I had a great sleep under the watchful eye?? of the Cameroon military. After breakfast, (we luckily found eggs down the street), Will, Mark and I went back to Nigeria to see what the results of all their phone calls yesterday might be. Much to my surprise, they had a plan! We had to take our passports and the truck papers to Ikon to be photocopied, I had to write a couple of letters stating our desires and then after almost 4 hours, we came back to wait by the truck-
for Cameroun to make their move. However,while waiting for the photocopying to be completed, I had to pee. I asked the girl sitting beside me, who was there with her class from school apparently learning about computers - they sat and talked the whole time we were there, if there was a toilet nearby. She said no. I went for a walk and found one at someone's home and came back to the shop. After a few minutes she asked me "you have poo?" What? I asked . She repeated herself - "you have poo?" I laughed and told her no, I only had to pee. Too funny.
Once back, the group had made a delicious lentil soup and then we waited and waited some more-
We have worked out a deal with Nigeria that they will let us come back into their country, spend the night in Ikom and drive north to the border we wish to use. But, that is only if Cameroon will cancel our entry stamp. Our group, except for Andy who just recently joined us, all have double entry visas to Cameroon but we want to save the second one for when we leave Equitorial Guinée. Few of the Oasis group have double entry visas so they are a bit hooped. Will and Mark have spoken to immigration numerous times and even taken a "void" stamp in with them to help them along. If they won't cancel our entry stamp, Nigeria won't let us in so we may be here awhile!
We are sleeping across from the well protected military post-
Not in the safe???? compound-
We've walked up this one street town numerous times today but because it's a 'ghost day" which means everyone is supposed to stay inside so lots of places are closed. Not that there is a lot to buy, in fact finding a cold drink is rather miraculous-
6:20 pm
After much negotiating with both the military and immigration, even though the Cameroun border is closed, we are on our way back into Nigeria!. The military is very drunk and walking around waving rifles, there has been an argument/scuffle between a couple of passengers – that's what happens when you have nothing to do and all afternoon to drink and living on the street in the middle of a civil war, so we are definitely needing to get out of here. I'm looking forward to sleeping in a bed with air conditioning!
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