Saturday December 20th, 2003
One of the topics of discussion at dinner last night was the Gorilla Habituation Project. Mariacah and Ludo were very interested, and after dinner we talked about what they were going to do during their trip. We decided that a trip down to Lomié to see Gorillas would be the perfect contrast to being in the extreme north of the country for the rest of their vacation (anne is in the exreme north for those who don’t remember). The only problem is that CIAD is closed for vacation, no advanced warning, and it is getting close to Christmas. Well, we decided to go for it. We all headed out in the morning to catch the bus back to Lomié for some Gorillas and Christmas dinner. First of all, the baggage carriers at the bus depot know me. We got out of the cab, and immediately, they took our bags, and set them next to the bus. I asked how full the bus was.. with us, it was full. Hmm. I head back to pay, while the others hunt down a bag or two to hold some of our stuff. Since we decided on this so last minute, we weren’t exactly neatly packed. I buy the tickets, ask Anne to grab some seats in front, and we wait. I was ready to wait a few hours, but after an annoying negotiation over bags on the roof.
-2000 for the baggage.
-no way. Last month I came this way with much more and only paid 500
-2000 or its not going
-500 and it is.
1500
500
1500 or you aren’t going
bullshit. Nothing, and I’ll put the bags up myself
1000
I hand him 500, and grudgingly, the bags go up.
We start loading the bus… and some woman comes up.. no more tickets for this bus..what? I was here a few minutes ago, and there were still 8 places… well the white people came.. and filled up the bus. What? Fucking white people.
Whatever. We load up (with an almost full bus.. 19 instead of 20+) and take off. I realise that the prices here are directly related to the number of white people. More whites, exponentially more money. I also noticed that near the holidays there are a lot more cops out, stopping people. Half of the bus said this was a good thing, and designed to keep crime down around the holidays. A more cynical minority said: yes, but the cops are the criminals. I would tend to fall in that camp. I mean, I realise the cops aren’t really paid well, so as a Chrismas bonus they stop a few more people, take a few more bribes. All in all we got stopped 8 times, including one with a full paper check. This doesn’t include the one guy who stopped us less than 100 meters after that last one, and everyone in the bus started laughing, and the bus driver said: you have to work this out with your buddy a bit better, he just hit us up a 100 meters back. It also doesn’t include the cop that we blew past.. he was just impotently blowing his whistle to get us to stop…and we were on a downhill, so weren’t stopping for anything… zooom. Its not like he has a radio, or phone to call in back-up, so on we go.
We get into town, Alex is there… sniffing around all the busses that come into town to see what he can see. He helps us take the bags to our place, after I convince Ludo and Mary (what she is called here, as no one can pronounce Mariacah –fucking dutch-get some real names.. I mean, really) that I know Alex, and its ok to let me help. We open the door (which Jen locked on her way out to spend Christmas with her friends at Kribi- a beach town apparently really worth going to), and I smell something odd. Maybe just jungle must with a door being closed for a bit. I go to put the Christmas haul in the fridge.. and find that it is broken. Not only is it broken, but Alex starts to boast of how he rewired the power so that he could turn on the porch lights to make it easier to get around at night, and to make the house look lived in. Apparently in the process he crossed some wires and blew the motor on the fridge. He is pretty amazing. He managed to break the only machine in the house that was working from outside. At a certain point you just have to marvel at the initiative and prowess of always being able to break something when I leave. This time, even a locked house didn’t stop him.
We all crash early, after explaining to Ludo and Mary the basics of cleaning with no running water. Tomorrow we start the Gorilla oddessy.