Adventures in West Africa

I land in Douala in Cameroon. In the taxi I am offered dark liquid from a plastic juice bottle. I swig. “Aha! Guinness mixed with local red wine.” “Exactly!” smirks the taxi driver. “You will drink a lot tomorrow. In Cameroon, we like to drink.”

At 2am we stop at a tollgate – a lone woman in the middle of the road in an orange jumpsuit who holds a lantern and a wad of local notes. The taxi driver turns to me seated in the back: “Did you know we have 250 tribes in Cameroon?” Linguistic politics in Cameroon is far greater than ethnic politics. We chat about Gaddafi and Mugabe and he proclaims: “Gaddafi is on drugs!”

We cross the Mungo River, bolting over the famed Mungo Reunification Bridge. “Now we leave French territory and enter English territory,” he says and insists he has only had one, maybe two, beers.

Next morning at breakfast in Buea I ask for fruit salad. The waiter saunters into the garden, pulls a bunch of bananas off a wild banana tree, and neatly, like soldiers, lays their yellow bodies side by side, four of them, still in their skins on a square white plate. “Fruit salad!” he beams. He lights my breakfast candle then flicks the TV channel from CNN to Will and Grace.

At lunch I drink cold Isenbeck Premium beer with chilli prawns on a stick staring at the sea. I bargain for pirate DVDs, buy some Collywood movies, Brenda Fassie and Richard Bona. I am teased because I never had beer for breakfast. “People take beer here at 8am,” I’m told. Indeed there is a bar and wine house on every corner. After lunch we visit the ‘Experimental Wine House’ in Limbe. French wine! Cheap French wine! I buy bottles and bottles of Bordeaux. That night, travelling by taxi with the same driver, I ask if it is safe for me to go to a bar on my own. “Very safe, no crime wave in Cameroon.” Then suddenly he dramatically veers off the road.

“Why are we driving off-road?” I ask, slightly prickled.

“We avoid tunnel at night for security reasons. Night thieves block road with big stones.”

“Oh heavens no, and steal my French wine!”

“Exactly!”

We get back on the main road and then, as we approach a new town, he seriously steps on it. “Hold on!” He morphs into Starsky from Starsky and Hutch.

“What the hell, Starsky!?” I yell.

“We have angels and devils in Cameroon,” shouts Starsky. “That was bandit village. Must drive through very fast.”

We slow down and pass a coffee plantation. I stick my head out to get a good whiff. Starsky downs the rest of his Guinness and rooi wyn. I crack open a bottle of Château Barreyres Haut-Médoc Cru Bourgeois 2004 and heavily swig. We beetle wildly through the night and fi nally arrive at our destination to the heavenly smell of gardenias. Finally, at Hotel Residence Carlos, where tonight there is no electricity or running water, I have a Greek shower, washing myself with a bottle of Bordeaux.

The next night I catch the same taxi. “So Starsky, not much of a crime wave in Cameroon then?” He smiles and takes a swig of dark liquid from a plastic bottle. Now I understand why in Cameroon one has to drink.

I leap out the taxi at a bar called Robben Island. Starsky is nibbling on a kola nut.

“Keeps you up all night. Very good if you fi nd yourself in a beer palace.”

“So you can drink through the night?”

“Exactly!”