25: Into the clouds in Cameroon

10.30 a.m. Wednesday 22nd April - thunk thunk - a smile spread across our faces as we heard the faceless, nameless clerk in the consular office at the Angolan embassy in Abuja pound the embossing stamp onto our one-month long tourist visas. With only a visa for Gabon left to collect in Cameroon, and visa-free passage through southern Africa guaranteed, it looks like the great African visa hunt may be drawing to a close for this part of the trip. With the bureaucratic barriers enroute to the Cape cast aside, we were back in business. All we have to do now is cycle there.

Beyond the thoughtfully planned and comparatively pristine streets of Abuja, lay the sprawling eastern satellite towns of Nyanyan and Mararaba, where many hopeful souls have gravitated to, aspiring to urban fortunes. Minibus taxis and okada riders wove perilously close as they tried to attract clients by honking their horns. Soon the urban din receded, however, and we were passing through the agricultural states of Nassarawa and Benue. We camped in fields that had been washed green during our layover in Abuja. The rains had now begun in earnest and the occasional thunderstorm broke out during the night, sending us out to hammer down tent pegs. Strong winds usually give warning of impending downpours. Then the rain starts and shortly thereafter the water typically breaches the first and only line of defence, my outer fly-sheet. From then on I'm confined to a the small dry portion of an already rather small tent. Tucked up into a fetal position I avoid the worst of the inundation. Tomorrow there will be sun. Before nine the evidence will have evaporated into another hot day.

The beginning of the rainy season also heralds a return to the fields for the farmers who are now busy ploughing and planting next season's harvest. Makurdi marks our midway point to the border from Abuja and we stopover for Nigeria's answer to McDonald's, Mr.Bigg's, and a couple of bottles of Star to celebrate life on the road. As we search for a guesthouse at sunset, Peter is accosted by a member of Nigeria's notorious State Security Service (SSS), as Peter asks for directions at a junction. The man has no identification, however, and encouraged by passersby, Peter rides off. Moments later we're both pulled over by several motorbikes and a crowd gathers as our documents are examined and we're asked several inane questions that only the truly suspicious, truly bored, or truly dumb could ask. The encounter is brief, however, and soon we're on our way again.

Leaving Makurdi a mangled motorbike lays in two separate sections across the road. The driver couldn't have survived. We find out later that he didn't. Twisted metal carcasses lie all along the roads in Nigeria and the combination of ancient trucks, fast cars, overloaded minibus taxis and often poorly maintained roads, leaves conditions ripe for wholesale carnage. Later on the same day we find ourselves caught out in the darkness, trying in vain to find a secluded spot to pitch our tents. We're invisible to the oncoming vehicles, overtaking two or three at a time. We roll down a lane as lightning over the mountains to our east sporadically lights up the night sky. We find a clapped-out Peugout pick-up parked under a mango tree and Jacob is talking with a neighbour as we ask if we can be put up for the night. Of course it's no problem and once the rain arrives, a couple of other passersby also run into the compound to seek shelter. Jacob farms oranges and dinner consisted of a biblical quantity of vitamin C. The following morning we're served up with pounded yam and a piece of tender, unidentified meat. Such kindness and generosity. We're sent on our way with the blessing of God.

The road to Bissaula

From Takum, in Taraba state, we begin our final trek out of Nigeria. A rough 80 kilometre track brings us to the small border village of Bissaula. We stamp out in the evening at the candlelit immigration post. Then we're asked to produce our international vaccine certificates. After meticulous examination of the yellow book, including the Gaelic script, the officer announces with great authority and a swelling chest that our certificates are indeed valid. Peter tells the man we realise that and if he's done there's a UEFA semi-final starting in a few minutes. "What can you give me?", the officer asks with a greedy smile breaking across his face. "Our friendship" Peter quickly adds, using a now well-tested phrase, as we grab our yellow books and go to seek a hot and airless room to rent for the night. Peter wanders off to see if he can watch the football in a nearby house where a generator and satellite dish brings the match live to this small, remote outpost in west Africa, while I chat with Sunday, a Cameroonian living in the village with his young wife and daughter. His daughter dribbles on my shoulder and cries when I smile at her.

Lizard for dinner?

The official border is a few kilometers further down a progressively narrower track. After a mango and banana break in Agabi, the last settlement in Nigeria, we splash through the shallow River Donga and into Cameroon. The first settlements we pass through appear no different than those on the other side of the river, except for more tattered Cameroon football tops in evidence. Like many of the borders that resulted from the colonial carve up of Africa, the same ethnic groups found themselves divided by an international border that means little to the people living in the area. Shortly after crossing into Cameroon we begin to climb into the north western highlands, beginning a three-day epic journey that marks the toughest stretch of the journey so far. The track rose up at gravity defying angles making cycling impossible on the steepest sections. Initially we could push or pull the bikes, but then I settled for removing the bags and carting items up, then the bike, and then doing the same all over again. Progress could be measured in inches per hour. Descending was no less challenging, down the deeply rutted and boulder-strewn track. Bemused and friendly villagers greeted us with benches in the shade and asked about our trip, while we asked about life in the village. "Why were we doing this?" Damned if I know.

Things got steep

We stumbled into Ako at sunset, the first immigration post into Cameroon. At the police station, a man with a large tooth on a chain around his neck, and scars from numerous fights that deformed the right side of his face, told us he would fetch the chief. The commissioner was a jovial fellow and after a cursory glance through our passports, said there was no problem if we wanted to camp outside the station. Later in the evening, while Peter caught the second UEFA semi final, I sat under the night sky, drinking a beer with the commissioner as we discussed topics from Chinese imports to what the Obama administration might mean for relations between the US and Africa.

After a breakfast of rice and kidney beans we were on our way to Nkambe, one of the larger towns in the highlands, and at 1770 metres one of the higher ones too. We were assured that the road between Ako and Nkambe wasn't too bad and the distance was approximately 40 kilometres, but we would be climbing over 1200 metres. After a couple of hours of cycling it was clear that the previous day's exertions had taken their toll. As the road rose once more into gravity-defying ascents, it looked increasingly unlikely that we would be able to make to Nkambe before evening. By 2pm we had collapsed beside a water pipe in the hillside village of Jeyu, wincing at yet another vertical slope that lay before us. There was no food prepared in the village, but I was able to buy some rice in a shop that someone had in their bedroom, and a smiling girl offered to cook for us. By 5pm we were staying the night and we spent the evening chatting with worldly men who farmed the steep slopes of the surrounding tropical forest. Our host, Exodus, was a carpenter who had returned after a decade in the cities to his native village to raise his family and grow the best pineapples in Cameroon. He studied our map of west Africa and then we went through all of the African heads of state, pictured on a tattered poster on his wall, trying to decide which were still in power. Most of them are.

Kids in Jeyu village, Cameroon

It was with dismay that I noticed the hill was still there when I looked outside into the slowly brightening morning the next day. A couple of hours later, after a breakfast of pounded soya beans and cooked bananas, we'd said our goodbyes and were waved off by a group of villagers who stood to watch our progress up the hill. We pedaled about ten metres before being reduced to pushing the bikes again. Several more kilometres of vertical ascent and the shouts of Polish swear words began to die out as the road levelled out. We'd made it. We looked back down the green, mist-covered valley and I marvelled how similar it looked, albeit on a grander scale, to landscapes much more familiar to me.

Wicklow or the Cameroon highlands?

We finally rolled into Nkambe on an overcast and chilly first of May. Labour Day was being celebrated with unbridled fervour and the shebeens and bars around town were filled to capacity and pumping out loud beats. A taxi passed me in the centre of town, its engine on fire and the driver oblivious to the warning shouts of bystanders. We've taken a couple of days off to see if our legs will work again and yesterday, as I began checking my emails and typing up this posting, Miina and Kristiina sat down beside me in the small internet cafe. We had actually passed them by on our way out of Ako, returning their wave, but not stopping to talk. They had been visiting the Ako area from Finland, in order to assess the needs of disabled children living in the area. They downloaded the photos they'd been taking over the previous couple of weeks and they told a much different story from my own. Untreated infections that had been left for years, causing kids to live with great pain. Whole families almost blind because there were no glasses available for them. They represented a Finnish organisation, Jaatinen, that was set up to monitor the rights of the disabled, and they were setting up links with a Cameroonian partner, but it was their first time in Africa and the two weeks had clearly taken a great toll as they realised the scale of the problems that they faced. They spoke of searching for a clean bandage in Ako, so that a child's leg that had been left infected for three years, could be dressed before they arranged surgery for him. They were only able to find one bandage after visiting the two pharmacies in town. There were two hospitals in Ako but only one had running water and neither had any electrical power.

When such stories are told and I recall the scale of problems that many communities face in the areas I pass through, I often find myself questioning the value of travel in such regions. What purpose does travel provide in such situations? Is it merely voyeuristic to pass through such places? Would it not be far better to work in a capacity that could help make change rather than merely being a silent witness? Ultimately, however, regardless of the unease that I sometimes feel, I still believe that travel has a higher value than simply being an experiential activity and that the interaction that occurs between cultures can, in its own small way, be a positive force for greater understanding between people. Or perhaps not. Yet Stevenson was right, the great affair is indeed to move. Even if there is the odd tempest, it still floats my boat.

Nkambe, Cameroon

Trip distance: 14,266 km

24: Going to seed in Abuja

The days are blending into one interminable wait here in Nigeria's capital, Abuja. I've established routines and am beginning to feel institutionalised. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest comes to mind, although this time it's set in Abuja, in a collapsing tent at the back of the Sheraton. I'm not sure I will be able to face the outside world again.

Days begin in the pre-dawn hours when the national mosque, several hundred metres away, rouses me from my sleep. I climb out of the tent and before a morning audience gathers at the breakfast bar in the hotel, I take a wash - the bar overlooks the outdoor shower that we're allowed to use and is beside the swimming pool. We don't get into the pool itself because that would blow our daily budget straight out of the water, pun intended, before we've even tracked down a rice and beans lady. I thought we might have been threatened with eviction notices by this point, but the novelty of cycling through Africa still seems to have some charm and our sob story about waiting for Peter's new passport and our mythical Angolan visas still persuades those with the power to let us be. And we are very grateful. We've slowly accumulated bits and pieces of furniture. An old dining table. A couple of rotten bamboo chairs rescued from incineration. We'll start building the walls around our patch of land under the mango trees any day now.

In the meantime our daily rituals evolve around trips to the 'rice and bean lady' and the 'noodles and egg man', whose illegal stalls are clumped around the public toilets outside the hotel's entrance. Across the continent, illegal street hawkers often face harassment from officialdom. Yesterday morning Peter witnessed the town council arriving in a pick-up truck with a nonchalent, machine-gun toting policeman and they began confiscating food and property from the hawkers, which can apparently be retreived upon payment of a 1000 Naira fine, thereby further reducing their already miniscule profit margins.

Besides consuming food and swatting mosquitoes in the evening, reading and the internet feature high on the things to do. I found a book stall after a couple of days and have become a gold-card customer in the space of a week, rotating Grisham and Ludlum novels on an almost daily basis. There are few other author's to choose from - so I now dream about courtroom battles and the CIA. We went to the nearby cinema once, for the novelty, and saw Marley and Me, but it was so cold inside with the air-conditioning on full blast that we haven't been back. Hopefully our Angolan visas will be ready to collect sometime next week and we'll be back on the road again.

As I've been going to seed here in Abuja, I've also made some changes to the blog (changed the address and title to the highly original 'The Slow Way Home'), as well as deciding that now, in the midst of a global economic recession, there really isn't a better time to do a long trip, blow all the savings, and pedal my way back home through the Americas and Asia. A personal rite-of-passage, if you like, or as many family members might argue - a convenient way to evade looking for a proper job for another couple of years! Very exciting times indeed. I've also decided that the trip is a great opportunity to do a little (well hopefully a lot) of fundraising, and after much thought I've selected the Peter McVerry Trust as the recipient of the money raised. I've created my own fundraising page on the mycharity.ie website where donations can be made. The Trust works primarily in the Dublin area, supporting young homeless people. Father Peter McVerry has long been a great inspiration to me whenever I've listened to him speak or read his writings, as he provides a voice for the homeless and marginalised and challenges those who have the power to make changes to do so. All donations will allow the Peter McVerry Trust to continue to support the many young homeless people that they assist and bring new hope to and create new possibilities for.

Abuja, Nigeria

Trip distance: 13, 566 km

23: "Welcome to Nigeria! What is the purpose of your mission?"

Finding a point to cross the border from Benin to Nigeria was harder than expected. Two days after leaving Abomey and riding north to the town of Save, we had wandered across a network of dirt roads, all of which we were assured led to Nigeria. A barrier lay across the track at the end of Oke Ewo village and a group of men who were lazing about under a mango tree, suddenly became animated at the sight of the cycling yovo's. The chief of the border post was summoned from his nearby thatched hut and he soon appeared, smiling in his bedraggled uniform. After telling us he didn't have an exit stamp to put in our passports, he assured us that we didn't require one when leaving Benin. We waved goodbye to Benin and, with no small amount of intrepedation, we rode down the track to a dried-out riverbed and pulled the bikes through the sand and into Nigeria.

Our first road in Nigeria

After climbing a steep track on the other side of the river, we appeared in front of a smoldering fire and several apparently deserted camp-beds. After several progressively louder "hello's" an immigration officer clambered up from one of the beds and cradling his M-16 machine gun, came over to meet his new arrivals. The bad news was that he didn't have an entry stamp for our passports, but the good news was that we had crossed at the wrong village and just a couple of kilometer's away, in the village of Wasimi, was the main immigration office and more importantly the Government-approved road that would lead us further into Oyo State and eastern Nigeria. Mohammad was alone but decided that we were sufficiently important to warrant the abandoning of his post, so that he could escort us on his Chinese motorbike through the forest to Wasimi. Thirty minutes later we were presented to the chief immigration officer, a friendly and, judging by the reading material on his desk, also a devout man from Lagos. After greeting us, his opening question was whether we would like beer or water. Three hours later we emerged into the late afternoon after having been cooked a meal of rice and sardines and been given a very favourable exchange rate on the Nigerian Naira to the US dollar. Nigeria wasn't looking so bad. I had read enough about Nigeria to ensure that I approached the prospect of cycling across the country with a rather large degree of caution. Yet, like many places, the reality is that much of the trouble that gets portrayed in the international press is confined to quite specific areas. In Nigeria's case, this means the troubled oil-producing states in the Niger Delta and a number of other places where ethnic and religious conflict occasionally boil over.

The police service must surely be one of the largest employers in Nigeria. The presence of police is unlike any other country that I had passed through yet on the trip and close to the border areas, road blocks are a constant feature, appearing every few kilometers. Checkpoints employ not only many thousands of police officers, but also a myriad of other government agencies that seek to check whether vehicles are overloaded, whether drivers have their licences up-todate, and perhaps whether Nigerian's brush their teeth every morning. Requests for 'dashes', however, are generally confined to the harrassed local motorists, and my tactics for evading such requests when flagged down include keeping the officers talking - a verbal bombardment with questions about the road ahead, my love for their country, and the merits of toe-clips, before indicting that it's either too hot or too late in the day to delay, and with that pedal off down the road.

Taxis in Ilorin, Kwara State

After four days riding and camping through the picturesque countryside of Oyo State and engaging with very friendly and helpful Nigerians, we found ourselves at the end of a sandy track, late one afternoon, in the village of Malete in Kwara State. After chatting with some workers and students from the local 'youth farm', we were told that there was a Zimbabwean managing the farm and after being introduced to Hamish, we spent a couple of nights pitched up on his front lawn and enjoyed the luxuries of satellite television, fresh meat, and cold beer. The youth farm was set up to train unemployed youngsters about aspects of commercial farming and to provide them with enough skills that they could embark on their own agricultural projects upon completion.

From Malete we tried to avoid taking the lethal main roads to Abuja, and instead followed a route that led us south along the Niger River to a crossing point at Patigi. The last time I had crossed the river was early in the New Year in Bamako. The morning before we reached Patigi we were confronted by a policeman in the village of Gbugbu who seemed intent on proving that we were carting 'incriminating items' around Africa on our bicycles. After asking to be given time to eat our breakfast as we were both very hungry, he agreed, only to return shortly afterward with a colleague in tow. A call was made to the chief of police in town and it was agreed that we would have to present ourselves in front of him to prove that we were indeed tourists, as the explanation was clearly a highly suspicious one for our new escort to comprehend. Fortunately the chief of police was a relatively sensible fellow and appeared quite bemused at our presentation and after a quick interrogation about the content of our panniers we were descending towards Patigi and the Niger.

A small motorboat was waiting to depart when we reached the river and after overloading the boat with three motorbikes, two bicycles, and ten men we crossed over to the northern bank, where long-horned cattle churned up the dry earth into a thick mist of dust as they returned home from a day of grazing. We camped up in a cleared field and I managed a quick wash with a 500ml sachet of drinking water before being driven into the tent by the hordes of mosquitoes that had launched a full scale war on me.

March and April, during the period before the rains begin in earnest, are the hottest months in Nigeria and temperatures are regularly in the high 30s these days. Following a couple of punctures in my rear tube in the searing heat on the way to Patigi, it was Peter's turn the following morning to attract crowds of children as he repaired his tubes. In the village of Jima we spent an enjoyable afternoon avoiding the sun by sitting in the shade of a large mango tree and chatting with Abubakar, a retired agricultural engineer, who now stayed at home taking care of his 107-year old mother.

From Bida we spent a couple of days cycling via Lapai and Gawu to Suleja before arriving in the federal capital of Nigeria, Abuja. Following the unceremonious eviction of the pastoral communities that previously inhabited the area, the city has been built from scratch over the past thirty years. With its modern, multi-story buildings jutting skywards, alongside the nearby Aso rock, wide roads, and visible opulence, Abuja stands in stark contrast to the rest of the country. The city was conceived of as a neutral site for a federal capital that could start afresh and break away from the ethnic divisions that beleaguered other cities and regions in Nigeria. In reality, however, the model city feels rather empty, devoid of the street life that is found in other Nigerian towns. Everything doubles or triples in price inside the confines of Abuja and with reasonably priced lodgings being virtually non-existent, we're fortunate in being able to pitch our tents in the grounds of the salubrious Sheraton hotel, behind the tennis courts.

Abubakar and the kids of Jima village, Niger State

Having obtained a letter of introduction from the Irish embassy, we're now waiting for Peter's temporary passport to be issued by the Polish embassy before we can begin the visa application process for Cameroon, the Congo, and Angola. So it looks like we'll be here for a week or two at least. This is a frustrating aspect of traveling in the region, as we pass through so many places where it would be great to spend more time and yet we get cornered into hanging around large cities that hold little immediate appeal as we chase up more visas. Anyhow, for the moment there is enough to keep me occupied and we hope to get moving towards Cameroon soon before the rainy season arrives and all the dust turns to mud!

Day 246

Abuja, Nigeria

Trip distance: 13,566 km