Trip to Mogode, Part II: Open again for more Happiness!

Well, it was pretty smooth sailing after we left the old principal. We kept continuing north and a little bit before Maroua, we turned off onto the road to Mokolo. At that intersection, though, we stopped for a bit to wait for Baudouin, a French NGO worker who lives in Ngong and another fellow veteran, who was doing some work in Yagoua, a city in the Extreme North, but finished the day before so he could meet up and come with us. Well, I walked a little bit and grabbed a coke with Amadou and by the time we got back, Baudouin had arrived and we were ready to roll.

We hopped back in the car and took off. The next stop was Mokolo, a little over an hour from the turn off. The further west we drove, the more the scenery started looking like New Mexico’s. The vegetation became more sparse, the hills and mountains became a bit more jagged, and I started seeing some plants that looked incredibly similar to Mesquite trees. Maybe I was a little homesick, but I almost felt a sense of déjà vu from the sights of everything around.

In Mokolo we stopped for about 15 minutes to grab some street meat to tide us over until we got to Mogode. I didn’t see a whole lot of Mokolo but for some odd reason it reminded me a bit of Santa Fe. There was nothing incredibly nice or Santa Fe-y about it but for some reason I felt reminded of the city I was born in. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the scenery around it was so similar and the cities are about the same size (Mokolo might be a little bit bigger, actually).

The road after Mokolo was rough. The pavement ended with the town and so after that we had about 35 kilometers of beat, uneven dirt road. Also, it was getting pretty hot so we had the windows open, but that also allowed the dust to come streaming in through the windows. I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt but I was really wishing I had brought a handkerchief with me. Amadou, always the fashionista, kept his head and torso covered with a jacket and kept brushing the dust off so he wouldn’t get, or rather stay, dirty. Finally the president of the club turned around and said “Leave it Amadou! You’re just going to keep getting dusty, wait until we arrive!” At one point we were driving along the road and there was a shallow valley off to our left and a small mountain on the other side of it. Somebody turned to me and said, “See that? It’s Nigeria.” I answered with something like, “you mean those mountains a ways off?” “No,” he replied, “The bottom of that valley there.” I was literally a stone’s throw away from Nigeria. Literally.

Well, we pulled up to the outskirts of Mogode, a fairly small town (maybe around 10,000-15,000 is my guess) and some members of the veterans club met us there. We got out and took some photos and boy was the scenery pretty. Volcanic plugs and jagged mountains shooting up out of the arid landscape. Eesh it was nice. We drove into town and made a big convoy/tour with all the motos accompanying us. We drove all over town and then got to the sous-prefet’s (government official’s) house where we said hello and introduced ourselves.

After that, we went to the house of the president of the Mogode Veterans Club. We had a pretty decent lunch there and the mood was very festive. One veteran, Alioum, even busted out dancing randomly for a few seconds. I had a sprite (from Nigeria as we were so close) and underneath the cap it said “Open again for more happiness!” Drink more, Coca Cola says, Drink more.

At this point we all got our assignments for the night of where we were going to sleep. I got assigned to this Elementary school teacher’s house and so we left, hopped on his moto (with my helmet of course), and zipped over to his house. His accent was a bit hard for me to understand as he slurred his speech quite a bit, and I actually don’t think he was too terribly strong with French. As we were going over to his house I kept having to tell him I didn’t understand what he was saying and so when we got there he stumbled a bit in broken English and said that somebody had come to his house on Monday (it was a Saturday, remember) while he was at school and burned it down. His concession was the type with a number of separate small one and two-room huts and the only thing left of his were some scorched mud brick walls. All of the guy’s clothes were in there, along with his identity papers, bank papers, moto documents, in short: just about everything of material value of his, save the clothes on his back and his moto. It was at this point that I noticed a faint scent of whiskey of him. Later, somebody explained to me that the fire wasn’t an accident, somebody came and specifically burned it down. The guy told me that he had two wives and somebody guessed to me that one of the wives, or maybe a girlfriend, got jealous and came and burned it down. He did talk about the burning of his house quite a bit but he always came back to saying, “I have my health and my family is safe, so I thank God.” I guess it’s good to always keep a positive attitude.

Well, I put my stuff in the room I was going to stay in, and then headed over to the soccer field. A few people were already hanging out and stretching. I started warming up a little bit and people slowly started trickling in. It was starting to get kinda late, and we weren’t sure we’d have enough time for the game so rather than do a full warm up, we did a couple sprints across the field and then a few stretches. And then the game started….