Pay up, pal

The first informal “toll gate” has crocodile jaws. A big, angry face appears in the window. “Deez divation. You pay. Everybody pay,” he grunts.

In other words, we have built this detour and therefore you have to pay. This is obviously ludicrous − the detour hasn’t been built, but has simply been created by vehicles; it’s not on the highwaymen’s land; and toll is not demanded of everyone, only of the poor cash cows called tourists.

The wounds inflicted to our egos by the Prévention Routière are still smarting and therefore this attempted extortion is not received lightly.

The inevitable noisy and overheated verbal exchange follows without prospects of a happy ending.

Suddenly my daughter Adrie pulls the crocodile jaws away from in front of one of the Land Rover’s wheels and, with an almighty heave, tosses it into a mud pool.

Philippe and I charge through in the first Land Rover, but the highwaymen have a whole arsenal of jaws and produce three more that are immediately thrown in front of Thys’ wheels in the second Land Rover. An enraged Thys wants to charge over the jaws, but I stop him.

Things turn ugly and the angry parties come to blows − fists and boots fly.
A casualty on either side will have serious consequences for our trip, so I try – in vain – to cool tempers.

In desperation I pay the required 1 000 franks (about R17) to a dignified spectator, and with his help we separate the fighting parties, but not before they charge at each other a few more times.

At the next eight roadblocks, the “enemy” are less prepared – they don’t have crocodile jaws, only beams. There are also not that many highwaymen. The pain of the preceding humiliation has made us determined, and what’s more, we have a numerical superiority.

We also have a plan now: I video the toll gate and tell the highwaymen their operation is illegal, because the mayor of Mamfé says so.

While I distract them, Thys and Gert slip unseen around the other side, lift the boom or remove the beams and throw it far to one side. While the dumbfounded highwaymen are still dazed, the Land Rovers charge through. They are so confused by the element of surprise and our numerical superiority, we pass before they can regroup.

It gives a rare feeling of satisfaction only to come short at one of nine tollgates.

A Carnet what?

At the border the bureaucracy delays (and frustrates) us for hours. First a customs official on the Cameroon side have to go look for his boss to unlock the required stamps. Then immigration officials check and write up the lot all over again. And everyone takes his task sooo seriously.

Little did we know what was waiting on the Nigerian side.

In a tiny immigration office, three officials sit in a row. The first man copies all the passport and visa details in a book – painfully slowly. Then, equally laboriously, a woman writes the whole caboodle down in another book. The last of the trinity studies and controls the lot once more, and eventually stamps our passports.

Across the road there is a booth with no lights – the police office. A policeman holds the passports in the light outside the office window and calls the contents out to his surly colleague at the table who copies everything in the near darkness.

The customs official on duty doesn’t have his stamps, he first has to glo look for it. In his years as a customs official, this is his first acquaintance with a Carnet de Passage. I have to teach him how it works, which takes a long time.

Eventually he finds his stamps and four hours after arriving at the border, we are allowed to drive on.

Ultimately, there’s no dashing across the continent – Europeans may have watches, but Africans own time.

Viva Africa!

* For three months Kees van Dijkhorst, his daughter Adrie van der Merwe, her husband, Thys, their children Gert and Nonna, and a friend, Philippe Zilliox, travelled through Namibia, Angola, the DRC, the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal in two Land Rovers.