It’s been nice (pt. II)
Leaving the bank kind of dejected, I try to pump myself back up because we’re now heading to the cyber café. We get there and its kind of crowded, but not to worry, the gentleman whisks me onto one within the next five minutes. But its got a blurry monitor so I get up to wait, and at that time a young lady is getting off another, finally. . .technology at my fingertips once again. It was kind of like getting my fix for the month. But I guess someone sold me some bad stuff.
After about twenty to thirty minutes of uploading files to my website the computer began stalling. . .and stalling. . .and stalling. Gees! Should’ve seen me going through and anxiety attack. Couldn’t take it any longer. So after about another half hour of it, I decide to ask the gentleman running the place if it were possible to use my laptop via their ethernet connection. Since I don’t speak french and his english is not too developed, we decided Akilah should translate for us. She did, and it was possible.
Now it is bad enough that Cameroonians already think most Americans have an abundance of money to throw around; and if you consider the current exchange rate, we kind of have more than we would at home. So here I go pulling out a Dell laptop in a cyber café. . .should’ve seen me looking over my shoulders every few minutes. The connection was a little faster. Well if you consider my laptop is over 550 MHz and theirs are like 333 MHz, it should be. But in terms of the internet connection, it was still slow. There were at least fifteen folks on the various systems in the place. Way too many. I was so frustrated at this point; I just packed up the laptop and decided to go. Our bill had come to somewhere about 3750 CFAs.
Oh well, dejected once again. We move on to the gare for Foumban. When we arrive I run into the same chargeur we’d run into on our way back from Limbé; we immediately recognized one another. It took Akilah about fifteen minutes or so before she recognized him. Anyway he found us a bush taxi going to Foumban, and after deciding to ride it, not to ride it, to ride it, we finally boarded the taxi. All on the back row. It was fine, until just before we pulled off, I noticed that I was not fully on the seat. Kind of one quarter on the seat and the remaining on the covering for the belt buckle. Ouch!
We pulled off, gassed up and began our journey. As usual, within ten minutes we were stopped by the Gendarme. Everything was fine except for the way a muffler was sticking out of the back of the taxi. One of the passengers was transporting what appeared to be the muffler for a minivan, and the door would not close all the way. We were detained for about ten to fifteen minutes before the driver realized what he needed to do. Or maybe he did, but was trying to find a way around it.
On the road again, but not more than 500 feet over a little ridge, we run into another Gendarme blockade. What is going on? How do these folks just stop you and less than a minute later do it again? Why don’t the use radios in this country so they can communicate with one another? How does one blockade know what the other just approved?
Once again, detained. The other passengers are now complaining that the driver should just do what he needs to so we can move on. Mind you, they’re not considering the fact that it’s he who suffers and not them; all they care of is getting home. Don’t they realize if the Gendarme wishes, they can prevent us all from getting there?
The rest of the trip home is pretty much eventless. We arrive in Foumban just as night falls. Phew. Don’t wanna have to walk up that dark stairway.
For dinner, Becky and Akilah decide to fix pasta. They do go back out to search for tomatoes, but for some reason as soon as the sun goes down, the tomato vendors disappear. So we had sauce for three made with one small tomato. That’s stretching food for sure.
Afterwards, I typed, they talked; the evening was a relaxing one.
I started thinking about the cultural differences of Cameroonians and Americans. A few days ago at Fremal when Akilah and I originally ordered legumes and chips and plantains. My chips were brought out with a tomato sauce; even though I made it known I wanted nothing with it. Its like the more you say you don’t want it, they assume that you couldn’t actually mean what you say, and do differently.
Yesterday when Akilah, Becky and I were there, they had to change their legume order to ndoly, which is usually cooked with fish, and specifically requested that there be no fish. Of course they couldn’t have meant that, so though there was no fish included in the order, there were fish bones in the meal. Naturally this was irritating to the two vegetarians across from me (Akilah more than Becky), and rightly so. Is there something that we missed in the translation of “No, I don’t want any?”