stuck

I'm stuck in Yaounde. I want to go home. If you remember Judie's blog, you'll recall that we have to take a train to the north to get home. it leaves once a day at 6pm and gets there anywhere between 9am and 5pm the next day.

but like every form of public transit here, it is always an ordeal. right now is the end of the summer vacation, so its even crazier. on the way down we spent an entire day trying to get tickets for the train, and in the end had to bribe someone to sell them to us. which means that they were selling us a ticket that was already sold to someone else. so allison and i spent the night on the floor in between cars by the bathroom. we shared it with 12 other people. for the first few hours i was sitting on someone else's bag with mine on my lap and a little girl between my feet. also there were random people's feet under and on top of mine. the little girl fell asleep with a a chocolate her hand.

her pregnant mother and her left at the 1:00am stop. which was also the stop that we had to switch around because they wanted to open the door on our side. after gathering up all the bags, moving 4 feet across the train to the other side, cleaning the chocolate off my feet, i decided to head to second class (which pretty much just means there are more people, same amount of seats) to see one of our friends who didnt pay the bribe.

i fought my way through the first class cars - stepping over (and on some) feet and bags. when i got to the second class car, i realized allison and i were in heaven up in our bathroom stinking 10x10 purgatory. i couldnt even step into the 2nd class because of the bodies. i say bodies because it was inhumane the way they were loaded in. it reminded me of the cattle i watched them load up earlier in the day during the 3 hours i spent at the station trying to buy a ticket.

Since its pretty much indescribable the amount of people, here are 2 photos that phil took. This is while the train is moving, they are not stopped waiting to get off. those people are sitting on arm rests, chair backs, standing in the aisle. In the background of the second one you can see a crowd of people standing. I’d guess there are 25 people standing there (that’s the same area where I was stationed up in first class). they were like that for 15 hours. I nearly threw up when I got there. I pushed and squeezed, but couldn’t get more than one of my feet in the car. I never saw phil that night. He said he wasn’t able to stand up at all.

By 2 or 3 am, I gave up trying to sleep or read on the floor. My feet and ass were numb. I decided to see if it was possible to sleep standing up on a Cameroonian train. Answer: no. but I did man the bathroom for a few hours, letting people know if someone else was in it or not. Around 5 or 6, I decided to try to share the top luggage rack with a sleeping man. I climbed up- about 5 feet- and squeezed next to his head, with my feet dangling over another person. The metal bars were no better than the floor, but the change in scenery was nice….

this was one of the worst travel experiences of my life. (notice how i say 'one of the worst'. not 'absolutely' or 'without a doubt'. travel in Cameroon makes me want to rip my eyes out.)

So now I’m ready to leave Yaounde, and have to take the dreaded train again. This time it’s a bed or nothing. I wanted the reservation for tonight (Saturday) but there were no places available until Monday night. Vacation ends in a week so it should prove to be just as exciting as the way down here. Maybe they sold my ticket 2 or 3 times already.

The good news is that there is a Michael Jackson tribute tonight.

other than the train, our visit to Limbe was great, but rainy. we discovered 2 new loves: palm wine and pidgin english.

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the photos at the top of this entry are from the deserted hotel.

we visited a primate and wildlife reserve. all the animals here have been rescued from poachers or captivity. the goal of the reserve is to release them back to the wild if possible.

this one is picking his nose and eating the boogers.

the beach at Limbe:

real wine and palm wine at our beach front 'resort' our last day at the beach.