Yaoundé, first impression

Since I will be leaving to Dschang tomorrow, and am not sure to have access to the Internet right away, I thought that it would be judicious to write a short article about my first impression about Yaoundé, the political capital of Cameroon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaound%C3%A9

The city:
First, you have to know that there is no map of Yaoundé (and no more for the other towns anyways). Besides, there is no sign either! You just have to know the different districts by their names, some famous roads, buildings, interesction, markets and... bars!
here is the best map I could found, but not very helpful since new districts appear all the time. As you can see, this map is rather designed for rich French diplomates than simple tourists and locals...


During my 4 first days in Cameroun, I stayed in Kamthe Hotel, in a small new district located south of downtown (and not on the map, of course...).


I had to wait for the 3rd day to go downtown (because I had to go to the French Ambassy and the Post Office).

I didn't take many pictures because:
-I dont know when I'm allowed
-Nobody does anyways, and I don't want to look like a tourist...

this is from the Internet (and doesn't look bad)
this is from me, taken quickly when (almost) nobody was looking around:


In a nutshell: it's warm, humid, crowded, noisy, dirty and smoggy! You might wonder: what is she doing there...

The transportation
In Yaoundé, you forget two things: public transits and walking
1. There is no public transit (I did see several a bus sign on the sidewalks... but never a bus).
2.Walking: Yaoundé is know as the city of the 7 hills (which made me laugh becaue it is also the name of San Franciso!), so not easy to walk. Since I still don't have any physical activity, and am not afraid of hills, I decided to try. After 30 minutes I took a cab: the gases emitted by the numerous cars prevent you to breath normally... :(

So how do you travel from a side to the other in the very extended city? (180 km², 1 million inhabitants)
You take the taxi! In fact, few are the people driving their own car. Most take a yellow taxi cab for 100-500 FCFA (less than 1$) the ride. It makes you think about NYC? me too! except when you look at the quality of the cars: no belt, broken windows but... horn! because the cameroonian driver doesn't know the road code (there is no sign anyways) and never brakes...
don't like crazy drivers? take a motorcycle! even cheaper (100 FCFA a ride) , it's also quicker, but maybe more dangerous (no helmet...).

Ok I guess I should stop for now otherwise you're gonna send someone to take me back ;)
don't be scared, i'm fine, and the people here are very (too?) friendly and helpful.

I have to pack now before going to Dschang. I will add more about the capital and the country in general a bit later (I realized that I didn't write anything about the culture, politics, economy and... cuisine, as lots of people asked me...)

Some more about Yaoundé, but I will complete when I go back there:

The people

Yaoundé (like other town in Cameroon as I will discover later), and probably Africa in general, is a city of contrasts, between modernity and tradition. For example, you can see people wearing traditional and colourful clothes, as well as . Some carry baskets full of fruits on their heads in the streets while others work with a laptop in their office.

The food

Finally! As lots of people were asking me before I leave: “but what do they eat in Cameroon?”

Here is the answer ( and you will see that even after only one day I can talk about it, what I would never do in France or California…).

Despite the fact that the guidebooks cite different name of meals, I have seen the same things everyday and everywhere so far: fried or boiled plantains, fried or grilled fish and chicken, some rice and noodles, fruits (banana, pineapple and papaya only, but it should be more diverse in the raining season), manioc (kind of bamboo), macabo and other tubber vegetables. To be brief: not very diverse and healthy! They fry almost everything in peanut oil and it’s overall pretty nutritious! I also wonder why the only meats you can find except chicken are offal and giblets ("tripes", "rognons", "foie", "tendons"...): where is the good part of the beef ??? my answers: either their export it (but I doubt) or they keep it for fancy restaurant for foreigners (in the Hilton hotel for example) or the cows are so skinny that there is nothing else to eat anyways…

Well, I think that I won’t have any difficulty to become vegetarian!

The way of life

On thing is sure, THE technology here is the cellphone. Everyone has one, and usually even 2, from the 2 main company: Orange (French agency) and MTN, because the connexion can be bad or overcrowded

In the house, you won’t find any garbage bin, usually no water on the tap, toilet paper and soap, but the TV is everywhere and ALWAYS on! (and when I say that I personally don’t have one they look at me as if I was an E.T…). But the good thing is that they have channels from different regions and countries in all kind of languages J

An interesting thing is that, as I had to leave early to Dschang on Thursday morning, I went to my advisor’s house for the night. Like in most family houses I guess: the TV on, the wives in the kitchen, cutting and frying plantains, a lot of kids playing and running around, the father coming late from work and being served by his wife and children, noone eating at the same time. Two things that strongly surprised me:

The mother beating her children fingers and but with a kind of whip, and the oldest kids studying in the middle of the night (usually 2-6am), probably because of the noise of the younger ones in the evening.

I will probably get back to these comments, confirm or correct, and add more about the country, the ecnomy and politics in general, but I wanted to give my first impressions of the capital, where I’ll go back to visit anyways.