Deciding to travel to Cameroon
It all started in June 1999 after I completed my 3-month intensive French language study program at a language school in Benin City. I realized that although I was already quite comfortable reading and writing in French, I had not reached the level of speaking fluency that I wanted. For example, I still struggled to easily answer simple questions or carry on a conversation for short periods without pausing for a few “eems and hmms”!
So, I told my teacher that I wanted to travel to any French-speaking country and spend part of my annual vacation there to develop my fluency. After some deliberation, he decided that although the Ivory Coast would have been the preferable place to go, he (due to cost considerations) would send me to stay with his family in Cameroon (Yes, my tutor is Cameroonian). In this way, following his instructions in a letter sent by me, his brother and sisters would help expose me to numerous opportunities to practice speaking French.
I went to Cameroon by road (via 2 border towns: Ikom in Nigeria and Ekok in Cameroon) for two reasons. First, that was the only way my N12,500.00 (about US$125 left over from my annual vacation allowance) would have been enough for the trip (I was told a return air ticket was N30,000.00 – $300 USD – at that time). Second, it gave me the opportunity to mingle with French-speaking people as soon as I crossed the border.
Being able to hear the natives speak French to each other; having the gendarmes ask me for my passport and visa in French (it wasn’t often that I came across one who spoke English!) served to help me consolidate my learning faster. With the money I saved from going on the road, I was able to buy many novels and magazines published in French, including those written by well-known authors such as James Hadley Chase, Agatha Christie, etc. – which I read regularly while there, and brought it back to Nigeria to continue using it in my studies.
Trying to get back to Nigeria – drama begins!
But back to my traumatic experience back home. Let me give you an idea of what it was like. That July morning in Douala, I asked my friend for the money that he promised to return to me and he told me that he had asked his boss for a salary advance. He left for work saying that he should call him at 9:00 am so he could give me directions to stop by his office and pick up the money on my way. A few minutes after 9:00 am I called him. To my dismay, he told me that he couldn’t get the money and began to apologize profusely, begging me to go on my journey without him!
I was shocked almost beyond words. Recovering somewhat, I told him (in as dignified a tone as I could!) how disappointed I was that he had put me in such dire straits knowing it was my first visit to the country (to which I made even more profuse apologies). . I hung up the phone in disgust and did a quick, hard thought.
One thing was very clear in my mind. I had to return to the Guinness Benin Brewery (in Edo State, Nigeria) to resume the evening shift no later than 2:00 pm the next day. I had used up the remaining days of my leave waiting for my friend to come up with my money. It was around 10:00 in the morning. I took a bike to the city center and found out about alternative routes to travel to Nigeria cheaply.
I remembered meeting some Nigerian merchants who lived in the city, who had mentioned a small port where merchants from Nigeria frequently entered Douala with produce and produce to sell. Eventually, someone gave me directions on how to get to the place called “Idinao” port by transport. The journey was not easy for me as various checkpoints meant that I had to face repeated questioning from the gendarmes. On occasion, when passengers were asked to pay one fare or another, given that I had no more than a few CFAs left, I tended to receive more than a little harassment from the officers.
Rescued by a “guardian angel”
Towards the end of the trip, at the last checkpoint, I was rescued from a particularly aggressive gendarme, who after seeing my passport questioned my intentions of wanting to leave the country through the port of Idinao. A gentleman who had quietly watched me go through trouble since the beginning of the trip, and who was obviously quite well known as a trader in Douala, spoke on my behalf and said that I was his younger brother (he was a Nigerian) who had come to visit him and that he was going to take me back to Nigeria! I was more than grateful and told him so. At the same time, however, I was surprised that this man would make such a gesture to a person he did not know. But as he was to find out later, he hadn’t even started yet!
After we got off at the port, he told me his name was “Sugarr” (a nickname, and that’s exactly what he wrote in my diary). His accent revealed that he was from the Igbo tribe (I am Yoruba). He asked me where he was going and I told him Benin City. He then explained to me that the ships from Idinao would reach Oron in twelve hours, after which he would have to travel a few more hours to reach Aba, and then Benin. Then he took me to the owner of one of the big but old boats, who was his personal friend. The ship’s owner, known as “Delta” (another nickname), agreed to let me board with my few remaining CFAs as payment after pleas from Sugarr, and also after I desperately offered him my Olympus Stylus camera to complete the pay!
Aid! Me? Traveling in a leaky, rickety old boat for 12 hours in heavy rain?
It was only after he said yes that I got a good look at the ship I would be traveling on along with many other people, and its countless bags of goods. The big boat creaked repeatedly as the waves of the Atlantic Ocean pounded against its sides, and I could see that water was pooling on the bottom, suggesting it was leaking! He had never been to sea before and what was worse, the radio carried by someone close to him had just announced that many Nigerians had died on a ship bound for Oron a few days earlier.
Some of the future passengers next to me were excitedly talking about people they knew who had been on that ship. I started to get really scared, but the thought of not being on time to resume my duties when I was supposed to (I never took my job lightly, and always wanted to do what was expected of me at all times), kept me from changing. . my mind. I collected my bags and entered the boat. The drizzle soon turned into a downpour and I had to use some extra change I found in my pockets to buy one of the big nylon bags people used as modified raincoats (by cutting rough holes in the bottom and sides for the head and arms). to pass).
We had to wait from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm before the trip could start. I hadn’t eaten anything since I woke up and I didn’t have money to buy anything to eat.
However, all he could think about was getting back to Benin City in time to take over from morning duty. I was resolved. As for being afraid that the ship would capsize in the sea, I quickly dispensed with any excuse not to continue, when I saw about five elderly shopkeepers making themselves comfortable on the bottom of the ship, their bags of produce at their sides. , and just go to sleep! “If they aren’t worried, then I certainly shouldn’t be!” I told myself.
The journey back home begins
We traveled in heavy rain on Delta’s rickety old motor boat for over 12 hours overnight (from 7:00 pm to 7:30 am). During the first four hours of the trip, I experienced for the first time what I had read about in sea travel books: seasickness. I got dizzy and felt like vomiting many times. Fortunately, after a while, my body seemed to adjust to the rhythm of the ship at sea, and I subsequently got over it.
During the “trip” we find about 5 different water control points attended by Gendarmes, Police, Customs, Army and Drug Control, respectively. Many times passengers were required to pay some “water fee” or fee, and as you can imagine, because I had no money, I always received special attention, including some heavy slapping. On one occasion my friend Sugarr tried to intervene as he had in the taxi, but this time he earned a dirty slap for his effort.
At approximately 7:30 am, the boat washed ashore at Oron. After we had our passports stamped at Customs, Sugarr asked me how I planned to move. Unable to think of anything better, I offered him my camera in exchange for the cost of taking transportation to Benin City. He refused and instead paid for my ticket to Aba, where he then took me to his wife’s shop and gave me money to continue my journey to Benin City. I noted his address in my journal, thanked him profusely, and headed to the parking lot he had described.
I resume work, as planned, at Guinness Benin!
A few hours later I was in Benin City. Before 2 p.m. one-hour journey across the Atlantic Ocean from Cameroon to Benin City, Nigeria. Even me I couldn’t believe it for a long time after that. Among other things, I kept wondering how it was that Sugarr had appeared at the exact moment when he most needed help to achieve my goal.
Two years later, in 2001, I would return to Cameroon (in company service), but despite my best efforts, I was unable to locate Sugarr.
To this day, I haven’t been able to find it. However, I will never forget the wonderful role he played in helping me achieve my purpose. Napoleon Hill in his book “Think and Grow Rich” said, when his magnificent obsession takes over completely, he will find that people and events will begin to come together in a way that will eventually help him achieve it. I think that is exactly what happened when I focused my mind on returning to Benin at that definite time so that I could resume work as scheduled.
From the day I had that experience, I was convinced that Hill was right when he wrote that “whatever the human mind can conceive, it can achieve.”
But you might be wondering: How did learning to speak French “the hard way” help my career?
My answer is that it not only helped me a lot in my career, but it also opened up a lot of opportunities for me outside of the workplace: new friends, etc. For example, in April 2001 (almost 2 years later), I was selected along with three senior managers, out of the fourteen who attended the pilot course at the Sheraton Hotel, Lagos, to attend an international coaching conversation facilitators course. for 1 week in Douala, Cameroon (note that the company and most managers had no idea at the time that I could speak, read and write French).
Read my article titled Achieving Your Goals Despite Adversity – Two Short But True Stories That Tell HOW to learn how my ability to speak French helped me get noticed by senior colleagues (including the expat Managing Director of Guinness Cameroon), even as I gained the admiration and respect/friendship of others I attended the course with.
“If you are weak in a crisis, you really are weak!-Later
