Friday, December 30, 2005

Never travel from Bere to Yaounde

We are 10 km from Yaound�. We left Bere Friday morning. It is Tuesday noon. I'm exhausted...which may explain what happens next. We pull up to yet another military check point.

Sarah and I are in the back seat of a Toyota minibus modified to hold 20 passengers. That means we are crammed five across on barely padded benches with not nearly enough space for my knees to fit even if I sit up straight (which is impossible due to the low ceiling). I therefore have spent the last 8 hours with my knees and legs twisted into positions I had previously thought impossible for me. I'm thinking of quitting medicine and joining the circus as Flexible Man. Despite closing the windows, everyone is lightly dusted in fine red dust highlighting eyebrows and almost shaved heads in a rich earth tone.

Since entering southern Cameroun it seems we've been stopped every 15 minutes by the military. My hand reaches automatically for our passports velcroed safely in a side pants pocket. Sure enough, a soldier swaggers up with a lazy "bonjour" slipping out of his mouth as he asks for ID papers. I present them. He scans them quickly and hands them back. At least I have nothing to hide like the last time I came up from Yaound� when I had an expired visa. I twist around a little to relieve my numb right leg when another soldier sidles up and asks for our passports. I inform him politely that we've already been checked. He takes them, anyway. After a cursory glance, he asks for our yellow vaccination cards.

I hand him mine. Sarah has left hers in Bere. I explain that it's not needed except at international borders and we've already been checked. He says that this is the border of Yaound� so we need them. This is an old Camerounian trick I've seen before. They want money to let us pass. He saunters off with our passports across the road to his buddies sitting under a tree. I am livid and so tired my normally weak inhibitions are completely obliterated. I shove open the window, crawl out, and march angrily across the street. We are in the middle of nowhere and they all have guns and are wearing military fatigues. What I do next isn't well thought out.

I storm up to the one holding the passports and start yelling at him in French explaining why it's so stupid and unnecessary to be always bothering people and trying to extort money. One of them says that I should start by greeting them or saying "bonjour". I snap out a sarcastic "bonjooouuuur" and continue my tirade. Pastor Job and the guys from the North Cameroun Mission who've been traveling with us come up and intervene. Miraculously, they let us go without any more fuss. I am wasted now not only physically but emotionally. As I crawl back into the minivan I start to have brief flashbacks of events on this trip up to this point.

Sarah, Nellie, and I are sitting on a sandy beach by the Chari River. This is the border between Bongor, Chad and Yagoua, Cameroun. There is no bridge. There are 10 or so dugout canoes pulled up on the beach with some Chadians idling around waiting to transport customers. They offered to take us across for 1000 francs each. We refuse. To cross the river in Lai--which is twice as far across--costs 250 francs. We take our backpacks off, set them on the sand and sit down to chat. It is noon. We know we need to cross but we don't want to be just give in to their exploitation of foreigners. We periodically bargain with them till the price comes down to 500 francs per person.

Sarah is hard core and says "no." We continue to sit looking at the invitingly cool water rippling past as we swelter in the midday sun. Sarah suggests swimming to amuse ourselves. Then it hits me!

"Why don't you two swim across and I'll take the bags, pay the 500 francs, and transport them across?"

They like it and start taking off their shoes and walking towards the water.

The unexpected happens! The Chadian we'd been bargaining with gets a frightened look on his face and yells not to cross that he'll take us for 250 francs each! Sarah replies that they really want to swim but he's adamant saying the current is strong, there are hippos, you are girls who don't know how to swim, etc.

Slowly it dawns on me, in Chadian culture, if something happened to one of the girls crossing, they would be responsible and they couldn't live with that. They were suddenly obliged to take us across, even if for free! We pay up and cross, feeling the cool water refresh us temporarily as we drag our hands the few hundred meters to the opposite bank.

Immediately, guys on motorcycles pull up yelling for our business. It is 7 km to Yagoua and I've been told the price for a "clando-man" is 500 francs. I waltz up to the first one and say, "Yagoua, cinq-cent francs". He agrees but then his boss runs up and says "750 francs." He refuses to give in. Sarah, as tough as ever, says "Well, we'll just walk then", grabs her backpack and starts around the corner to the immigration "office".

The "office" is in an old, abandoned carcass of a steel motor home with rickety wooden steps. Out back is a shelter made of sticks stuck in the ground with woven straw mats laid on top to provide shade.

"Al-salaam alekum," I greet as I duck into the door at the top of the stairs.

"Wa alekum al-salaam" is the reply of the camo-wearing immigration officer. I present our three passports and he signs them quickly with plenty of rubber stamps making our passports very "official" looking.

Meanwhile, Sarah has been reasoning with the "clando-men" who've followed us. They argue that gas prices have gone up (an old excuse, nothing new here). Sarah just picks up her pack and takes a few steps down the road before they laughingly call out after her "�a va, 500 francs". Sarah's a very tough customer.

The wind whips into my face, stinging my eyes and causing tears to leave a streak back across my cheeks. It's nice and cool and free-feeling to be bouncing up and down on the sandy roads riding casually on the back of the "moto". We pull quickly into town and board the first of many buses.

Several hours, much reading, quite a few frozen yogurt baggies, and we are nearing Maroua. The man next to me heard me speaking English to Sarah and asked me where we were going in broken English. I told him the Koza Adventist Hospital. It is nearing sundown, Friday evening and we hope against hope to make the last bus to Mokolo where we can catch more "motos" to Koza. He suggests getting of the bus before Maroua as the road to Mokolo shoots off there. He says we may get lucky and catch a bus there.

Suddenly, after miles of no crossroads, a road veers off to the left. My friend points. We look for a bus and see nothing until we are past the turn off when we see a tiny minivan. He motions something to me. I don't understand. He yells and the bus screeches to a halt on the side of the road. We explain and the driver grudgingly sends his assistant to the top of the bus to take our luggage down. Meanwhile, I've sent Sarah back the 100 meters to the crossroads to make sure they don't leave.

We snag our bags off the asphalt as the bus scurries away and run awkwardly back to Sarah with our backpacks swaying back and forth. They have plenty of room and leave 30 seconds after we are on board! Nous avons la chance!

Sarah and Nellie are crammed in the back next to a Camerounian girl with an MP3 player! All the people on the bus are constantly checking their cell phones and commenting on whether or not the network is present! All the while, we pass small mud brick huts, herds of goats, and kids dressed in rags waving cheerfully as we chug by spewing out rich, black diesel smoke from our tailpipe.

Shortly after dark, we enter a darkly lit, smoky little town called Mokolo. The streets are rocky and steep, built on the side of a mountain shooting out of the surrounding desert. Small shops selling a little bit of everything are harshly lit with bare fluorescent bulbs. The bus stops on the steep part of a hill and once again we are surrounded by the "clando-men".

One of them says "Docteur, we haven't seen you in a while but we've been waiting for you." Since I've never been there before I can only assume they are confusing my army style buzzed blond hair, lanky frame, and clean-shaven face for Dr. Greg Shank's thick, dark curly hair, broad shoulders, and black goateed face. After all, according to them, all white people look the same (every time we watch a movie with the Chadians they think I am the main star...�a c'est toi, James, n'est-ce pas?).

The night is cool, the stars are out, the air is dry and dusty as only can be found in a desert night, and the road is windy, rocky, and steep. Once again I am hanging on the back of a small motorcycle and I have an hour to just let my weary, wandering thoughts focus on the simple beauty and joy of being in that moment...for an hour!

Arriving in Koza, I find Greg and Audrey in surgery. A young man was stabbed by his brother multiple times. He then showed up--after half an hour in a pushcart over mountain trails--with his intestines hanging out his side, one lung collapsed, and profusely bleeding wounds down to bone on his right arm and left posterior shoulder. When we get to the OR, Greg has the belly open, has sewn up the diaphragm and is controlling the bleeding on his liver wound. A blood transfusion is up and running and I ask how I can help. I change into scrubs, put on sterile gloves, and start cleaning out and suturing his shoulder and arm wounds. A piece of skin the size of a small plate has been sliced back off his arm and has rolled up into a scrunchy little mess at the medial border of the wound. I slowly stretch it back out and over the wound after washing out and closing the muscles. I leave the lower part open to drain and an hour later we both unscrub with the boy still alive. He has a urinary catheter sticking out of his chest (improvised by Greg since no chest tubes were available), a massive bandage on his abdomen and side, and two loosely wrapped dressings on his arm and shoulder.

We all head home (except Greg who has a few rounds he wants to make) to a never-better-tasting supper of cold beans and rice. I sleep till the next afternoon when we catch the "motos" to Mokolo, the bus to Maroua and sleep that night at the Catholic mission before catching the 7 am bus to N'Gaoundere.

On that bus we meet up with Job and Wangkel from the Chad Mission and the 3 administrators from Northern Cameroun Mission. 4pm finds us in N'Gaoundere where we hit town for some fried egg sandwiches in a hole-in-the-wall place showing English League soccer and serving the best papaya drinks ever. 6pm and we are on the train for Yaounde.

I stretch out on the bunk and strip down to my shorts in anticipation of a nice long sleep overnight with the cool air rushing in as we descend on Yaounde. An hour and a half later we still haven't moved until a man tells us that the cargo train ahead of us has derailed and the train won't be leaving tonight. The president of N. Cam. Mission calls and arranges for us to sleep with the vice-president of the court of appeal! She's a strong Christian and opens up her house to us.

The next day, after avocado sandwiches, we head out to the market to search for French Christian music. The head of a local Christian radio station had come over that morning and takes us to a small boutique blaring loud Christian Nigerian praise from some huge old, speakers with the bass totally shot.

We are supposed to catch the noon bus for Yaound� but our host says not to worry as she knows the owner and has told him to wait for us as long as it takes. Here in Africa, it's all about who you know!

11 hours and two buses later we find ourselves in Bertoua. We pull off the main route, around a corner, and into a small, poorly-lit courtyard with several other buses. A guy comes running up yelling "Yaound�! Yaound�" and tells us to put our bags over on a bus right next to ours. It's a tiny mini-bus. We unload and quickly reload our packs. The first bus drives off and soon we look around to find the place empty except for us and a few other passengers. We've been abandoned.

I sit on a bench. Then I get hungry. I walk out with Sarah to the street. We sit on a crude wooden bench in front of a table covered with different feast-preparing items. In one corner is a pile of French bread. Scattered across the table are piles of avocados, old tin plates, a cup full of random silverware, a cardboard egg crate half full of brown eggs, and a spatula. Underneath and behind is a metal can with some coals in it and a frying pan sizzling over it with the fresh smell of "fried" wafting across the cool night air.

Sarah has just bought some freshly baked French baguettes from a bakery that happens to be just at the back of the bus stop and we order egg and avocado sandwiches. Nothing has ever hit the spot like those sandwiches. The smell of charcoal mixed with muddy, African street odor and the sounds of frying, scraping, shuffling, distant shouting and the occasional roaring of a passing diesel cannot be described, only experienced.

My belly full, I pry open the window of one of the abandoned buses, crawl through and stretch out on a seat until Sarah wakes me at 2:30 am to cram into the back of a tiny minibus and bounce around over unpaved, red-dust covered mountain roads until 10:00 the next morning when we find ourselves 10 km from Yaounde at the last of many police check points...