Infrastructure (11 March, 2010)

We who live in the western world do not realize how lucky we are!

Cameroon is a beautiful country, a microcosm of the Africa with all its varied climates and its diversity of people. Cameroonians we meet are friendly, intelligent, hardworking and loyal. They work in a world that is manual and hard, with little infrastructure to support them.

The company that supplies electricity in Camroon is AES, locally known as “Always expect shortages”. Every day, there are power cuts: some last for seconds, some for hours. In the last three days, Dave has been trying to replace the power bar for my laptop. There is no problem finding it, but the shop no electricity the two times Dave went to buy it – so we can’t make sure it works. Imagine what that would be like in your life. Still, when the lights went out yesterday, I found it quite enjoyable to sit in the dark of our hotel room and listen to the chanting outside with no pressure to hurry.

There are major, paved highways that connect different parts of Cameroon. Cities have their main roads tarred. Other than those however, roads are unpaved, revealing the deep rust colour of the soil. They all have bumps (big ones) and potholes (big ones). With the rainy season, what you get is a lot of red mud. When buses travel on the dirt roads during rainy season, they often get stuck. Apparently out of nowhere, several men appear to push the bus out. In a country of extreme poverty, repairing that road may mean the loss of livelihood for some.

Drains are interesting in Cameroon. They are 2 foot concrete trenches, about 18” wide sometimes covered with wood or concrete slats. that line both sides of roadways. Last Tuesday, Dave and I went off early for dinner so that we could go to the internet café before meeting our colleagues, now friends really, at the restaurant. There were heavy rains on Tuesday so off we go, carrying our rain gear and making our way down the mud lane that leads to the main road. It is dark. Streetlights are few and far between here. We are almost at a main road when, in a effort to avoid a big mud puddle, I side step right into the trench. Suddenly, I am on my behind in this hole, with no foothold as it was on a hill and at the exact point where the trench took a step down of about 2 feet. Three or four men appeared out of nowhere to help out. A car and two motor bikes stopped to shed light on the situation. People were fabulous! With a little effort, I was hauled out of the gutter (literally), with some pretty severe scratches but lucky that there was nothing broken. I hobbled back to the hotel with Dave continually repeating “Boy, were you lucky” Entering the lobby with my skirt all muddy and stinging some from the scrapes, it was hard to see his point.

Then there is the water. There is running water everywhere but in remote areas. Water systems are iffy. Today, we had no hot water in our hotel room. The service is excellent however and it was repaired within half and hour of brining the problem to the hotel’s attention.

When I finally reached our room after Tuesday’s adventure, I headed straight for the shower with some my clothes and my sandals still on to wash all the mud off. When done, I put my sandals on the balcony to dry, all the time noticing that there was water dripping from the ceiling into the bathroom. No big deal, we would tell the hotel staff tomorrow. Back from dinner, we noticed that the drips were more frequent, but since the drain for the shower is in the middle of the bathroom floor, we thought, shut the door so that it does not keep us awake and off to sleep we go. Those of you who know Ottawa airport will know what I mean when I refer to the fall sliding down the big stone wall. That is what we woke to in the morning – a steady stream of water coming down the bathroom wall on the inside and the same coming down the wall to the balcony. Since no-one had thought to put drain holes in the balcony, I found my sandals lazily floating in three inches of water that was slowly backing up into the room. Luckily, nothing was damaged and they put us in a new room right away.

So, as I said, we westerners are very lucky, especially where material things are concerned. But you know, the people here are happy and friendly. They party and laugh a lot. They are creative and resilient. And there is a lot to be said for that!