Wascally Wabbit

It's carrot season.  I found this out in Lagdo earlier in the week, and a lucky Cameroonian police officer found this out two days later because of yours truly.

 

I was on my way up to Maroua, the capital of the Extreme North province, for the weekend (I'm still there - here - now, as a matter of fact), and at the fork in the road (forchette dans la route? doesn't really translate) my bus got stopped by the the police checkpoint there.  Now much earlier in the day, I was hassled by a police officer at a bush taxi stop in Garoua trying to get some argent out of me, claiming that a bunch of tourists on Christmas Eve gave him some "motivation," and he wanted me to do the same.  I gleefully replied that I didn't understand French, which is sorta true I guess, but I exhausted his patience and he gave up.  The PC tells us to flat out refuse to pay any bribes for anything, whether it's the police, gendarmes, or the electric company, because it's annoying and feeds into the corruption problem (of course, you could argue that the presence of development workers feeds into the problem as well, but I digress...).

 

So fast forward a few hours on the bus (a real bus, different from the bush taxi), and we were stopped at the checkpoint.  While waiting, the bus driver buys a bunch of bags of carrots, and me sitting up front in shotty and being a whitey, he gave me one.  Right about then, the police officer is checking everyone's ID cards (cartes, en francais), and if you know me at all, you know I space out all the time.  This was one of those times.  I had the bag of carrots in my hand and the police officer had been pointing and saying very loudly at me, "Carte! Carte!" I looked at the bag of carrots in my hand (carote, en francais, see where this is going yet?), turned around, saw the man's finger in my face, then slowly offered him my bag of carrots.  Needless to say, he didn't take the bait, and I felt like the biggest jackass in the world.  I was then picked up by the collar and dragged out of the bus and thrown in jail. Just kidding. I showed him my carte de sejour and we all went on our merry way, except for the guy who didn't have his ID carte, he got kicked out of the bus. If only he had some carrots.

 

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#  Another random note, I was sitting in the bank last week, and this guy walks in wearing Credit du Sahel pagne (fabric) pants (think pajamas) and an Osama bin Laden t-shirt.  You have the essence of capitalism on the bottom, and the face of anti-Americanism on top.

 

#  Maroua is a really nice city.  I love me some Garoua (my provincial capital), but Maroua is about ten times less aggressive and I don't really feel like anyone's going to steal my shoes while I'm still walking.  There are a lot of trees, and it's amazing what some shade can do to a place.

 

#  Somehow Florida winning the BCS has to be Steve Spurrier's fault.

 

#  Happy belated birthday, Ian! Hope Stein Mart is kicking ass.