An African Blessing

After we landed at the airport in Yaounde, we packed into like 6 or 7 Land Rovers, Land Cruisers and vans. I was in one that only had a front seat and a back seat as the rest of the back was full of our back packs and we crammed four people into the backseat, “Africa-style” as they said. This small girl named Christina was sitting in the front and had the whole passenger’s seat to herself, she kept asking if somebody wanted to get in there with her because she felt bad that she had that whole seat to herself. As we were pulling away, a peace corps worker named Tiki stopped the car and hopped in with her, so she sat on the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. We all laughed and the driver said in his heavily accented English, “Welcome to Cameroon.”
As we were driving into the city it started to rain, slow at first--big fat drops that smacked against the windshield with a crack. After a few minutes the rain started to pick up and Tiki spoke up and said that when you arrive at the airport in Africa and it starts raining before you get to your first destination, it’s a blessing.
A few images from the drive in:
a shaggy green canopy with slender trunks and cloud-like heads pop up; mud and cinderblock houses with tin roofs and dirt yards; trash collects in any drain or recess between houses, yards and roads; big, fat raindrops tumble from the dark clouds that reached up for miles; [orange] signs on the corners of bars, restaurants, and road-side stands (what’s that? –fruit? –mobile phone minutes, I think?); fruit stands with large, tattered umbrellas selling green mangoes and fist-sized tomatoes; beautiful hand-crafted furniture stashed in groups under palm trees with thin blue and clear tarps stretched over; a large headstone next to a smaller one in a house’s yard, facing the road; a 15-20 story, abandoned building with a top-to-bottom World Cup advertisement; the slightly sweet, slightly bitter, poignant smell of sweat; dented, rusted yellow Toyota cabs beep and swerve in and out of lanes.