10 December
Hello people,
I'm trying to play catch up with my updates at the moment as we have the internet
and I seem to be far behind.
At the moment Mike, Thomas and I are in the small sea side town of Kribi ( Cameroun
) camped out in the grounds of a 5 star hotel right on the edge of the beach waiting
to see the new year in, we have the best of both worlds here with cheap camping and a great but expensive bar and resturant at our disposal.
So back to Abuja............
Abuja was a small Nomadic campment until 40 years ago when Nigeria decided to have
a new capital city and since then it has been expanding ever since. The buildings,
streets and roads are all very modern and new, there are large 5 star hotels and
shopping malls but the place has no real character and the electricity suppy can't
quite keep up with the demand resulting in frequent power cuts. Despite this it
was a welcome break for Nick, Mike and me and we stayed for a couple of days while
we got visas for Cameroun, we breakfasted at both the Hilton and the Sheriton and
were interviewed by local TV stations and magazines about our trip, it was great
fun riding round our small hotel car park for the TV cameras, and for a few days
we became celebraties ! So we left Abuja on a bit of a high and now with a good
feeling for Nigeria.
Leaving Abuja we rode east to Jos and gained in height from 400m to 1300m and as
a result the weather became cooler so you could now walk around at mid-day without
breaking into so much of a sweat, the landscape is getting greener all the time
and at times we rode through quite dense woodland. There was some sort of large
scale Womens institute meeting going on in Jos ( a dangerous thing to be going on
anywhere in the world ) and so it was hard to find a place to stay and we ended
out being welcomed at the 'Assemblies of God' guest suites. This enthuasastic religous
lot made us very welcome and we were invited to dine with them that evening. The
next day ( Friday 7th December ) Mike decided to move on while Nick and I stayed
for another night, we will meet Mike further down the road at a nature reserve.
In the meantime I've been envited to church tonight by some visiting preachers so
it could be interesting and interesting it was !
At 6 o'clock I was collected by my two new preacher friends and another man that
they called the general as he used to be in the army and I think is now the equivelent
of a priest. We arrived at the church, a wooden framed building with corragated
iron sheets for sides and the roof, I was envited to sit at the side at the front with the other guests and preachers. The service started well with singing and dancing
and then some enthuisastic preaching, I was introducied to the congragation and
my travels talked about and I started to think about what I had been
missing out
on all these years. Then it was the turn of my friends the two visiting preachers
from Lagos, this is where things changed, they took complete advantage of the 50 to 60 strong congragation of lower class and slightly gullable people of Jos by
putting on a well reheased fortune telling show, they would single out individual
people and amaze them by knowing there names and with facts about there familys,
these facts had been written down on small pieces of paper that I had seen being
passed around from where I was sitting. The profets as they now called themselves
would predict terrible things for these people but claim they could prevent them
for large amounts of money that would have taken a hard working individual here
months to earn, and the poor now scared people would hand over large handfulls of
cash to have there sins forgiven. The highlight of the evening was when it was announced
that the profet Richard would be here next week and that he could heal the unhealable
"He can heal Aids !" There were no fewer than 4 collections during the evening and
the selling of the profets book, on the way back in the car I heard the gold watch wearing profets on the telephone saying that the money had been counted and that
they had made themselves 60,000 N that evening ( 240 pounds ). I will finish with
this now as it still winds me up almost 3 weeks later.
The next day Nick and I moved on to meet up with Mike at the Yankari game reserve
and to see the famous Wiki Warm Spring that stays at a constant 31° thoughout the
year, arriving early afternoon we met up with Mike and proceeded to spend the rest
of the day in the spring relaxing, that evening we discovered that there was a freshers
party going on for the Uni of Jos first year students. This was our first experience
of Nigerian girls as Mike and I sat in the bar we where constantly chatted up and
given invites to the party by gorgous
girls, this we guess must be what its like
to be goodlooking, so for tonight we will take advantage of our new found good looks
and PARTY !!!
Sunday morning was an early awakening from our tents ( 6:30 ) as the students had
to leave for Jos and they had come to say goodbye and get photos, so guys if you
are reading this then thanks for a great time, good luck at Uni and a special goodbye
to Samira, Princess and Jenny.
By 6:45 we were being recruited as extras for a Nigerian tourist documentary being
made by some americans who wanted some white people in the film, this ment that
we had to go on a free safari and see elephants, hippos, crocodiles, bush bucks,
lion footprints and a microlight taking off. We left the reserve that afternoon
and rode east and as the sun started to set we pulled off the road and into part
of a small mountain range where we set up camp and the 3 of us laughed about the
mixed experiences that we had had in Nigeria and talked about heading to the cameroun
boarder tomorrow before falling asleep under the stars around the campfire.
10th today and off to Yola the last main town before the crossing to Cameroun, here
we filled all our fuel tanks with the dead cheap fuel at 0.30p per litre and were
then directed to the market where we could change money descreatly out of the watchfull
eye of the bank, we were directed straight to the centre of the market where Nick
was given the job of getting provisions, Mike changing money and me guarding the
bikes. A crowd soon gathered around the bikes and although quite clostraphobic everyone was smilling and happy and just wanted to meet me, ( this was also the same market
that Nick was told by a man that he was the first white man he had seen ! ) soon
the plain clothed police arrived complete with AK47's and started to push people
away from the bikes then they producued large sticks and started to beat the crowd
away, this was when the once very friendly crowd started to turn on the police and
I was glad to see Mike and Nick returning and we got the hell out of there.
We rode on eastwards to a small village where we cleared customs and were officialy
sigened out of Nigeria, the road ended here and it was a case of choosing the least sandy track that headed east, this worked ecxcept when we got to the bridge marked
on our maps that crossed a 300m wide river into Cameroun the bridge did'nt exist
and never had done. This was no problem for Nick and his little XT350 as he was
lifted straight into a small leaky wooden canoe and carted off to the far side but
for Mike and I we were stuffed with our fat BMW's. Soon a small bardge appearded
and our bikes were balenced on planks of wood across the bardge, in situations like
this there is never a shortage of help as people will fall over backwards to get
you sorted.
Once across the river we were in Cameroun and soon signing in with the local police
in the small village on the bank of the the river, the police also found us a space
in the court yard at the rear of the station to camp for the night so after a swim
and much needed wash in the river we retired to the local resturant for rice, sauce
and meat of unknowen origen wash down with river water, its all good and tomorrow
we head into Cameroun !
06 February
Hello people, sorry If I hav'nt been in touch for a while but the internet is hard
to find in Congo and Angola !
On the 29th January I reached Cape Argulas the most southern point of Africa after
18 countries, 15,000 miles, 4 months and 3 hedges !
The trip has been great and all seems a world away now that I'm in south Africa
with cash machines and hot water, so for now I'm just making the most of the weather
and relaxing !
So here is a few pitures for you and I look forward to seeing you all when I get
home.
Chris
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