By Alexis Grant (Originally posted on Inksling in Africa)
Douala airport officials are known for demanding bribes from foreigners trying to leave the country.
But two South African men I met in the airport while waiting for my flight told me a story that trumps all the rest.
The men joined me in a small air-conditioned lounge attached to the airport’s lone restaurant, where I was killing time before my 2 a.m. flight to South Africa. We were the only three people there, and we chatted while I ate a plate of spaghetti, one of the few items on the menu. We quickly realized that all three of us were going to South Africa, albeit on different flights.
“I hope we get home tonight,” said the man who had told me his name was Abdul. He started to laugh. “God willing, we’ll get home tonight.” Then he turned to me and added, “They kept us here in the airport for a week, you know.”
I almost choked on my noodles. “What?”
“They wouldn’t let us leave,” Abdul said with an accent that sounded both South African and Indian. “We slept in this airport for a week.”
“What do you mean, they wouldn’t let you leave?” I asked, my eyes growing wide.
Abdul began recounting the tale, which had started two weeks prior when he and his friend Mahesh were on their way to the Central African Republic. The trip was for business; Abdul was a diamond cutter who planned to buy stones in the CAR, and Mahesh was going along as his partner. They had no plans to visit Cameroon and stopped in the airport only to change planes.
But when airport officials, while inspecting the men’s travel documents, noticed they had an invitation from a diamond company, the officials insisted they pay a fee in order to board their plane to the CAR. Not a small bribe: 4,000 Euros.
At this point in the story, Abdul paused to put his head in his hands, and then he began to laugh, as though he still couldn’t believe the absurdity of what happened next.
He and Mahesh refused to pay the bribe, he said, and the uniformed men wouldn’t let them leave. They missed their plane that day, as well as the next five flights that left the Douala airport for the CAR that week.
By now I had started laughing, too. This was just too ridiculous. I pictured them in the bare-bones Douala airport, with its lone pathetic restaurant, dirty floors, unbearable heat and hard, uncomfortable chairs. I thought of that Tom Hanks movie, the one where the main character is stuck in the airport for what, months? A year? Even spending that much time in the airport in the film, with all its amenities, would be preferable to spending a week in the Douala airport.
“Where did you sleep?” I asked, giggling.
“Over there,” Mahesh pointed through the glass. “There is one cushioned chair in this airport. I’d sleep on the chair and him on the floor until he started to get angry, then we’d switch.”
Now I was really cracking up, and since it was obvious the story amused me, the guys continued with more details. They clearly enjoyed relaying the ridiculous tale, probably because it was the first time they had talked about it with anyone other than each other. They hadn’t been able to communicate with most people in the airport because they didn’t speak French.
“Oh, everyone in this airport knows us!” Mahesh said theatrically. “The police, they kiss our cheeks! The women who clean the floor, they say hello! Let me tell you, before this fiasco I would have done anything to make love to a woman who spoke French, just to hear her speak to me in the language. But now, after this trip, if anyone, anyone speaks French to me, I will throttle them!”
“And it gets worse!” he continued. ”I’m a vegetarian! What do you think they have on the menu here that’s vegetarian? Bread! Bread and butter!”
In perfect timing, the waiter then entered the room to take my empty plate. “Have these men really been sleeping here in the airport for a week?” I asked in French, giggling.
“Yes, they have been here,” the waiter responded. And then, with a serious face, “They don’t like hotels.”
At that, I laughed for a full 30 seconds before I could speak. “Did you understand what he said?” I asked my new friends.
They shook their heads, no.
“He said you don’t like hotels!” I announced, and the three of us doubled over laughing, howling like drunkards, knowing the airport staff thought they preferred this “dump,” as Mahesh called it, to a proper hotel.
In between hoots, Mahesh offered what I was hoping he would. “You have to see the chair!” he cried.
We walked our laughing selves through the restaurant, around 20 or so Swedes in fatigues, out to an empty hall. And there, next to a sliding door that opened to a concrete balcony, sat a lone cushioned chair, its black covering torn to reveal the white stuffing inside.
“That is where you slept?” I howled. The men, still amused that I was so caught up in their story, posed for a photo, both of them sitting in the chair. And then Mahesh walked out to the balcony like he apparently had done so many times before.
“It’s perfect for inhaling plane exhaust,” he said. “And if you take off your shoes and walk on the tiles, it’s like reflexology!”
The men finally were able to leave the Douala airport a week after they had arrived, but only after the diamond company and several CAR government officials intervened. They spent a week conducting business — “After all that time in the airport, we got to the hotel in the CAR and the shower had only one knob! No hot water!” Abdul said. — and were now on their way home, stopping again on layover through the Douala airport.
We finished the chair photo shoot and headed together toward our gates, Mahesh pointing out where I needed to pay my departure tax and the office of the airport director. “I could write a book about this dump,” he said.
After all three of us made it through the security check, we said goodbye, and I headed in one direction toward my gate, they in the other.
I hope they made it home. I hope they’re reading this blog post from the comfort of their living rooms in South Africa, and not still taking turns sleeping on Douala airport’s one cushioned chair.
Alexis Grant, originally from Bethlehem, is a freelance reporter traveling through French-speaking Africa. Follow along on her blog, Inkslinging in Africa, at http://allonsy.wordpress.com.
For more on African airports and airlines, click here to read George Esunge's recent experience in Dakar, Senegal.
Good read...
Douala Airport is notorious for its monstrous atrocities and Ms. Grant was on point with her description of how dirty, smelly and uncomfortable the airport is. I am truly sickened by the state of lawlessness not only in that Douala airport but in Cameroon as a whole. An illiterate in uniform at that airport has the power to hold hard working travelers hostages? and what is the government doing about this?
Posted by: UnitedstatesofAfrica | October 31, 2008 at 08:51 AM
DOUALA AIRPORT IS THIS IS THAT ITS RUBBISH, HEAR THIS SICK MINDED IDIOTS OF FRENCH -AFRICAN MONKEYS, IS THE WHOLE OF LA REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN,MINUS BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS NOT A SICK, ROTTEN
FRENCH COLONY? THATS THE MAIN REASON WE WANT OUR LONG OVER DUR INDEPENDENCE FROM THIS BUNCH OF USELESS ANIMALS.
Posted by: red flag | November 02, 2008 at 02:22 AM
red flag, no offense, but you sound like a stark IDIOT. African-monkeys? was that necessary? What an IDIOT!!
Posted by: UnitedstatesofAfrica | November 03, 2008 at 01:35 AM
YOU ARE THE IDIOT YOU ARE REFERRING TO
Posted by: red flag | November 03, 2008 at 11:10 PM
La Republique du Cameroun in action.
Posted by: Ma Mary | November 07, 2008 at 04:21 PM
I went through the same experience, but my ordeal lasted two days until I had to return to Bamenda to get additional money to pay for a flight reschedule just because I did not include a bribe inside my passport. After that incidence, I never flew CamAir again until it went belly up. I wonder how those illiterates feed themselves now as their troubled airline is no longer functional. I have never seen a place so left for decay as Douala international. That your francophone ingenuity, but an eyesore to the rest of the world.
Posted by: che Sunday | November 11, 2008 at 10:36 AM
Anybody who is still to pass through that corridor of 'arrivals'will hardly appreciate the truthfullness of this story.
In that corridor,you meet Camerronains in Uniforms(customs, police, immigrations etc). Sincerely this is the first bad taste one experiences on arrival of how ROTTEN Cameroon is. I lack words to explain. You see men and women in uniforms.THIEVES in broad day light.
The activities on that corridor of arrivals is despeakable. Something MUST be done about those Uniform men and women.
Is a shame to this Country in this 21st century
Posted by: Emah | November 19, 2008 at 12:27 PM
The worst thing about this is that nothing 'probably' has been done with the officials who requested the 4000 or so eur bribe. RIGHT???
That is just a typical example of the 'gestion du ventre' that has characteristically flattened development in CMR.
How much airport tax do these guys collect each day in Dla? Imagine 10000CFAF per passeger flying out of the airport...
Posted by: Colliom Nebato | November 23, 2008 at 05:54 AM
I have just arrived back from a trip to Douala which was to do with work and can confirm all of the above comments are correct.
I arrived but was lucky enough to be met by someone who works in Douala and knows how things work but even with this I never felt safe.Douala airport must be the worst place I havee ever been to and will never visit again.
Posted by: stuart | September 13, 2010 at 06:11 AM
the dla airport is one of the places the gov't have to review interms of corruption.my brother could not travel even will all available and genuine docs.too bad
Posted by: dre | February 02, 2011 at 10:35 AM
Douala airport is like the mirror of the govt.i had to pay $20 because i did not have my vacination card on me.i pay $20 for my carry on.it is unfortunate that the people to protect you are the ones stealing from you.all the fees they collect goes to individuals not the govt.air condition zero,when you arrived you will sweat like a race horse too bad.cmr exports nothing but bribery and corruption.the airport is our outlet to the world and it is very bad.
Posted by: musa | September 24, 2011 at 07:50 PM
I feel bad for this country called Cameroon. The way things are being done is like Cameroon is an orphan without parents. Douala airport is a complete mess.
Posted by: Ernest Timnge | April 14, 2014 at 11:54 AM
YOU TRAVEL ALL OVER THE WORLD, CAME TO YOUR OWN BIRTH CONTRY, AND YOU ARE TREARED LIKE A SLAVE, WHAT IS THE PRESIDENT WHO HAVE BEEN THERE FOR 32 YEARS DOING.I BET YOU CAMMEROON WILL NEVER GET BETTER TILL PAUL BIYA IS GONE, HE AS PRESIDENT HELP TO SPOIL THE COUNTRY.
Posted by: TIMMY | June 29, 2014 at 01:27 AM