Cameroun

It is March 2005 and me with my friend Majo Abraham are about to fly to Cameroun for 5 weeks. Here at the Wienna airport is still snow and Iam saying goodbye to my wife Erika and to my father as well and only with difficulties Iam trying not to cry because I really dont know what it will be when we will arrive to Cameroun. I only know that guy in Cameroun through the internet so I hope he will be waiting for us at the Douala airport. After the seven hours of flight we start slowly to land. The whole flight it was only Sahara desert down there but now it is the most beautiful view I have ever had, because the clouds are starting to disappear and there is only whole wild jungle down there. I have milions of thoughts a second and Iam thinking, am I crazy enough to do this? Majo is sleeping, he has already been in Borneo, Vietnam and Venezuela, but for me it is the firts time in tropics. The airoplane has landed at the airport in Douala which is only the bigg cut place inside of big rain forest. It is masacre from the beggining because few hours ago it was snow and minus 2 degrees of Celsia and now here is plus 35 degrees of Celsia. Iam totaly swed and we has been waiting for the luggages for more than one hour and half and it is already dark outside what is not very good as well... There is many people by the exit from the airport waiting for their friends and much more of those waiting for us to help to carry the luggage or just for our money to give them. I dont even know how I found Terence who is waiting for us at least. He is saying; hurry up our car is parking few meters away from here, so we start running to the car but all those people run with us and they now dont want to carry any bags anymore, they just want euros or dollars and I feel that someone is pulling something out from my bag while we are running. We quickly jumped into the car, but unfortunately they all jumped on our roof as well and they dont want to let us go until we pay them money to leave. Terence gave them something, but the driver started to drive finaly away and they all still run bihind us now with kniwes and machets. This is something, and I dont even know how we got out from there but one car is still fallowing us so Terence said to driver to loose him in the town. Unfortunately we have flat tyre now so they have to change it so we have to stop. Terence told us to get down on the floor so nobody could see us. Terence and the driver are changing the tyre and we are hidden on the car floor and outside is just dark town with many black fellows going up and down and fires are burning in the cans, but if someone would see the whites inside the car we would be in trouble. They finaly did it so we can move now again and now I see that poor life, everywhere just wooden houses, muds, dirt, cans with fire and on the roads cows and goats. This is Africa. Finaly after two hours we arrived to Terence house and I hope that they will not serve us for the dinner. But no, they are very friendly and the wellcome us very warmly so we can finaly sit down and feel that we are safe. I would like to give the kids chocolates which I bought for them but they stole them in that mass infront of the airport so at least the bottle of slovakian slivovica which is very strong alcohol survived so I give them to try. We feel now very good and talk for long and I dont even care about all those bugs, lizzards and all other animals which sit on the walls inside of the house, but next morning we have many bites from the bugs all over our bodies.
After few days we have everything important like map and fuel for our generator so we can now finaly go to the rain forest to catch. We will go with the same guy who brought us from the airport so it is good. Our first target is Mount Koupe in the mountains which are north-east from Buea where Terence lives. When we got there Terence said that he know a guy who will help us to carry some bags and they all know him from the village where he lives so they will all leave us alone. Lets go to the mountains than, but with the bags of 20 kg at our backs and with water and fuel in our hands and the hot and wet weather and all those small flies and mosquitos that goes deep to your ears it will not be very easy to climb up the mountain. But nevermind, we found quite good place where we could build the camp and also to catch. We had few very good days of catching when one morning we were waken up by few men with machets saying that they want money for staying in their forest and their territory so we had to go down to the village again and after 4 hours of talking we agreed that we will pay them 200 usd for staying 4 more days and fro protecting us against another such a men who would want to get some money for ,,another,, territory. I was quite happy to leave that place because I was looking forward to go to the lowland rain forest close to the Congo borders, to where we went by public transport this time. From Buea to Douala and from Douala to Yaounde, from Yaounde to Sangmalingma where we hired a taximan who schould take us to the farthes village in the jungle from where we could only go by jeep. The taximan were two young boys and Terence were together with one of them sitting on the fron sit and that is why they travel, they use every place where to sit. We were at the back with all our bagages. Good road was gone a long time ago and now it was only the muddy road inside of jungle but he was driving like crazy idiot and after while he broke the exhaust vent. But thanksgod Majo is mechanic and he just quickly removed the vent and threw it to the forest so we were driving now without it. We finaly got to the last village in the forest from where we could only go by local jeep transport. To Mintoum we can in the midnight but the people in Mintoum were very surrprised that we did it from Buea to Mintoum in one day! it was very far and I was very tired. I knew that in Mintoum there is a catholic priest an d church with who we will decide for how long and for how much we will stay. We agreed two and half week fro 150 usd which was great because the priest even gave us a small cottage where we could stay and he told everybody in the village that we are his guests so evrybody left us alone so we could catch without problems in whole rain forest. Night catching was perfect because we had audiens as well. All the people from surrounded villages came every night to watch how we catch moths. They were sitting far from the blanket and watching and when I caught the moth they started to clap their hands and when I missed they started to laugh. It was very funny and small children brought us 10 kg of fresh bannanas from 1 usd almost every day. They were also paying a big attention to what we were throwing away and the most popular thing was an empty meat can which the oldest kid took away then put it on his head and he was running with an empty meat can on his head in the village while the rest of the kids were running behind him as after a God with the super toy! In this part of Cameroun they were Pygmei tribes and the empty can was very new and good thing for them because all they had was a small house made from mud and plam leaves. We were also introduced to the local teacher who invited us for the ceremony of the end of school year and for the lunch as well. For lunch was a monkey and it was the most horrible food I have ever had eaten because it tasted the same as it stinked. But Terrence eat it all and was very satisfied. The ceremony of the end of school year was very interesting as well because they did not get any diploma, but simply were called one by one infront of all the children and teachers of school and depending on how the kid was good or bad at learning they all cheared him or he had to lay with the face down in the dust for approximately 30 minutes. One day we decided to go deeper into the jungle to the river Lobo where we wanted to stay for night so badly because it was very beautiful virgin rain forest and from everywher only the sounds of monkeys or tropical birds, but Terence was affraid of leopards and crocodiles so we had to go back to the village. I can imagine how good it would be if we could stay there for the night catching, because even in the village we had more than thousand of insects on the light every night. We had very good night catch every night while we were sitting in the Cameroun jungle and from the deep of the rain forest we did hear the sounds of the night jungle and it was all so cool, just like I wanted it to be. But then something else had to happen while Majo was catching close to the light whne one ant with wings flew into his ear by mistake and did not know how to get out but he only got deeper to ear and we did not know how to pool it our or how even kill it. They wanted to use a liquid rubber but we decided to pour the oil into his ear so finaly we got the ant killed and and it also went out somehow after all. But only after this incident I understood how easily we could get in trouble here where we are far away from civilization. And also our food has finished so we started to catch the grasshoppers to eat them and we also started to buy from local people the meat of antilopes, porkipine, snails on sticks, onions, avocados and some kind of small bread. After two weeks we had so many moths and butterflies that we had to buy another 3 buckets just to take them all. From Mintoum back to Buea it was not so easy and it took us two days to travel to Buea. The jeep driver was horrible because not even he was late for more than 5 hours he also wanted to pick up as many people on the road as he could and he did not care that we were almost about 20 of us at the back there sitting one on another in that hot sun and smelly jeep and he started to take people on the roof as well as the goats or men going from hunt with dead animals so I had to hold dead monkeys on my lap and my legs were dirty from their blood and jeep had flat tyre about 4 times as well. It was horrible but I was in Africa where it is normal and I just had to think about something nice.
Our last trip in Cameroun was Mount Cameroun, which is 4100 meters high and is the fourth highest mountain in Africa. It is also vulcano so it grows every year. Buea is at the base of this mountain in the altitude of about 1500 m so Terence lives wery close to the mountain so we only took the most important things like generator, fuel, water, tent and some food and we went to the Mt. Cameroun. Terence did not want to go with us so we went to the Mt. Cameroun office at the base of the mountain and the gave us currier who was our guide as well. We climbed up to about 2800 meters when it was not possible to go further up so we decided to build the camp there. It was already evening so we started to catch but it was not so good as Mintoum, but I was happy because I caught 2 males and 1 female of some small Saturnid which I still need to identify. The next day we decided to go down so we stayed in the ground rain forest but in the evening it started to rain but after few hours the rain stoped so we quickly started to unpack the light when very thick steam came out of the wet forest so we could not see almost at all but Majo told me that this is the best weather for night catching and he was right. After about one minute after the light was on, the moths started to fall from the sky and in the duration of about one hour we caught hundreds of insects and alsomst 200 Saturnids only during that hour! I have never seen such a mass of moth coming to the light and Majo could not catch them all with our 3 nets. I was only sitting on the ground and killing them and Majo was just throwing the nets with saturnids or sphingids inside on me. Our courier Francis helped us to change the injections which I was using to kill the moths. So we succesfuly ended our Cameroun trip which did not start very well but we left all not needed things to Terence and we just packet our bags and buckets with butterflies and moths and I also had some caterpillars, Majo had some alive plants and fruits and I dont even know how we could get it all safely without any problem to Slovakia.
After the arrival to the civilization I felt like Iam on different planet, where is air condition everywhere, clean water normaly in every house, you can buy anything in shop and stressed people are living their lives in their cars and in their offices. I had to get use to it for about two weeks. But Iam very happy that we made this trip without any problems and without any diseses at all. Cameroun is very beautiful country with all those great rain forests but also very poor, corrupted and quite dangerous country. But Iam not sorry that I was there and has meet my new black brother Terence and that Majo and me we have many nice memories and new experiences from this trip. And also I will never forget this expedition to the wild african jungle, where I spent my time with local people, lived with them in their village, eat their food and slept in the tent in the middle of jungle under the wild african sky!

Martin Jagelka