ABBA does Africa
I think I have described before that things can be horribly monotonous… the dirt never changes color, rain falls every day and (almost without exception) Cameroonian men 18-30 are the most obnoxious people on the planet.
But there are sometimes wonderful surprises… and I like to reward such surprises with enormous (relatively) amounts of cash.
Last Saturday was easily one of my pitiful days in country. I left the Peace Corps transit house at 9:30 in the morning, angry at most everyone I encountered. It took nearly 40 minutes just to arrive at the bus station via taxi (the twenty something young man in the passenger seat spoke at lengths about his desire to go celibate and devote his life to saving the gorillas… or at least that’s what I picked up in French). They actually had no idea where the bus agency I wanted was, but they drove me around and finally demanded I pay for the whole taxi (when they left me at the wrong agency).
I paid an extra 1000 francs for a better seat on the bus and bought some superglue to fix my sunglasses… but there was no glue inside the tube. We left around an hour later, but were stuck in standstill Yaoundé traffic for another hour (cattle crossing? Crazy man in road? No, just a poorly parked dump-truck).
The agencies have not yet caught on to the concept of efficiency, and so we made close to 10 unscheduled stops to drop people off wherever they felt like. We picked up people and dropped them just up the road. We stopped for the driver to buy some plantains. Almost 11 ½ hours later, I arrived at the bus station in Bamenda. In a crazy-white-lady rage, I pushed a smart-ass young man out of the doorway of the bus, where he drunkenly stood arguing with others in the back of the bus.
A taxi had pulled up behind the bus. I offered 2,500f (5 bucks) for him to take me straight to Bafut, alone. In a huff, I got in the backseat while he collected my bags. Suddenly it was quiet and dimly lit with only the Cameroon taxi lights on. Peacefully green and red, like Christmas. The driver had some kind of laid-back saxophone-y thing in the tape deck, and he picked my bags and entered the car. He never said a word.
As we headed up the road, he ejected the tape. This caused me a bit of distress, as did his concentration on picking a new tape and reading the label in the low light. He popped it in and I rolled my eyes, knowing there was no end to a days annoyances.
It was ABBA’s greatest hits. I nearly cried.
I gave him a 7,500f tip (I’m sure he didn’t have change anyway) and told him that it was for keeping his headlights on for the entirety of the drive and for the music (and for not talking to me, but I left that out).
Inappropriate balloon animal hat photos (it wasn’t on purpose, I would say I’m just not ready for such complex balloon art) soon to come.
But there are sometimes wonderful surprises… and I like to reward such surprises with enormous (relatively) amounts of cash.
Last Saturday was easily one of my pitiful days in country. I left the Peace Corps transit house at 9:30 in the morning, angry at most everyone I encountered. It took nearly 40 minutes just to arrive at the bus station via taxi (the twenty something young man in the passenger seat spoke at lengths about his desire to go celibate and devote his life to saving the gorillas… or at least that’s what I picked up in French). They actually had no idea where the bus agency I wanted was, but they drove me around and finally demanded I pay for the whole taxi (when they left me at the wrong agency).
I paid an extra 1000 francs for a better seat on the bus and bought some superglue to fix my sunglasses… but there was no glue inside the tube. We left around an hour later, but were stuck in standstill Yaoundé traffic for another hour (cattle crossing? Crazy man in road? No, just a poorly parked dump-truck).
The agencies have not yet caught on to the concept of efficiency, and so we made close to 10 unscheduled stops to drop people off wherever they felt like. We picked up people and dropped them just up the road. We stopped for the driver to buy some plantains. Almost 11 ½ hours later, I arrived at the bus station in Bamenda. In a crazy-white-lady rage, I pushed a smart-ass young man out of the doorway of the bus, where he drunkenly stood arguing with others in the back of the bus.
A taxi had pulled up behind the bus. I offered 2,500f (5 bucks) for him to take me straight to Bafut, alone. In a huff, I got in the backseat while he collected my bags. Suddenly it was quiet and dimly lit with only the Cameroon taxi lights on. Peacefully green and red, like Christmas. The driver had some kind of laid-back saxophone-y thing in the tape deck, and he picked my bags and entered the car. He never said a word.
As we headed up the road, he ejected the tape. This caused me a bit of distress, as did his concentration on picking a new tape and reading the label in the low light. He popped it in and I rolled my eyes, knowing there was no end to a days annoyances.
It was ABBA’s greatest hits. I nearly cried.
I gave him a 7,500f tip (I’m sure he didn’t have change anyway) and told him that it was for keeping his headlights on for the entirety of the drive and for the music (and for not talking to me, but I left that out).
Inappropriate balloon animal hat photos (it wasn’t on purpose, I would say I’m just not ready for such complex balloon art) soon to come.
posted by K at 11:56 AM
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