Extreme North Voyage - The Sequel

Extreme North Voyage – The Sequel

 

It was time again for another extended weekend trip to the Extreme North, all on the up-and-up with Peace Corps admin, of course.  As a PCV nearing COS, I have to set an example for the newbies, especially since I've been running into trainees in Garoua that are currently having stage in Pitoa, because PC really likes it when PCTs meet PCVs not approved for training.  But, hey, admin, I did attend the Extreme North VAC meeting, even though I was reading a People from June the whole time, so that's kinda good, right?  (Funniest thing from that issue: High school yearbook photos of various celebrities, including Zac Efron from High School Musical.  Um, it's like he's only aged a couple years at the most.)

 

My itinerary: Nights in Mokolo, Tourou, Koza, and then Maroua.  I definitely lean more to the western side of the EN when it comes to traveling.  Mrs. Marcel, your son is a prominent part of this post.

 

Mokolo and Tourou

 

I had the best of luck with buses on this trip.  I got to the only bus company that runs between Garoua-Mokolo just missing the first bus, which was loading up at the time.  I bought my ticket, sat down, and was perfectly content to wait another two hours before le deuxième left.  Then a guy came hustling out from behind the counter, called me over, and handed me a ticket to get on the first bus.  Last person on.  Out of Garoua by 8:30, in Mokolo by noon-thirty, a far cry from my last voyage in April, where it took seven hours.

 

I spent the night in Mokolo at Brooke's house.  Marcel was there, and we headed up to Tourou, Brad and Leah's post, late the next morning with huge hangovers.  The three of us (Marcel, Brooke, and I) had met up with Brooke's new post mate and a couple vacationing southern PCVs at the Hotel Flamboyant, a white man hotel, for dinner, but not without a couple beers beforehand.  A lot of wine was consumed, a lot of Spaniards at the table next to us were giving us looks, and a final beer at a bar called Disneyland, which used to have "Gestapo" painted on the wall inexplicably (something tells me they weren't referring to Walt Disney's anti-Semitism), was had that was completely unnecessary.

 

Brooke had work to do the next morning, silly goose, so Marcel and I ranged over to an Internet café dehydrated and killing time before going up the mountain to Brad and Leah's.  When the connection was finally up, we started reading up on the third debate, which happened in the middle of the night before, and going over how well Obama is doing in the polls, especially in battleground states.  The best article I read likened McCain to Bob Dole in 1996: they're both just trying to hang on to Republican states and not be embarrassed.

 

We got back to Brooke's, packed up the things we would need, left most of our stuff there (we would be back in two days), and got the moto's Marcel arranged to get up to Tourou.  (Marcel is good at doing things like this – he'll do the bitch jobs no one else wants to do.)

 

Tourou is one of those posts you expect your Peace Corps village to be like.  It's on the top of a mountain along the Nigerian border isolated by an unpaved road lined with millet fields that makes the 35 km from Mokolo seem longer and has no electricity, running water, or cell phone reception.  During our training two years ago, we made a field trip up to Tourou to see the PCV up there's well project (Brad replaced this guy, and Leah opened up the health post.) because the old country director, the guy who went on to criticize Peace Corps in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs, possibly had a man-crush on the PCV.  (History repeating itself: when we did the field trip, we were all viciously hungover after dinner and drinks at the Hotel Flamboyant.  I can't decide if that's just a coincidence, we're idiots, or if we're just really that predictable.)

 

Probably because of its isolation, Tourou has nonetheless seen a lot of development work and has more tourism than one would expect for being in the middle of nowhere.  It's known for the women who wear gourds on their heads and, when the time is right, dance topless.  (Fortunately, no topless old ladies were present during my stay, but some of the women do wear the gourds when going about their day.)  Adding to Tourou's isolation is its history.  The people there are almost all Hidé, who at some point were chased into that part of the mountain by the Mafa or the Fulbé, possibly les deux.  Fulfuldé isn't spoken there, and given it's proximity to Nigeria (literally kilometers away), Nigerian money can be used in the market.

 

So, Marcel and I arrived in Tourou on market day after a pleasant moto ride climbing up the mountains and looking down into valleys and at some point possibly crossing through Nigeria for a few hundred meters.  Brad and Leah's house is a minute away from the market, so we dropped our bags off, and the four of us took a little tour of the village.  Our first stop was lunch, which was, completely out of left field, the best beef I've had in Cameroon, rivaling Brochette Lady in front of Metropole in Garoua.  The ones in Tourou were very thinly cut coated with dried peanut butter.  I think I ate about ten of them.  After food, we saw the health center where Leah works at and the library they helped set up, then it was back to the house for the rest of day, where we dawdled, sat on the roof, played with little kids, waited for Katy to show up, had dinner, and went to bed really early for our big day tomorrow.

 

Tourou-Koza Hike

 

The last thing Marcel said to me as I left the Peace Corps compound in Yaoundé to catch the train up to N'gaoundéré after our COS Conference in August was if I wanted to hike from Tourou to Koza.  Brad was standing there next to Marcel as I looked back into the concession and scoffed and said no.

 

Two months later I spent two nights in Garoua because a lot of people from the Extreme North were down for the weekend, including Marcel, Brad, and Leah.  (It's been rare for me to spend more than a day in Garoua this year, there just isn't much reason for me to be there than to check my email and buy white man food.)  They said they were actually doing the hike in a couple weeks, and after I asked some questions coolly but really thinking "Are you f***ing nuts?", I hatched my long-weekend plans.  I've always been good at planning I-need-to-get-away-from-here trips, whether by Pontiac or bush taxi & foot.

 

We rolled out of bed in Tourou a little after five, not difficult since there're no lights and nothing to do after dark but go to sleep, and after fetching Brad's counterpart, Abdou (spelling questionable), we were on the road at 6:15 walking past small villages and kids going to school. 

 

It was a really pleasant walk at first.  The road hugged the side of small mountains and looked down into valleys as the sun was rising on fields of millet and was nearly all uninhabited after an hour or so.  We were lucky that Tourou sits on top of the mountain, so it was mainly downhill.  In fact, the toughest part of the hike was climbing down the last major hill because at that point, the trail was mainly rocks or going through someone's field.  (People farm on the side of the mountains up there.)

 

Our first stop was the last real village we would encounter until we said, screw it, we're taking motos.  Brad, the biggest agro-forestry nerd in Peace Corps, skipped off with Abdou to go see a well, for no reason other than confirming that yep, there's a well here, while the rest of us sat against a church and ate.  Brad and Abdou came back after ten minutes and took the rest of us to a second well in the middle of foléré, sesame, and more millet fields that Marcel noted was not in the direction of Koza.  We stood in the sun as Brad did his thing because Katy decided to go pee next to the only tree in the vicinity before one of the villagers led our fellowship up and over another hill to get back to the road.

 

Maroua

 

We arrived in Koza six hours after our hike began, but we stopped walking ten kilometers out after we realized we took a longer road than expected and the road itself turned from nice shaded hills to wide and flat with no protection from the sun except for Marcel, who inexplicably ordered a leather hat that would make Indiana Jones jealous.  We found motos at a village that consisted of half very nice catholic missionary compounds and half mud houses, and with relief were sitting in front of Katy's fan at her house in Koza thirty minutes later.  Brad and Leah continued on to Maroua, Abdou went to wherever he was going, and Marcel and I spent the night in Koza.  After a night of realizing how dehydrated we were, watching an hour of the third debate Marcel downloaded followed by Office Space, Marcel and I headed to Maroua.

 

Spending the night in Maroua is nice now with a case de passage for PCVs, a dorm-like place like they have in Yaoundé and other provincial capitals for us.  It was really packed for the provincial meeting, though, so I ended up sleeping on a couch in the wide-open living room while watching High School Musical 2 with Brad and Leah, which changed my life.  Bet on it!

 

Anyway, Maroua was nice, as usual.  There's a new restaurant that specializes in hamburgers, the afternoon was spent at a shaded pool, and dinner was street food at a bar, where Matt was in fine form with awkward comments and at some point calling Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's retardation.  It was good times all around, and I caught a bus back to Garoua the next morning after an enjoyable final Extreme North trip.