MEDIA CENTRE - Off The Wall

Phil’s Travels – Yaounde, Cameroon (06.25)

Phil’s Travels – Yaounde, Cameroon (06.25)

… continuation.

My taxi arrived at 04.30 and blow me down it was the same Pocket Rocket Lady I had a few months ago, with the electric Merc with the electric blue interior. Lovely. So early in the morning, check-in and security done in the blink of an eye. So quick, I worked for an hour or so and we speedy boarded on to the Brussels Airlines plane. In summary, a very smooth morning. As smooth as milk chocolate until it wasn’t smooth. Having all boarded, the flight was delayed 60 minutes due to an missing suitcase somewhere in the boring depths of T2 and not on our plane as planned. So, Brussels Airlines chose to delay our flight, putting 75 transiting passengers at risk and ill at ease, and the airline at risk of some heavy compensation payments, rather than fly and have one person suffer an item of delayed luggage. Commercial sense?

Many of us transiteers were very nervous, as Brussels Airport has some long distances between the regular terminals and the Africa terminal (Terminal T). In the end, Brussels had it covered. They guided us to a lounge for a direct bus transfer to Terminal T. No passport or security checks. We even had time to visit the Starbucks stand before boarding.  

The first leg to Douala was around seven hours and the inflight entertainment selection was poor. The sound was poor and the controller was equipped with a touch sensitive pad that was more sensitive than sensitive parts of the human body and made for very clumsy operation. The second leg from Douala to Yaounde was a super short hop of barely 30 minutes.

This visit, we stayed in a different hotel. One adjacent to the upside-down building (see photo below). The room had no décor (devoid of any artwork), was very basic, the finishing was poor (especially in the bathroom), no sockets at the desk, hairdryer did not work, the street noise very loud, the lift scraped as it approached the top floor and the shower-screen was hanging off one last vestige of connection to the wall. To top it all off, when I showered, the water was guided beautifully down to the end of the bathtub and onto the floor by the sink, where it pooled gloriously around a small drain in the floor without actually going into the drain. Still, at least the bed was comfortable.

The first evening, we had dinner by the pool. The following day was stuffed with workshops and work on other projects awaiting workshops. It was not exactly the day for which I had left Cyprus a day early. It was meant to have been the day on which we presented to the Prime Minister of Cameroon. But this constantly moving target had moved again to the next morning.

So, for our second evening, we were all invited to our lovely client’s recently remodelled residence. Previously a restaurant and a site that I had evaluated for my lovely client way back in 2019, which he acquired shortly after my first visit and had converted into a small palace. Beautiful work, sir. We ate delicious food, drank a wonderful array of wines (thanks again for the thoughtful contributions and I am grateful to the hotel for fixing the hairdryer) and finished the evening with a rare (for me anyway) glass of digestif.

Back at the hotel, I was awoken at 02.30 by a vicious mosquito onslaught. I seemed to be covered in them. So, I reverted to anti-mosquito mode – I turned on the AC, shook the previously unused quilt to one side inside its cover and cocooned myself in soft, impenetrable cotton. It worked, except that the little flying nuisances dined on my head instead. I awoke next morning with so many bites on my head it looked as though I had a red ‘go-faster stripe’ from eyebrows to back of my bonce. Fortunately, the stripe seemed to clear before the PM meeting and I am stripeless on the media photos.

After the adrenaline rush of the very brief, but successful, PM meeting (he was laser focussed and did not waste any time), my head seemed to explode. It was either a delayed response to the evening before or the onset of malaria. Only time would tell which.

Post-PM, we had internal team meetings and follow ups. A late lunch at a nearby restaurant (Cameroon-style, meaning the food arrived a lengthy 60+ minutes after we ordered) and made it to the airport in plenty of time.

At our gate, my posse and I were standing close to the boarding counter when one of the staff (a very soft spoken, timid lady) came up to us and asked us to move away from the area to a more discreet location. Apparently, we were intimidating the other passengers in the waiting area. First time this has happened to me and first time I have been told I look intimidating. Little, old me? Still, we moved. The soft spoken, timid lady had spoken and we obeyed.

After only 50 hours on the ground, including a 50-minute delay on the return aircraft (owing to majestic storms overhead, yielding lightning and torrents of rain), we took off into the fire-lit sky and rose into the heavens on bumpy air. After dinner, a movie and a good sleep on the flat-bed seat, we landed in Brussels nearly on schedule. No bus this time. With many hours until our London flight (why no flights to London before 09.50? Another quirk of the industry, clearly), we visited the truly plush lounge and my possie pussies pampered themselves with showers whilst I worked.

It was during this extended layover that we heard about the tragic Boeing crash in India. Fortunately, we were flying Airbuses. Regretfully, it meant another Phil’s Forecast 2025 had come to pass.

Our approach into LHR involved many rotations over Essex and east London in the company of many other planes in the stack, like a flock of vultures circling over an expectant meal. In the end we flew west across north London and landed from the west over Windsor, without dropping in on HRH KCII.

My day was not over. From LHR, I caught the Piccadilly Line to the West End, with my luggage. Hooked up with a client, met with a seller, inspected a hotel and enjoyed a delicious pepper steak lunch in the new restaurant. I finally got home in the early evening – just in time to shower, eat and sleep before going again in the morrow to hire a car and drive north.

To be continued…