Vagabond Rick Travels The World

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Market Days

March 14th, 2008

I think the highlight of the trip to Cameroon was the different market towns each day of the week. They draw people from the outlying areas so you get to see a nice variety of the locals with their local traditions and goods. Since they are dominated by the women, I also got to see lots or pretty women! Each market is quite different because of the difference in tribes, but they all follow a similar plan of chaos (!) with stalls or areas where food (vegetables, fruits, spices, dry/fresh fish, beer, meats and other), household goods, bicycle repair, hardware, clothing and trinkets are sold. The markets ramble through the streets (picture totally chaotic dirt paths) between the homes and other buildings in the host village. They start early morning and go until sunset. The configuration of the markets, the people and their clothes and the goods they sell make for an amazing sight and I don’t think we tired of any of them.

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Posted in Africa, cameroon | No Comments »

Tags: Africa, cameroon

Monkeying Around

March 14th, 2008

Pamela and I visited the Limbe Wildlife Center when we stayed on the coast north of Limbe near Mount Cameroon. We never got to see the mountain because of the hazy, overcast skies which have dominated almost every day in Cameroon. Like the Mfou primate center near Yaounde, this old zoo is being used to rescue primates from the bushmeat trade and those taken from the forest for pets. Usually, the older animals are killed for their meat and the babies are left over for pets. The wildlife center integrates the baby primates into their existing groups. They have grandiose plans to put these animals back into nature, but I seriously doubt that they can do that successfully and they did not provide any specifics backing up this wish. Their intentions are very good, but I think the claims of possible reintroduction into nature are more for charitable contributions than real. I think they serve a good enough purpose (that being to educate people about these amazing, threatened animals) as they are without having to do what is probably impossible.

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Posted in Africa, cameroon | No Comments »

Tags: Africa, cameroon

Chad!!!!! ( and Nigeria, too)

March 14th, 2008

We had left the village of Pouss and its market and ventured over to the Logone River which separates Cameroon from Chad in this area. There was a sandy beach on the Cameroon side with a few people waiting to load into a large pirogue. Across the shallow, but wide river was the Chad side looking much the same as the Cameroon side except more people. I turned to our guide, Abdou, and asked if we could rent a boat to go to Chad. He thought I was joking. I was not. We were soon crossing the river headed to war-torn Chad in a boat holding the three of us plus a captain.

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Tags: Africa, chad

Fifty Wives

March 14th, 2008

The trip to northern portion of Cameroon was simply amazing. We met people and saw sights that were incredible. The number of different cultures was like nothing I have seen before and is the big draw to that part of this country. I’ll have to write about all of them, but I thought I would discuss the oudest people that we met first. I didn’t misspell oddest in the last sentence because these people live in the village of Oudjilla. Oudjilla has a chief who we met and he is famous throughout Cameroon because he has 50 wives!

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Tags: Africa, cameroon

Kenya and Lamu

March 12th, 2008

We arrived back to Nairobi so pleased to find no violence and a near-term fix for their political crisis. We visited Pamela’s family in Meru near Mt Kenya and enjoyed that very much. Pamela’s son, Beckham, and I get along quite well. He is a very smart five year old and loves to wear me out. Riungu and I toured his farm including the new watering system he has installed. A few of us jumped into Pamela’s uncle’s pickup truck and drove up the hill towards Mt Kenya to see the source of their water. Idah works for the water project which delivers water via pipeline to almost 1000 homes today and has plans to expand much larger when grant money is available. The people on that water system are so lucky compared to much of Africa having water at a tap in their homes rather than collecting it from a municipal well (or worse). The highlight of the visit was Riungu and Idah giving Pamela a piece of property in the local village that they have owned for years. She is planning to build and operate a business such as a general store.

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Northern Cameroon

March 12th, 2008

I thought a lot about Ethiopia on the trip through part of northern reaches of Cameroon. Cameroon is one of the most complex countries one can expect to find in Africa. There are over 200 tribes and languages in an area almost identical in size to Great Britain. Many of these tribes are located in a relatively small area called Northern Cameroon. Since Cameroon is so oddly shaped and this is main reason for so much diversity, please look at a map ( http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/africa/cameroon/ ) to understand how small of an area between Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria and Niger (by crossing Lake Chad) makes up Northern Cameroon. The complex mix of tribes is similar and as traditional as the peoples of Southern Ethiopia. A lot of the north’s landscape is flat, dry Sahel used for farming and grazing, but the most interesting areas are hilly. The striking similarity between Northern Ethiopia and Northern Cameroon is the terraced hillsides used for farming. And when I think of Ethiopia, I also think of Peru and Bolivia where the terraced hills are even more spectacular. While Northern Cameroon is not nearly as beautiful as the Andes or Ethiopian highlands, the combination of variety in landscapes and peoples certainly makes it one of the most interesting places I have visited.

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Douala Auto Mystery

March 12th, 2008

One thing noticeable about Douala is the number of luxury vehicles and newer vehicles in general. The only place I have seen this in sub-Sahara Africa is Cape Town, South Africa. But Cape Town is extremely wealthy and Douala is not. Sure, Douala has a fair number of wealthy and it has a good number of expats and foreign businessmen, but the number of well-to-do does not explain the number of nice cars. A similar city anywhere I have seen in sub-Sahara Africa would contain very few Mercedes and almost all of those would belong to embassies (embassy workers even below ambassadors have quite a penchant for luxurious automobiles – a nice place for the next president to start whacking our federal budget). BMWs in lesser numbers and Lexus are rare. Of the normal cars, the far majority would be beat up older models. SUVs would mostly be limited to the Land and Range Rovers and others needed for safaris. Not so in Douala!

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Douala Twilight Zone

February 25th, 2008

We got back to Douala yesterday after spending some time at the coast near Kribi. We do not follow the news in Cameroon because it is in French. So we did not know that riots had started in Yaounde on Saturday and a transportation strike was scheduled for today (Monday). We were lucky to leave Kribi when we did because now the country is basically shut down. I would have told you yesterday about how peaceful Cameroon is and how well the people get along. Sure, they have a dictator masquerading as a democratically elected president, but so does most of Africa. We see few signs of government control such as troops and, in fact, we see more US Army and Navy personnel in Douala than Cameroonian because they are here training Cameroon troops. Cameroon has oil so it is an important country to America!!!!

Unfortunately, the transportation strike of today has resulted in rioting and the front of our hotel was trashed this morning. We saw rioters from an upstairs window and we heard gunshots although we do not know who was shooting. Now we are trapped in the hotel and the hotel personnel tell us that the strikers are planning to go all week. Pamela’s visa runs out Wednesday, but I am sure this is not an issue if we are not able to get to the airport or fly out on time. I guess we should have stuck with the original schedule of flying out on Saturday – damn! My guess is that this Cameroon business is not worthy of international news since Cameroon doesn’t have much oil and this would just be a normal day if we were a few kilometers north in Nigeria (I suspect that is why we have troops training in Cameroon). By the way, the strikes and demonstrations are for two reasons: 1) the price of petrol was raised by the government (and I suspect people here don’t get the idea that oil in general is increasing in price and someone has to pay for that) and 2) the dictator… I mean president…, Paul Biya, is trying to change the constitution to allow him to be president for life because he needs more time to fix things that he has not had time for in 26 years of control… I mean leadership!

I am not sure why I keep getting myself into the Douala Twilight Zone, but we are safe if not a bit bored trapped indoors. Will attempt to escape as soon as the rioters let us. Hope the hotel has enough food…

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Uganda Photos

February 20th, 2008

I managed to get many of the Uganda photos uploaded, but it was a painful experience not to be attempted again in Cameroon. So, more photos going online will need to wait until Kenya if they have someplace with good upload capabilities… Here’s the link…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vagabondrick/sets/72157603945355528/

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Proud of My President!!!!

February 19th, 2008

It is truly a first for me. I am today proud of my president, George Bush. He is now in Africa and he is doing some very good things. First, in Tanzania he continued his administration’s excellent record with contributions to Africa for things like malaria and AIDS and debt reduction. He is getting some criticism about his choices for receipients of the money (church-based organizations get a lot), but from what I have seen many of the traditional charities are ridiculous messes of bureaucracy so I am not sure this criticism is really being leveled for the benefit of Africans. I was just laughing with him (another first, most of my laughs of the past have been at him) seeing him be a goofball with the Masai dancers just as I have experienced. We all look ridiculous with the Masai and they look ridiculous, too! Second, he went to Rwanda and lauded them for everything positive they have done since 1994. I think his visit to the Genocide Memorial in Kigali was an excellent thing to do. I especially like this support for this country given France’s horrible acts of the past with Rwanda and their hell-bent judicial moves to protect genocidaires and claims that Kigame and his fellow government heads are criminals. These claims are to try and cover up the facts about France’s role in the genocide so having the leader of the free world (ouch, I can’t believe I am saying this of Bush!) put our support for this fledgling country and its attempts to move beyond the horrors is just fantastic. A D- president getting an A+… not bad, George!

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Proud of My President!!!!