The Road Less Traveled

by David Best (United States of America)

Making a local connection Cameroon

I was growing tired of Berlin. It was still a divided city in the 1980’s, and I had become weary of the crowds and squalor and living in my dilapidated apartment in Kreuzberg. I was keeping an eye out for something interesting to do when I found an advertisement in an alternative newspaper. Someone was looking for drivers to take five old Mercedes dump trucks to Cameroon. All expenses paid. Somehow, with my limited German and my California drivers license, I got hired. The journey would take us through Austria and Italy, across the Mediterranean Sea to Tunisia, then through the Sahara Desert to Cameroon, where our leader, Michael, was going to sell the trucks for a huge profit. It was an amazing trip across the Sahara. We slept under brilliant starry skies that reached all the way down to the horizon. We fought sandstorms and breakdowns and stretches of roadless tracks where we sometimes spent entire days digging all five trucks out of the sand, often only traveling four or five miles a day. One truck broke down completely in Tamanrasset, Algeria, and we had to drive a week into Nigeria for spare parts, then return to rebuild the engine in 115-degree heat. But this is all peripheral to my story. When we got to the Cameroon border there was a problem with our documents. There was always a problem with our documents but this was a big problem, and we were turned away despite the large bribe Michael tried to pay. We were just two days from our destination but unable to proceed. Michael studied his maps for several hours and decided we would try another remote crossing two days North, near the Chadian border. His plan worked, and this little-used border accepted the bribe and let us into Cameroon. The bad news was that right across the border a bridge had been washed out some weeks earlier, and the road was impassable. There were hundreds and hundreds of trucks lined up on either side of this bridge, with no discernable signs that anything was being done to begin repairs. Michael started interviewing local villagers until he found someone who remembered an old road through the jungle that used to connect this border crossing with a remote village called Ndikiniméki. The next morning we set out with our new guide, driving down an overgrown trail through brush and grass that was six feet tall. This road was really just a path scratched through the jungle, and I had to drive leaning far to my right so I could keep the middle of the truck centered on this narrow route. After a long and stressful day we found the tiny village of Ndikiniméki, but the arrival of five battered old dump trucks caused all the inhabitants to flee in panic into the jungle. It was only after we had circled the trucks and started cooking our evening meal that some of the braver children cautiously crept back to inspect our ragtag caravan, and eventually all the villagers returned to welcome us. Flash forward twenty-six years. I’m in Mumbai, India and have discovered the best fruit-shake stand in the entire city. Guava, breadfruit, mango, and maybe fifteen other exotic fruit drinks were made fresh to order. You sat on random folding chairs on the sidewalk and watched the world go by. On one visit I ended up sitting next to a very distinguished black man, well groomed and dressed in an expensive suit and tie. He spoke with a beautiful African accent. When I asked where he was from he said Cameroon. I said that I had been to Cameroon many years ago and he wanted to know where I had been. I said Yolanda, and Douala and a little place I was sure he had never heard of: Ndikiniméki. “I’m from Ndikiniméki,” he said. I told him the same story I just told you, about our trucks invading his tiny village 26 years ago. He said, “I remember the day when the trucks came out of the jungle. I was just a little boy. You scared us all to death.” We remain fast friends to this day.