131.
A “land shark” sells me a seat to the border of Cameroon in a nice Land Rover. The road is closed, he admits, but assures me that the Land Rover will make it. I think it probably will and climb in with three woman in white saris, four men in white robes and turbans and the usual piles of luggage—but no live chickens underfoot this time!
We’re off! The road is a morass of ruts and churned mud. Sliding and sloshing, we make it out of town. On the outskirts of Maiduguri and for the first few miles of the trip, dozens of trucks and busses stand beside the road stuck in the mire. Some seem to have been here for days and the passengers have set up housekeeping alongside the vehicles.
The Land Rover crawls a few more miles and then falls into an unusually deep water filled ditch. There is a sickening thump and the Rover also comes to a halt. We are stuck in mid-savanna—a flat, marshy plain.
Skinny frogs with round red-gold eyes and lime green racing stripes hop all around. There are flies here too; gad zillions of them! (Two sit on the back of my hand as I write this!)
At sunset I roll up in my plastic sheet and spend the night slapping mosquitoes, which appear in starved hordes when the flies go to sleep. I slop on my insect repellent but it’s sauce to them and they banquet on. The stars shimmer. The Milky Way is close—our lovely galaxy showing us her edge.
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