Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Groundhog Day concludes and we bring Nigeria with us into Cameroon.
After an exhausting week we load the car up and set out for Banki, the border with Cameroon. Just as we reach the junction that turns from the main road towards our destination, a car pulls alongside us with the Nigerian chief of the border post. He says follow him. Ideal. Literally and perfectly ideal. As we passed the checkpoint, men jump up to salute him and we coast through in his wake. Twice or three times the soldiers and police men assume that we are not a legitimate convoy and beckon aggressively for us to stop. But we don't feel like it and finally we don't have to. I feel like sticking my thumbs in my ears, leaning out the window and waiving my fingers around; I feel like shouting neener neener neener. Nevermind that Shamal, our escort and patron saint of border crossings, drives like we are being pursued by a helicopter.
We reach his post and all urgency evaporates. We take our shoes off and enter his house. We watch the last ten minutes of Ghost Busters II, for which I am not prepared, and then listen to Condoleeza Rice lying through her miserable you-can't-touch-us façade about the United States' commitment to treating prisoners of "The War on Terror" with fairness. Our hosts are very impressed with Condi: a very powerful woman; very confident. But they don't believe a word she says. They were shaken and saddened by the United States' decision to ignore the United Nations and the International Community. They ask about the war. We talk about the war and they know a great deal about these issues. (They inform us that the BBC, the Voice of America and Deutsche Welt all broadcast the news in Hausa: the lingua franca of much of West Africa. That makes Hausa speakers unusually well informed about international politics.) Then we are eating rice and pepper sauce along with a casserole dish of meat parts that looks like a choral reef dipped in mud. Also there is short bread and fruit juice. Remember. This is the border. We are supposed to be full of stress; waiting, bowing and scraping, growing confused, earning stamps.
Someone walks into our luncheon and speaks rapidly in one of the three hundred languages spoken in the area. A man just stabbed his wife to death for refusing him something. This is a small town. Sometimes it is easier to shoot armed robbers than to take them to court. You try to pay for information but you can't get it. People are always solving their problems with knives. They have apprehended the wife killer. He will face life imprisonment or he will be hanged. Shamal doesn't even leave the room. This happens all the time. Tuuli is shaking her head. By now, she handles chauvinism and disregard for woman spectacularly well.
You can't tell where Nigeria ends and Cameroon begins. There is an invisible line in the middle of this ordinary town that Shamal cannot cross. Only law enforcement and law evasion know exactly where this demarcation rests. The gate between the signs for Nigeria and Cameroon is simply a nod to the expectations of the rare traveler who happens to pass through holding documents and needing authorization. A murderer can cross the imaginary line through town and then turn around and insult Shamal's mother. But, this far north, where banditry is such a problem, where the border is so theoretical, the Nigerians and the Cameroonians cooperate. Shamal can call his counterparts. They will catch his man and chuck him back across the line. He stresses that law enforcement would be utterly impossible otherwise.
The cooperation is especially evident when we are being given free soft drinks on the Cameroonian side, when their official goes and changes our money for us, when they personally take us through the difficult task of processing the documents for our car: "Don't stop their car. We are together. They are important." There is a large obnoxious sign in French that says "Everybody pays at Customs." We didn't.
Nigeria's porous borders (they exist, at least, with Cameroon and Niger) are telling. Shamal considers them to be a concrete example of Nigeria's willingness to extend brotherhood. African affairs dominate Nigerian politics and she is a huge contributor to Peace Keeping forces and mediation talks. Sometimes the Cameroonians cross and vote in Nigerian elections; sometimes it happens the other way around. Their local governments help one another. Citizenship doesn't really matter here. Shamal's friend points out that when Northern Nigeria suffers, much of Niger, Chad, Benin and Cameroon suffer along with them. He says if the southerners try to separate and refuse to share the profits from their oil, nationals from these bordering countries will readily join the north to defeat them. Shamal says they have done it before and they would do it again. The talk of solidarity is nice. The shaking fists and readiness for warfare is more unnverving.
Shamal pays for our accommodation and takes us out for the most amazing fish we have so far eaten on this trip. It is from a nearby river. A tilapia big enough to feed five people. The Cameroonians did not sell Nigerian beer. They ridiculed it. Our Nigerians ridiculed Cameroon's beer; but they still drank it. We tried to remain neutral. We talked politics, law enforcement, colonial history. Nigerians have done their school work.
I feel like it was necessary to bring Nigeria with us into Cameroon. I felt like a pet store fish whose little plastic bag was gently brought into equilibrium with a new fish tank.
After an exhausting week we load the car up and set out for Banki, the border with Cameroon. Just as we reach the junction that turns from the main road towards our destination, a car pulls alongside us with the Nigerian chief of the border post. He says follow him. Ideal. Literally and perfectly ideal. As we passed the checkpoint, men jump up to salute him and we coast through in his wake. Twice or three times the soldiers and police men assume that we are not a legitimate convoy and beckon aggressively for us to stop. But we don't feel like it and finally we don't have to. I feel like sticking my thumbs in my ears, leaning out the window and waiving my fingers around; I feel like shouting neener neener neener. Nevermind that Shamal, our escort and patron saint of border crossings, drives like we are being pursued by a helicopter.
We reach his post and all urgency evaporates. We take our shoes off and enter his house. We watch the last ten minutes of Ghost Busters II, for which I am not prepared, and then listen to Condoleeza Rice lying through her miserable you-can't-touch-us façade about the United States' commitment to treating prisoners of "The War on Terror" with fairness. Our hosts are very impressed with Condi: a very powerful woman; very confident. But they don't believe a word she says. They were shaken and saddened by the United States' decision to ignore the United Nations and the International Community. They ask about the war. We talk about the war and they know a great deal about these issues. (They inform us that the BBC, the Voice of America and Deutsche Welt all broadcast the news in Hausa: the lingua franca of much of West Africa. That makes Hausa speakers unusually well informed about international politics.) Then we are eating rice and pepper sauce along with a casserole dish of meat parts that looks like a choral reef dipped in mud. Also there is short bread and fruit juice. Remember. This is the border. We are supposed to be full of stress; waiting, bowing and scraping, growing confused, earning stamps.
Someone walks into our luncheon and speaks rapidly in one of the three hundred languages spoken in the area. A man just stabbed his wife to death for refusing him something. This is a small town. Sometimes it is easier to shoot armed robbers than to take them to court. You try to pay for information but you can't get it. People are always solving their problems with knives. They have apprehended the wife killer. He will face life imprisonment or he will be hanged. Shamal doesn't even leave the room. This happens all the time. Tuuli is shaking her head. By now, she handles chauvinism and disregard for woman spectacularly well.
You can't tell where Nigeria ends and Cameroon begins. There is an invisible line in the middle of this ordinary town that Shamal cannot cross. Only law enforcement and law evasion know exactly where this demarcation rests. The gate between the signs for Nigeria and Cameroon is simply a nod to the expectations of the rare traveler who happens to pass through holding documents and needing authorization. A murderer can cross the imaginary line through town and then turn around and insult Shamal's mother. But, this far north, where banditry is such a problem, where the border is so theoretical, the Nigerians and the Cameroonians cooperate. Shamal can call his counterparts. They will catch his man and chuck him back across the line. He stresses that law enforcement would be utterly impossible otherwise.
The cooperation is especially evident when we are being given free soft drinks on the Cameroonian side, when their official goes and changes our money for us, when they personally take us through the difficult task of processing the documents for our car: "Don't stop their car. We are together. They are important." There is a large obnoxious sign in French that says "Everybody pays at Customs." We didn't.
Nigeria's porous borders (they exist, at least, with Cameroon and Niger) are telling. Shamal considers them to be a concrete example of Nigeria's willingness to extend brotherhood. African affairs dominate Nigerian politics and she is a huge contributor to Peace Keeping forces and mediation talks. Sometimes the Cameroonians cross and vote in Nigerian elections; sometimes it happens the other way around. Their local governments help one another. Citizenship doesn't really matter here. Shamal's friend points out that when Northern Nigeria suffers, much of Niger, Chad, Benin and Cameroon suffer along with them. He says if the southerners try to separate and refuse to share the profits from their oil, nationals from these bordering countries will readily join the north to defeat them. Shamal says they have done it before and they would do it again. The talk of solidarity is nice. The shaking fists and readiness for warfare is more unnverving.
Shamal pays for our accommodation and takes us out for the most amazing fish we have so far eaten on this trip. It is from a nearby river. A tilapia big enough to feed five people. The Cameroonians did not sell Nigerian beer. They ridiculed it. Our Nigerians ridiculed Cameroon's beer; but they still drank it. We tried to remain neutral. We talked politics, law enforcement, colonial history. Nigerians have done their school work.
I feel like it was necessary to bring Nigeria with us into Cameroon. I felt like a pet store fish whose little plastic bag was gently brought into equilibrium with a new fish tank.
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