Leap Year Memories

[WV Sawmiller]

    Well, this is wordy. Let's see if it will be accepted.

                Well, its Leap Year again. My most vivid memories of Leap Year were February 2008. I was working on the Elkem Solar project in Kristiansand Norway and my wife had taken a year's leave of absence from her high school teaching job in Summers County WV, where she was the Band Director and taught some other general music classes at the middle and high schools, to join me. We got one of her former students, who was also one of my son's best friends, to substitute teach for her and housesit for us. He is now the current band director there since she retired.

                We set up a vacation to Cameroon in West Africa. I had worked there from 2000-2004 on the COTCO project where we built a 650 mile 30" diameter oil pipeline from SW Chad the entire length of Cameroon terminating at a Floating Storage Operation (FSO)in the Atlantic Ocean near the village of Kribi. The FSO was basically a semi-retired super carrier tanker ship moored in the bay at Kribi. The pipeline went under the seabed and came up to the FSO filling it with crude oil. Tankers pull up and are held in position by tug boats while the oil is transferred or "uplifted" to them. Cameroon charged a per barrel fee to transport the oil in the pipeline and Chad got the market price for the oil. I worked at the headquarters in Douala taking care of housing of our ex-pats and facilities maintenance for the offices.

                We set up our trip to return to Cameroon and planned to spend most of our time in the Atlantika Mountains on the border with Cameroon and Nigeria. We had set up the trip with a guide, driver and vehicle. We planned to trek in and live and photograph the Kome (Koo Mah) tribesmen in the area. They were first contacted by outsiders in 1986. We had visited them briefly around 2001-2002. My wife called them the Leaf People because the women traditionally just wore a patch of leaves in front and back and tucked into a belt of beads. They were nude from the waist up and all I ever saw were barefooted. Another unique feature was the girls/women pulled the two front teeth when they were married/engaged. The adults (men and women) smoked pipes and the women would tuck their pipe in their belt with the mouthpiece uncomfortably close to their butt cracks IMHO. The most common tobacco pouch was made from the tanned hide of a bush rat. This site has some good details and pictures of the people and what we saw and experienced.

https://lastplaces.com/en/travel-is-knowledge/the-komas-the-lost-tribe/#:~:text=The%20Komas%20inhabit%20the%20Alantika,groups%20that%20inhabit%20the%20plain.

                The travel agency I had used before had promised the same guide I had used before and liked but they lied. When we got there, they scrambled to find a lady named Billie who was our trip guide and did and excellent job but had never been to the area. The travel agent also said they would arrange transport from the village of Wangui (the end of the road) into the mountains using beast of burden such as donkey, camels, oxen, etc. because I knew my wife could not negotiate those steep narrow trails. When we got to Wangui there were no such riding stock to be found although Billie did find us small motor cycles who took us in as far as they could while 5-6 porters we had hired trekked in with our gear. I suspect the bike owners/riders were mostly busy smuggling fuel and such across the trails from Nigeria and Cameroon but they got us several miles closer to the village. I would not recommend that form of transport for others.

                We trekked to one of the villages, set up our tents, drew water from the nearly dry river (it was the dry season) using a filtration pump system. We cooked our meals over an open fire and interfaced with and photographed the Kome tribespeople. We had taken along a portable picture printer and gave the people photos in payment. Our local guide said we making it hard to the next tourist to come in as the Kome were going to expect copies of pictures from them too. In addition to photos, we paid the Kome with local foul smelling tobacco, boxes of matches and pieces of soap. The soap was molded in sticks about 1.25" square and several feet long, Turoman would pull out his penknife and cut off a section a few inches long to give as payment or a tip. Turoman was a local guide we hired and he took care of getting permission and payment for services and goods. Billie was the trip guide while Turoman was the local guide with local knowledge, contacts and access. We stayed several days and visited a couple of villages and participated in a village party on the banks of the river. The party had loud music from battery powered boom boxes and local millet beer which was drunk by everyone old enough to hold or sip from a coconut cup. We had to cut that part of our trip short because Becky could not climb higher or walk further into the mountains. From near stone age to boom boxes in 25-30 years is amazing.

                We returned to Wangui and proceeded to make a big circle around the country visiting other villages and towns. We stopped at a local school built and financed by area parents at recess and took and left pictures and made a lot of new friends at one point. We stopped at local market day events whenever we found one going on.

              We scheduled to loop around south and stop in Kribi for a few days. We passed through the outskirts of Yaounde, the capital city, and got fuel and found there had been massive riots stemming from a countrywide rise in the price of fuel. Power was out in the city and the fuel was dispensed using a little hand crank system. Many gas stations had been burned, we saw where tires had been burned in the roads, etc. We found later the uprising was pretty much a Coups D'etat. This article touches on some of the events.           

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Cameroonian_anti-government_protests#:~:text=The%202008%20Cameroon%20protests%20were,25%20to%2029%20February%202008.

                We routed ourselves through the backroads and visited another Pygmy village. Most of the fuel we bought on the trip came out of 20 liter green wine bottles bought from vendors on the side of the road. Most small villages did not have an actual gas station and local "businessmen" bought or traded for the diesel (Locally called Gazoil) from truckers passing through. A trucker would stop in a village and swap fuel for food, lodging and other creature comforts.

                Our back glass motor failed and the back window of our SUV was down and the red dust from the roads/trails we were driving on completely covered us and our gear. We finally got to Kribi which is a resort town on the Atlantic Ocean with black sand beaches and pulled up to a nice hotel. The manager came out and asked where we came from and how we got through as the main roads were all shut down due to the riots. We were the only ones to come in all day. Our route through the backcountry had missed all of that. They brought us towels out and we wiped as much of the dust off as possible then checked into a room – there were plenty available.

                This was around 27 February or so and we were locked down till it got safe to travel. A Frenchman heard we were there and came and asked if we would be interested in trying to hire off duty cops (Gendarmes) as private security and form a convoy and make a run for Douala about 50-60 miles away. We told him to keep in touch with us and if necessary we might be willing if that appeared the only option. On the night of 28 February I think it was, Paul Biya, president of Cameroon, had a meeting with the opposition and they agreed to a cease fire so on the morning of 29 February we checked out, packed up and headed for Douala.

                When we got to Douala we went back to the German Seaman's Mission (GSM) where we had first stayed and had reservations for that night. We had left bags with our winter clothes for our return to Norway. It's cold in February in northern Europe but was hot in Cameroon just a few degrees north of the equator and we did not want to carry the excess weight. The GSM said, even though we had reservations, they had no rooms because of the riots and such and people had not been able to leave. We told them we just needed something for the day as we would be leaving at midnight. The staff talked to the chaplain and he agreed to let us use a private room he kept for guests so we were golden.

                We paid the GSM housekeeping staff to moonlight and wash our laundry we'd accumulated over several weeks in the bush. They were happy and we were pleased to get it done.

                Louis, one of my old workers came over to see us and told us during the height of the riots he went out to buy food for his family, which is a daily event where they don't have refrigeration and such in their homes. He'd bought some bread and such and the Gendarmes stopped him, confiscated his food, took his shoes and made him lay down on the pavement with a bunch of others. After a while the Gendarmes told them all to get up and run. They did and he said he heard shots. He looked over and saw blood flowing from the side of the man running beside him and the man fell. Louis said "I could not stop to help him as they were still shooting."

              The article above talks a little about a bunch of people killed on the bridge over the Wouri River at the edge of town. The people were trapped by Gendarmes from both ends and many died with they jumped or were thrown into the river below. The actual death toll will never be known but it was way more than reported.

                We re-packed our gear, gave much of our camping gear and such to Billie as a tip and for her future use. We had reservations on a flight out that night for Paris and were able to make to flight, overnighted in Paris and got back to Norway on the 2^nd of March with some real good and some really bad memories of our trip.

                Nowhere in Central Africa is a good place to be with your wife during a coups attempt but we survived and have the pictures and journal entries to back it up.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Here is another report on the number of deaths that occurred and mentions more about the massacre on the Bonaberi Bridge over the Wouri River in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. It lists 139 people killed but also notes the actual number killed on the bridge will never be known.

https://www.postnewsline.com/2009/02/139-people-died-in-2008-protest-observatory.html

   Looking at my journal I see we left Norway on 14 February and got back on 2 March 2008. Fortunately for us when the worst of the rioting and killing was going on we were out in the bush with remote people who did not even know it was happening.