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141.
The New Zealander claims that “The American black man is the wildest animal on the face of the earth” and needs “more bloody fear for the law—more police and jails!” He keeps up a constant monologue about shock treatments, fellow madmen, murder, suicide, guns, knives, blood, testicles, cunts—and he says he is a paranoid schizophrenic with no personality of his own—he only mimics others. His face is distorted by constant motion and I don’t mind confessing that it makes me very nervous to be sleeping in the same room with him.I don’t much care to be awake in the same room with him either, so I walk a lot during the day.As I walk I think. I always thought I was a fairly gentle and generous person, but the heat, flies and constant nagging of beggars is wearing me down. I seem to be becoming more brutal and aggressive in self-defense. ~~~
A man I meet on the street warns me that the local police “are down on European hippies” and by that I suppose he means me, since I am white, my hair has grown longer as I travel and my beard is pretty full now too.
He also says that the further east you go the worse it is “for hippies”.
I am having enough trouble just getting by so I visit a barber for what I hope is an acceptable short haircut and beard trim--then I visit the police station to pick up my passport....
140
N’djamena, Chad: The maps still call this town “Fort Lamy”, but the residents now call it N’djamena.
I am sharing a small shabby room in a four-room hotel, with a white man who says he is from New Zealand.
He is quite literally crazy.
He claims to be twenty-five years old but looks at least forty. He says he is on his way to the United States to find a black American woman to marry because “You can beat them and they love it”. He wants to be an American citizen too and this arrangement seems to him to be the best way to achieve that goal.
He says he has been around the world three times and has been a patient in mental hospitals in Australia, Europe and America. From his detailed descriptions of life in these asylums, I think he is telling the truth about that.
He says that the pollution he has seen in every country will soon mean “…the fucking end of the bloody world!”
I am not sharing the room by choice but because it is the only shelter I can find in this parched, dusty little town....
139.
Several men are resting beside the road in the shade of a shelter they have built of branches.
I ask in gestures if I could join them and they kindly make room for me. One of the men even sends a child into the village and the kid returns soon with a pillow for me! I close my eyes and sleep peacefully surrpumded by these men for the rest of the day.
I wake in the late afternoon, thank my benefactors and hike off. I walk until I can no longer lift my feet then pause for a solitary meal of bread and sardines sitting beside the vacant road.
Good heavens! Here comes a big truck going my way!
It’s the first vehicle I have seen moving since crossing the last border. The laughing driver stops at my frantic waving and, with his buddies from the cab, helps me clamber into the huge empty dump-bed. For me it’s as good as a Rolls Royce limo! I am pitched around the steel bed like a loose pebble as the driver navigates the ruts but we soon arrive at a bridgeless broad brown river--the end of the road. The trucker refuses to be paid! (Hooray!)
Dozens of empty canoes line the shore and clamoring boatmen wanting to ferry the tourist of the day across besiege me but the biggest and meanest puts me into the boat of his choice and in a few moments I am poled across the water.
Alerted by the commotion on the farther shore, a policeman is waiting on the river bank to greet me, confiscate my passport and welcome me to Chad.
...
138.
Nightfall.
I am alone on the road. My clothes and body are filthy. I bathe in a shallow, warm rain puddle.
A bull wanders over to check me out. I guess I am OK since he wanders off again.
I continue down the road passing villages of half a dozen huts with radios blaring. Between the villages the frogs are loud.
I lay down in the empty road to rest but the roaring sound of thousands of mosquitoes swarming close to the ground scares me back onto my feet to continue pacing. I walk until moonset.
There is plenty of starlight to continue but I am too weary.
I cover myself with my plastic poncho sheet but it is so hot I must leave my head exposed with one exposed arm beating off the mosquitoes. A dog trots by snarling, but does not investigate more closely. Some smaller creature scurries across the plastic sheet. Exhausted, I sleep.
Dawn: the blisters on my feet and back have burst.
I stop at the first village I come to and ask with gestures for water. A woman brings a small pail full while some men gather to watch me as I boil water on my little gas stove and prepare tea.
The village bully soon arrives. He looks at my open backpack and gestures for a gift from me. Then he grabs a package of dry macaroni from my pack. I tell him in gestures that I can’t spare anything since I have no idea how long I will be walking. I put my tea things away and get ready to fight for the food. He is about my size but looks strong and in top condition. I will undoubtedly lose a fight with him but I believe I must keep the few provisions I have if I am going to live through this miserable passage. To my great relief the other villagers convince him to return the package.
I pick up my pack and march off feeling kind of jittery. If he follows me into the desert I may die fighting for a stupid package of noodles. Luckily no one follows me. ...
137.
The road is bordered by flat land and shallow swamp from all the recent rain.
Nothing moves.
Grey heron-like birds and little red and black birds sit on roadside shrubs gazing at me as I pass.
When the sun is high I flop under a scrawny tree reading another of Robin’s books: “The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born”, a story about an honest man trying to make a living in Ghana, a country where everything runs on bribery and corruption.
His wife and children suffer and his mother-in-law cries that he is less than a man because he doesn’t know how to “play the game of life”.
There it is again.
Sometimes the rules we are taught to live by seem only fairy tales whereas real life is a game of brute strength, bribery and murder; but then some angel on horseback comes along with the gift of life--a smile and some kindness…
I walk all afternoon. It's very hot. The road seems drier....
136.
Cameroon Border: I sleep fourteen hours in the mud room of a “hotel” and wake a bit stiff. There are no banks here but the owner of the little “hotel” I am staying in wants thirty US dollars to send to the Malta National Lottery so he exchanges some money for me.
This hotel owner is an “Ibo” which is some kind of tribesman. He says he and his family, two wives and six children, were hunted through the bush where they had to live “like monkeys” in Niger. Eleven months ago he crossed the border into Cameroon and invested his life’s savings in this miserable hotel but the title was not clear and he expects to lose “everything” shortly. He considers a win in the Malta National Lottery his last hope.
Walking out to find a market to buy something to eat, I meet a young man who offers to help me. He speaks some English and says his name is Tom. He says he hates Frenchmen because they sleep with black women and then beat them instead of giving them money.
He likes Americans because they are generous. This particular American is unfortunately too poor to be very generous but he says its OK because he just wants to practice his English anyway. Tom’s brother, who lives in Lagos, is a general and is famous for killing Ibos. The roads east are closed from flooding and it is almost seventy miles to Fort Lamy, Chad. I don't want to stay here so I guess I’ll walk it.
I buy some canned sardines, bread and canned milk and set out before dawn....
136.
Speaking halting French, my benefactor says his name is Azarak Byriam and he is from Miriam, Cameroon.
He wishes me a good day and rides away.
In a daze, I drink the milk and eat the food, and soon feel marvelously refreshed.
I have just finished the snack when a Land Rover pulls up going my way. Would I like a lift to the border? No payment. For free.
Saved in the very nick of time by these two miraculous occurrences, I accept the ride but am damn near overcome with emotion.
I ride into the border town, gulp three bottlers of orange soda pop and walk across the border. I am two days late on my transit visa but am the first person to cross in the weeks since the floods closed the roads west. The understanding border police let me cross with no argument. ...
