One thing that hasn’t changed much since we first visited Cameroon (in 2004) is the taxi system. They are fairly inexpensive, though they have a few drawbacks. First of all, they pack in people (normally into a Toyota Corolla), as you can see above and below (driver not pictured, but on the other side of Kim.…)
But it isn’t just people who get overloaded; it is also not uncommon to see stuff sticking out the back of a taxi:
One comment we heard that has helped us process traffic here is to not think of “my lane” and “your/oncoming lane.” Or, as we were otherwise told in understanding Cameroon, “Everything is negotiable.” How many “lanes” do you see in this photo?
On the far right (upper right in photo), you can see a yellow taxi on the side of the road, probably picking up or dropping off a fare. Behind him is a silver car edging in between us and the taxi in front of us. Passing the taxi in front of us is another silver car, straddling the center line. On the other side of him is an oncoming taxi, who is passing cars stopped on the other side of the road. Think of it as water, flowing around whatever other is there, including cars, people, motorcycles, and potholes. Then our driver passes:
I don’t remember who we were passing, but you can see we’re across the center line with oncoming traffic (don’t do this, James!), which we managed not to hit. And yes, that truck in the oncoming lane really is labelled “flammable liquid” (probably natural gas tanks for cooking).
One benefit of all this congestion is that things really don’t go very fast. On a trip downtown, I only get up to fourth gear once or twice, and over 60kmph (38mph) maybe once. So most of my driving has been in first or second gear, negotiating near gridlock, so any accident wouldn’t be very serious. In fact, I had a motorcycle hit me the other day, and he just kept on going.…
But the trip in the taxi is only half the fun; there are so many places you can go. One of my agenda items in these last three months has been to research church options. There turn out to be lots of different churches around, each with their own particular issues (as is true everywhere, I think). After spending a good chunk of time looking for signs on our main road, I realized that might not be the best option; this sign points to something that I never could find.…
But we did find lots of other churches, smaller and larger, more baptist and more presbyterian, more village-esque and more televangel-esque. Most seem to have teaching at least bordering on prosperity as gospel. It has been easier getting around on Sunday mornings once we were able to use group cars, though not without issues. The car we checked out last Sunday stalled on the way to the church we planned to go to. We got it push-started, but we returned to our neighborhood, rather than park it in a neighborhood where push-starting it would have been much more problematic.
Whatever trouble we have getting around, we are glad to have on hand our missionary aviation colleagues. We visited the hangar one day, and got a few photo ops:
This program also has something we haven’t had before, a missionary helicopter:
There was even some art on the wall with the aviation mission statement:
With some of the security issues in Cameroon right now, we aren’t able to go some of the places this aviation program has flown in the past —so they aren’t getting as much flight time as they’d like. But it is good to know they are there, and I look forward to flying with them some day!
Please pray for our safety and smooth travel as go out and about in Yaoundé and elsewhere in Cameroon. Please also pray for the larger security issues to be resolved, and for peace, development, and the growth in breadth and depth of the church of Jesus Christ in Cameroon!
This work by Kent is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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