White White White

Every time you drive through a settlement in rural Cameroon you are greeted by hordes of children hurtling out of their houses and schools screaming 'white, white, white' at the truck as it trundles through. The waves, smiles, and sheer excitement on the faces of the kids is one of the most enchanting aspects of travelling in this part of the world. The kids in Nigeria are only slightly less restrained, perhaps the colonial legacy of British diffidence as compared to French bonhommie? Whatever the answer, it's clear that our presence is greeted as a rare and remarkable thing to behold.

The sheer number of children you see in the villages leaves you wondering whether these countries are going to be facing spiralling population problems in the years to come. Often you see them neatly turned out in brightly coloured school uniforms, the schools invariably being run by the churches. Religion is a big force in West Africa and the churches are well kept and bursting with activity. In Northern Nigeria the same is true of the mosques.

Religious slogans such as 'The Lord is my Saviour' abound on billboards and the back of lorries - possibly an optimistic sentiment to hold given the breathtaking disregard for road safety exhibited by your average Nigerian driver. The churches are also heavily involved in running the ubiquituous Aids Clinics you encounter in even the smallest villages. There seems to be a strong moral flavour to the way in which the disease is being tackled here perhaps emanating from the lead role being taken by the churches. I was interested to read in one of the lively Nigerian newspapers that the Government had responded to criticism of its policies by the Nobel Laureate Wole Solyinka by stating it would offer no comment, as it was impossible to have any meaningful discussion with somebody who doesn't believe in God.

Currently we're staying in the rat infested staff car park of the Sheraton Hotel in Abuja. Abuja is a strange modern capital city half build before the money ran out, leaving it as an odd jumble of showpiece buildings and empty lots. The compensation for the rats is access to our first proper shower in weeks, and the attractions of a large swimming pool.

In The Jungle

The problem with jungles is that you don't actually see very much in them, apart from a lot of trees. In Cameroon we visited the Korup National Park which is the most biodiverse tract of rainforest in all Africa, sheltering everything from the weirdest insects through to elusive gorillas. And yet, trekking for two days in the depths of the rainforest my most exciting spot was a large millipede. It's a strange sensation to hear the proximity of animals but be unable to sight them in amongst all that foliage. I suppose this might be quite good news for the jungle and the survival chances of the endangered animals. But it means the sort of financial lifeline tourism provides for the safari countries of East Africa is never going to be as viable here. Though there's a hell of lot more wildlife in Cameroon than Kenya, the chances are you're not going to see all that much of it.

Korup is primary rainforest, but that doesn't necessarily mean all the trees are ancient and enormous as I had perhaps rather niavely imagined. To be honest, much of the forest has the feel of ancient woodland in the UK. The difference is in the scale of largest trees, the humidity, and the incessant background noise. Also, we don't have biting black ants in England. I had over fifty of the buggers running over my body when I stood too long in their pathway. The experience gave the expression 'to have ants in your pants' a whole new potency for me. I was ripping off my clothes like I'd just arrived at a nudist convention once they started sinking their teeth into me.

It is encouraging that work is taking place in both Cameroon and Nigeria to combat the threat of animal extinction. In Nigeria, we visited the Afi Mountain Drill Monkey Ranch, where we were able to get up close to one of the most endangered primates of them all, as well as observe chimpanzees rescued from cruel capitivity. The Drill Monkey sanctuary has something like 85% of all drill monkeys held in captivity and is conducting a very successful breeding programme whilst housing the monkeys in very close to natural conditions. We saw similar good work at Limbe in Cameroon, where a wide range of rescued primates included lowland gorillas. However, there is no doubt that habitats remain highly threatened and conservation work is being hampered by poverty, ignorance and corruption. Everywhere, in these countries you encounter examples of major investment having been made at a particular time and then nothing much happening afterwards. The existing tourist infrastructure at Korup is on its last legs, and at the Yankari National Park in Nigeria the Wikki Warm Springs Resort has that same down on its luck feel as your classic out of season English seaside town.

Yankari is an exceptional place to visit despite the warn out look of its central settlement. Sited in the savannah of northern central Nigeria, the park shelters large populations of quite a number of game animals. We got very close to a big herd of elepants, saw water and bush bucks, crocodiles and the telltale bubbles of a submerged gang of hippos. You can wind down from your safari in the most idyllic natural springs imaginable, a crystal clear stream of water heated naturally to 31C wends its way out of a leafy dell beneath a giant cliff. You can even get relatively cold beers, a rare find in this neck of the woods. Just remember to watch out that the baboons don't make off with your clothes, and try not to get into an argument with a warthog.

Road Building In the Rainforest

I am beginning to come to terms with some of the challenges of travelling in West Africa. Once you leave the relative luxuries of the coast, you see an altogether more extreme side of life. Take driving for example.

In Cameroon, there are simply no surfaced roads except between the biggest centres, so a 60km drive to the Nigeria border from Mamfe turned into a three day epic on account of a little unseasonal rain during the dry season. The final stretch was the worst, with mud filled holes deeper than the truck which we traversed only with the greatest difficulty using a full set of sandmats under the wheels. The first big hole resulted in a flooded radiator which had to be changed on the roadside. The second was so deep and waterlogged that we couldn't contemplate attempting it at all, and instead had to get out the pickaxes and shovels to undertake a 50m road widening exercise, fortunately with the willing help of a couple of local guys who hacked away at the hardened mud as though 35C heat, high humidity and clouds of blackflies buzzing around your head were no more than the merest irritations. We got the truck 80% of the way across the gap before our new road began to give way and threaten to topple the truck over and into the water. Some neat driving by Pete limited the damage to a back axle buried in mud, which we had uncovered after a couple more hours digging. The third hole, just 500m further on was perhaps the most demoralising, as we despaired of getting the truck out of the depths of the hole as our mats failed us. We got out as darkness fell after gritting the mud with pepples, inverting the mats (which shreds the tyres, but we had to do something) and heaving with all our might. Camped up on the roadside, to face the same again the following day, culminating in me having my first and hopefully only experience of bailing several hundred gallons of liquid mud out of another deep hole to enable the truck to pass without ruining our last radiator fan. We patched up at the border when we finally got there, and crossed over onto the nice tarmaced roads of Nigeria like we were entering the Promised Land.

We All Like To Be Beside The Seaside

Impressions of Cameroon seem to be bursting in on me from all directions. The past few days have been spent at the beach, first at the idyllic and undeveloped southern town of Kribi, and now at the Anglophone town of Limbé further north, nestling below the murky slopes of Mt. Cameroon, an active volcano and West Africa's highest peak at 4,095m. Here the sand is black from the action of the sea on millennia of lava flows. Just along the coast is the second rainiest place in the World, so we have been lucky to be undisturbed by showers, though it is the dry season. The climate is hot and humid with an afternoon breeze off the sea affording welcome relief when it arrives. Visibility is not the greatest due to the climatic conditions, so the mountain is a hazy presence at the best of times, though it has gifted the area a fabulous biodiversity that is obvious to see in the beautiful botanical gardens at Limbé and more generally in the lush vegetation that abounds allabouts.

Kribi is the Palm Beach of Cameroon with discrete villas belonging to government misiters tucked back from the beach. However, there are very few hotels and the town appears to operate like any other, though I notice there was church provision for tourists at one of the absolutely packed Sunday services I strolled past. Kribi is not the real Cameroon in the sense that it is overpriced and accesed via a proper paved road, but eseentially it serves an internal tourism function and it is absolutely unspoiled by beach commercialism in the Western sense. It's unquestionably the most beautiful beach destination I've ever visited.

I passed a couple of days walking along uninterrupted miles of pristine sand fringed by jungle, pausing to watch local kids playing footie at low tide, and knots of fisherman working in teams to make a catch directly off the beach. They do this by positioning a canoe-style fishing boat carved from a single tree trunk a couple of hundred metres offshore. A net runs in two lines from the boat to the shore with a team of men on each line slowly pulling the net in. Any catch is divided amongst the men, who might number as many as thirty in total, so pickings can be pretty thin at the end of a long day heaving on nets in 30°C sunshine. Yet this is a major form of employment hereabouts as witnessed by the large number of boats you encounter pulled up upon the sand. The sizzle and smell of frying fish is a welcome sound as you wander your way, and the crevettes and baracuda I tried at our campsite restaurant were quite superb.

A couple of kilometres down the coast we came upon the unusual sight of a river cascading into the Atlantic down a waterfall. We managed to hire a boat here to take us upriver to a pygmy village. The village turned out to be a bit bogus with several of the pygmies looking none too short at all and primitive seating area constructed for visiting tourists, but the boat trip through the jungle was spectacular. This was the type of jungle you get in Tarzan movies with great long creepers cascading down from gigantic trees, and the constant, but sightless, sound of activity in the undergrowth.

For all the beauty and abundance though, Cameroon is a poor country grappling with enormous corruption problems and the menace of violent crime fuelled by unemployment and extreme need. Douala did not feel like a safe town to go walking around as a tourist, and though the atmosphere is much more relaxed outside the city, you notice the presence of armed guards on a surprisingly wide range of buildings. People have told me that the infrastructure has been in decline for the past few years, so one wonders if things are going to get worse before they get better.

The biggest problem to development is the endemic corruption everywhere which seems to be bad even by West African stabdards. Public officials demand bribes because they don't get paid their salaries. The strength of the tribal system enables chiefs and bigwigs to syphon off all manner of funds from their communities. I talked to a western volunteer working for a foreign government sponsored aid programme who was facing an enormous ethical dilemma in working to promote community savings in agricultural microbanks, the idea being to encourage them to invest as a cushion against the tremendous uncertainties of subsistence life in this country. It was put to me in these terms - for the average person in a rural community, if you get sick, you either get better or you die. And yet, this volunteer was conscious that a good proportion of these savings were being embezzled by the bank directors, and the volunteer's position did not enable them to openly challenge the situation. Such a challenge would be construed as a political act, something that would directly contravene the terms under which the organisation works and can operate in the country.

People have no knowledge or experience on which to draw to sort out problems themselves. It tells you something that it's not uncommon to find that ancestral skulls are used as collatoral for bank loans here. Ironically, many of these loans go to pay for the elaborate funerals that are such a part of life here during the 'funeral season', when the rains stop and people can get around the place. These funerals might be held months or years after a person has died and involve the body being disinterred for the celebrations.

Still despite the problems and the crime it's hard to imagine a friendlier place or a more smilely people. It's intriguing.

Too Darn Hot

They used to call West Africa the white man's grave, so I've come armed with enough mosquito repellant to fell an army of the pesky things and I'm popping pills which may induce psychosis in me as a second-best substitute for malaria. ...And guess what? So far I've not seen one of the little blighters. Maybe it's just too hot for them to handle here in Douala, because believe me, it's baking in Cameroon.

I've been poking my nose out into a city that is supposed to be renowned for muggings after dark, but couldn't be friendlier on first acquaintance. Actually, it hardly seems like a city at all, rather an overgrown provincial town, though it's the main metropolis in the country. The central square is an unremarkable patch of lush grass surrounded by low rise colonial era buildings in an advanced state of decay, and improbably, an array of outsize antique photocopiers lined up along the pavement awaiting business from the army of civil servants that work thereabouts. The fact that the Justice Minstry has reserved parking spaces for no less than ten Vice-Presidents leaves you wondering whether they might suffer from an over-inflation of bureacracy in this country. Certainly, I found changing money at the bank took the best part of an hour to achieve, though I've rarely seen a queuing public look in better spirits anywhere.

Since the trip officially commenced today we've decamped from the administrative heart of Douala to the Downtown area. We're staying at the Roman Catholic Mission, which incorporates a lovely little church with colourful stained glass windows and a very nice looking swimming pool! It's just off Douala's version of Knightsbridge, which though a little less grand than its London cousin, does sport a local fast food joint named 'Harrolds', all done up with a green awning emblazoned with the name of the place in the trademark style of London's most exclusive department store. We've been warned that Douala is very much at the sophisticated end of West Africa, so I can hardly wait to find out what lies ahead.

Back On the Road Again

I've been having a little interlude in England refamiliarising myself with the way things work here. Its been a refreshing break from relentless travel and an enjoyable opportunity to catch up with family and friends, including seven of the gang who were with me in China. I got to play uncle quite a lot, have baths, and gorge myself on roast dinners, fish and chips, proper beer and most importantly, bacon, something that doesn't seem to exist at all in Asia as far as I can tell. I also finally got a chance to see all the thousands of slide photos I've taken over these many months, a process which was so laborious it prompted me to go out and buy a digital camera to use for the remainder of the trip.

On the other hand, I've been reminded what a fundamentally rude and unfriendly place England is compared to most of the countries I've visited. I've been ground down by the ever present grey wet murk that passes for a sky in this cold land and simply astonished at the sheer expense of doing virtually anything here. So the prospect of a little warmth and sunshine down Africa way grows more appealing by the minute. I've even been practicing my French in anticipation of getting into a bit of chat with the locals over the prospects of the Cameroonian team in the forthcoming African Nations Cup. I can hardly wait for the second half kick-off tomorrow.