Life at the limit

This has been my motto for the past week. Every day, it feels like, there is something new, something weird, something fascinating to throw me off my game. And for some reason I don’t even mean this in a bad way. Not necessarily anyhow.

My first taxi experience for instance. People here use shared cabs. Which to me is more like hitchhiking- but hey. You stand in a group of many, many people at the edge of the trafficked street. When the taxis slow down you simply yell out your destination and the price you are offering. Sometimes you get lucky and reach work within a couple of minutes. Sometimes, you stand there wondering if anyone will ever take you. My first day alone, I thought I got lucky. The first taxi let me in. 250 Francs- local price, great, I thought. Promptly, however, he took a different route. Immediately making sure he was still going to my destination, he confirmed and informed me of the traffic jams he wanted to avoid. About 47 seconds later he changed his mind. And threw me out. He didn’t want to go to my work- to much traffic. So I got out of the taxi- not knowing where I was of course. I had been in Yaoundé for 2 days! Panic may be a too strong word for my feeling, but it came close. Even if I called a colleague to collect me, I didn’t even know how to describe the place. There are no bus stops or anything that could lead the way for a foreigner.

The only thing I could think of is look for a good place to stop the next taxi, not really knowing if the route was the right one. It took me a good thirty minutes to find a cab- squeezed into the front seat with another person- seat belts are overrated anyhow- until I finally reached work.

Endlessly tired and a little proud to have managed this by myself I started my work day.

As if the taxi drive itself isn’t a reason to pray anyway. You trust a random person and get in their car. They take routes no one would even consider calling “street”. They could take you anywhere and no one would know or find you. You drive on roads that have holes so deep the tire could get stuck. You can hit your head driving over speed bumps. It is crazy.