Voyages outside of Douala: Ndom
We often had to make business trips out of town to visit sites. One of our clients wanted to revise the layout of a home he had already started building, in Ndom, about 128 km from Douala, towards the northeast. Part of the road was highway, and the other part was on dirt roads, the infamous red laterite,* otherwise known as “tôle ondulée,” i.e. “wavy metal roofing”: very, very bumpy. It took six hours to reach our destination, by which time I felt like I had been shaken around in a salad wringer for several hours. We were to stay overnight at the client’s brother’s home, a more rudimentary style of housing, with no inside plumbing. There were only 2 rooms, so as we were a large group, the men slept in one room and the women in another. In the middle of the night I felt like going to the restroom: however, I was scared stiff of going to the outhouse, which was located several yards behind the house. I was convinced that a pack of wild animals would find me. I preferred to wait till mor...