Today is Wednesday. Therefore, it must be rubber plantation visiting day! We travel along the Yaounde road to the village area of Tiko. Our guide for today is Terrence, a very affable chap, and casual worker at the school. We start at the farm, watching the white rubber sap dripping in to the buckets, which are tied to the trees. There are lots of trees. There are lots of mosquitoes. These are particularly nasty looking black and white ones, who would give you malaria for looking at them the wrong way. There is also another encounter with a big ant. I used to like ants.
We then proceed to the factory site, where, somehow, Terrence manages to wangle us in with visitors passes. Security didn't look too happy at first- I don't think they get a lot of tourists. It is highly interesting watching all the various processes involved in changing white sap into scorched black blocks. Truck arrive, people wash and the squeeze the rubber, and containers are filled. The rubber is then shipped all over the world to be created into an unimaginable number of different things.
We even have time to visit a nearby small holding, where a very nice woman shows us around her variety of plants, including Peanuts, Pineapples, and Huckleberry. We even get to try some of the nuts straight from the ground. It wasn't my intention to make this excursion today. I'm surprised how much I have enjoyed the whole experience. Well done Terry! We celebrate with a spot of lunch- plantains, fish, rice and beans. And a beer.
It's Natalie's last night here before she returns to Germany, so I make it back downtown for a few drinks. Walking back up the road in the dark, I fail to avoid a very deep dirty puddle and cover my leg best flip flops in filth. It's hard not to see the funny side as, from the darkness, I hear Shun doing an immaculate impersonation of a London underground train: - "Mind the gap. Mind the gap."
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