4 more ideas for t-shirts (to be said into a dictaphone for maximum effect)
on Notes from Quite Far (Cameroon), 08/Jan/2010 12:59, 34 days ago
“Où est mon cadeau” (Means “where is my present” and is what Cameroonians ask foreigners who have been away)“On est ensemble” (Means “we are together” and is a message of solidarity normally said just before sodding off and leaving you to it)“I stayed at the Radisson Hotel” (On the back of the t-shirt it would say “and now I have no money”)Pocket cups (a joke for those who know)This is Yaounde, capital of Cameroon. I landed last night. At 3000 feet, the temperature was 22 degrees. At ground level, at 9pm, the temperature was 30 degrees. Read it and weep, my UK friends. Enjoy the snow and ice. I promise to think of you every time I open the fridge.The English snow meant there was a risk I wouldn’t make it to the airport on Thursday morning, so after a certain amount of deliberation, I booked in at Manchester Airport’s Radisson Hotel for a quite reasonable online rate. Highly organised and sensible you might think. I certainly thought so until, on Wednesday night, I handed my booking confirmation over to a confused receptionist, who pointed out that I had in fact made my booking for January 15th. So a bit less organised and sensible than I thought. We managed to iron it out and I got my night in the lap of luxury in the end.Once more it’s been brilliant to stay in the UK. The holidays have been anything but dull, with not only friends and family to catch up with, but also two trips to casualty courtesy of my niece, who is now carting around her own weight in plaster of Paris. (Thanks for the added excitement missus. I hope you mend quickly and get a better cast on soon.)As you would expect, coming back to the UK always makes me grateful for the comfort and convenience in which I have lived the vast part of my life so far. For the public services, proper sewage system, access to information, freedom of expression, equal rights. For that fact that roads exist separately from pavements, and you can take things back to the shop if they’re broken.However, visiting home also makes me realise that I don’t come from Utopia either. When things don’t work in Cameroon (which is the entire time), it is tempting to say “Well of course in England, this would never happen.” Then you come home and it does. You wait for a train that doesn’t come, and the train company blames the bus company and vice versa, and so you queue up at the travel information centre for half an hour only to be “informed” that they don’t know anything either. I am obviously not trying to compare Cameroon’s non-existent infrastructure with Britain’s faulty one. I’m just saying that it does me good to remember that these things happen everywhere. Only in Cameroon there’s no such thing as an information desk, and people genuinely don’t seem all that bothered. Or maybe they are simply resigned to the fact there’s nothing they can do. Either way, travel over here is more gruelling, but also strangely more relaxing.And speaking of travel, the next leg of my journey begins tonight with the overnight train, followed in the morning by a ten-hour bus ride. Heading to the station soon to battle the queues and buy my train ticket. Wish me luck!