"Something's wrong, I only see one folder."
"There is only one folder."
"Uh, no, there are 5 other folders that should be in here."
"Oh, we have a very robust anti-virus program. It probably identified them as a virus and deleted them. Sorry."
No quarantine, no questions, no photos. 5 weeks of a once-in-a-lifetime trip, gone.
So while I post pictureless blog entries and research data recovery software, I do have to wonder... would this have still happened if I was wearing the fetish belt that was supposed to protect me on this trip? Was my inability to cope with the voodoo stench somehow related to my computer misfortune? There's just no way to know for sure.

Here Cowboy Bars and Dance Clubs Don’t Exist

2008-03-05T03:38:00.000-08:00

Rom, Flo, Nicolas, and Guillaume invited me to join them on a trip back south to Grand Popo. I had read that this was the most tourist-oriented town in Benin, which isn't saying much, but that it is essentially a lazy beach town. That’s not the type of destination I usually choose, as after about 15 minutes sitting on a beach I am ready to walk around and see a town again. But I was really enjoying their company and figured they hadn’t yet steered me wrong.
Rom and I took the ancient Renault while the others took their Toyota 4-Runner. The trip was only an hour, and we pulled to a stop on a dusty cobblestone street in front of a church. There was a red yellow and green painted sedan parked there with paintings of Bob Marley and other Rastafarian symbols on it. A tiny hand-painted sign pointed to a path beside the church that said Lion Bar. As we walked along the side of the church, the reggae music could be heard.
Lion Bar was a small concrete structure with 3 windows facing the ocean (the left one’s frame painted red, the middle yellow, the right green). Inside the structure was a tiny counter, a large stereo, a small collection of bottles, and countless photos, pictures and paintings of more Reggae artists and Rastafarian symbols. I sat at one of the 5 barstools perched on the sand facing the windows and was served a cocktail made of fresh pineapple juice, ginger, lime, and rum by a man with a clumpy collection of dreadlocks and a smile that never seemed to fade from his face. His name was Gildas and he was the proud proprietor of Lion Bar. Behind the bar was a short row of about 7 clean concrete rooms with a mattress on the floor, a fan painted red yellow and green, and more Rasta stuff painted on the wall. Each door had the portrait and name of another reggae artist. The Bob room, the Peter room, the Culture room. There was one pristine toilet, and one pristine shower for the whole place.

Gildas behind the counter at Lion Bar

Gildas opened Lion Bar just about one year ago. He is another African success story: after working 14 years as a zemi-john, he scrimped and saved to buy the car I saw parked in front. He used that to give little tours to the occasional tourist, and kept saving to cerate the hotel he dreamed of. With a little business advice from Flo, Guillaume and Rom, Gildas kept things as basic and “roots” as possible. The place was only known by word of mouth and Gildas rarely had a vacant room. A devout Rastafarian, Gildas served the day’s catch, cooked by one employee named ILoveJah, after a short blessing to Jah, and afterwards the dishes were cleared by his other employee, Cofi.

The bar looked out to the Atlantic, with a small concrete platform for reggae bands to perform, two hammocks and a handful of palm trees being the only things that stood between Gildas’ little home and the white sand and blue ocean and sky. That’s it, that’s all, there ain’t nothin’ else.

Gildas spends his days serving drinks and food and selecting choice cuts from his large CD collection. You can hear anything you like, as long as it's reggae. Though in 24 hours, I never heard a single familiar tune.
On the beach were three simple straw huts for shade and when we sat in them I looked to the right and left and saw the beach fade off into the ether, without another soul visible on it as far as the eye could see. Over the afternoon and evening at Lion Bar, I kept track of who crossed this plot of land:
- 1 curious village boy
- 2 women with water buckets on their heads
- 1 goat

The view from Lion Bar

As we sat on the beach, I thought about how amazing this was, yet not quite what I was interested in. Yet when that Rasta vibe set in, it all made sense. I realized that I could spend some time without walking around, without seeing anything. That it is good to slow down and chill sometimes. I rarely do that.
Rom mentioned the stresses of traffic, of weather, of life in the west. “I don’t understand these things anymore,” he said.
As Rom and I chatted, our last talk before he had to go to Cotonou to meet his girlfriend, we returned to the topic of tourism. “Look at Gildas: with an investment of about $4500 he made this, and it pays for itself within a couple months.” It was impressive.
“You know, since you have worked in and are interested in tourism, if you want to come out to Possotomé, I think we can work something out. There are a lot of ideas left to do.”
That was a heavy proposal.
“Where do you see your life over the next 10 years?” he asked.
“You know, I have never really known, my long term plan has always been blurry. I just kinda go with what feels right at the time. With what brings me what I want at the time. What about you?”
“A wife, some kids, a nice house. But I am going to do it this way, not with the stress. I want to be free.”
It recalled a story that my old manager Maja told us at work one day about taking a simple route to the good life, which had the unintended consequence of contributing to my friend and colleague Warren’s decision to sail the world for a few years.
I always think of myself as too type-A to live the simple life. That I thrive on the variety of stimuli that I seek in the city, with my friends and family, and in my travels. Would I be happy without those things, but also without the stresses of the western world? It’s not an option to be taken lightly. It really would marry my passions tourism and business. There would be many sacrifices but also many challenges and successes.
That night, the reggae music and rum served in coconuts kept Gildas, Nicolas, Guillaume and me up until the wee hours, dancing in the sand as the wind rattled the palm fronds and the waves crashed quietly just a sand dune away.

That Sinking Feeling

2008-03-05T02:40:00.000-08:00

(This entry will be republished again later with more photos when I can find a cooperating computer)

A few French guests arrived at Chez Theo in Possotomé, a few friends that Rom had met previously in Benin. Floriane was an English teacher in Cotonou, and her husband Guillaume was working toward the exams to become a teacher in Benin as well. Flo’s younger brother Nicolas was on his first trip into the third world, spending his 2 week vacation to visit his sister and brother in law, and to finally understand the feelings sights and sounds they’d been trying to convey in email and phone calls for the past year.
Rom had mentioned to me that the others wanted to rent motorcycles for the day and ride around the lake. Did I know how to ride? Did that sound fun to me?
Rom arranged for the bikes to be delivered at 8:00, knowing they would arrive around 10:00. At 11:00, we finally had the bikes, and headed out on the road. They were little 100cc Suzukis covered in stickers praising Jesus as many bikes in Benin are.
I immediately had a little trouble with my bike. First the clutch cable was so loose that the bike was having trouble shifting. As the other bikes pulled away, I sputtered to a stop. Locals jumped at the opportunity to help out a struggling Yovo and dragged the bike to the little shack on the road to tighten the cable. I was still having a hard time getting the bike to ride, until I realized that the bike was built to shift in the opposite direction from the bikes I learned on and rode in China. This one required that I stomp down on the shifter to shift up, and click up to downshift. I had been racing the engine to get the thing rolling in a high gear.
Once I figured that out, I was on the road, the red dirt moving quickly beneath me, the fascinated smiles of the villagers following us. The feeling on the bike was very different from the one in China, mainly because it was actually the right size for me. I could place both feet flat on the ground, with room to spare, when I was at a stop. The bike was lighter than any I have ridden, and I was confidently in full control of it.
A few minutes along the main road, Rom suddenly pulled off to the right, nearly causing us to ram into him. He dismounted and we all did the same, following him over the ditch and into the brush where a group of people were digging in the dirt. Rom began to talk with someone overseeing the operation and then translated for me a few minutes later.
Apparently the people were digging for and then sifting out small stones from the ground. Discarding the soil and sand, they dumped the stones into buckets all day under the punishing heat. One man would use a pickaxe to break up the dirt, then dig it out with a shovel, tossing it to a woman who would throw it at a metal screen to sift it. A child would then shovel the stones into buckets.
“Can you believe these working conditions?” Rom asked me, as I swam in my own sweat and acquired layer after layer of red dirt from the occasional vehicle passing on the road. “They make 300 CFA (70 cents) per bucket. A good team might make 10 buckets in a day, but most make about three.”
For some perspective, a beer costs 500 CFA and a small dish for lunch on the side of the road will cost about 100 CFA. A ride on a zemi-john across a small town will cost about 200.

Breaking up dirt for stones

I asked Rom whether he knew these people before we stopped.
“No, I just saw them there and it looked interesting, so why not ask?” Rom and I got into another conversation about tourism. This is exactly the type of thing I think about: rather than going on a pre-programmed track where every other tourist goes, talk with the man on the street and learn that way.
Back on the bikes, we left the main road and traveled by a small foot path through tiny villages. With the wind on my face, a few bikes ahead and behind me, and the occasional villager standing in awe, I was ecstatic. I howled into the wind, unable to contain my excitement. We were a sight, and the locals loved it. One boy was so shocked to see us that he tipped right over on his bicycle and fell into the brush on the side of the road.
We continued around the lake, and joined up with a main road. There was a restaurant in the middle of nowhere and we all pulled over to grab some food. When the orders were being taken, Flo turned to me.
“What do you want to eat?”
“What’s good?”
“Want to eat a rat?”
“How is it?”
“It’s good!”
“Well, why not?!”
I was served an Agoutie, some member of the rodent family, large, furry with coarse straight hair, cute when they are little and a bit ugly when they are grown. It, like all African meat, is tough and required effort to chew. As Elvis commented back in Cameroon, “I can not handle that soft meat you people eat in the West! I need my meat tough, like the bush!”
It didn’t taste like chicken, more like beef jerky. It was served in an incredibly spicy tomato sauce on rice, and was reasonably easy to get down with the exception of my portion of skin with some fur still intact. Really chewy and not the type of thing I want to go through again. It did the job though.
Back on the road, we each took our turns with some bike issues. Nicolas had all the spirit in the world, but did seem to struggle with his bike. I wondered whether he was having shifting issues too, as he often had trouble getting started. At one point his accelerator got stuck at full throttle, and without a kill switch, it took some fancy shifting for him to kill the engine.
Nicolas’ struggle with the bike was very familiar to me. I always felt like the weakest link on the trip in China, hesitant to go off road or do water crossings because the bike was harder for me to manage than it was for my larger friends. Here, I just sat back and smiled while Nicolas took his turn to learn the things I had to learn in China. And when Rom was disappointed because Nicolas couldn’t handle some of the off road stuff he and I wanted to do, I understood, and had no problem going back to the road.
After a day of getting coated in fine red dirt, we were hot, filthy, and tired. When we returned to the hotel, Rom suggested we go into the lake. Perfect.
Rom, Nicolas and I hopped in one of the hotel’s pirogue canoes and clumsily paddled out into the lake. It was a struggle, owing to our collective lack of coordination and the fact that the wind was brisk, causing small breakers to form in the lake.
Lake Aheme is a freshwater lake that mixes with the ocean, raising its salinity a bit. When we jumped in, the water was hotter than a bathtub and the most relieving feeling I had felt in a long time. The lake is only about 5-6 feet deep, with the bed consisting of a thick layer of mushy clay filled with tiny pieces of sticks, stones, and who-knows-what. I did my best to keep my feet out of it.
After a bit of a swim, we wiggled our way back into the boat, taking with us a fair amount of water. As we splashed the water to bail it out, the increasing wind and waves just kept adding more water to our situation. Within a minute, there was so much water in the boat that Rom told us to jump out.
Within seconds, the heavy wooden boat was full and resting on the soft clay at our feet. I tried to think of how we righted canoes back at summer camp, but was unable to coordinate the effort with the others. Rom said he was going to head back to the hotel to get help.
As Rom made the long swim home, Nicolas and I balanced on the tips of the boat, struggling to keep upright despite the waves. We chatted and told stories and tried to keep a hand on the 3 paddles, palm branch and various clothes that had come with us into the lake. Eventually, on the horizon, we saw the hotel’s large boat approaching. However, it seemed to struggle in the wind also, continually diverting and not making it any closer to us.
As our bath approached an hour, local fishermen began to approach in their pirogues. Finally, one boat reached us. Shouting at us in their local tongue, we were pulled into their boat as two locals jumped off and began to swim around the other side of the boat. In a moment, the boat had swung around a few times and moved a short distance before the captain drove his palm branch into the clay and tied his boat to it as an anchor. The men swam farther away. Nicolas and I kept saying bateau, bateau and pointing to where we had been standing on it, but after a moment it was apparent that the men swimming for the boat thought it was over where they were. Now everyone was confused. I jumped back in the water, trudging over to where I thought the boat was, dragging my feet across the clay to feel for it. Nothing. Reports from the other fishermen indicated the same.
Occasionally, I would brush against a branch or a stone, my heart leaping for a moment until I realized it wasn’t the boat.
The fishermen chatted with each other while they searched, and I got very intimate with that muck that I had tried to hard to avoid earlier. The wind continued, splashing the green water into my mouth, it was slightly salty. I noticed the sun was quickly approaching the horizon.
Additional pirogues arrived, manned by young men, their dark bodies in stark contrast to the sky above me. I looked up as their boats passed by my bobbing head, their palm frond stabbing into the clay as they passed.

Pirogue captain with his palm branch

Rom arrived in another boat, along with Guillaume and a couple of the hotel’s staff. Now with a large crew we were sure to find the boat. But the sun had just reached the horizon and I suddenly got concerned. I thought back to previous trips, about how the scariest moment of my life was when I was nearly killed in a desert for accidentally ruining a local artifact. The Bedouin’s voice echoed in my head: “You can’t just go and make another boat! You can’t just go and buy another boat!”
Was the boat lost? Could it have sunk into the clay by now? How would Theo react? Whose fault was this? How much would a new boat cost to commission? My mind raced in the gathering darkness. Things were looking bleak.
I thought about losing a ski in deep snow and how the strategy to find it requires making a cris-cross pattern in an organized fashion across the hill. It was entirely possible that we’d moved past the boat dozens of times but due to its oblong shape, just missed it. I had no idea how to convey this to the fishermen who were becoming more and more difficult to see in the darkness.
Eventually my path crossed with Rom’s. “We need a strategy,” he said, and I agreed. “OK, each of us, 2 meters apart, move that direction.” He repeated the instructions in French to the others, and then it was translated to Fon for the fishermen.
In a line, we moved across the lake. And finally, my foot brushed against something hard. After feeling around it for a moment, I let out a cheer. The boat was found. There would be no threat on my life. And sure enough, the boat was just 10 feet from the boat that picked Nicolas and I up, right where he and I had pointed at it in the beginning.
That night, after swim-walking the canoe across the lake to the hotel, I discovered they had a bottle of Johnny Walker. I had a nice glass of it after a delicious meal and some fresh pineapple, and eventually dozed off in my chair in the cabana.
“Fatigué?” Flo asked me.
“Oh you know, just an average day for me: riding a motorcycle, eating a rat, losing a boat, finding a boat. Nothing unusual.” She translated my response into French for the others and as they all chuckled, I headed off to bed.

Start From Scratch

2008-03-04T04:17:00.000-08:00

A hotelier in Porto Novo pointed me to Chez Theo in Possotomé, on Lake Ahémè. I had liked the guy and his hotel enough that I was willing to take his recommendation, despite it being one of the lower options on the Lonely Planet list.
Possotomé is a tiny town on a lake that is reached only by a dirt road which is currently under construction. My book doesn’t even give a map, just mentions the town and a few hotels. When I asked the reception for a map of Possotomé, he took me around the corner and down a well-kept path under arches of bamboo towards the lake. A nice little surprise; I didn’t even know whether I was near the lake. Out on the water was a decent-sized cabana built of bamboo and straw. The bartender there handed me a bottle of Possotomé water. Apparently my French isn’t that good. I explained I was looking for a map and he then took me to a younger man with curly hair and a short goatee who was sitting at a table talking with a couple older Yovos, probably French tourists.
He turned in his chair and we did the name game in French. Then, in English, he asked “what do you need?” I explained my situation and he directed me to sit with him. The older French folks left the table and he and I got to talking.
His name was Romain, known as Rom. He was French and employed at the hotel. I figured he was one of those slightly jaded guys who take a job at a third world hotel to hit on the tourist girls that come by. The type of thing rampant in Greece and Spain. I began to wonder what type of hotel I had arrived at.
“What type of work do you do for the hotel?”
“Mm, how you say, I manage the project?”
“Really? That's part of my work, also!”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Well, I work for an online travel agency. Maybe you know Expedia.fr?”
“Yes! Of course! We should talk – I want to get this hotel more customers, and maybe we can do something!”
So we got into a conversation on the economics of internet travel. Rom was far from a jaded slacker looking for a way to while away a couple years after college. He had first been connected with the hotel as a final project for his MBA program. He had 4 months to help develop the fledgling hotel into something more. Rom talked of his work and how he transformed the place from another generic concrete African hotel to one that feels more unique and natural. The project was such a success that he decided to commit to it indefinitely, and here he was.
It was immediately apparent to me that Rom gets it. He spoke of developing the hotel with a keen business sense, but also with a sense for sustainability.
“Africa is free. I can do what I want. For this hotel, I use local labor, I use local materials, I use minimal cement.” I looked around and noticed that the pathway was lined with locally made clay pots which he used as decoration and path markers. Local baskets and weaves were used as trim and decoration. The cabana was built on sticks pounded into the mud of the lake as the nearby stilt villages did.
We walked down the path and Rom pointed out the onsite garden where he hopes to produce enough vegetables to make that the primary source for the hotel. The hares which are commonly eaten here are raised on site. And the fresh fish is purchased right out of the lake from the local boys in boats who ply it daily with their canoes and nets.
“Come, let’s go into the bush.”
We hopped in an ancient white Renault which was rust red on the inside from years of the dusty road. As we drove, Rom explained that Theo, the hotel’s owner had worked his way up from the humblest beginnings. “One bag of cement at a time”.
“First stop,” Rom said. We climbed out of the car and walked into a tiny village on the side of the road. There, Rom pointed out the well that the villagers were digging, the cages where they grow the giant rats they eat called Agoutie, a room where they raised snails to eat, and the vegetable crops they were working on. Rom explained that these villagers worked on some of his projects, so he helped them get their projects going. We picked up a villager and got back in the car.

Digging the well with a metal bowl

“Second stop,” Rom said as we climbed out onto the red dirt road again, and this time walked off into a forest of small manioc (tapioca) trees and of young teak trees.
“30 centimeters tall in October. Now, three meters!” Rom pointed out how some of them had been pruned by machete, against his directions. “I bought them a clipper and pay them 5 CFA per tree to do this the right way.”
“How do you know the right way? Do you know about agriculture?”
“My first degree before business was agriculture.” Wow.

Children hunting crabs among the mangroves

We continued toward the lake and entered a mangrove forest, where millions of little feelers were prying their way up toward the hundreds of branches attempting to link with the ground below. Within the forest, four children were carefully poking around for small crabs which they took home in old coffee tins for dinner.
“What do you think, bungalows among the mangroves?” Rom asked, gesturing out a paradise of a hotel in this untouched area.
The land all belonged to Theo. Theo knew he should do something with it, but needed a visionary with useful skills to get things going.

A captured crab

The third stop was down a painfully dusty side road that approached the lake from above. There was a plot of land that had been dug out in preparation for a home. A large baobab tree sat adjacent to it and the view went from the red dirt to the green mangrove forest to the blue lake. “This will be my home. All local wood, local labor. The land is so cheap, maybe 20,000 Euros all the way to the lake.” I looked at him with a sense of wonder.
“Africa is free. To-tally free.”
The paved road to Possotomé is slated to be complete in a year or so. At the moment the lake is dotted with a few villages and a couple rarely-visited hotels. Fishermen fish, kids hunt, locals labor. The villagers don’t need clothes, and water is pulled from wells or the hot springs down the road. By chance I arrived the day before the annual gathering of all the lake villages for a huge voodoo dance off. At night, looking across the lake, one can see a few fires and a handful of electric lights indicating the villages. There are no motorized boats on the lake and Rom would never want to introduce them.

Children fishing on Lake Ahémè

Africa, or Benin at least, is free, and this little slice of it is within Rom’s control. The lake has potential for immense tourism, with countless activities and sights in the area. This could turn into something big. At the moment, Possotomé is untouched and unspoiled by tourism. Starting from this potential, Possotomé and Lake Ahémè have the opportunity to introduce tourism in any way they like. Under Rom’s vision Possotomé will not become an ugly place ruined by tourism, but will move toward a balance of respect for the past while benefiting the locals and a responsible number of guests for the future.

Voodoo dancer in Possotomé

Don’t Go Around Breaking Young Girls’ Hearts

2008-03-04T03:47:00.000-08:00

Cotonou was much more pleasant than I expected, so I spent a few more days than the average tourist. I then headed west for a day trip to the coastal town of Ouidah. Ouidah was one of the largest ports used in the slave trade back in the day. This city was run by a variety of colonists, all in the business of buying rural Africans from coastal Africans and shipping them across the Atlantic to Brazil, the Caribbean, and finally the US. The slaves brought with them animist religious practices called vodou, or voodoo in English, as well as a lot of musical inspiration which became the Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian sound that I had heard in the past but had never thought about its genesis.
As I explored Ouidah and then Porto Novo, I found that the locals reacted to me much friendlier than the Cameroonians did. I still had to ask permission for photos, still got a man really pissed off for taking a photo of his black market fuel for sale, but largely didn’t get the look of suspicion I felt in Cameroon. Even the children seemed to have a friendly little song that they all sang to me whenever they saw me.
“Yovo yovo bon soir! Ça va bien? Merci!"
It took me a couple days to learn that Yovo is a Fon euphemism for whitey… so the song goes “Whitey whitey, good evening! Are you well? Thank you!”
I can’t imagine the nerve or the violence that would result of anyone singing such a song to any other race in my country, but here they don’t mean any harm and to them it seems a perfectly acceptable way of greeting a stranger. Having singing and clapping youngsters lurking behind every corner is at least more pleasant than I have experienced in other countries.

Black market fuel from Nigeria

Along with the singing, I felt it nice to be travelling alone again. I was able to manage just fine, keeping myself out of trouble, figuring out the bus/taxi/zemi combinations required to get from here to there, and even getting countless marriage proposals. It’s a fun game to be offered someone’s daughter and to be able to speak enough of the language to joke around with their proposal. At this point, it is possible my family would prefer to hear that I am betrothed, but so far I have turned down all of the offers in the end.
On my own, I have been able to stumble through enough French to have a girl explain some voodoo fetishes to me, and even convince a local fisherman to take me out on his handmade boat for a little tour. On the placid lagoon of Ouidah, he stood perched in the rear of his long thin canoe, stabbing a long branch from a palm frond which looked like a giant’s eyelash into the shallow waters. We met his brothers who were using nets and rotting palm fronds to attract fish for their family’s meal and income.
A local family welcomed me into their courtyard and gave me a glass of soldabie, the local swill made of distilled palm. Even though I have been drinking straight alcohol for a few years now, I find this stuff hard to sip.
Africa’s got soul, there is no question about it. In general I have a whole collection of little games, stupid human tricks and the like to distract children asking for a handout when I travel. One time, in a little village built on stilts above a lagoon, the children were getting a bit intense and I needed something to do. I did a little dance move and saw the whole swarm imitate me. One kid started clapping a rhythm. Hm.
So I directed him to continue while I started grumbling the bass line to Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. I then pointed at more kids to have them clap, which they did. I then did the “hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo” rhythm vocalization that Jacko did, and after getting that going, pointed to a few kids to have them pick it up, which they did. Getting a few others to carry the bass line, I then did my best falsetto over the band to sing Billie Jean. All of us stomping in the dirt, and laughing at the end. It was the end of the Yovo chant and the money requests for a while and a great laugh for all of us.

A boy in Ouidah

Every one of my trips seems to have a brush with death in some way or another. As I was walking the road that the slaves walked to the waiting ships on the coast of Ouidah, I saw a group of youngsters ahead on the otherwise vacant sand path in a long forest of palms. The kids were all in their briefs and as I approached, they started shouting at me with a clear sense of urgency. They were speaking so fast that I couldn’t understand them. One seemed to be gesturing me away from the opposite side of the path, the side I was walking down. I had time to squeeze out one “Je ne comprend pas” before another boy in briefs and a blue t-shirt pulled over his head like Cornholio burst out of the foliage, running at top speed directly at me.
My first instinct said this was some sort of trap, a mugging, but within a fraction of a second, I saw that he was flailing his arms wildly all around his head. Was this kid totally nuts? Goofing off? I kept walking toward him. And then I noticed the black cloud following him.
My brain had enough time to tell me “African killer bees” before I turned, and started running too, flailing my own arms as a portion of the cloud diverted to me when the kid ran by. A few seconds later, my cloud was clear, sting-free, and Cornholio returned, obviously relieved that he too wasn’t hurt. I thanked the kids profusely for the warning and apologized for my not understanding, and they sent me on my way with big waves and smiles.
It’s too soon to say whether that is my only brush with pain or injury on this trip, but let’s hope so!

Welcome To The Machine

2008-03-04T03:20:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Cotonou, Benin late at night. My Lonely Planet refers to Cotonou as “A dangerous city” which is “like being locked in a car with a chain-smoking speed freak.” This was not something to be taken lightly. Definitely not the type of place to arrive late at night.
I took a zemi-john (moto taxi) from the airport to a hotel and was able to ask in French for him to take me to an ATM first so I could pay him. Thankfully ATMs are guarded by men 24 hours a day in Africa. In the darkness, the city was quiet. The air was breathable, and nothing like what my book described as we cruised down poorly-lit dirt roads and vacant city streets.
My hotel was on the main drag, Ave Steinmetz, and as it turned out there was a big road construction project in front of the hotel, so there was no traffic there either when I first stepped out to Cotonou in the morning.
In fact, it took me a while to find the insanity that my book described. I slowly walked northeast toward the Grand Marche, the enormous market at the heart of the town. As I approached the large intersections closer to the market, I could hear the grumbling of engines, and see the change in air quality. As I approached, the roar grew louder and when I arrived at the main intersection, it was as if I were standing at the point where two enormous gears mesh together. There were controlled intersections, something I hadn’t seen yet in Africa, and a mind-boggling number of zemis, taxis, cars, trucks, and people, all moving in coordinated chaos. Every truck, every car, every bike, and every head was loaded down with more cargo than it should be carrying. The roar of the engines, the exhaust, the countless moving object, all made for a phenomenally chaotic space. I followed the flow of traffic and made a clockwise circuit around that intersection before being spit out on the other side, and as I continued down the block, the machine grew quieter. Not quiet, but not as intense. So I turned around, and dove back into the machine and allowed myself to be spit out on the other side again.

Welcome to the Machine

I ventured into the endless, smelly, overcrowded Grand Marche one day and allowed myself to get lost. There was no use in trying otherwise. As dusk was approaching and the vendors were beginning to close down, I hailed a waiting zemi and asked him to take me to a restaurant I had to try: Le Roi Du Schawarma. The King of Schawarma. Now that’s a place I had to try!
The zemi was ecstatic to drive me and I don’t think he understood my directions. He just let me get on the bike and immediately kicked it up to 3rd gear, the dense crowd be damned, he began screaming like an ambulance siren, bobbing and weaving, people jumping out of the way for their very lives. As the driver wailed and we caught air off of the lumps in the dirt paths, I screamed “doucement!” between hearty laughs at the expressions of the fearful vendors and shoppers.
The screaming and wailing took me deep into the city, far from my intended destination. I eventually just told the driver that the spot over there was what I was looking for and gave him twice his requested fare for the memorable experience. I caught the next zemi back to my hotel; he got thoroughly lost, but I got a nice tour of the city in the process.
Cotonou, to me, didn’t seem to be the brutal beast my book warned me of. Perhaps I have seen bigger and more dangerous. For me gears of the machine were a game I could play by choice, and when I needed some asylum in the city, I could find it by heading a few blocks in any other direction.
Inside the Machine

Disco Inferno

2008-03-04T02:00:00.000-08:00

In one day, Guy, Elvis and two of Elvis’ friends, Patrick and Fredi, I did a rather grueling circuit across the southwest of Cameroon. As well as seeing the boats loaded for Nigeria in Idenau, we also stopped at a place where the 2000 eruption of mount Cameroon destroyed a large swath of farmland and roads, and visited a ~50 person fishing village named Dibunscha. These destinations were reached after the long drive from Douala to Buea to Limbe, so in short, it was a long day of travel.
However, it was also my last night in Cameroon and Guy was set on making it a good one. So after checking into a hotel in Buea, which turned out to be another Hotel Sans Eau, we were going out to the local disco. We’d be joined by his friends Lucy and Jeannine. I was a little self conscious, knowing we were going to a disco. I had no idea how developed or fancy things could get, after all, we were in a pretty small town in the middle of Africa, but I didn’t like the idea of going to a club in my backpacker clothes. When I travel, I take lightweight, compact, fast-drying clothes and chant in my head a little mantra a la The Fresh Prince in Parents Just Don’t Understand: “You see the world to learn, not for a fashion show.”
There wasn’t enough time for me to procure any nicer threads, so in my hiking boots, zip-off pants, and nicest REI buttondown, I was heading to a disco.
We spent a couple hours in Jeannine’s apartment before leaving, listening to more Cameroonian music. There was so much of it that I liked, though Guy and his friends seemed to be set on a genre that all had a very similar beat, almost akin to the Bo Diddley Beat, and with vocals that sounded like aggressive shouting, similar to Dancehall Reggae. It was beginning to sound all the same to me. I longed for some Makossa, and to get to some air conditioning if it was to be had, or a beer at the very least.
On the way out that night, I was introduced to Guy’s girlfriend, Olivie. I’d heard she existed, but found it hard to believe, the way Guy followed every woman with a significant backside, crotch first. He’d often make the shape of an hourglass with his hands, but his eyes out and say “I liiiike!” Every town we visited, he was busy collecting phone numbers and attempting to make plans later in the night which never came to fruition. But I had to respect the guy’s persistence and unflagging enthusiasm.
Olivie was incredibly cute and friendly, though one of the first things she said to me was “Guy doesn’t want to go with me anymore!” It seemed a crime, and I offered my condolences. So Olivie walked off, and we got in a cab to go find Elvis.

Elvis and the boys in Idenau

Elvis was posted at a bar with the other guys, and two new girls. Both college age, far younger than any of the men present.
“You know what I love, Adam?” Elvis asked. I knew the answer. “Women! They make me so happy! Even if I can’t fuck!” Elvis made a gesture with his fist and forearm. I assumed he meant because he was married, but I was pretty certain that it hadn’t held him back in the past. I concurred, of course, and we slapped hands, did the Cameroon handshake, and Elvis carried on in a torrent of belly laughter.
Together, with the two new girls, the whole posse headed down the road to a bar. ”Here you will see how the African woman dance!” Elvis shouted.
We approached a bar with a sign that read Zanzibar and had a chalkboard propped up in the dirt parking lot which said in French that there were people from Cote d’Ivoire present that night. Walking in, there were 6 lone men at tables and one hefty woman in a white tank top lip synching to an African song on a stage illuminated by one bare bulb.
Beers were procured, and Guy took me outside.
“Oh Adam, I wish I could be you!”
“Why is that?”
“I have big problems tonight. I want to, you know, with Jeannine or maybe Lucy, but because you wished Olivie could be with me, now she will be here!”
I had no intent to salt his game… I was just offering my condolences! Guy said he was worried about having to balance the conversations, and was worried if one of the other girls tried to kiss him in front of Olivie. I told him that I would help keep the other girls chatting so that it wouldn’t happen. It’s tough juggling language, conversational niceties, and some other guy’s fraternization!
It turned out that the dancing at Zanzibar was to be watched rather than participated in. Our group made up the bulk of the audience, and the women lip synching got progressively more suggestive as the night went on. One woman in a white Chinglish tanktop and short, high-waisted white shorts was the clearly most skilled dancer. Over the course of her songs, she abandoned the mic and incorporated some kind of combination of typical African dance as well as some incredibly suggestive moves like a stipper would perform.
The crowd went wild, with the women in our crowd doing the majority of the whooping and hollering, and of course, endless enthusiasm from Elvis.
“Oh my god! Man, can you believe this?! I love it! Look buttocks!! I love buttocks!!”
The dancer took to the floor of the stage and thrust her hips as if there were an invisible man below her. Jeannine jumped up and tucked a small bill in her shorts. Elvis and I did the handshake.
Everyone seemed to ignore it when, after her last song, the dancer caught a heel on the tattered red carpet on the stage and completely landed on her ass.
When Olivie arrived, she sat next to me and we chatted. I remember looking over as the big-bellied waitress, dressed in tight pink jeans with the belt undone to give her some breathing room, and a missed belt loop in back laughed when she received an ass-grab from one of Elvis’ friends. Seeing my shock, Olivie asked, “Not like your country?” No, not at all.
Guy seemed to spend the evening nervously loping around the room, avoiding all of the girls, and sucking on a small box of wine.
As it turned out, the performance at Zanzibar was a bit like a striptease, though without the stripping, and the girl in white came over to tell me she loved me before standing upright and immediately slamming my forehead so hard with her pubic bone that I saw stars and my glasses were knocked someplace behind me. After a short and incredibly rough performance, she returned to her friends and left me to pick up my pieces. I felt like a truck hit me and just kept going.
But apparently Zanzibar was just a bar and after that we were to go to Jupiter, the local dance club. Outside, the scene was just an African version of the same thing one might see at a western disco. Men looking tough, women looking sexy, moto taxis swarming around, tables with beers on them visible in the outdoor courtyard.
Guy’s nerves and consumtion of his box of wine had put him in a state I hadn’t seen before. At the door, the ladies were ushered through without cover; it was Thursday night, ladies night. Guy argued that since he had brought a handful of hot girls he shouldn’t have to pay eihter. My impression being that Guy hasn’t really refined the art of negotiation, the response wasn’t what he wanted. And when he tried to just walk in, he was forcefully pushed to the ground by the bouncer. I made myself scarce. I didn’t need to be the one Blanche (white) in the club that was associated with the one clown getting beaten by the doorman.
In the end, the girls smoothed things over and I happily handed over the 12,000 CFA ($24) required to get us both in. Not a lot of money to me, but a ton of money to someone in Cameroon.

Guy sleeping off his hangover the next day

Stepping through the hallway, the first thing I noticed was the heat. I was sweating in the night air outside, but a wet heat was radiating down the hallway. People moved past, exiting the club, completely drenched.
Inside was nothing like I ever expected. It was a club like any other, although less deced out in terms of decorations, televisions, and lighting gear than most I have seen. The bar offered less than 5 choices for hard alchohol, though it appeared that most people had empty hands. Who could afford a 2000 CFA drink after such a cover charge? The crowd was one black blob, all moving in unison. As we joined it, suddenly it was as if everything I’d experienced in Cameron suddenly made sense.
The enthusiasm and dance moves that I had seen Guy perform or on the music videos on TV were exactly what everyone was doing. Guy and Elvis’s incessant and blatant sexuality was everywhere: the grinding was more carnal than I have ever experienced and strangers danced with strangers in ways that would make most people blush. That community that I had seen in the taxis and on the streets continued in the club. While it seems back home in Seattle, people rarely dance with strangers, anything was fair game in Buea.
I thought that I’d sweat with the Africans in the cars and buses, but that was just the warm up. In this room where the temperature must have been a heavily saturated 100 degrees, the crowd was one enormous wet mass, all sliding against each other, throbbing to the beat.
The music that was getting to me in Jeannine’s apartment suddenly made sense. It all had that same beat because it was club music. The tunes were expertly DJed, never missing a beat as they segued from one tune to the next. The crowd whooped and sang along with every song and bumped hips or did a pelvis thrust in time with the moves that the performers did on the music videos.
One of the bits of Pidgin I had picked up was what I thought a little poem that Elvis taught me, but turned out to be the lyrics to one of the songs. I got a great reaction from the crowd when the one Blanche was able to sing along
“Boby na ma ting!
Boby na ma chop!”
“Breasts are my thing, breasts are my food!” All the girls played a game of grab-tit to the beat of the music.
And finally the fashion. Perhaps it is just because things different to us look cooler, but looking around the disco that night, I could nto get over the fashion. Every person looked straight out of some music video, some film, some… something. And it was just the little flourishes that did it: a newsboy hat here, a wide collar, a cloth tied around a waist, a pair of sunglasses, a sweater vest, a turtleneck, a gold chain. Everyone looked different, individual. No copycat goombahs with the open collar button down shirt and the same haircut. Everyone looked impeccable, and the tiny handful of name brands visible were all certainly fakes.
As we carried on toward sunrise, I wondered whether my clothes, which I wished I could have replaced for that night, looked potentially interesting and different to them. Maybe because I was different, I looked cool. It was hard for me to believe, but the feeling I got from the people at the club that night was that it didn’t matter. I was one of them for a little while, sweating, sliding, laughing with one big mass of humanity.

Relaxing the last morning in Buea

I Go Chop Your Dollar

2008-02-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

A clando car in Kumba

When Guy and I checked in at the Kanton Hotel in Kumba, I saw that the previous guest in the register was listed as Mr. Elvis. Having written witty or obnoxious things in foreign hotel registers myself, I joked with the steel-faced desk girl about how she had very elite and deceased guests. She failed to see the humor.
And the joke was on me, when we emerged from the hotel to be greeted by someone that recognized Guy.
“Hello! That was easy!” shouted a rotund, shaved bald man in a striped shirt as he shook hands with Guy. “My name’s Elvis,” he said, extending a thick hand to me.
It turns out that another one of those phone calls had been made and Guy had another connection in this town and he had just begun to look for us. Elvis was living in Kumba for his job, while his wife and child lived in another city. As we walked the town, full of the energy I got from my cold shower, I soaked in Elvis’ infectious enthusiasm as well. With this guy, everything was huge, from his belly to his laugh to his voice to his words.
“Can you believe this town?! There is so much damn dirt! How much do you love Obama? He is so god-damned the best!” Elvis shouted through the cloudy air.
Elvis loved the world and I loved Elvis for it.
“You know what makes me happy?” Elvis shouted to me while Guy went on one of his countless little chases after a solo girl.
“What’s that?”
“Girls! Man, I just love to see them, they make me happy!”
“Hah, yeah, me too! I think that’s something we all enjoy, though maybe no one does as much as our friend Guy here!”
“Man, I just love them! You know what I love the most?! Buttocks! Man, just like that! I love them!” We slapped a high five and then shook hands Cameroonian style, snapping our middle fingers together after the shake.
“You know what we have a problem with here in Kumba? Overpopulation—of churches! We just have so many god-damned churches!”
“I had noticed that!”
Guy howled with laughter.
“You wouldn’t believe it! They are everywhere! You see, it is a business, mostly coming from Nigeria, and I think it is just a scam really. You can’t substitute for hard work, and praying all the time for something to happen to your life will never get you anything. I see people they just give all their money to the church and what does it get them? The priests all drive nice cars and the people are still hungry and frustrated. What is the point?!”
At that moment, a cacophony could be heard down the street.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“Hah, a church of course!” We walked over and peered through the windows, watching a packed hall full of revelers led by a woman shouting over a screechy music track. The entire crowd was on their feet, clapping, singing, dancing.
“Can you believe it?! Incredible!” Elvis screamed, slapping me another high five.
“And they are all from Nigeria, eh?” I asked. “You know, my itinerary skips Nigeria completely because whenever anyone hears the word ‘Nigeria’ in America, they think of that email scam.”
“Oh, 419 scams! Yeah, they are all about that! Say, have you learned any Pidgin yet?”
“No, not really. I know that chop is food or to eat, and that’s about it.”
“Oh you got to learn this, it will blow your mind! You won’t believe it!”
So Elvis taught me the lyrics to the song I Go Chop Your Dollar. They go like this:

I don’ suffah no be small
Upon say I get sense
Povaty no good a all, no
Na I’m make I join this bizniss
419 na jus a game
You are da loosah, I da winnah!

Roughly translated, the singer is saying that he has suffered and turned to 419 scams as a way to make money. It’s just a game in his mind and he wins by stealing your money!
That night, Elvis taught me a handful of useful Pidgin words and phrases. Nigeria remained a topic of conversation. Being just a short drive from Kumba, Nigeria is a big trading partner and Kumba is a big trade hub in the process.
“Oh man, you know what you got to see? These cars in Kumba, you won’t even believe them! They will blow your mind! They import normal old cars from Europe and then they put extra large shocks under them, and use stacked up parts of old tires to make them very tall. They call them ‘clando’ and they pack eight people inside and then they can take anything on top or on back! They can carry up to 400 liters of oil!”
“No! I have to see that!”
“You got to see that, you won’t believe it! Incredible!”
And Elvis was right, he took me to the clando park a couple days later, and the cars were just as incredible as he described. Empty, the cars were so jacked up that the rear end was several inches taller than the front. Loaded down, the cars rode nearly level. The shocks gave them the smoothest ride available on the rough rural roads, as well as enabled the capacity needed for large hauls.

Elvis also took me to a tiny seaside town named Idenau at the end of my stay in Cameroon where people load up enormous wooden boats with more cargo than one could imagine. They put two engines on the back and two on the sides, weighted so the nose of the boat is far in the air, and they cruise off to Nigeria with more goods. It wasn’t clear how regulated the commerce was with Nigeria, but considering how dey chop me dollah, I no trust dem fatha den I tro dem.

Boy in front of boats at Idenau

Trade Up For A Thicker Skin

2008-02-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

For a long time, Cameroon felt like an endless string of frustrations with tiny moments of pleasure. I tend to expect a certain degree of freedom in my travels. At the very least, I hope to lose track of time, allowing days and hours to become inconsequential, my awakening in the morning or movement from one place to another based solely on my own whims and bounded only by train or plane schedules. I expect to be able to move freely within a country or a city, seeing what interests me. If I see something interesting in how a woman prepares food at her sidewalk stall, I might sit and watch for half an hour. I have also been fortunate enough to visit places in the past where the locals were either ambivalent or enthusiastic photo subjects. And so far, Cameroon moved counter to all of my expectations.
With Guy, I moved on his schedule. He would tell me he’d wake me at 8 and would wake me at 7. After we’d grab a meal, he would just lead me places, introduce me to people, or do things without being able to explain what we were doing. It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to see his friend Jeannine’s apartment, or that I wasn’t excited for the opportunity, but I was simply taken there for durations that long outlasted my comprehension of French, and I knew that asking what we would do next or even making a suggestion might not receive a response. I had to learn to just go with the flow and take advantage of the moments that actually interested me. I had to act quickly to catch the things that interested me, and I did my best to point out to Guy the beauty and fascination that could be found in things that were surely mundane to him having lived in Cameroon his entire life.
Some moments happened so quickly that a camera couldn’t even capture them. A boy running across the street, his sandals so full of Kumba’s dirt that each of his steps left little clouds of dust to fade in the setting sunlight. A goat standing proudly atop a bus tearing past us down the road. A lizard standing guard over a roadside table offering pineapples and papaya. A dog chasing a hen. A man kicking back inside an enormous tire, with sunglasses on and his hands laced behind his head, just too cool to be contended with.
Sometimes I could point out to Guy the humor or intrigue in things he took for granted. The shoe sellers who put one on their head to draw attention to their wares. The boys selling bags of water, chanting “l’eau, l’eau, l’eau!”. How children write in the dirt on cars “lavez moi”, wash me, just like they do in America.
The most frustrating thing of all was the lack of freedom for me to photograph whatever I wanted. I fully recognize that I have no right to go poking my camera lens at anyone in the world. If someone doesn’t want me to, that is definitely their prerogative. I have just been spoiled by so many people in so many countries who just don’t care, are flattered for the attention, or are amazed at the concept of a digital camera. For some reason, a significant percentage of Cameroonians hate a camera and anything that comes with it, but it was never easy to predict who.
One afternoon, Guy and I passed a shop with hundreds of mirrors set up for sale outside it. I showed Guy how we could align ourselves with them and take a cool self portrait. We stood, just so, smiled, and—
“Hey! No!” the shop owner shouted.
“One can’t take a photo of the mirrors?” Guy asked in French.
“No, na ma bizness!” no, that is my business, the man shouted back in Pidgin. It just didn’t seem to make sense that we couldn’t take a photo of his wares which were already on display for the whole world to see. And as we stepped away, discouraged, the woman selling short phone calls on her mobile phone in front of the mirror shop waved us over and asked me to take a photo of her on her phone. There just wasn’t any predicting the reaction, and when it was negative, it was ugly.
I was feeling particularly down the day we were to travel to Kumba. We’d spent the first half of the day visiting people and places in Buya that didn’t interest me in the least and in the afternoon we finally went through the arduous process of finding a mini bus that would take us to Kumba.
I don’t quantify a lot of things when I travel. I don’t want to know how hot it is – I just know it is damn hot. I don’t want to know how long the bus ride is – it’s going to be long and painful. And the ride to Kumba was just that. There were 16 people crammed into the four-row bus, and I was sitting on the gap between the misaligned jumper seat and the main bench. We didn’t have seatbelts, but didn’t need them: we were packed in so tightly that I am certain if the bus had flipped, we’d still be stuck in there, our collective tension keeping us in place. I was squeezed in next to an incredibly large and sweaty man who spoke with a booming voice right into my ear because he was talking with the man sitting behind me. We were jostled for hours, along the road that was nearly all loose red dirt and “under construction”. The ride was everything I might expect: long, hot, painful, sweaty, dirty, loud.

Kumba has a bit of a dirt problem

When we arrived in Kumba, red with dirt, Guy was clearly beat. But strangely I felt energized. When we found Hotel Kanton, I was excited because it looked just like all of the hotels we stayed in on the road in China. The shower was cold, but it was about the most sensational shower I have ever received. I had earned that cold shower. And after that cold shower, I bounded into Guy’s room and told him to get his shoes on because we were going to take Kumba by storm.
That right there is one of the reasons I choose trips like this. At home a cold shower would piss me off, but when something as simple as a cold shower could make my day and could give me a new lease on life, I know that I have been granted some perspective that is so easy to lose in our lives of comfort back home.
That evening, as the darkness confined Kumba’s significant dust problem to the headlights of passing cars and motorcycles, I led us through the town with renewed energy. And when we sat down for some Gi-Gi Co-Cos just a few feet from the dirt road, I just soaked up that filth and revelled in it. I breathed in that red dirt as if it were clean Seattle air. I was riding on some much-welcomed perspective that night.

Over time, there were breakthroughs on my feeling of a lack of freedom in Cameroon. I noticed that when strangers would chat with us, Guy would sometimes claim to be a French tourist. Somehow this granted him a little more leeway, being fluent, feigning ignorance, and being black. I bought Guy some sunglasses at a market, and he began to look even more the part. He sometimes took to carrying my day bag, to complete the look. Guy began to take leads from me when I was interested in something, learning about things he had probably seen a million times without thinking about. He joined me in feigning ignorance at what a clutch looked like in order to get a closer look at an auto shop, and asked questions on how a sandal is made from an old tire.
Guy even began to take a hand at my camera, learning a new skill for himself and offering more protection from the fury of any angry photography subjects.

Transmission Boy

Guy and I had another trying day of travel, heading from Kumba his mother’s home in Nkongsamba. The day started with arriving at a bus station at sunrise. After being directed to another station, we waited there for a couple hours, in the intensifying heat, only to team up with a local woman who suggested we might make faster progress on a train. The three of us went to a train station and waited another few hours in the heat, dodging surly station police, only to slowly realize that the train was never going to come.
The news of the train never coming was continually being relayed by the motorcycle drivers waiting outside the train station. We didn’t believe them because they had an obvious interest in lying to us. I remember one of these drivers had orange eyelashes yet black hair, which Guy immediately pointed out. I cringed, thinking this was probably something the boy was a bit self-conscious of, looking so different from other people. As the hours passed, we finally took the motorcycle drivers’ advice and Guy and I boarded one driver’s bike together, my backpack and camera bag in tow.
I was a little concerned about travelling down those hellish dirt roads with such a burdened bike. I at least had the foresight to grab my respirator mask from my pack before we left and Guy bought one as we left the station. Rather than hop on the main road, the driver drove straight for the jungle across from the train station. There emerged a thin yellow footpath completely surrounded by green on all sides. When bikes or farmers came from the opposite direction, we slowed and leaned into the greenery to let them pass, the branches whipping my bare legs.
We emerged from the jungle and rode a sealed road for a while, only to be stopped by a cop holding a long piece of twine attached to a nail board. As it turned out, the driver had blown past the same cop earlier in the day, and was now having to pay for his transgression. Meanwhile another driver argued with the cops declaring that he would not sign a ticket declaring him a “suspect“ when he didn’t feel he had done anything suspicious. While we cooked in the sun for over an hour, waiting for the inevitable bribes to be handed over, I saw a weakly-inflated ball roll into my field of vision. Two children wanted to engage me in a couple minutes of football while we waited.
Fines paid and back on the road, the driver apparently decided that roads were not the best place for him to be. At the next rail crossing, the driver turned alongside the tracks and began to drive on the chunky gravel alongside them. For a few miles, we tore along the tracks on a trail no wider than 8 inches, sharp gravel below us, metal rail ties to our left, and sharp metal stakes protruding from the ground every few feet on our right. Guy’s repeated cries of “doucement!” to travel gently were rarely heeded. And when the rails ended, we dove right into a loose dirt road that suddenly explained the orange eyelashes of the motorcycle driver. I closed my eyes and thanked my foresight for the dust mask for many gruelling miles. And when we finally got to the next town, we had to trudge in the heat for another couple hours before finally finding a jam-packed mini bus with a motorcycle strapped to the top, among the other luggage, and marked with a sticker reading “Deliver Me” on the back.
The bus did deliver us, after another few gruelling hours of dirt roads though miles upon miles of banana farms. When we finally arrived at Guy’s mother’s house, painted orange ourselves, and began to be eaten by mosquitoes while we consumed a coconut, Guy passionately relayed the day’s stories to his family.
“Jamais! Jamais Kumba a Nkongsamba!” he declared, vowing never to make the journey again.
I had to lead by example again, showing the stamina to shake the whole thing off, and amazed that I could handle what someone raised in these conditions could not. But then again, I only learned how to handle that by experiencing it on multiple occasions. I explained that I had endured 8,000 kilometres of that in China as an example, and that I wasn’t so tough before that trip.
We cleaned up and met up with Guy’s friends in town that night and put back a few beers, singing and dancing on the sidewalk. Guy was visibly tired, and I was too, but I think he got the concept and maybe over time he too could shake off a day like that. In any case, his next trip to Nkongsamba by train or bus will be a welcome relief, and I won't be quite as impatient the next time a Mariners game slows my evening commute. That night, the shower sure was refreshing and the beer sure was tasty…

If You’ll Be My Bodyguard, I Can Be Your Long Lost Pal

2008-02-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

I first met Guy at the family’s home in Douala. He was younger-looking and soft-spoken, with a faint mustache. Guy tilted back in his chair and loped around the house with a bit of an egotistical air, so I assumed he was a teenager. When word got around that I’d been robbed at the airport and near Limbe, phone calls were made and friends and family were called upon to ensure that I was protected from further troubles while I was in Cameroon.
This was never explained to me, I just started seeing the pattern. Over the first few days, I was given a local’s phone number and met them when I got to town, and handed off from one person to the next as other commitments came up.
Guy showed up again as I was leaving for Buya and when I thought he was seeing me off to the bus to the next town, he got in and rode along. From that point on, we were partners.
At first I thought this was great; I was in no hurry to be taken advantage of again, and I was a bit nervous based on my initial experiences in Cameroon. Guy spoke enough English and I spoke enough French to get the point across, and it was nice to let someone else do the negotiations with cab and bus drivers, to ask directions, and to explain the things I was seeing in the marketplace.
Within a day, though, the presence of my partner started to eat at me. I had learned a valuable lesson on my motorcycle trip across China: it can be fun to have someone do all the question-asking and negotiating for you, but a big part of the fun is the adrenaline rush of not knowing whether I’d gotten on the correct bus, or the moment where the few words I know in the local language suddenly click and I am able to string together enough to communicate myself perfectly. It was nice to have the protection, but I also felt I was being robbed of part of the experience.
Another lesson I learned on the China trip is that it is fun to travel with companions. Traveling alone, it is difficult to share the humor and internal commentary on the things I see every day. With my companions in China, we made up names and phrases to describe the things we saw, and the inside jokes still rattle around in my head and bring a smile to my face from time to time. Sitting at dinner our second day together, I looked across the table at Guy and we suddenly ran out of things to talk about. We’d hit the boundaries of our shared language and experience and suddenly my partner seemed even more of a burden. Over the course of the day, my frustration had increased as I noticed that Guy tended to mumble whenever he had something critical to explain or ask of me. It was probably due to a lack of confidence in the language, and a habit he just wasn’t aware of. In any case, continually asking him to speak up or use different French words was quickly getting on my nerves.
I was wondering how long this would last, and knowing that Guy was out of work until April, I had surmised that he intended to travel with me for the rest of my trip. I would be footing the bills for all of his hotels, transportation, food, mobile phone minutes, and so on. And Cameroon is anything but an inexpensive country to visit. Hotels firmly at the low end of third world standards can still cost $30 or more per person per night, mosquitoes or cockroaches included. So I was paying a high cost for my protection in Cameroon. In the past, I’d chosen my own travel partners; this one chose me, and there would be no easy way of declining his assistance.
I turned to my camera and started reviewing the photos I’d taken over the previous days. After a couple minutes, Guy slid over beside me and watched the slide show as well. When I got to a photo of some food I had eaten during a few hours alone in Douala, he started cracking up.
“You know what that is?” Guy asked me in French.
“Yeah, suya! I love suya!” Suya is meat slowly barbequed over a fire, chopped into small chunks, spiced with cumin and chili pepper powder and served with slices of onion. Apparently the idea of taking a photo of the man who prepared my food was too much for Guy. He laughed hysterically.

Suya for sale in Douala

“Suya, suya!”
“I love it! Maybe we can have it tomorrow!” I suggested. This sent Guy off even further.
“Papa Suya!” he exclaimed, pointing at me and giving me a new nickname.
“Papa Suya!” I hollered back.
“Wik-wik-wik, Papa Suya!” Guy said, imitating scratching the name across a turntable.
The chorus from Run DMC’s song, Papa Crazy appeared in my head, and I started freestyling, changing the lyrics to describe Papa Suya and how much he loved suya. It’s a simple song and I was able to span some English and some French in the process. When I rhymed suya with Buea, a rhyme that was dying to be made, it sent us both into laughing fits.
Later that night, we both ordered some drinks. I grabbed a “33” Export beer, the pride of Cameroon, and he ordered a Guiness Stout and a Coke. I know this is going to sound like blasphemy, and it is in a way, but in Cameroon Coke and Guinness are mixed together. I’d never heard of such a thing. Guy gave me a sip. The tastes actually seemed to be made for each other, though still not what I would really want to do to a Guinness.
“It’s good…” I said in French, before explaining that my friends back home would think this was crazy.
“I love it!” Guy crooned, imitating my love declaration for suya.
“What’s it called?”
“Gi-Gi Co-Co!” Pronounced with a hard G and a long E, just like Guy’s name.
“Papa Gi-Gi Co-Co!” I declared.
So, names declared and applied to each other, Papa Suya and Papa Gi-Gi Co-Co had our first inside jokes together. Maybe we would find a bond between us after all.

Guy, Jeannine, and Lucy, Buya's "Top Model"

It’s Good To Be King?

2008-02-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

My travel companion, Guy, and I eventually made it to the mostly Muslim town of Foumban. There, we stayed at what I deemed Hotel Sans Eau (Hotel Without Water) and were awakened every morning to the Muslim call to prayer. It had been a few years since I’d experienced that dawn ritual, and it served to remind me that, in addition to one god and 5 daily prayers, the Muslims seem to be steadfast believers in addressing the community through overblown and distorted PA systems.
In Foumban, Guy introduced me to Jean-Daniel, another friend of my Swiss-Congolese friend Jessica. JD was a genuine and soft-spoken man who lived in Douala but was in Foumban because his father just died from Meningitis. Over Cokes and beers that night, JD took moments to stare pensively into space and then engage me in conversation.
“It is time for me to make a change, Adam. I lost my mother before, now my father. I am finishing school for Communications, and things are to be very difficult.”
“How much longer until you finish school?”
“One more year. But with my father gone, I now have to care for my entire family. My brother and sister, they are still younger than I am and I must pay for their school. I need to make a change, and I do not know what to do. I am sad that Jessica was unable to bring me a camera,” JD sighed. “I wanted to take photos of my father, but now I have lost both of my parents. It is too late.”
As JD described his situation, and outlined the odds stacked against him, particularly the odds of finding a job in Cameroon after finishing college, my heart sank. Guy had finished school as an electrician a few years previous, but he is unable to find consistent work as an electrician, so he chauffeurs for a government employee when he is in town, and finds odd work in-between. Not the most hopeful of situations.
JD was so clearly intelligent, genuine, and sensitive that my mind raced for ways to help him. As I suggested he spruce up his resume so I could see if there were any possibilities at my company’s offices in France, he was very appreciative.
I felt bad though, as we talked about the abundance of jobs and the quality of life in the US. I felt guilty and as I often do when I talk with people in developing countries, I under-exaggerated our money and opportunities. It made me feel guilty thinking about the opportunities that are everywhere around me, and that it wasn’t JD’s fault that he was born into a much more difficult environment. These are the cards we’re dealt.

Evening Football, Foumban

The next evening, JD took Guy and I to the Royal Palace in Foumban. The palace is the home of a man who is at the latter end of a dynasty that has existed in Foumban since 1394. JD told the story of men leaving tribes and double-crossing other tribes in order to establish what is now Foumban, and passing down the role of Sultan of the Bamoun people from one generation to the next. The palace was enormous, and was encircled by several large buildings which housed the Sultan’s countless wives.
“So how does the Sultan decide when he wants another wife? Do women come to him?” I asked.
“No, he simply goes into the market or has his men speak to the woman. She comes by force,” JD explained.
JD took me to a larger-than-life bronze bust of the Sultan, who simply appeared to be a fat man with ugly glasses and military jacket.
“Want to take a photo?” JD asked.
I didn’t. I felt nothing but disgust. In my mind, I cursed the man whose image I was looking at. He was no better than the rest of the Bamoun people. There were people scraping together meager existences just outside his palace while he lived a life of privilege and had the power to acquire women by coercion, against their will.
The Sultan was just a man, lucky to have been born into his situation. As far as I could tell, no effort or work was required for him to obtain his position and his luxuries. His countless cars, his opulent home, and his opportunities were available to him simply by his birth. It wasn’t exactly the same, but I silently wondered whether JD ever thought the same of me.

Munching a carrot, Nkongsamba

A Girl Gets Her Hair Cut in China…

2008-02-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

…and the effects are felt across the world.
During my first day in Douala I noticed a Qingqi motorcycle, the Chinese brand that I rode with my friends in China in 2006. Now keen to see what other brands were represented in Cameroon, I started to keep track. Indeed, there were quite a few Qingqi K50s (as well as a knock-off, a Qyngqi), and looking around the city, the motorcycles read like any city in China: Sanlin, Lifan, Kymco, and Nanfang being the most common.
Many bikes are modified or given fake nameplates, including a couple Wonda bikes, whose font looks just like that of Honda.

Waiting for passengers, Foumban

The Chinese connection didn’t end there. As I explored the markets of Douala, Kumba, and Nkongsamba, it was obvious where most of the goods were coming from. Truckloads of brightly colored plastic sandals are for sale in the markets. A Chinese specialty. Soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, tissues, shoes, luggage, fans, televisions, VCD players, speakers, plastic chairs, and of course the ubiquitous knockoff football jerseys and name brand clothing, all made in China. A handful of “Chinglish” shirts seem to have made the journey as well, which seem to be worn with as much pride and innocent ignorance as they are in China.
I’ve been stunned by the seemingly infinite patterns, colors, and styles that Cameroonian women wear in their hair. The braids alone are woven into countless intricate and physics-defying styles that I have never seen imitated on the streets in America or on television. As my Congolese-Swiss friend Jessica later explained, the hair artists seem to forget how to create some of these styles when they leave Africa. Braids are just part of the picture, however. Woven into the braids, or woven into normal hair, are countless other styles of hair. Some of them seem to be made from plastic, but others are so downright convincing that it seems perfectly plausible that the funky flip the woman on the bus is sporting is her natural hair. In the marker, it was apparent how this all works.
Sure enough, in the markets, I've seen shops with large varieties of packaged hair extensions for sale. Looking at the packaging, the more expensive offerings are labeled with the assurance that they are 100% human hair. And all of the packages are labeled as Made In China.
It only stands to reason. With 1.6 billions heads of stick-straight, black hair, it seems a natural industry to take the longer clippings, style them as needed, and sell them to the thriving market in Africa.
The forced community of more than a dozen Cameroonians sharing a single mini van to get from one city to the next leads to some fascinating conversations. On the trip from Limbe to Buea (pronounced Boo-Yah!) a cop at a routine traffic stop took a particular interest in my passport. He never asked for the expected bribe, but took quite a bit of time paging through the booklet and examining every page, despite the protests of the crowd on the bus.
“Please, we beg of you to allow us to leave, we’ll be late!” shouted one woman. The cop finally returned the passport and as soon as the van door closed, the entire crowd got into a heated discussion about what had happened. Every person had something to say and offered it up to the rest of the bus. Some spoke in Pidgin, some spoke in English, some in French, and others in their local dialects. Two men carried on long after the others, mainly in English, discussing Cameroon’s corrupt government and police force, and centering the debate on whether “this is inevitable or whether we have done this to ourselves”. The men seemed to agree on their own country’s poor leadership in creating a difficult living situation despite a country rife with natural resources such as rubber, pineapples, bananas, timber and their port.
Engaging me, the man asked why I was in Cameroon.
“Well, just to see it, really.”
“And so you came to swallow some dust with us!”
It was true: we were on an abhorrent road, pitted every few feet and filled with loose, red dirt. With most of the windows open to add some moving air to the tightly packed bodies which were sweating all over each other, the dirt breezed right through the vehicle and stuck to the wet surfaces of our skin. The man explained that the road was under construction, based on new innovations the Cameroonians were trying to adopt based on work they'd seen by outside companies that had recently done major road construction in Cameroon. Where were those companies from? China, naturally.

Roads wreak havoc on cars

It turns out that Chinese road construction crews were contracted in to create high quality roads. Rather than employ local resources, they brought their own men, trucks, tools, and materials. “They even brought their own tar,” he explained.
It was unfortunate that the deal was arranged that way. I would guess that the Chinese knew their efficiency would be reduced by having to employ or mentor the locals, though it would have benefited the Cameroonians better if they had. As it happened, the man explained to me that only a few Cameroonians were able to learn the Chinese methods of road construction, and that they were to pass it on to the local crews for future work.
Later, in Kumba, I met a man named Elvis who explained to me the relationship of the Cameroonians and the Chinese.
“Well to be honest with you, they help us, but I really do not like their policies. They come to do fishing near the port in Limbe. In the past, we had small boats and all the fish we needed. Now they come with huge boats and there aren’t enough fish remaining for people to eat anymore. The prices are now huge, imagine paying 2000 CFA ($4) for a fish! How can someone feed their family?!”
Once again, it was apparent that Chinese efficiency has both positive and negative effects. For the benefit of Cameroon, and for the world at large, I can only hope that sustainable relationships are developed that have positive impacts down the road. In the meantime, in case you needed a reminder about whose millennium this is fixing to be, once again it is China that is cashing in at the moment.

The Grand Pecking Order

2008-02-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

As I flew the final leg of my two days' worth of flights to arrive in Douala I met a half-Swiss, half-Congolese girl named Jessica who had previously lived in Cameroon and was willing to give me a few pointers on changing money and decent hotels. In the end, she suggested I check in to the same hotel as she, and introduced me to her local friend Julio who had picked her up.
As I caught my first glimpses of Cameroon through the windows of the taxi—work crews exercising along the road in the day’s first light—I was invited to Julio’s family's house in Douala. Their home was just around the corner from the hotel, a humble one-story cement structure tucked behind the overall din of downtown Douala. As we arrived, Julio's Mama jumped up from the ground where she had been hunched over a bowl, squeezing the moisture out of a white putty I later learned was starch for pressing clothes. The family was ecstatic to see their friend Jessica and were very welcoming to me, offering snacks and a local hibiscus and juice drink called folera right away. I struggled to resurrect the remains of the French that has rotted away in my brain for the past 15 years, and got my first tastes of the dizzyingly fast transitions between comprehension and seemingly gibberish as the family traversed English, French, their local dialect, and pidgin.
After a lunch of omelettes and baguettes with tea, Julio, Jessica and I left to get cash and my bearings. Stopping by the hotel on the way, I discovered that the crooks working the baggage at Royal Air Maroc had relieved my backpack of my small digital camera, my Chinese cell phone, and 3 Clif bars. Not the best way to start a trip and I had really been looking forward to getting audio and video on this trip. Getting over it, I was taken on as the adopted tag-along and invited back to join the family for beers that night. I had heard that Mama was particularly fond of Amstel.
When we arrived at the house, Mama had changed out of her loose, bright green patterned dress and into a black, better-fitting one. She'd put on a wig and lipstick and was clearly ready for a night on the town.
So the whole entourage walked to the bar about 10 feet from their front door, down the same alley, and took a seat at a table made from a giant wire spool, under a thatched roof, lit by one bare green bulb, illuminating the dusty football posters and Guinness ads that adorned the walls. A barrage of makossa music and the latest local hits such as Seka Seka and Don't Matter surrounded my jet-lagged and drunken head. Jessica and an extended array of family and friends gathered around. Mama and I tipped back Amstels as she declared that Amstel stands for “Aime-moi si tu es libre." Love me if you are free. Occasionally, the joyous Cameroonian music would overtake Mama and she would stand, clapping the first three beats of a measure and leading the rest of the gathering crowd in loud “eh-eh-eh”s on the polyrhythm. Just like that, I had arrived in Cameroon.

Having been taken under the family's wing, I was in their care for my first couple days. I had a few hours here and there to explore the city on my own and shoot some photos and venture into the cuisine. Douala struck me as a little tamer than I expected for a bustling West African capitol. The smells weren’t as pungent, the heat not quite as oppressive, and the noise not nearly as assaulting as I have come to expect from my travel destinations.
Douala, and indeed all of what I have seen of Cameroon is incredibly musical. Local and regional music is heard everywhere; the uplifting and lilting guitar lines that have always entranced me from Paul Simon’s Graceland are brought to the fore in Makossa music. Seemingly every shop, every taxi, every restaurant has music playing and as opposed to so many people in the world, the Cameroonians generally seem to have a grasp on what a reasonable volume level should be.
With music playing everywhere, I've seen perfectly sane people take to dancing on street corners or in shops. It still impresses me that people constantly just decide to sing along, whether walking down the street or hopping in a cab. This too is just one of the many forms of community and shared experience that I have seen here. For example: taxis are always shared, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. One simply puts their finger in the air or makes a kissing sound and a cab will pull over. The desired destination and price is suggested and the driver honks his agreement. A moment later another passenger joins in, two in the front seat and three in the back. It is customary that a new passenger greets everyone in the car with a “bon jour” or “hello”. As I was later explained, if one doesn’t offer verbal greetings upon crossing any stranger, people think that the person is upset or doesn’t like the people they didn’t greet. This is vastly different from anything I have experienced before, and takes a lot for me to get used to, coming from the impersonal and individualistic West.
Aside from greetings and singing, the forced community of having to touch strangers while sharing taxis and buses seems to create a unity and solidarity that I have never seen elsewhere. I have heard multiple Cameroonians mention their "African solidarity" which I believe comes from these shared experiences. In China, where I have seen their indifference to injury or even death of their fellow countrymen, I wonder whether they'd be more prone to caring about one another if they had such intimacy together.
The reactions I get as a tourist in Cameroon are totally different from most places I have visited as well. There are moments of immense interest in my presence and astounding hospitality once I get into a conversation with a stranger, but as I walk down the street, I seem to be viewed with indifference or even suspicion. I’m still learning to read the local body language, but it is really discomforting to not have my smiles returned when we make eye contact. It’s not the unbridled wonder I got from Tibetans or the oppressive attention from Ethiopians, but is taking some getting used to.

Down Beach, Limbe

When I arrived in my second town, Limbe, a friend of the Douala family, Guy, had phoned ahead to have his friend Babi to meet me there. Babi took me to the nicest hotel in the town, implying it was the only suitable option for a foreigner, and took me around to the beach for fresh braised fish, poisson braise, eaten by hand with the black sand between our toes.
In the morning, I was actually a bit relieved to have a couple hours without an escort, so I decided to walk north from my hotel to shoot some photos. I walked along a rural road surrounded by plantain trees and with the ocean crashing along the shore below.
About 30 minutes away from my hotel and only about 3 photos in, I was called over to someone's front stoop.
After an initial first few questions about my origin and reason for visiting Cameroon, things went awry.
“So you is just walking around snaffing (snapping photos) in dis village?”
“Yeah, more or less,” I said. I didn't see any reason to lie.
“You can not jus do dis. The chief may get very angry.”
I'd heard about chiefs. I had read that it was generally polite to check in with them upon arrival. It hadn’t even crossed my mind to find one yet, since Babi had taken me around Limbe.
“Oh, then let me meet him then!”
Mobile phones were punched, loud talking in another language. I heard the word blanche, French for white.
As we walked down the street, one of the men filled me in. “Our chief is dead, and we not appoint a new one yet, but you meet da Chairman.”
We crossed the street and on the wooden front porch of another small home, I was directed to sit down, across from an older man with yellowed eyes and a plaid shirt sitting on a wooden chair;
“Dis de Chairman.”
I removed my sunglasses and greeted him with deference. I was excited at the opportunity to forge a bond with a person of stature.
“So ah hear you snaffing in (the name of his village, apparently no longer Limbe). Dis is not OK. You cannot jus do dis."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know that it wasn't OK. I have come to talk with you and make sure that it is OK for me to look around your village."
"No, you can not. Are you a journalist?"
"No, photography is just a hobby."
"Who you show them to?"
"My family, and friends who are not able to be here to see the beauty of Cameroon."
"No, you make money from them. You then send photos of naked children to your home and they think we are poor and naked!”
I assured him that was not my goal; that I am so much of a shutterbug that I end up covering all aspects of a place I visit and that I have no interest in making a place appear poorer than it is. After a fair amount of discussion led by the Chairman about the relative wealth Americans compared to Cameroonians, the Chairman laid down the law. He told me that my appearing in his village and “snaffing” was a crime in his eyes, that I could make money from my photos and that he needed to be compensated. He asked for CFA50000, about $100.
“Your choice; I will hold you here until you pay." The Chairman sat back in his chair and stared off down the road that ran through his little kingdom.
I protested, I negotiated, but I really had no leg to stand on; I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to properly deal with a Chairman. In the end I handed over the equivalent of $50, was treated to a nice cold Coke by his cohorts, and was invited to take all the photos I wanted. I wanted none. And I had to meet Babi in mere minutes.
When we met, he was distraught, and as we talked with more people, it was estimated that the Chairman was probably nothing more than a man on a chair. I'd been fleeced. With that story and the camera story plying the, mobile phone lines, friends and relatives of the people I met in Douala have accompanied me at every turn since; striving to ensure that I get a safe and positive impression of their country. They are doing a great job. So, counter to my past travel habits, I've been traveling in a pair or group the entire time and will do so for the duration of Cameroon. I've learned a few things about dealing with chiefs and men who sit on chairs, which I hope to not need in the next countries. In a moment, I'll be taken to a place where passenger cars are loaded up with unimaginable amounts of cargo to be driven to Nigeria. That’s right up my alley and I can’t wait!

Diving into a lake near Kumba (not naked)

Where Are You Going?

2008-02-09T04:25:00.001-08:00

It's a question I have been asked with the emphasis on each of those words, and usually followed by "and why?".
Right now, it's 4:30 in the morning, 15 minutes before Linda is taking me to the airport and I still have a handful of things to prepare before I go. I don't have a lot of time to explore the why question right now. For now, the where:
- 2/10 Fly Seattle to London
- 2/11 Fly London to Yaounde Cameroon
- 2/22 Fly Yaounde to Cotonou Benin
- Travel overland through Benin, Togo, & Ghana
- 3/24 Fly Accra Ghana to Freetown Sierra Leone
- 4/4 Fly Freetown to London
- 4/10 Fly London to Seattle
And to be quite honest, that's about all I know. The rest I will figure out once I am on the ground.
Generally, when I list off my destinations, the "where" portion of the question is repeated. Most of the people I know don't know of these countries, couldn't point them out on a map, and have no idea what happens on a daily basis in these places. Not too long ago, I couldn't either, so the first part of the "why" might be so that I can learn about these places. And if you're following along, you will too.
Take a look at the map below, and I'm going to get back to getting ready to go there.

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