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Here we are then...

I'm a freelance writer, just landed in Asia after a couple of years in Africa and almost three decades in Europe. I received the wonderful gift of typepad from a good friend so I'm taking this opportunity to post some old and new writing plus my photo collection.

A Tale of Two Second Cities has been rattling around the inside of my hard drive for some time, ever since I arrived in Cameroon in 2002, in fact. I've dusted it down and put it on display where it's waiting shyly in the wings to be read.

Here's a taster, if you like it, feel free to read on:

After one too many cold but sweaty (an anomaly of the British winter) bus journeys to the Merry Hell Shopping Centre, near England's second city of Birmingham, I decided to emigrate. Another second city, Douala in Cameroon, seemed as good a choice as any. I was very worried about crime, racial tension, poverty and disease. So it was good to leave all that behind...

Part One: The Airport... The first thing that struck me when I got off the plane was a man in military fatigues carrying a gun who was there to greet me. My husband did tell me that someone would be waiting to ease my way through the complexities of immigration, but Queen of the Package Deal as I am, I expected a nice lady with a clip board...

(Now, if you want to know what else happened in The Airport, click on the link to the right).

Tale of Two Second Cities - The Price

Everything in Cameroon is "discutable" – a French word describing how a Cameroonian salesman will set the price of any given object at such an impossible, outrageous, astronomical figure that the average expat gets right back in his 4x4 and drives straight to the airport.

Some examples of starting prices I’ve been quoted:

Small wooden mask to match the one I’d previously bought from the same salesman for less than a pound: £80. Eventual price of purchase – less than a pound.

Smoke alarm of the type sold in UK DIY stores for a fiver: £770. Price when I point out that the first price seems a bit steep - £60.

A Jeep Cherokee which looked as though it’d had a particularly hard life and had been parked by the side of the road for 6 months with a For Sale sign in the back window: £36,000. Eventual selling price – none, it’s still there.

And the most outrageous of all: at a very well known international bank, which shall remain nameless, when asking for the interest rates on a loan. "4% per annum, Madame, but of course, it’s discutable". You might think, you can’t barter in a bank - that’s ridiculous. No, that’s Cameroon.

If the sense of outrage doesn’t send you over the edge, then the other option is to haggle, but if that is your chosen path in life, then you have to clear your diary. Time in Cameroon just doesn’t cost as much as it does elsewhere – people here can afford loads and loads of it. I’ve known discussions for something as simple as a terracotta plant pot to take a week. Obviously you can go home, sleep and eat in between bids, but even so it goes on a bit.

Fortunately, the man with the plant pots has his stall alongside a very busy Douala route. I’d spotted a nice, simple planter and pulled over to ask him the price. He narrowed his eyes, stroked his chin, glanced at my car to judge how much I’m worth (happily, I drive a particularly knackered old Mazda, which always disappoints them – there’s no point going shopping in the husband’s Range Rover, they start getting out the cruise brochures while he’s still putting on the handbrake) and made a decision – "I give you good price, Madame, very good price, Madame, come closer, come closer, Madame, the price of this pot is a secret, Madame, just between me and you, Madame, come and stand closer to this open sewer behind my stall, that’s better, yes, this pot has a very good price, this pot is just four hundred pounds (long pause to consider the impact of this on his openly irritated client) mais, c’est discutable".

I point out that it’s just one small terracotta pot, and if I’d wanted one cast in platinum and encrusted with gemstones I would have gone to Tiffany’s of New York, and ask him to name his third price. This throws him for about half a second, until he realises that my little joke indicates that I’m up for the full-on, no holds barred, get the beers in and settle down into a comfy chair, discussion of the price. A broad smile lights up his face – if there’s one thing a Cameroonian market stall holder likes more than making money, it’s discussing money.

I head for my car, and shout over my shoulder that my opening bid is a pound, take it or leave it. He announces that he will see me tomorrow, and puts the pot in the back for safekeeping. For the rest of the week, every time I drive past his stall I shout a new figure out of the window, until on the sixth day, he gives an imperceptible nod and accepts a fiver. As I screech to a halt, several taxi drivers spontaneously combust in anger at my driving (my driving?!), and he lobs the pot in the back. Job done.

Tale of Two Second Cities - The Pygmies

We were invited to take a canoe trip to a Pygmy village. Probably the oldest residents of Cameroon, the Pygmies are famous for being small and for maintaining their traditional lifestyle when almost everyone else has opted for hot running water and shoes.

I was in two minds about it. On the one hand, I quite fancied travelling up the river with the rainforest tumbling down into the water. On the other, the thought of marching into someone’s village ‘to see how they live’ smacked of a Victorian freak show.

Principles left in the hotel room, six of us fell into a big dugout canoe with an outboard motor strapped to the back. As we set off it occurred to me that I didn’t really know where I was, I’d never met our ‘guide’ Balthazar before, and I didn’t have a clue what was living in the river. Plus, as I’d only been invited that morning and we were away from home, I was wearing a pair of strappy sandals with little kitten heels. Everything about this trip screamed of a really bad idea, but we were here now so off we went.

The boat listed dangerously to one side so that the left rim of the canoe was at water level. Balthazar was leaning nonchalantly over the left hand side with his fingers trailing in the water and the laws of physics told me that if there is more weight on one side than the other then it’s much more likely that a canoe will sink and its occupants will be eaten by crocodiles. So I poked Balthazar and told him to sit in the middle. He fixed me with a look of infinite disdain and said that he was making the boat lean left on purpose so that water won’t come in through this giant hole in the right hand side of the canoe. He leant over to point at the giant hole and, indeed, water came rushing in. Balthazar handed me the cut-off bottom of a bottle of mineral water so I could bail out, and then moved back to the left hand side, looking, I have to say, a little bit smug.

Remarkably, we arrived at the Pygmy village. Unfortunately, they were out. We went further upstream. Our friends had been before and the Pygmy chief had asked them to return with specific gifts, namely soap, salt and bras. Heavily laden with our precious cargo we marched (well, I sort of sashayed on account of the heels) through the mud up to the Chief’s hut.

Everyone stood around looking a bit awkward, as you would if someone had just knocked on your front door and with no word of explanation, handed you a couple of packets of Lux and a greying Marks and Spencer balconette. We’d been told that in thanks for the gifts, the Pygmies would perform their traditional dance. Instead, the Chief gathered his sons around him (a Pygmy chief has the right to sleep with all the women of the village, so as you might imagine it was quite a crowd) and with many suspicious glances over his shoulder in our direction, appeared to be holding a council of war.

Our presents, it seems, were not appropriate. What they really wanted was whiskey, fags and cold hard cash. So, rather like the rest of the world, then? It soon became apparent that a very expensive watch, such as the one adorning the wrist of one of our party, would be a suitable alternative. The only option was to back out of the village, muttering grave threats about European witch doctors who empower watches to protect the souls of their owner, and if someone was to, for example, mug a person in the middle of the rainforest and nick their Rolex, then a horrible end would be meted out to the thief. Before they could question us further about the true extent of our Western ju-ju, we legged it.

(Note from the writer: Elsewhere in Cameroon, if you're prepared to make a much longer and more arduous journey, there are many communities of true Ba'aka, or pygmies. Living deep in the rainforest they are masters of their environment and experts in hunting, fishing, natural medicine and forest lore.)

Tale of Two Second Cities - The Airport

The first thing that struck me when I got off the plane was a man in military fatigues carrying a gun who was there to greet me. My husband did tell me that someone would be waiting to ease my way through the complexities of immigration, but Queen of the Package Deal as I am, I expected a nice lady with a clipboard.

Michele – not since John Wayne has there been a more unlikely candidate for a man with a girl’s name – created quite a stir when he grabbed my upper arm and hauled me out of the queue at passport control. As we marched off he put me on the opposite side from his gun, keeping it visible, and kept looking back over both shoulders, as though bandits would appear on the luggage carousel.

It was actually rather cool because my fellow travellers were looking at me as though I was either a) someone important or b) being arrested in a country whose language has no word for ‘parole’. At a fast trot we passed through immigration, pausing only for Michele to snatch my passport, disappear into a booth where he had an animated row with a brave member of airport staff, and then out into arrivals where I spotted my husband (hurrah!) at whose feet I was delivered.

Mission accomplished, Michele kept lookout while my husband and I had a bit of a hug and a kiss - while my back was turned he probably did a thousand press-ups - and then we made our way out to the battlefield otherwise known as the car park. Sending small children flying with a flick of his finger (I thought they were just standing there minding their own business, but clearly they were begging in some devious, inobtrusive way) Michele got us safely to our vehicle.

After such a gun-toting start to the trip I was expecting to have to clamber up into the passenger seat of a four-wheel safari jeep with special anti-rhino side impact bars. But it was a Volkeswagon Polo.

Undeterred, I heartily thanked Michele for saving my life and my luggage, and we bid him goodbye. Happily, it looks like he’s going to help us when we go back, and I’m hoping a heavily-armed, battle-scared mercenary might get me upgraded to Business Class.