Staying at a Presbyterian church for a week while waiting for our visas might sound like the safest and most boring part of our trip through West Africa, but in fact it was some of the most crazy days.
From the days before one girl had caught a worm in her foot, one guy had been jumped by robbers trying to get his phone and the drivers had gotten their things stolen from inside the truck. When we got to Yaounde one guy was seriously ill from malaria and two of us accompanied him to the hospital to get treatment. While being in a taxi on our way to the hospital, some guys ripped our taxi doors open and snatched our bags. When holding on to my friends bag and beating one of the robbers in the face, more people came and stabbed me in the hand and took my and my friend’s bag too, with absolutely all my valuables except my passport and credit card which was safely locked into the truck. At the hospital we were luckily enough to go through the emergency entrance and we soon found out that we both had malaria. Quite a crappy way to celebrate the Norwegian national day, but luckily the Cameroonian national day was just three days later which was celebrated the same way as ours with ice cream, song and parades. One guy got his camera stolen among the crowd that day and when going home with a taxi in the evening he and another guy were attacked by the taxi drivers who took them far away from where we stayed and demanded a ridiculous amount for taking them there. For me a lot of the time in Yaounde was spent in the hospital and at the police station, but at least we got the full experience of the city and also the rest of the visas that we needed for this trip.