Checkpoints

We were driving across Eastern Cameroon, heading for a remote and obscure crossing point into the Central African Republic.  As we drove, the landscape, scenery, roads and people gradually changed.  The buildings became more basic, often using no more than materials taken from the rainforest.  The concrete and corrugated iron constructions of Bertoua and Batouri, the last two sizeable towns we passed, were replaced, first with mud and thatch houses then, increasingly, by the thatch, leaves and grass houses built by the Ba'aka, or "pygmies".  Across this ever changing landscape, two things remained constant - the logging trucks, stirring up thick clouds of choking red dust which lingered in the air long after they had passed, and the police or security 'checkpoints'.

At each of these checkpoints, some attempt was made, with varying degrees of subtlety and guile, to levy 'fines' for incorrect paperwork.  Each time we were greeted by a military official and heard the request for 'les papiers personels', the passports were handed over and the rigmarole began.  Many of the guards, poorly trained and seemingly barely literate, clearly had no idea what they were looking at.  One officer, noticing a photo attached to the visa in my passport, carefully checked this photo against my grimy face peering out of the car window, and made sure that I knew I was under scrutiny.  Satisfied that the bedraggled, filthy specimen in the back seat was indeed the subject of the visa photo, he handed the passport back, apparently now happy that the visa was valid.  The fact that he had diligently been checking an expired Tanzanian visa from 2006 appeared not to have been noticed.  I wasn't going to point out his error.

Further on, another official sat scrutinising with great care a Malian visa from a little over a year ago.  When Simon tried to point him to the correct page in the passport, he jabbed at the visa page with his finger.  "Bamako!" he insisted, with wide eyed indignation.  True, Bamako is the capital of Mali, and also the name of a village we had passed through some 30 minutes before - possibly the source of the officer's confusion.  We left him carefully running his finger down the page on behalf of the Malian authorities.  As he did so, a female officer walked past, greeting us all with a hi-5 and a click of the fingers, an interesting new variant on the 'finger snap handshake' I became familiar with in Ghana.  Here was a new tactic.

"Monsieur, mon frere," she began, looking me in the eye in a manner which I found a little unnerving,  "pensez de moi.  Vous pouvez aider moi, n'est-ce pas?  N'est-ce pas?  Monsieur, mon frere."

This was a new one on me.  Hearing this kind of wheedling, whining plea from a uniformed official doesn't often happen in Essex, and I wasn't sure how to respond.  Asking her what sort of 'aider' she had in kind could have been construed as opening negotiations, and simply refusing could have been awkward - however inappropriate her behaviour, she still had a police badge after all.  In the end I settled on the tourist's best line of defence - blank incomprehension.  My french is pretty rubbish you know.

The most blatant and useless example of cheating, however, came from one of the few officers who actually managed to find the right visas in our passports.  Handing one passport back through the window, he played what he imagined would be his trump card.  "Le visa, c'est fini!" he declared hopefully.  This was so pathetic I actually felt quite sorry for the guy and almost dashed him a few thousand CFA out of pity.  Almost.  From where I sat, I could clearly see the visa page - "Delivre le 21 fevrier 2011.  Validite 3 mois".  The visa still had two months to run.

"Non, monsieur, le visa n'est pas fini.  Vraiment, c'est pas fini."  The gendarme turned away from the car, his shoulders slumped with disappointment and, with a "merci monsieur!" and a cheery wave, we drove off into the afternoon heat.