Lesson # 6548: Don't believe guide books.

Yesterday, I read through a Cameroon travel book. It was immediate obvious that the author has not been to Cameroon.

In the "Do & Don't" section, it said that it's obscene and dangerous to pee in public. People here pee on the street all the freakin' time. I've seen more penises here than a prostate cancer specialist sees in the course of a career. (As an aside, one of my biggest accomplishments here yet was to pee in public, standing up. I straddled the gutter and peed like a man! Retribution for the gutter cutting open my knee. It's the small things for me--some people get Nobel prizes; I celebrate peeing standing up.)

In regards to one specific bar, the book said, "Interestingly, the beer is served from behind a wire cage." The beer is always served from behind a cage here. It's the Cameroonian take on the bulletproof glass around the counter in liquor stores in bad neighborhoods in the U.S., because all the neighborhoods here are bad.

The moral of the story is that you shouldn't believe travel guides.


Last night I dreamed about pizza for the second night in a row. I dreamed that my family and I had about six pizzas on the balcony of our old house, and that after eating pizza, I was toasting a sandwich and all the cheese melted off of the sandwich and onto the tray of the toaster oven. I cried in frustration, and shouted something along the lines of, "Fucking fuck ass motherfucker! FUCK! I haven't had a sandwich with cheese in six months!" It was very sad. And I woke up craving pizza, which is hopeless in this city.


The radio in this cyber café is now playing "My Heart Will Go On," which is my cue to leave, so I'm off to play with orphans!