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George warned us that the road to Mamfe was in disrepair and it would take a long time to get there. We were determined to spend Christmas with Joe's brother Phillip and his family in Mamfe and several people told me that the roads weren't really all that bad so we forged ahead. It should've been adequate warning that we had a hard time hiring a van that was willing to go to Mambe... Live and learn.

Highway to Mamfe

Denny Nkemontoh
2006-02-25 19:55:13

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George warned us that the road to Mamfe was in disrepair and it would take a long time to get there. We were determined to spend Christmas with Joe's brother Phillip and his family in Mamfe and several people told me that the roads weren't really all that bad so we forged ahead. It should've been adequate warning that we had a hard time hiring a van that was willing to go to Mambe... Live and learn.

First we stopped in Kumba. Joe was brought up by his aunt and uncle in Kumba. He went there when he was seven years old in order to attend school. In fact, when he entered primary school, he enrolled under his uncle's name, Mbah, so that was our last name when we first married.

His uncle has passed away but his aunt still lives in the family compound so we stopped to meet with her. She looks like a little old lady from the village but she is very forward thinking. Very sharp. We enjoyed meeting her.

Cousin Richard in Kumba told us it'd be 2.5 hours to Mamfe. It took about 8 hours. As we drove, the road got worse and worse. If you go back to my first email upon arriving in Cameroon, I said that the roads were "absolutely horrible." I knew not what a horrible road was. I pulled out my camera at the first bad pot holes and snapped a photo. Twenty minutes later we hit a pot hole that surpassed the earlier ones. Fifteen minutes I was snapping again. Soon the whole road was pocked with holes. And not pot holes. They were car sized holes... We hung on for dear life. There were many times when it seemed we were tipped and driving on two wheels. Plus, it was dusty with red clay. We covered our faces with towels when we hit the worst dust. It turns out that the road we took was abandoned and they didn't put up detour signs. You just had to know the detour. (I heard the detour was shorter but rougher but did shave off a bit of time...)

All the roads into and out of Mamfe are so bad that the large trucks can't make ...