The young waitress had two scars under each eye — Benjamin explained that when she was a child a soothsayer said she had “double vision” — the ability to see spirits. The soothsayer had cut her, put traditional medicine in the wounds and cured her.
Solomon dropped us at the coastal resort of Kribi, clucking at the state of his car. Chilling out with a drink at our hotel, looking out over a vast expanse of white sand, we saw foreigners for the first time — not tourists, but diplomats and aid agency workers from Douala and the capital, Yaounde, looking for a bit of R ’n’ R. I finally managed to wash away the last of the red dust in the sea, surrounded by decorously clothed Muslim women, giggling as they splashed in the surf.
We spent our last night back in Douala, at the seamen’s mission. The barbeque was fired up and slowly the bar filled up with an eclectic mix of locals, expats and, yes, seamen. Crews at tables ranged from boisterous Germans to Filipinos, quietly getting drunk on Guinness. And I spied at least one anchor tattoo.
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