I awake at 5AM after only a few hours of sleep. Audrey and Sarah are already up. Sarah slept till 5PM yesterday and couldn’t sleep the night. Our bodies are about 10 hours off the time zone here. I awaken and hear Allah… being sung over a loud speaker. It’s the Muslim call to morning prayers. About the same time I hear about four other mosques start their morning call to prayer too. We are back in Cameroon! about a half hour after that the roosters start crowing and the world is awakening.
The trip here was rather uneventful. All our planes and connections were on time. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we checked and all our six pieces of luggage had made it that far. Boarding our last plane to Chad, I started getting more nervous. We hadn’t been harassed about our carry on luggage weight (15lb limit, and ours was 35) in Addis like usual, and that was a relief. But there is the constant worry of what will happen in the customs of Ndjamena, Chad? Even thought we just pass through, we often got harassed about opening boxes, checking documents… to try to find contraband or get a little extra pocket money. Now there are X-ray machines there that they can “see” what’s in your bag. So I thought it would be worse. We got ALL our luggage without much problem. Then went through the X-ray machine, gave our papers to the customs officials, and 30 sec later we were on our way out the door with all our baggage. WOW, what a relief! Our taxi driver, Adama, was amazed at the number of pieces we had brought, even though he was forewarned and it was the least we have ever come with. He had a little Toyota four door to pick us up in (he used to have a Toyota wagon). So three large pieces went in the trunk and three in the back seat. Leaving one seat in the back for two people and one in the passenger seat! My wife and daughter squished in the back seat for the 6 hour ride.
The road is brutal. It would be better if it WERN’T paved. It has trucks going over it that are about 100tons overweight and this creates huge potholes in the pavement. so its a few seconds of acceleration then slam on the breaks to go 2mph through a hole, then repeat 5000 times! At every police barrier, toll booth, or stop for our driver to do his Muslim prayers; we had the usual swarm of boys with their wares for sale. We call it the mobile market. Some had packaged cookies, water bottles filled with questionable water, juice in a used bottle, boiled eggs, meat on a stick, a metal bowl- asking for a handout, or just a request for 10Francs! At one of the stops Adama filled the car with gasoline. He stopped, and a boy ran up with a funnel and a jug of gas, filling it with 40 liters. Of course it was Nigerian gas because it was in a bottle and not a station. Anyone with jugs under a tree has Nigerian gas. Finally we made it to the meeting point with Yves.
Oh what a beautiful sight! There was our old truck, with Yves, Jacques, and Hawadak! We had a joyous meeting then started the hour long drive on the sandy, dusty road. It was getting very dark. But we still had to swerve to avoid the goats, sheep, kids, dogs, and a hedge hog. The road wanders through a desolate area near the Nigerian boarder that I have always worried about bandits, but we arrived safely at “home”. They put us in our previous house, to our delight! Ngatsbi had prepared a meal for us and there were about 15 of the workers outside waiting to greet us when we arrived. There were many hand shakes, embracing three times, and exclamations of joy at our meeting again. Now at 10PM we were wasted but couldn’t sleep yet. So we unpacked our things and separated out hospital items. Somewhere around 1AM we fell asleep. Three days of travel, FINISHED! Greg