Monday, March 5, 2012

You Will Never Guess What I Ate Today - March 3rd

I may begin a new tradition in my blog.. typing my expectations and the actual events that go down.
My expectations: I figured it would be a dirt road for a good part of the drive. I expected way less people (which is very niave of me) and I also was thinking it would be flat and a little more dry looking. Also I expected to buy food on the drive for lunch (if I trusted it but I had my snackies just in case). I also expected it to be 8 hours.. ish. And fairly minimal traffic. Also animals, I expected to see many animals (like not Zebras and Elephants and Lions, but animals maybe like something more simple). Let’s see what else was what I was expecting…  I wasn’t expecting but 1 stop.. and one bathroom break.
OKAY the actual event of the drive:
We got into the car and put our suitcases in the back two seats so we could put the toilet paper we were picking up. SO WE LOADED the car with toilet paper. I mean the entire trunk stacked until behind the first row of back seat where we were sitting.
First of all it’s day time so Douala was A MESS. Absolutely crazy traffic and people.. people EVERYWHERE.. I’m not meaning people were out. I mean EVERYONE was out. Markets all the way down all of the streets and round a bouts with 30 cars within it and within 15 feet of the actual circle, plus another 20 mopeds and a semi or two going through.  Like 4 lane (okay exaggerated, maybe a 3 lane) round about.. not because it’s a huge round about.. because they decided to put a circular blockade in the middle of a street corner and everyone goes at the same time. In between every car and every miniscule  normal amount of space between cars was a moped or motorcycle thing.. with anywhere from 1 to 4 people on them. Oh and inbetween the motorcycles and cars and trucks there were people walking with baskets and sticks and products and beans and peanuts on their heads, in their hands in trailers and carts. Down the streets was the same deal.. when there was a break between markets.. maybe 10 blocks.. it was about 50 mph on the skinny road… with usually 3 lanes of cars on a 2 lane road. Dodging other cars.. passing at your own pace, even when other cars are coming, no we did not dodge motorcycles and people.. they dodge our van.. and our van dodged semi trucks and larger vans. In Africa, the biggest gets the right of way absolutely the opposite from the U.S. I mean people dodge motorcycles, motorcycles dodge cars, cars dodge vans, vans dodge semis.. and so on. Instead of using blinkers here we use horns, and instead of slowing down to allow someone out of the street we use horns to signal “GET OUT OF MY WAY.” Oh man it was beyond interesting and we had only been going 20 minutes.
We saw rows of lumber, then food, then furniture, and tables, and chairs and fruit and beans and bread and well just about a lot of millions of things along the roads of Douala. We stopped at a bakery and bought bread “to eat along the way” Rose had said. We went in and she picked up two things of President Cheese (like a spreadable little triangle circular thing I’ve seen them in the US) and 3 loaves of French bread. Also.. here was the interesting part.. SARDINES.. erg. So my dad and I glanced at each other like.. eww. It was only 8:00 at this point so we weren’t eating soon. We went on our way and got out of the city.. which meant not quite so crammed buildings but still people and cars everywhere but now not so jammed that we could go about 50 to 70 miles an hour depending on the town (really village of homes and markets) we passed through.. which was every 10 minutes still at this point. We stopped at a fruit stand and Rose and Aman bought papaya and some pineapples for us. The man peeled and sliced a fresh papaya for my dad and I to eat and when I asked what the funny green things were he said Avocado. So he also sliced us a piece of one of those. It was really yellow but very sweet and I started to feel a little off just in feeling unsure about everything we were doing and eating and the bumpy winding car ride. By now we had papaya, toilet paper, suitcases and pineapple in our car.
We continued on our way slowing down only to go over the massive or little or flattened or big or rough types of speed bumps at the entrance and exit of each village. Also stopping to pay “Tolls,” basically just people stopping people to pass for a price. Many many many children approached the cars at each of these to sell items. We bought fresh roasted peanuts at one place, they were really good. At one of them I woke my dad up in a hurry cause some kid was holding a weird rat like scaly looking armadillo shaped but very light brown colored and without the lines of the scales like an armadillo, weird looking animal with a REALLY LONG flat tail. Ew.
Oh then we stopped and I had to use the restroom of course but this was like totally just people roasting scary meat and who knows what.. but as soon as I asked Sister Rose decided she needed to go too. They charged us 100 Francs which is about 20 cents and it was a no toilet seat toilet and no flusher and a bucket of water with a rusty pale I’m pretty sure was to try to flush it… however I was not about to touch that. I didn’t even attempt to wash my hands in the sink. I used massive hand sanitizers after that. Oh and I brought my own tissues into the bathroom… not my little Charmin TP .. my dad handed me like kleenex’s which as you girls probably know just isn’t the same as good toilet paper so I was mad at myself for buying it and not using it yet.
At this place the driver bought fried plantain, but I didn’t feel like eating anything. We stopped only two hours again later and had lunch. We sat at a little picnic table outside some building and Rose asked us to buy a drink at least (well she payed for it). We got a grapefruit like soda that was extremely sweet. Then Rose opened the cans of sardines and the cheese and got a knife for the bread.. guess what! I ate it. I ATE SARDINES! I did pick out the spine cause that really grossed me out. But you cut the French bread in half, open a piece of cheese and smear it in, pile some sardines (piling being putting just a small small amount on for me) and then eating it like a sandwich. It was very interesting. Fishy, salty. But hrm I tried it before my dad did J. It was a very different experience. So we left there and drove on.
We stopped and got “bush” mushrooms, cause they were gathered from the bush not a nursery. And we stopped and bought MORE papaya, cause it was “from natural” so not a farm of papaya trees. So we had everything you could imagine in that van. Ha ha. We drove through the bigger town of Bamenda where my dad and I saw an albino person, and we got gas there and rode through to Njinikom.
Here is Sister Rose picking out the papaya on the side of the road. It comes in sizes small to large!
So in Njinikom we met with the Hake’s and put our stuff in the house and went to evening mass at the chapel on the hospital grounds. We walked around to see the different areas of the hospital and met many of the sisters. Then we came back and had delicious Wheat Berry Soup Terry had made (kind of like minestrone but with wheat berries not pasta and with some other spices). Then it was bed time. I fell asleep like before my head hit the pillow. I slept very well. 

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