Transportation: 4-Wheel Drive Anyone?

Q: How many adults can fit in a Toyota Corolla?
A: At least nine.

Yep, nine. Also, 7 in the cab of a small pickup truck, 26 men in a 12 seater van, 63 in a 25 seater minibus, three people in the driver's seat of any car, as many children as it takes in a school bus until one of them falls out. This is possible in Cameroon, where if both your butt cheeks are on the seat, you've got too much room.

Shared taxis, which are the primary form of transportation in towns like Buea, are usually Corollas and are supposed to hold no more than 7 people. They drive around town, picking up and dropping off at random locations but at least they only cost 100CFA, or 25 cents. After taking a lot of shared taxi rides, I noticed that they all seem to have the same accessories: an American flag air freshener, a sticker on the side window of an Asian woman, fake Hawaiian flowers across the dashboard, Jesus-related paraphenalia, green or blue lights inside, a furry cover for the driver's seat and an HIV-testing promotional sticker. This must be the Cameroonian cabbie starter-kit. Most cars have only 1 handle to roll down windows which gets passed around. And you know which cabs to avoid because the windshield will be cracked on the passenger side, where someone got thrown forward in an accident. (Seatbelts exist only for drivers.) But what really differentiates the taxis are the names or sayings painted on the side of the car. Below is a selection of my favorites from Buea.

-Bush Doctor
-The Spanish Lover
-Osama Billion
-Talk 2 My Lawyer
-Playboy
-Vatican Express
-Nice guy again
-James Bond
-Cockman
-Asshole
-I am covered in the blood of Jesus
-No food for lazy men
-Don Pedro
-No Satan
-Jesus for Life
-Maitre Julio
-Simple Chief
-Barcelona
-Nellyville
-One Mama
-Rabbi
-Red Bull
-Nazi Group
-Daddyroo
-Patience Express
-Loverboy
-Mitterand (like the former French President)

When not riding in strangely named taxis, I rode on 'Chinese mosquitos', known to the rest of the world as motorcycles. I have yet to convince the Cameroonians that most motorcycles they get are in fact Japanese, not Chinese. They are called mosquitos because they are small, fast, and deadly. They wouldn't be death on wheels if people consistently drove on one side of the road, there weren't potholes the size of swimming pools on the 15% of roads in Cameroon which are paved (and the rest weren't mud pits), people wore helmets, and there were such things as stop signs and traffic lights. I never saw an odometer or speedometer that worked, doors would jam so often window egress was a common sight, and to be a driver was to be a mechanic. As George, the head of UAC in Mamfe, said 'In Cameroon all drivers drink gasoline.' George himself drank gas many times during the summer in order to unclog the engine of his ancient, odometer-stuck-at-999,999, white station wagon. Even the driving school's car was in bad shape. It had no side mirrors, broken tail lights and deflated tires, and looked like it had survived a war. I guess if you can manage to drive that thing without killing yourself (or the driving instructor) you can drive anything in Cameroon. However, I still prefer my Chinese mosquitos.