Alli in Africa

So, yesterday I began my morning by waking at 5 am (half an hour before the Muslim call to prayer!!) and finished my small packing. I was taking a bus to Yaounde in order to attend some meetings and then go home for a lovely visit. After arriving at the bus park by 6, ensuring that I got the “good” seat I preceeded to wait until the departure time of 9. Finally around 9:45 when we have finally gotten around to trying to leave, a person came running up to tell a woman at the back that her daughter has just died in the hopsital. Understandably the woman begins to cry….then preceeds to hysteria to the point that she cannot even identify her bags for the workers to remove them from the vehicle. So we wait for another half hour for a family member to come and retrieve both the woman and her bags. We finally hit the road at about 10:30 and are doinjg quited nicely timewise until suddenly our bus driver pulls to the side of the road. The clutch is gone. It is now 1:30. So, I get off the bus and walk to 10 kilometers to Makenene (the market and midway stop point, which is by the way, a 2 hour walk in the blazing sun). Finally around 6:30 our new bus arrives at the market to pick up the ones who decided to walk. Everyone loads the bus….and we’re off, again! Live is grand, jamming to the abundance of boy bands blaring on the radio with backup help from all the women on the bus. Then, we stop in Bafia. There we take on 5 men….one of which has to sit 5 to a seat whereas everyone else is sitting 4. This should be nothing new to them, I mean, we’re in Cameroon for crying out load! Where it is normal to put 8 adults in a four door car! But this man continued to complain and bicker with the other passengers for 45 mintues, even over the blaring radio! Finally, the bus drvier (I love this man, by the way) pulls the bus over, gets out of the bus, walks down the side, yanks open the window and smacks the man upside the head and then preceeded to tell him to shut the hell up or he would drop him there in the middle of nowhere at night. Did I mention that I loved my bus driver? So after that we get about 10 minutes down the road when a gendarme stops us and checks i.d.’s. Guess who the 5 people were that did not have their i.d.’s??? So we sat for another 45 minutes while they argued and bribed the gendarmes and finally were able to leave.  After all this trouble, we finally arrived in Yaounde at 9:45 at night and the curfew for the office is 10. When all was said and done and I finally managed to get my bags down and get a taxi I was long past ten. I arrived at the office at 10:30 and I must say that I dare the country director to say anything to me!!! I am spoiling for an arguement!