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Home » Television » Our Productions On Demand » Global Energy and Carbon » Following A Trail Of Carbon Footprints » Winging Our Way to Cameroon

Winging Our Way to Cameroon

A blog update by producer Bob Dambach
June 11-13, 2009

Ten days of reconnecting in Fargo and then off to Cameroon.

 We drove to Minneapolis on Thursday June 11th so we could save almost $2,000 apiece on airfare.

It’s 26 hours of actual travel time from take off in Minneapolis on Friday morning, connecting flights in Newark, N J and Brussels, Belgium, to touchdown in Douala, Cameroon on Saturday June 13 at 4:30 p.m.

It takes about an hour to get through immigration and health stations. 

Then after showing a little financial appreciation to custom officials and porters we claimed our baggage and prepared for the 2½ hour ride to Buea, our staging point for the first part of our trip.

The airport at Douala reminds Dave and I of the one we landed at in Odessa, Ukraine in the late 90′s when we were working on the Germans from Russia documentaries. It was functional but not fancy at all.

We could have used the Mars rover to negotiate the ruts in the road through the outskirts of Douala, but once we left the city limits the road to Buea was newly paved and very nice.

We had three toll road stops (500 AFC) each and one security checkpoint stop along the way. We arrive at The Capitol Residence hotel around 8:30 p.m. it’s a clean modest hotel with a decent restaurant and adequate AC. The water is turned off from midnight to 6 a.m. and occasionally in the middle of the day as well. You learn to adapt.

Some facts about Cameroon (sometimes Cameroun in  French)

• Population: 18.9 million
• Geographical area: somewhat larger than California
• Capital city: Yaounde (1.2 million)
• Largest city: Douala (1.8 million)
• Currency is the Central African Franc (CFA) about 500 for $1 US .
• Life expectancy at birth is 55 years.
• 130,000 households have fixed line telephones, 4.7 million people have cell or mobile phones.

Cameroon’s official languages are French and English but more than 275 African languages and dialects spoken. In our experience the African languages were spoken the most, then French, with English a distant third. Almost everyone spoke and understood some French and seemed to be the common language for communication. However, communication for us in Cameroon was still easier than it was in Delhi.

Our families that we videotaped lived in the villages of Muyuka and Ikata located in the Southwest province at the base of Mt Cameroon ( a volcano that erupted just 5 years ago!)

You’ll meet the families in my next postings.

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