Visit to Guivirdig

Out of the 7 CIDA IYIP volunteers that came last year, 4 of us extended. Catherine (aka Cat) was the only one that returned to her original placement. She lived/lives in a small village maybe 60 km outside of Maroua, and last year we heard so much about this village that Sarah and I decided that we had to finally pay her a visit. The plan was to leave Maroua at 10 so that we could make it to market day and spend some time with Cat. At 9:45 I call Sarah only to find out that she wont be ready till 11. I show up at 11 to find her, and her boyfriend Mamoudou eating breakfast. I have a delicious crepe and we are finally on the road within 45 minutes.

We took motos to the bus station, and on the way there it appeared that the vso vehicle was following us. Upon arrival we found a bus that was almost ready to go but that had 2 seats left. We thought that the VSO might be heading in that direction, so we headed over to the car to see what their plan was and if maybe we could hitch a ride. Turns out that it was someone from another organization that has access to the car and that he was just going to the restaurant. We headed back to the bus station only to discover that the bus was full and leaving without us. We then preceded to wait for three hours for the next bus to fill up. We broke down at the side of the road once and had to change a tire. We got stopped by the gendarme and it was discovered that the bus lacked the necessary paperwork and they didn’t want to let us continue. After a discussion between the driver, the gendarme, and a few of the passengers that lasted over half an hour, it was finally decided that we could proceed but that the gendarme would keep what paperwork was there to insure that the bus could not come back full.

We finally arrived in Guivirdig at close to 5pm. The market was closing down and we had missed the Peuls – a tribe of nomadic cattle herders who are apparently very exotic in appearance. We walked quickly around the market, ate some dinner, and started into girl talk. I was so tired from waiting and traveling all day that I fell asleep in the middle of a conversation. Finally the three of us squished into a double bed pulled the mosquito net down and fell asleep. Cat had a meeting first thing in the morning so she was not going to accompany us to Pouss and Maga…. She finished her meetings early and we decided that we were not giving her the choice of not coming.

We piled on motos and headed to Pouss. Just outside of Pouss there is a small village with traditional Mousgoum houses. These are giant mud/clay houses that take up to 6 months to build. We had a tour guide that explained that there was a house for the man and one for each of the wives (polygamous). The children would sleep with their respective mothers and once the boys were old enough, they would sleep in the fathers house. Each wife would sleep with her animals and the big animals (cattle, horse, donkeys) would sleep with the man. The women would take turns cooking for everyone, and the night that she cooked for everyone would be her night with the man. In case of invasion, there was a small sanctuary built into the first wife’s house and everyone would pile in there with all the animals. It was very interesting to see these traditional houses.

From there we headed into Pouss, on the way there was a river and right on the other side of that river is Chad. It costs 50cents to cross the river and enter Chad. I for some reason believed that Chad would be different, maybe cause of the conflict that happened there last year but in reality it’s just like Cameroon, well near the border anyways; tribes, language, and customs don’t really obey by borders. We arrived in Pouss with the hopes of seeing the Sultan. The Sultan’s tribe (which I believe is Mousgoum) is reknown for being very tall. It is said that back when the tribe was pure they could be found to be up to three meters tall. I think this is a little exaggerated but who am I to know. The Sultan is however something like 7 feet talk, so I thought that would be interesting. He had however left that morning for another village. We continued on to Maga (which is where we went to see the hippos last year) we had a quick tour around the market, had lunch and went and waited for a bus to bring us back into Maroua. We sat and waited for 3 hours. Cat left us to go find her way back to Guivirdig. They loaded the bus up with goats and sheep… They said that there was too much stuff on top of the bus so they decided to put these animals under the seats. When we finally got on the bus, there was 30 people, 6 mid size animals and various other bags (all in about the same size bus as a miniature school bus). We drove for about 10 minutes and stopped to wait for another hour.
The first half of the ride went fairly smooth; aside from the fact that I had a goat sitting on my feet and at some point it pooped on me. the road was paved. We stopped so that the Muslims could pray. By now it was starting to get dark. After the prayer we got back on the bus and made it a whole 20 minutes before stopping again. This type we had mechanical problems… after 40 minutes they were semi fix and we were off again, or so we thought. We made it probably 15 meters and the bus died again. Big trouble ‘Carborateur’ we waited something like an hour and a half before we gave up hope of making it to Maroua and caught a bus back to Guivirdig.

We got back to Cat’s house to discover that the electricity had been out all day and there was no water. We made use of what we had and called it an early night. At 5 the next morning we were on a bus back to Maroua. This one only had 2 emergency stops (tires) and we made it home safe.
I tell you what a weekend.