The Road to Hell is Unpaved

Another volunteer pointed me to this article from the Economist about the hellish state of Cameroonian roads and their impact on the country's economy. One of the roads he writes about happens to be the road to my village, and I can personally vouch for everything he writes: the mud, the rain barriers, the gendarmes, etc.

An excerpt:

The plan was to carry 1,600 crates of Guinness and other drinks from the factory in Douala where they were brewed to Bertoua, a small town in Cameroon's south-eastern rainforest. As the crow flies, this is less than 500km (313 miles)—about as far as from New York to Pittsburgh, or London to Edinburgh. According to a rather optimistic schedule, it should have taken 20 hours, including an overnight rest. It took four days. When the truck arrived, it was carrying only two-thirds of its original load.

The scenery was staggering: thickly forested hills, stretching into the distance like an undulating green ocean, with red and yellow blossoms floating on the waves. Beside the road were piles of cocoa beans, laid out to dry in the sun, and hawkers selling engine oil, tangerines, and succulent four-metre pythons for the pot. We were able to soak up these sights at our leisure: we were stopped at road-blocks 47 times.

These usually consisted of a pile of tyres or a couple of oil drums in the middle of the road, plus a plank with upturned nails sticking out, which could be pulled aside when the policemen on duty were satisfied that the truck had broken no laws and should be allowed to pass.

Sometimes, they merely gawped into the cab or glanced at the driver's papers for a few seconds before waving him on. But the more aggressive ones detained us somewhat longer. Some asked for beer. Some complained that they were hungry, often patting their huge stomachs to emphasise the point. One asked for pills, lamenting that he had indigestion. But most wanted hard cash, and figured that the best way to get it was to harass motorists until bribed to lay off.

.......

Even without the unwelcome attentions of the robber-cops, the journey would have been a slog. Most Cameroonian roads are unpaved: long stretches of rutty red laterite soil with sheer ditches on either side. Dirt roads are fine so long as it does not rain, but Cameroon is largely rainforest, where it rains often and hard.

Our road was rendered impassable by rain three times, causing delays of up to four hours. The Cameroonian government has tried to grapple with the problem of rain eroding roads by erecting a series of barriers, with small gaps in the middle, that allow light vehicles to pass but stop heavy trucks from passing while it is pouring. This is fair. Big trucks tend to mangle wet roads.

The barriers, which are locked to prevent truckers from lifting them when no one is looking, are supposed to be unlocked when the road has had a chance to dry. Unfortunately, the officials whose job it is to unlock them are not wholly reliable. Early on the second evening, not long after our stand-off with the police in Mbandjok, we met a rain barrier in the middle of the forest. It was dark, and the man with the key was not there. Asking around nearby villages yielded no clue as to his whereabouts. We curled up in the hot, mosquito-filled cab and waited for him to return, which he did shortly before midnight.

The hold-up was irritating, but in the end made no difference. Early the next morning, a driver coming in the opposite direction told us that the bridge ahead had collapsed, so we had to turn back.