--We said good bye, and then followed the students’ bus till it turned off to Mangamba. They’re going back to clean the house and gather mousquitaires and leftover medical supplies which they’ll distribute to Mbanga hospital, Kotto Up school, other places and people, follow-up Michael’s surgery and discharge plans. Tomorrow morning they’ll leave Mangamba forever, visit a leprosarium in Douala, and shop for fabric and curios in the afternoon. Friday they’ll write their final paper and leave a copy for Ruth to submit to the Department of Health, and they’ll fly to Paris that night for a long weekend and then home to Portland.
--We loaded our luggage and got in the 4-passenger, 4-wheel drive Toyota truck with Njoke and Npho and drove away, heading for Limbe where we’ll stay for two nights and visit the surrounding sights.
--We crossed the ---------- River Bridge, the boundary between former French and British protectorates that caused today’s Francophone and Anglophone Cameroon. In 1961 France granted Francophone Cameroon independence, but Britain’s position was that their region was not yet developed enough to govern independently; they required Anglophone Cameroon to join Francophone Cameroon under one government, the Republic of Cameroon. As in the American South, tensions between the groups are unresolved and occasionally there are serious uprisings. Five years ago this bridge was blown up; it was replaced and facilitates nonstop heavy commerce.
--The river banks and bottom under this bridge are very sandy, a material needed for construction. The banks are lined with dugout canoes filled with loads of sand that workers got by paddling out, diving to the bottom to collect a bucket of sand, swimming up to the canoe to dump the bucket, diving back for more sand. When the load in the canoe lowers the sides just above water level, the worker paddles to shore where another man waits to shovel the sand out. The banks are steep, so another worker shovels the load up a few feet, then another worker moves the load up another level, until it is on the high ground where a waiting dump truck is filled and then hauls it away to a construction site in Douala or elsewhere. This seemed like a don’t-miss photo opportunity.
--We stopped, walked down the beach, watched, talked with a worker, took a lot of pictures. A man appeared, gesturing angrily. Another man came, we were the center of a gang of angry men, yelling at us. Njoke handled this well. We were escorted to a guard shack where a man in military uniform told us this has happened to other visitors - this area is not posted that photos are forbidden - we’d have to surrender the cameras. They agreed to watch Njoke and Joe delete the photos of the sand divers. The uniformed man’s superior arrived and wasn’t satisfied. We showed our passports and talked about why we’re in Cameroon. Njoke sent us to wait at the truck. After 10 minutes he returned, poorer by quite a bit.
--We drove on to the town of Tiko, then turned down a dusty bumpy road through miles of banana plantation that is owned by the Cameroon Development Corporation and leased to Del Monte Foods until we entered the headquarters clearing where Njoke had arranged that we’d meet the plant manager and have a tour of the plantation. We waited and waited, a message arrived via Njoke’s son-in-law who works there that the plant manager apologized for a conflict and he couldn’t meet with us. The son-in-law answered a lot of questions and told things we didn’t think to ask. It was fascinating to see hundreds of stalks of bananas that had been cut from their respective trees in the orchard and hung on a trolley that delivers them to a shed where a protective blue plastic bag is removed, the bananas are inspected and washed, and sent on to a packing shed to be boxed for shipment to foreign countries.
--Back on the road it wasn’t long till we were in Limbe. We were here two years ago but until today we had little concept of the size of this old city – certainly not a sleepy little town, and Njoke knows his way around well. Alfred Saker, a German Presbyterian missionary, arrived in 1885. His work was accepted well – today the Presbyterian church is firmly established and very influential in Cameroon. Less savory, in the 18th and 19th centuries this natural port was the site of very active slaving and ivory export trade.
--We spent a few hours touring the Limbe Botanical Gardens – created in the late 1800s by the German occupants, it has survived political and governmental ups and downs – today it is renowned for tropical plant research and the beautiful grounds. Predictably, Joe enjoyed examining and identifying many of the trees and plants. It is serene here, and we took good advantage of the unhurried experience, savoring the peace and beauty.
--We then walked over a knoll to a seaside restaurant where we had a late lunch/early supper of rice with red sauce, fried plantains, and fried chicken, and of course we washed it all down with good beer. We sat and visited until twilight, then to the hotel.
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