CEMAC and COS

My last (attempted) travel in Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer:

I wanted to visit my host family in Mbalmayo for the last time. I called my host sister Mimi and arranged to travel with her on Monday. I met her at Mvan (the neighborhood which houses the travel agencies to the South province) around 1pm, after a long taxi ride across town. We boarded a bus and left a few minutes later. After a short 15 minutes of driving we were stopped at a police roadblock and told to pull over into an empty field.

Four and a half hours later, she & I began the long walk back to Yaounde to catch a taxi home. I finally paid 600F to circle the outskirts of Yaounde and return to Omnisport. I walked into the PC Case at 7:15pm, down 2500F and with nothing to show for it but fatigue.

You may know that travel in Africa is difficult, but it is further complicated when 5 African presidents are arriving at the Yaounde-Nsimalen airport and roads are closed all over town. CEMAC (the economic union of central Africa including Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Gabon, CAR and Cameroon) was hosting its annual meeting in Yaounde.

The one highlight of my 7 hour ordeal: the president of Congo-Brazzaville's police escort got lost on the way from the airport to the Hilton. Rather than following the prescribed route he took a secondary road, forcing policemen & soldiers to run up and down the street wildly gesticulating and blowing whistles at drivers to pull over. I sat calmly in my taxi cab & waved to Nguesso as he drove past.

My PC service is complete.