Been a while - Part One

Yes yes yes, it has been awhile since I have done a post, but work has been busy and my writing motivation has not been there, nor has it been creative, not that my other posts have been written very creatively but hey, I would like to think so. Anway, this might be a long post so what I am going to do is post it in parts, this being part one.

Anyway, the truth of the matter is it has been raining every single day, but luckily over the weekend there was a bit of a gap in the rain, which I am happy to say, allowed me to go for a bit of a walk about in town, I even got a bit of a sunburn while out walking. Now I didn't feel like bothering the driver out of his weekend to come fetch me just so that I could go to town, it is a nice walk to the town centre and I also thought if anything I could get onto a cheap taxi.

Well one thing I had to remember was that where do I tell the taxi's to take me? you see, they might not understand town centre and so forth, and if I tell them to take me back to my apartment where do I exactly tell them to take me? I don't even know the streets name.

However I did manage this quiet nicely. You see, about a street or two down from my apartment is a place called Marie De Douala. This means place of marriage in Douala, so I am told. So if you are in Cameroon - Douala and the urge hits you to get married then this is the place where you will go. It just so happened that when I walked past there on my outing that a marriage was taking place.


I did hang around a little to see what actually goes on here, although how different can a marriage in Douala be? I never got to see if it was different as no bride came out, no groom appeared, just a few of the guests hanging around. I took a chance taking this photo as you know, people in Cameroon do not like having photo's taken. But I didn't feel like sticking around for much longer just in case this is one of those weddings that carries on forever and ever.

Now my walk started and I realized that it was pretty hot out and it might be a good idea to get a taxi, one of the cheap taxi's but this comes to mind where do you tell him to take you, so another land mark, if I can call it that is Akwa Palace. So to get home I just tell them to take me to Marie De Douala and if I want to go to the town Centre I say take me to Akwa Palace ...




Akwa Palace is just one of the main hotels in Cameroon, it is one thing that has surprised me and that is the amount of hotels in this city, maybe Douala/Cameroon gets more tourists than I originally thought, but then I also suspect that a lot of people that do come to Cameroon are here on business.

Now below I will display a few pics of some of the stores or sights I saw in the town centre, no, there wasn't anything facinating, the town is run down and the roads are in pretty bad shape, but to the people in Cameroon this is just another day on a Saturday morning.


Main Road in the City Centre


Another angle of the city Centre. But the cars you see here, and yes there are some very very nice cars in Cameroon, but in this pic, the cars here are parked, like I said before in a previous post, the traffic here is a law unto their own, I don't think you will find a traffic officer anywhere, not really sure what they will do, these cars are just parked in the middle of the road on the island, sometimes they do obstruct traffic but then you just have to drive around them.


And surprise surprise, I am still in the City Centre :)











That is where I will stop with part one, Part two will continue with another post.