2004-02-24T02:34:00.000-08:00

Profile : An African Dream

I am not the most traveled person. I clocked only recently my 17th travel in a foreign land whereas my partner in life has set foot in 40 countries. A great friend of mine from Brazil has been in 27 until falling in love with Thailand and a Thai woman. Another one, an easygoing pal from Australia has done about the same. And no later than last week emailed me from Venice on his way back to Melbourne that he will be going to South America in 17 months. Time to save money.
It is only that I find travelling one of the most important things on earth. Starting with this essential truth that the flame of progress was kept throughout history by travelers be it for business or tourism. It is thanks to them that knowledge came out of monasteries and spread among the populace. Had Herodutus not traveled to Egypt, the temple secrets of Thebes would have never been revealed to Athena. And what if Columbus had not ventured on the seas ? would America be the same today? Travelling broadens our knowledge, reduce stereotypes and although mishaps often happen along the way, make us better people.
I have vivid memories of this honest man from a little village on the verge of Aswan Dam in Upper-Egypt who offered generously to guide me while I was conspicuously thinking he wanted a tip. Later on he offered me shelter, food, had my shoes dusted up and refused to let his sisters take whatever money I was now willing to give.
Emulating Marco Polo
I was born in Yaounde, Cameroon. Here until recently when hard times forced people to start to look for greener pastures elsewhere, people were only used to see the world comes to them. As for me, quoting Maurician Poet Edouard Maunick I have always had the instinct to see what lies beyond. My mom tells me I started walking at 9 months and prefered go eating in others children houses. As such if they wanted me to eat home-cooked food, they had better taken it there.
By the age of 7, I had accomplished the turf of travelling on a plane alone back from holidays in Douala, our biggest city. But most remarkably I was an avid reader. When I won a big encyclopedia in a quiz contest I spent whole afternoons away from school scanning the history and maps of far-flung countries and dreaming to redo the journeys of Columbus, Magellan or Marco Polo. But the Big Bang didn’t happen until I made my first big journey which, you was no farther than Lagos, Nigeria; the country next door, just an hour 45 minutes on the “iron rooster”.
Though a country with common features, Nigeria was nevertheless awesomely different. The evening I arrived at Murtala International Airport I caught that fever that will never quit me totally and whenever I get to a new a country releases it powerful bouts. Today I live and work abroad in a city which is a Babel of 133 nationalities. Unlike most of my peers, I deliberately left my government job at home to read as Descartes said in the great book of the world.
A Unique Perspective
I have made a lot of friendship along the way. Some which have endured, others I have never heard of again: Tamara, my Argentinian travel companion in Barcelona; Carrie, the all-smile Canadian now in Leiden; Amr, the youthful bespectacled inhabitant of Cairo; Ivan the dreamy painter from Yekaterinburg; Hideo the Japanese a la Rambo, Roberto, Grant…
I have learned a lot from them. Discovered differences and similarities but in the process, I have only fallen in love with mankind. When someone asks me what are the most beautiful moments of my life up to now I point without hesitation at those years travelling. Those moments of innocence, strolling and wandering in the streets of a small town in the middle of nowhere. All this has a price of course but those moments are extremely rewarding. I have learned more from the history of Ancient Egypt just by visiting than If I had been fed by three academicians. I am not particularly rich and my family was middle-class; which may be a less favourable rating in richer countries. But it has been my dream to visit as many countries as possible and still is. I purport to do it.
As an African traveller, my perspective has been singular. At some places I was the first or the second African to have ever turned up. In others where I was on visit I became myself an Unidentified Living Touristic Object. At St-Peter-and-Paul Fortress in Saint-Petersburg , I was literally taken hostage for a photo-op by two Mongolians girls whose names I never asked. Also I have almost always had to apply for a visa except for neighbouring Nigeria. Some times it has been immigration officials on my heels, suspecting me of being a masked immigrant or on a few occasions fellow travelers ripe on ostracism. Well…I have overcome all that and my stories I hope to share with you here, have grown only saucier while I became fonder and fonder of this Tellus (Earth).

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