We roar into Bertoua taxi park, trailing a cloud of diesel fuel, in a bush taxi that looks like a milk truck with holes cut out for windows. A sigh of relief goes through the taxi as it stops. Its capacity is 24 people. They've shoved more than 30 of us (not including the kids on our laps) onto the three long benches in the back. We're jammed in so tight our pelvises interlock like links in a chain.
Welcome to West Africa, I think.
Nobody can move until the people next to the back doors get out. As usual, we are forced to wait. After the substantial Bulu woman who's been sitting on me for three hours gets off me, I can peel myself off that poor, tiny Nbororo herdsman I've been flattening for the same amount of time.
Mariamnu, the woman sitting across from me, grimaces in relief as we take our knees out of each other's crotches. I hand her her four-year-old daughter, whom I've been holding on my lap for three hours and 98 kilometers. She thanks me, hustles her three kids off the taxi, and engages in a loud argument with the bag boys over what they still want to charge her for sticking her basket of manioc on top of the taxi.
I yank out the backpack that I have jammed under the seat and get out, ignoring the glares from the bagboys. They'd tried, unsuccessfully, to stick my bag on the huge luggage pile up top and charge me for the privilege. They know where I'd like them to stick it now.
As I lurch off the taxi, reddish-brown mud squishes under my flipflops. I have to pick a chips wrapper off my foot before I can walk away. I wave to Mariamnu as I go, wishing her luck with the bagboys. A few weeks ago, the taxi park ground was rock hard. Now, it's a quagmire. God, I love April on the Equator. Things will get worse as the rainy season progresses. The thunderheads piling up over the vivid green rainforest on the horizon make that clear.
The usual harassment starts right away. As I trudge across the taxi park, a group of little kids yell "nassara, nassara!" at me. As though there was any doubt that I was a stranger, a white woman in a Cameroonian taxi park.
George spots me as I'm circumnavigating a three-foot-wide pothole. The red, slimy water is probably only six-to-eight inches deep, but that's enough to get me wet and socially unpresentable. I never get a chance to run away when he approaches me.
"Jane! I didn't know you were in town."
I mumble a noncommittal greeting. I don't want to give him any more information than I have to. I'm not quite sure what George's story is. I do know that he's not someone to whom I want to broadcast my movements and motives.
Nat down in Abong Mbang thinks George is CIA. I doubt that. I can't see an operative making his life that difficult by such an obnoxious cover. Besides, this part of Africa is not a high priority in US interests.
"Hey," says George, "I'm heading over to Chez Biya. I hear they have a great plantain chicken platter on special. Wanna come?"
Oh, perfect. Lunch with George means listening to him bleat about how wonderful capitalism is for West Africa while I drink myself senseless on Trent-Trois beer, waiting for the food to arrive and for George to go hoarse. The former event should take about three hours. The latter hasn't happened yet, as far as I know.
It's hot. The sun is too bright. I'm covered with red dust, I have a malarial headache and I really need to pee. I wish George would go away. It would be impolite to say that, though.
I smile at him. "George," I say, "go away."
Two hours later, we are sitting in the variable, windy shade of a banana tree next to the street at Chez Biya. What can I say? George offered to buy me lunch and I don't make that much money as an Aquaculture Extension Agent. I'm leery of eating at a restaurant that is named after Cameroon's notably corrupt President, but I'll get by. George, as far as I can tell, doesn't notice the irony. This is no surprise. George is a hairball. With legs.
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