Waza

Here's a travelogue of a trip I took up to the Extreme North earlier this year at the end of April…

Waza/Maroua/Mozogo

Day 1

Lagdo to Mokolo direct should take maybe four or five hours in a perfect world. It's only 275 km or thereabouts away from Lagdo. I was traveling with my bike to pedal around Mozogo and Koza, towns 30 and 20 km, respectively, outside of Mokolo, and I had to take a bush taxi to Garoua, and from Garoua, a bus on the luxurious agency Tsanaga Express. I left Lagdo at 6:15 AM and arrived in Mokolo grumpy and disheveled eleven hours later at 5:15 PM. (Mokolo is a major town on the western side of the Extreme North. Maroua is the province's capital.)

I arrived in Garoua just fine, and the bus to Mokolo loaded up faster than I expected. All of the luggage and my bike were on the boat, but it was only until after the bus had been sitting there all morning that they realized something was wrong with the tire. Once we got on the road an hour later, it took 6 ½ hours to get to Mokolo because of a massive road construction project between Garoua and Guider. The guy next to me was perhaps the most boring person in the history of buses. He was speaking in Fulfuldé to his buddy next to him, and I was crying on the inside with boredom only understanding about 15% of his conversation. He also wouldn't fully sit back or forward, creating maximum discomfort since we're squished in five to a row designed for four. (He was talking about how it took him 12 hours to go from Garoua to N'gaoundéré once, an event that requires about two minutes to describe, not fifteen.)

Nevertheless, I arrived in Mokolo in one piece, and Brooke, posted in Mokolo, and Marcel, posted in Mozogo and my co-conspirator in the bike riding plot, met me at the agence. The original plan was to go directly to Mozogo from Mokolo, but racing against the sun, Marcel and I only made it to Koza, Katy's post. (Brooke stayed in Mokolo and met us in Mozogo the next day.) The ride was relatively easy. Koza is located on the bottom of a massive hill, a six-kilometer descent, perilous for me because the road was rocky and it was nearly pitch black by the time we coasted into town directly to the bar/restaurant where Katy was waiting for us. After a couple beers each at the bar and a bottle of wine back at Katy's house, we slept soundly until 5:30, when Marcel and I pedaled out to Mozogo, 10k down the road.

Day 2 – "60 meters to Nigeria"

Marcel and Katy had an animation on the importance of soybeans to improve nutrition only a couple hours after Marcel and I got to his house Friday morning. Katy would meet us there – she would bike – and Marcel and I shared a moto to the far-flung village on the Nigerian border through the Mandara Mountains. Going à deux was perhaps a mistake, the road was particularly uncomfortable and the distance long for sharing one moto, but the views were amazing. The people in this area have terraced the sides of the mountains that are peppered with large boulders and live in relative isolation despite the close distance to a major city like Mokolo or the black market haven of Nigeria. These places have also seen major development project interventions, and the health center was nicer and bigger than the ones that surround Lagdo.

After the animation, which was for women, Marcel and I headed out, and I noticed a sign that posted the distances to nearby towns. Mora was 30 or 40 km away, Mokolo the same distance the other direction, and straight ahead? Nigeria. 60 meters. 60 meters to Nigeria, only a dry riverbed separating two villages on opposite sides of the border. On the moto ride back to Mozogo, Marcel pointed out all the natural landmarks in the landscape where other PCVs from our training group live, showing how densely packed villages in the Extreme North are but become so far away because of poor roads.

Day 3 – Fried Goat Cheese

The next morning, Marcel and Katy had the same animation to do at another health center, this time located more conveniently on the road towards to Mokolo, our eventual destination in order to catch a bus and head out to Maroua in the late afternoon.

Hungover again, Marcel and I pedaled back to Koza at the break of dawn, where Katy was sick so couldn't come to the presentation. Luckily, the health center wasn't too far outside of Koza, but unluckily it was back up the steep hill we sped down 36 hours before. We actually stopped at an artisan shop/bar a few kilometers before the village, where we met Brooke, who took a moto to the shop. Marcel took the same moto to do the animation while Brooke and I drank soda, read People magazines from a few weeks ago (how'd she get them so fast?), and gossiped about other volunteers while overlooking the valley Mozogo and Koza were in and glad we weren't working like Marcel after too many rum and cokes the night before.

Marcel came back and Brooke took the moto to Mokolo as we struggled up the hill. (Brooke took the moto because she has a visual impairment and can't ride a bike and she was porting our bags; I'm a light packer, but even I couldn't fit four days of clothes in a normal backpack.) I followed Marcel's uphill secret, drop to the lowest gear (like I wasn't already there) but then pedal slowly, almost comically slowly, expending as little energy as possible. It worked for me, and an hour later we were back in Mokolo, where we had lunch then took the bus to Maroua. ("Comically slowly." Can you use an adverb to describe an adverb?)

Day 4

Four days in a row of waking up before 5:30. This time we had to be up to wait for our rented van to Waza, Cameroon's best (it's all relative) safari, to pick us up at 5 AM. The six of us going were out there, and the guy was 45 minutes late, a surprise this time around because the guy is apparently always on time.

Waza is only two hours north of Maroua on a paved road, and we were at the park's entrance by 8:30. We stayed in our own rented rust bucket van and picked up a guide, an old man who hardly spoke French. When I saw the guide, who didn't introduce himself or say anything to us, get in the car, and we rolled into the park, I knew this wasn't going to be all that it could be.

Talking with Marcel later that night back in Maroua, he touched on a good point about Cameroonian tourism, whether it's in Waza or the opposite side of the country at Mount Cameroon. No one tells you the best way to go about things. You, the tourist who doesn't really know what's going on who's money local people are relying on and trying to squeeze out of you, are left thinking of all the ways to improve on the experience as you're heading back to wherever you're sleeping for the night. With Mount Cameroon, a better explanation about arranging your packs and the difficulty of the adventure; Waza, the ability to rent a car at the park and spending the night, making it a 1 ½ day trip, instead of having to rent a car not designed for safaris in Maroua and having to be rushed because you have to get back to Maroua before dark the same day, would make things so much better.

We saw some animals, although not the big two: elephants and lions. We saw a few warthogs, birds, one jackal, some ostriches, too many gazelles, and spent most of our time traversing the poor roads and trying to stay awake. The most excitement in the morning came from a possible elephant sighting, where the guide, the driver, and Marcel – because Marcel does things like this, pretending he knows how to track elephants – stood on top of the van and saw that the elephants were… trees. Back in the van. (We saw all the evidence of elephants throughout the day, large tracks, trampled grass, poop, even a skeleton, but no actual elephants.)

The entire time, the guide hardly said a word. Sometimes we even pointed out animals before he saw them. I was so desperate for any information about the park, I would have listened attentively to facts about a scraggly bush or something. Some of the land was burned, and we asked if there were bush fires here, and the answer we got back was that it was either poachers or sparks from antelope fights. Um, antelope fight sparks cause fires that spread in perfect rectangular patterns? In addition to that kind of sketchy answer, it was like we were just driving aimlessly around the bush, which we were, but without savage beasts. This isn't to say we saw nothing, it was just a little disappointing. On our way out of the park, after seeing nothing but gazelles or empty space for a couple hours, we reached a fork in the road. The guide turned around and asked us if we wanted to see giraffes or just go back to the entrance. Well, let's see. Let's go see the giraffes.

We turned onto the left fork, prong really, reenergized, and after about ten minutes, the guide spotted our first giraffe, who was munching on some leaves from a tree and looking at us curiously before going behind the trees. They really don't like cars that much. We went on a little further and found a group of 12 around some trees, even though we could only see two at first; their camouflage is actually pretty good. We stopped the car and got out to take some pictures before they went away, and after we headed to the park entrance, the giraffes made the trip worth it.