In a village, we meet a man with a nice, 1980’s racing bicycle. He tells us about the problems he face at the police roadblocks. “They stop me and demand a receipt for the bicycle. But because I don’t have any, I have to ‘pay’ – otherwise they commandeer the bicycle, and it will cost me even more to get it back again.”

Further east, we stay the night at Auberge Domaine del Albatros. It is situated along the road, along out in the forest. On a large, green meadow, between the road and a hillside, lies scattered four or five whitewashed huts with thatched roofs. The owner, Jean-Yves Akame, lets us stay in one of them huts for just five dollar. Inside is a large bed, a table with comfy chairs, a shower, toilet and a sink.

The electricity has been gone the whole day, thus the shower doesn’t work. So in the evening, Jean-Yves instead brings us a bucket of water and an oil lamp. In the hut closest to the road, he has built a bar. We meet there in the evening to discuss his project. He wishes that more tourists find their way to his auberge – he wants to show them around; tell them about the local culture and environment. His wife has made us tea; we sit for hours chatting.

The next morning, he takes us with on a short walk up through the forest and some cultivated fields. His knowledge about various plants and insects is astonishing – there seems to be a use for more or less every type of grass and plant that we see. The sap from one can heal wounds, the leaves of another can be folded into a cup to drink water with, and yet another is used to mark out property, or in a group of four to indicate a grave.

Unfortunately, most of my pictures from our two days at Albatros were destroyed on our way to Cape Town, but I still promised Jean-Yves to convey a warm welcome to the who finds his or her way to his auberge. I’m sure that a longer visit there can become a highlight of a journey through the country.

We stay at an auberge in Akom II for 2,500 CFA a night.

From time to time, the sun slides forth behind openings in grey-blue clouds – heavy with rain – and lightens up the lush, green bush and the brick-red earth.

After 25 kilometers, we pass through the country’s only resort town, Kribi, and turn inland on a dirt road. We overnight with two young women – Doris and Estella – in Afan-Oveng. We bath in a small river nearby, and fetch drinking and cooking water from another small stream.

Reaching Londji Plage (Longji Plage), we camp on the beach in return for a small fee to its owners. The seaside village is not far from Kribi – a famous resort town in southern Cameroon. The beach is quite beautiful.

Cameroon is also famous for its rainforest in the east of the country. But the only forest we’ve seen has come loaded on trucks. Several ones pass us by each day, heading westward to the port of Douala. The rainforest of Central Africa is one of the worlds largest and most diverse, second only to the Amazonia.

Although still very fatigued by the malaria, we decide to continue our cycling south. We stay overnight with a nice family along the way, on which compound we are allowed to pitch our tents.

We collect our passports and Congo visas at two o’clock, but before then both I and Lina test ourselves positive for malaria. Besides, I also had iron deficiency and some fungus and bacteria in my feces, so we get loads of drugs with us to Edéa.

Leaving our bikes and luggage behind, we take the bus the two hours’ ride to the capital Yaoundé. We go there in search for our two only remaining visas on the trip – to Gabon and to the Republic of Congo.

Gabon is easy. We hand in our passports at ten a.m. with one filled-in form, two photos and 35,000 CFA, and collect them just before two p.m.

We then run on to the embassy of the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), where we have to hand in our application before two p.m. in order to receive our visa the following day. We just manage to get there in time, and the procedure is as simple as at the previous embassy: One filled-in form, two photos and 70,000 CFA. Again, we get a one month visa, valid from a date of our own choice.

After having searched the city center for a place to stay, unable to find one that is cheap enough, we try and ask a taxi driver for a recommendation. We are lucky – he drives us to a far-off suburb which we would never have found ourselves. There, we get a self-contained room with a fan and TV for just 6,000 CFA. It’s clean and neat, too. Tomorrow, we will collect our passports at the embassy in the afternoon before we head back to Edéa.

In the morning – when we see the town in daylight for the first time – I’m most thrilled to discover that they have chococam. It’s a peanut and chocolate butter that’s been available in many of the previous Francophone countries of West Africa as well. It is perfect to use as a spread on baguettes – good for snacks along the way. Also, the avocado season has seemingly just begun – six of them cost just a dollar. Yummy!

After finding out that neither Gabon nor the Republic of Congo has any embassy in town, we say goodbye to our host Ejyke and continue south to Edéa. It is a nice road, yet with surprisingly little traffic for being the only tarred main road between the country’s two largest cities. Also, people drive more sane here than in Nigeria – maybe thanks to the signs that occasionally line the road with texts such as “Sept mortes” (seven dead), beside which the wrecked remains of some bus or car lies left as a remembrance.

In a village some fifteen kilometers before Edéa, I halt at a house where palm oil is being made. I talk with Araba. He tells me that he works there for the money. Left behind in his home village, not far from the capital Yaoundé, is his wife and only child. It is now past eight months since he last saw them, because the money he earns aren’t enough to cover the seven euro bus ticket. His sorrow for not being able to see his family is unmistakable. There is a thin smoke coming from below the old oil barrels in which the palm nuts are heated. In a corner stands the machine that is used to extract the oil.

Reaching Edéa, we stay at decent Auberge Ration. There, we will leave our bikes locked-in while we head to the capital Yaoundé in pursuit of visas to Gabon and the Republic of Congo.

They first said that we’d reach by six in the morning, after already pushed the time forth once as we departed four hours late. But early in the morning, “The engine has a small problem [...] and we can’t go with full speed.” We reach by three in the afternoon – fifteen hours late.

Alongside me on the cargo deck lied Ejyke Emanuel. He invites us to stay at his place in Douala, “Call me when you reach the petrol station at Camp Yabassi.” After receiving our entry stamps at the immigrations office – easy and swift without problems – we start heading towards town. But when we ask three guys along the road for directions, we’re instead invite for beers. And why not? William from South Africa, Sherman from Singapore and Martin from Sweden (!) work as sailors; their ship is at dock. “They had to fix something; something was broken,” Martin explains.

We head back to the harbor where we sit down at one of several nice seaside bars. Themselves already quite drunken, they invite us for three rounds of beer and a plate of fresh, grilled fish. The ship they work at provides the oil platforms we passed by during the night with necessities such as food, fuel and spare parts. We have a good time together anyway, and thank them for a good start on our journey through Cameroon.

They arrange a taxi for us that escorts us to Camp Yabassi. We follow on our bicycles – though rather wobbly. Upon reaching, the driver phones Ejyke for us, and he shows up in just a minute or two. After leaving our stuff at his place, we head out to a pub nearby where he invites us to yet another round of drinks and fresh fish.

We sleep in Ejyke’s one-room apartment: I and Lina on the bed and Ejyke on the floor (he refused to take the bed himself). It’s terribly hot, and a lone table fan isn’t sufficient to keep the many mosquitoes at a distance. I lie away and listen to Nigerian 2Face Idibia: “If love is a crime, I’m willing to be hunted.” His latest CD Grass 2 Grace, which Ejyke bought in Nigeria, is on repeat throughout the night.

We are more or less forced to take the ferry to Cameroon. A rumor – although unlikely – claims that the southernmost land border at Ekang is closed. If true, we would have to cycle almost 800 kilometers north to reach the next border. Because of our visa to Angola – which cannot be extended further south – we would then have to cycle more than 100 kilometers a day in average during the next two months. Hardly fun if at all possible considering how the roads worsen more and more the further south we come.

The ferry usually leaves to Limbe, but the only one we find goes all the way to Douala, the second biggest city of Cameroon. We reach the harbor at ten a.m. and are able to negotiate down the ticket price with our very last naira. Vi collect each and every dime we have to afford. “We will depart at noon,” they say at first. Then, at two p.m., “We wait for the water to rise; the high tide to come.” We finally leave at four p.m.

The ride out of the delta is beautiful. We pass a dozen of fishermen in their small boats, with patched, colorful sails arise, lit up by the warm evening light. When we reach the ocean, the sun has already set. I sleep closely together with a dozen other passengers on the front upper deck. We sleep on a tarpaulin that covers sacks of seed from the splashes when the boat cuts through the waves. Lina sleeps on a couple of chairs in a sitting area on a rear upper deck. The shipmen have kindly helped us with the bicycles and put them on a small platform in front of the wheelhouse.

Suddenly, sometime during the wee hours, I’m awakened by one of the passengers beside me. The ferry sails amidst many dozen oil platforms, seemingly scattered at random across the pitch-black ocean. They shine like houses on pillars. From some of them, gigantic, flickering flames shoot out – excess natural gas burnt; flames that mirrors in the black water below. We pass some of them at only a hundred or so meters distance. A majestic sight, not least if one reflects upon them – these beautiful lights – as the source of so much trouble; so many of today’s conflicts. But also as a core ingredient of today’s civilization.

In Calabar, we meet American Amy who drove past us the day before. She invites us to stay in her guest room in town, and in the evening we’re taken with on a pizza party that her German boyfriend Alex has set up with various friends. Could we get a better birthday present (both I and Lina were born on the 14th)?

Visa to Cameroon
Address: Cameroon Consulate / 21 Ndidem Usang Iso Road / Po box 863 / Calabar / NIGERIA
Phone: 00234-(0)87-222782
We show up at nine a.m. and are let inside half an hour later. Two filled in forms, one letter to the consul (something like “Dear Excellency, please give us a visa…”), three passport sized photos and 51,000 CFA give us a visa valid for a month (‘short stay’). We had to wait inside the consulate until four p.m., and were only allowed outside to get lunch at noon. Fortunately there was a toilet. We didn’t need any passport photocopy, reference in Cameroon, letter of invitation or proof of hotel booking.

Summary Nigeria
Entering this country, I was prepared for the worst. Rumors of extensive corruption and armed banditry leaves little good to read. Besides, I made the mistake of reading the US Department of State’s list of travel warnings, with Nigeria on top: “Violent crime committed by ordinary criminals, as well as by persons in police and military uniforms, can occur throughout the country. Road travel is dangerous. Robberies by armed gangs have been reported on rural roads and within major cities.” There were also particular warnings on traveling overland from Benin. And even though it was easy to grow tire of the border police whom worked slow on purpose in hope of being bribed – finally asking straight out for a dash of 1,700 naira – I never got any actual problems. In fact that bribe request was the only one during my whole visit in the country, and in the end I didn’t have to give way to it.

After a few days in the country, Lina joined in again after almost two months vacation, and we continued together southeast towards the border of Cameroon. Along the road, we mostly met caring and welcoming authority officials at the several roadblocks we passed through each day – both police and military. They were there for our security, and simply wished for our journey to be as good as possible. At the immigration in Abuja, it was no problem to get my visa extended – the staff even invited us for soft drinks. In the end we probably had a dozen or so addresses and phone numbers to officials who wished to keep in touch, or who gave us their numbers to for us to call would we need them. Our only bad experience was actually our meeting with the Nigerian Security Service (Feb 9th), but they too turned out to obstruct us only for the sake of our safety.

Accommodation at hotels and hostels was cheap (except in Cross River State where that and everything else was more expensive), so we only camped or stayed at peoples’ homes a few times. Besides, we often cycled between 80 to 120 kilometers a day – sometimes on really terrible roads – and didn’t have much time left during which to meet and socialize with a possible host.

The biggest difference from the rest of West Africa was the people. They were incredibly welcoming and friendly. When people in Senegal and Mali shouted “Give me money” or “Give me your bicycle,” the Nigerians greeted us by “Well done,” “You try,” “Master” or “Patron.” Amusingly, they also took pride in guessing our nationality, but often didn’t get it quite right with greetings such as “Chinaman,” “From Japan,” “Indian” or “From Afghanistan.” When we told them that we were from Sweden, they usually first replied, “Aha – Switzerland.” After having repeated Sweden a few times, they continued, “Aha – Sudan.” Then, after they’d finally understood we said Sweden, they asked, “Is that in Asia?”

Nigeria has by far been the most pleasant surprise so far on the journey. And even without considering the bad expectations from rumors of corruption and violence, the country is a favorite in the region. It seems as if the government – at least from a tourist’s point of view – has been successful in its fight against corruption during the past few years, but that the picture of the country will take many more years to change.

Last but not least something about the upcoming election in April. It is an almost compulsory topic of conversation between people here, and it was quite easy to get a picture on peoples’ general opinion. Everyone that we discussed it with – and we did with most people we met – gave the impression that president Obassanjo and his PDP (People’s Democratic Party) have done little good during the past few years. Far from their slogan on huge billboards throughout the country: “We’ve done good things – let us do more!” Everyone told us that they would vote for change. Unfortunately, quite some also said that they might not vote at all in disbelief that their vote would ever be counted. A few said that whatever the actual result, it will be altered in favor of the PDP. The picture we got was so unanimous that I’d be very doubtful towards a result through which the PDP would remain in power. Guess who won?

We stay at the only hotel in Akped Central. Quite nice, and we are able to bargain down the price to half. With an hour or so of light left of the day, we wash our clothes in buckets outside before having dinner and going to sleep.

The lush, fresh green is just overwhelming and increases for each day that we pedal south. The cashew trees bear fruit – soft apples in shades from green through yellow to red, with each a nut (the actual fruit) attached below. The fermented smell from the mushy apples fills the air. The apples are impossible to export because of their softness, so the children usually eat them whilst picking the nuts. The mangoes also bear fruit – green now, but ripe in just a couple of weeks’ time. Banana and pineapple is sold along the roads, as well as fresh palm wine.