Les rues de Yaoundé: No Man's Land

On Friday, I took a motorcycle taxi to class.

This may not strike the reader as a particularly blog-worthy event, so allow to me explain:

The streets here are terrifying. Terrifying.

Each street is roughly 3.5 SUV-friendly lanes wide, but the lanes aren't marked. You drive on the right, supposedly, but the middle lane is for passing, and if the driver wants to pass the person in the middle lane, he goes over to the left lane. At any given time, 100 or so motorcycle taxis ("motos") zipping in between cars. So essentially, the lane system is null.

There are no speed limits.

In the entire city, there is one intersection with a traffic light. Intersections, therefore, operate on a "No lifeguard on duty--Cross at your own risk" sort of system.

Sidewalks are rare, so you walk on the side of the street and pray not to lose your toes to a moto.

Taxis operate differently. You don't hire one to take only your party to a specfic destination; rather, you name a landmark, they take you if they're headed that direction, and they pick people up as they go along. I think this system is brilliant, and that we should do it in the U.S. to make taxis cheaper for everyone and to reduce carbon emissions...

...however, Americans would flip a shit if they were expected to sit that close to strangers. It's totally standard to have six passengers in a taxi--four in the back, two in the shotgun. It's uncomfortable, but considering that I can anywhere in the city for about 40 cents, I can deal with it.

Oh, and everyone honks, all the time. To say "Hello," or "Yes, you can get in the taxi," or, "No, you may not get in the taxi," or "Fuck you," or, "Hey look--a white girl!," or just if it's been more than 12 seconds since you last honked.

It usually takes around 76 seconds to find a taxi--there are thousands of them--but Friday morning, I waited an entire six minutes and was about to be late for class, so when a moto pulled over, I didn't wave him past as I usually do.

I was wearing a skirt, and several people were watching--a little white girl boarding a moto is quite a sight in this town--so I knew that straddling the seat would end badly. I sat side-saddle, held onto my books with one hand, and put the other arm around the driver's waist.

Luckily, traffic was light and I didn't have to go far, because I definitely could have slid right off the back of the thing.

But the moral of the story is: I'm a freakin' badass!