Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand. - Alan Bennett

5 September 2019, Chinese camp to Boumnyebel, 42.8km
Hotel le Relais 15,000CFA (R375)  

There is an old Irish joke about someone asking for directions of a man whose punchline is “If you want to go there, this is not a good place to start”. If you want to get to Douala, the Chinese camp on the incomplete double-carriage highway that will one day link Yaoundé and Douala, is not a good place to start. The 40km of completed tar (bitumin) we rode yesterday ended just after the road construction camp for workers where we spent the night. From there we had two options to link up with the road to Douala, neither appealing. One was to turn left off the highway, taking the gravel piste (track) to Matomb, and soon thereafter picking up the N3 to Douala. The other was to continue along the now unpaved Chinese highway to a town whose name I did not catch, and there pick up the N3. Mr Kelvin, our “host” from last night, had recommended the Matomb road, saying that if it rained, the unpaved highway was almost impossible to travel.
As it was drizzling when we left the camp, we opted to turn left toward Matomb, and found ourselves on a narrow red gravel road, and there my heart sank and I thought: “If this is the good road, I don’t want to see the bad”. Deeply rutted in places, mushy in others, the road climbed and dropped through forested hills on a day where it drizzled some and the sun shone hot some. Where it was mushy, usually in the dip between drop and climb, potholes of unknown depth were filled with rainwater, the road surface slippery before, after and between the potholes. Here people have taken to walking or riding their autocycles on the verges, effectively widening the road, until these sections too become mudbaths for the incautious. The inclines were much too steep to cycle, forcing us often off the saddles and onto our feet. So steep were they, almost the full weight of the laden bikes had to be pushed up them, draining hands and arms and shoulders of the will to live! It was only 15km to Matomb and its tar road, but it took us several hours.
Finally in Matomb, we popped into a bar/restaurant for a quick softdrink, and there met a teacher who said he had no students to teach and would return on Monday to the area where he teaches to see if the kids had come to school. Charl later heard on the news that in some Anglophone areas children are boycotting school…
Just beyond Matomb we turned onto the N3 which currently links Yaoundé and Douala. The road is not in good nick, with some potholes and rough sections, and a little too narrow for the fast-moving traffic. Although much of it includes a shoulder, this varies in width from under a metre to almost non-existent, and is uneven and unpleasant to cycle. For the first time since entering Cameroon, we have encountered some impatience from drivers - a product of faster-moving expectations - who hoot to insist we take to the shoulder. We don’t like to hold up traffic and try to be accommodating, but it does make for a more nerve-wracking ride.
Again today we were stopped by gendarmes at a roadblock. Several men, all sporting and using super-loud whistles, made it clear while we were still some distance from the block that we were to stop there. They did not ask for our passports, asking rather several questions about our doings: where had we come from, where were we headed, where were we sleeping? Then one counted out the eight men surrounding us and asked us to buy them drinks. Aside from disapproving of officialdom imbibing alcohol on the job, and especially at our expense, Charl and I are determined not to pay any bribes* on this trip. I just said: “Oh no, we don’t buy drinks” and they laughed it off and sent us on our way without any hard feelings. *Later, we decided this request did not really qualify as a bribe as it was not linked to a threat or implied threat to exercise power at our expense. It was more like begging, the assumption being that whites have money and are willing to spend it, or feel some residual racial guilt and are willing to pay for it. When we mentioned we were from South Africa, one man, clearly angered, mentioned the xenophobic attacks currently ruining lives back home where Nigerians and their stores have come under attack and several murdered. This has resulted in violence against South African businesses in Nigeria. So sad and so pointless, all of it.
We are staying at the brand-new Hotel le Relais just beyond the peage (toll) and marché (market). In fact, work on the hotel is still in progress, but our room, though not yet sporting running water or anywhere to hang clothes or towels, does have a brand new and comfortable mattress, always a plus. Oddly, our host and a security guard came back to our room shortly after settling us and said they wanted to search our baggage, a strictly-enforced hotel “rule”, to check for anything “dangerous”. They were diffident and polite, so I submitted with good grace. They ran out of enthusiasm before we ran out of bags, missing our pepper spray and police baton. At the peage, where drivers are forced to reduce speed, are vendors hawking manioc batons and dried plantain chips and tangerines.
We were up earlier than planned this morning, awoken by gospel music played loudly from around 05:30 by one of the workers. There is no sound-proofing between the rooms at the camp, constructed as they are of corrugated tin and wood, and no expectation of privacy. What there is, is an extraordinary tolerance of noise from neighbours (except from Charl and I who, like old farts, complain often to each other about the noise levels in Africa).
We dined, at a little restaurant crowded with small wood tables covered in floral plastic with plastic chairs in shocking pink and staid blue, on pre-cooked rice and extraordinarily tough chicken in a tasty sauce.

For today's route see below photos
For overview route, click on ROUTE tab above…