Football and Elections
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008We are once again stuck in Douala after spending 3+ days on the coast in Limbe where it was nice to relax, but a bit boring. Douala is a bit boring, too, and it is easy to see why it is not a major travel destination. Yesterday we visited the central market and it was by far the best market scene I have seen in Afica or Latin America. The people are exceptionally friendly and they had a lot of unusual things for sale such as the red palm oil that they produce and consume in huge volumes, odd-looking vegetables and fruits and plant materials such as bark, traditional medicines, and animal parts as well as the normal stuff like clothes, chickens, goats, pineapples, etc. I was definitely the freak of the market and people loved saying hello to me. Pam got a good view of what it is like to be mzungu in a local situation in Africa and she thought all of the attention was fun. It is fun! We struggled trying to find out what some of the odd stuff is used for, but there are a surprising number of Cameroonians that speak English well to help us through the questions and answers. Two guys got me to try chewing a bark that has some medicinal properties and it was horrible, but it definitely affected my head even after spitting it out after a couple of minutes. I could not find bushmeat for sale, but I did find stalls selling animal parts such as tortoise shells, forest animal skins and snake skins including one that we opened up that was a python that was about five meters in length. We only scratched the surface of this huge market in over three hours and we will go back if this Douala episode continues. We are supposedly leaving the city by plane on Thursday for the northern part of the country, but who knows since we are in the Cameroon twilight zone.
vagabondrick