East of the Sun Trip Part 2 : In which we find ourselves on a prison bus

Now modern transportation is a wonderful thing. Wheels, awesome. Engines, even better. Jet plans, fantasy come true. However, of the 293 kilometers between Bertoua and Yokaduma, I’m guessing 20km are paved. So of all the modes of transportation for this trip, I’d rank them by preference in this order:

1. My own big 4x4 air conditioned SUV

2. Someone else’s big 4x4 air conditioned SUV

3. Horse

4. Sway backed donkey

5. Big horned african cow

6. My own two feet

7. Prison bus

So did we take our big SUV? Against Peace Corps regulations, and I wish I was that fancy. Perhaps we galloped along through the wilderness, just us and our horses, channelling John Grady? Against Peace Corps regulations, and I don’t know how to ride a horse. No, we were the lucky folks crammed like sardines in option number seven! 

What, you might ask, is a prison bus? Good question! It is rather the size of a minivan, but instead of plush seats, it is filled with four rows of benches in the back. These benches may or may not be padded. To enable people to climb in and out of the front rows, the benches are broken up by one folding-backed seat in each row. This seat is probably not level with the bench to either side of it, and probably doesn’t leave enough room for a 5’6” individual to put their knees straight in front of them. (I would know, as that is my height and had the pleasure of a middle seat.) The driver is separated from his two (or three or four or…) front passengers by the hump of the engine which conveniently heats the whole bus and may need water poured in regularly to cool it; he’s separated from his back passengers by an intimidating metal grate. Thus the name prison bus. Not only does it feel like punishment, but passengers have the impression that they’re top-security-barred-in to protect the driver - and he probably needs the protection after a few hours in that contraption! It is made to seat twenty in the back, but as many as three more may stand in the back, and others might hang off the back on climb onto the roof with our copious quantities of luggage. 

According to the writing, things that are forbidden include: speaking to the driver, throwing glass bottles
out the windows, or vomiting.

So there we were, fully loaded and finally trundling out at 7:10 am, wobbling a bit with a center of gravity far above the recommended height for rutted dirt roads. OFF ROADING! SO EXTREEEME! Having already been awake two hours, we were ready for whatever form of napping our uncomfortable seating permitted. People start to doze off, heads against windows or drooling on neighbors or repeatedly hitting their faces on the metal bars of the benches in front of them. Joe is dozing with his head drifting down, popping up, drifting down, popping up… until he faceplants on Kate’s back. (He left a dirty forehead mark and Joe and I subsequently giggled every time she turned and we caught a glimpse.) As we collectively drift off, someone’s phone rings. 

It’s the omnipresent ringtone of MTN Cameroon. Everyone grabs their pockets or purses, checking if they’re the one disturbing all the other passengers. Finally, the man next the the window in row two answers. 

ALLO! OUI, ALLO! 

(Conversation is not possible at a normal volume. The bus is clanking and jostling down the rough road, all its parts seem loosely jointed and smack against each other, the front door doesn’t close and bangs with every bump. And besides, service sucks.) 

NON, JE SUIS EN ROUTE! JE DIS QUE, JE SUIS EN ROUTE À YOKADUMA! He listens and then discusses his very personal life with either his wife or a mistress on the other side. She’s clearly pissed about something. NON IL N’Y A PAS DE PROBLEME! CA NE GENE PAS, ON RANGE CA MAINTENANT!

Now all the bus is getting involved. Oh, you’re going to fix the problem right now? Tell us all the problem, we’ll tell you how to fix it! Finally embarrassed, he hangs up. And promptly explains the story to all 25 strangers on board. The loud gossipy mamas all offer their own opinions on the matter, arguing with the men who dare to disagree, and now we are all best friends. Good thing, since we’ll be spending a solid block of time together. 

Perhaps 20 km outside of Bertoua, we reach the first “contrôle de gendarme” - that is, a ruse in which police men check our ID cards and try to find any excuse to collect a bribe. Many drivers preemptively offer “motivation”, just to save time and trouble. We all scramble off the bus (climbing over seats, bags, chickens, and trying not to hit our heads on the low back door as I did three times before the day was over) and file past the gendarmes, brandishing our IDs one by one before crossing to the other side of the road block on foot and waiting for the others to join us. We’re waiting. And waiting. 

Houston, we have a problem.

One young man doesn’t have his ID. Technically, you don’t need one if you’re under 17 and a student. Our young Romeo claimed to be a student, the equivalent of a sophomore in high school, and studying German. But when he couldn’t respond to a simple Guten tag, the gendarmes for some mysterious reason doubted his story. And then another young woman didn’t have an ID, and was traveling only with her mother without written permission from her father. They called her father and he was like WTF I DID NOT GIVE HER PERMISSION TO TRAVEL SEND HER HOME RIGHT THIS INSTANT. And they did. (I am refraining from loosing invective about how this law was created not to prevent kidnapping but to control women. Seriously infuriating.) 

An hour later, we’re finally TRULY on our way, I’m sitting in the much-coveted middle folding seat, lucky lady that I am. My knees are crammed against the seat in front of me and rapidly turning a swollen reddish hue that I last saw when I tried to teach myself to snowboard on an icy mountain. In spite of the physical discomfort, I’m drinking in the lush green outside the window that is rapidly becoming more jungly. Massive heart-shaped leaves bigger than my head (and that’s pretty large) line the road. They’re mostly wrapped in coats of brown dust thrown up by the prolific traffic on this dry dirt road, and the few green leaves are so bright and new; I fought down the urge to shout at them, HIDE YOURSELF, BEFORE YOU TOO ARE SMOTHERED! But you know tomorrow they’ll be the same color as all the others. Occasional breaks in the trees offer glimpses of low, verdant hills stretching away into the sky. We pass one village after another, each tinier than the last and with poorer construction. Twenty buildings and a school give way to ten houses, seven… Concrete gives way to wood planks then to wood poles covered in red mud. Aluminum roofing gives way to dried leaves and grasses. Each one is a surprise: can a village get any smaller and still be called a village? Apparently so. Even the tiniest ones seem to have UNHR or other development agency signs posted prominently by the road.

After some kilometers in this state, the development signs fade away, the villages are even tinier, and we begin a new ritual. We pass a man standing on the side of the road, usually a Muslim Fulbe identifiable by his dress and paler skin and tall lanky build, and screech to a halt. He greets the “moto boy,” negotiates a destination and price, grumbles, and climbs on to stand in the back of the prison bus or even hang off the back. Then he sees these three foreigners and with a start exclaims, NASARA! (White person, in Fulfulde.) The moto boy explains our presence and we all settle in together. Until, a few kilometers later — NASARA! 

By the time we reach Batouri, the former regional capital and 90km into our trip, we are still Nasara, but we are their Nasara and no one else is permitted to mess with us. 

At this point, it is already noon, so everyone hopped off to eat (Christians) or wash and pray (Muslims). Two young men commence extensive mechanical work on the bus, including rotating all the tires and changing the heigh of the axel… Joe, Kate, and I exchange worried looks that ask, Did you know something was wrong with our bus? Are we even going to make it there? How long until we leave Batouri? 

We have so much farther to go, and the road is only getting worse. 

But we do finally leave Batouri, only to be immediately stopped at another control (the 2nd of many, I lost count), continue for less than an hour, and stop again for prayer. It’s still Ramadan, and our driver is Muslim, so he hasn’t eaten since daybreak, which is comforting. 

Sharing the road with logging trucks & Maersk shipping containers

At this point, I have reached a stage of intense physical discomfort which I always think I should be able to transcend and enter my zen place. But either I don’t have transcendence in me or I’m too tied to my body, because I never quite manage to forget the pain of my knees knocking against the seat in front, the seat digging into my back, the sweat of myself and my neighbors… And yet I also revisit a theory I pondered at the beginning of my Peace Corps service, that physical discomfort intensifies the physical beauty surrounding me, or at least my appreciation of it. (Anyone else ever have this experience? Many people have added this to the list of evidence that I am indeed crazy.) 

Hours after that point, it’s all a blur. Jungle. Green. Tiny Village. Dust and Green. Jungly green dusty village. On and on. Weird sights occasionally break through my reverie, like a sudden break in the trees to see a green field full of giant termite mounds shaped like mushrooms. Alice in wonderland-y. Kate, Joe, and I were all shocked out of our trances when we paced through a beautiful, large town named Ndelele with a large whitewashed Catholic hospital and a church with REAL STAINED GLASS! Huh? Who put that there? 

Another town - Yola. (Insert #yolo jokes here.) 

Around six hours later at 6pm, we stop in what is basically a truck stop pass-on-through town called Gari Gombo. This is a funny name because Gari is a corn or rice-based sugary drink popular during Ramadan, and Gombo is a soup or sauce made primarily from boiled down okra. It was time for breaking fast, so we stopped for thirty or forty minutes and everyone ate. We found Gari, but had no luck finding Gombo. None of the Cameroonians were as amused by the name as we were, but then we Americans find all sorts of “normal” things bizarre. When we finally leave again, night has fallen fully and we still have some distance to our destination. Only two hours, someone assures us! 

Except that two hours later, our prison bus has slid on the slick muddy road - right into the ditch on the side. For one heart-stopping moment, we all feel the bus tilt - sharp - right… Until it settles at a stomach lurching angle. We didn’t flip, we didn’t flip, we didn’t flip: this is the mantra I repeat over and over again in my head (or was it out loud) as I try to slow my racing heart. The passengers collectively decide, SCREW THIS! You get us out of this ditch while we wait back there! 

We were lucky. A kind 18-wheeler truck driver stopped and pulled us out with a handy chain someone has. Engines gunning, the bus lurches out of the ditch on the right side of the road, only to swerve hard left and almost fall in the left ditch. Finally, the driver regains control - and we all pile back in. What other choice do we have? Sleep on the road? 

Many people sleep in the full dark. I can’t (we didn’t flip, we didn’t flip) and time passes as slowly as the bus is driving. At this point, I’m happy to have the driver advance at a crawl, if it keeps us out of trouble. L’essentiel, c’est d’arriver. Eventually… we do arrive. It’s 11:05, and we’re all exhausted. 

We collect our bags from the roof of the bus and scramble drowsily onto waiting motorcycles, who are all fighting over who gets to carry the Nasara. At Hotel Elephant, we enjoy a last day of running water before tumbling into a bed and tucking the mosquito net around us… Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Alarm’s set for five! 

Snores.