Ms. Patricia Nkweteyim Temeching’s experience from August 20-22nd, 2014
I had been in Nigeria for twelve days on a brief academic mission. Mission completed, I was about to leave for my country Cameroon when I learnt that the borders between the two countries have been closed in a bid to prevent the spread of Ebola from spreading from Nigeria to Cameroon. This, to my mind was the right move by the government of Cameroon. But Nigeria is not my home and my leave to stay in Nigeria was only for two weeks.
Ms. Patricia N. Temeching in Calabar, Nigeria
I made some phone calls to verify if indeed the borders were closed. The answer was yes, the borders were effectively closed. Even to Cameroonians like me wanting to return to their country? I was told I would be able to return home, but must first of all undergo medical screening and possibly be quarantined at the border if I was suspected of carrying the virus. I said that too was a good thing. I would gladly submit to screening, and if necessary, to being quarantined. I felt proud that my country was up to the task in preventing Ebola from coming into my homeland.
Today I set out for Ikom from Calabar. Upon arrival at Ikom, I started looking for a vehicle that would take me to the Ikom-Ekok border. A young man asked me whether I was Cameroonian or Nigerian. I asked how that mattered to him and he informed me that only Cameroonians were allowed into Cameroon. That Nigerians and other nationals were not allowed in. I was happy that my people had concern for their citizens and would not let them be stranded in a foreign land. So I paid my fare which had more than tripled, and boarded the vehicle.
The going is smooth until I arrive at the Nigerian side of the border post. The police, custom and immigration officers are all carrying stern faces. A crowd of frustrated Cameroonians, some of them business people with their trucks of wares have been refused exit from Nigeria. The boarder officials angrily explain that Nigerians have been refused entry into Cameroon. They don’t understand why Nigerians, most of them businessmen who are legally resident in Cameroon, have their families there, and earn their livelihood there have been sent back to Nigeria from the Cameroonian side. Since Cameroon is afraid of Ebola, they have decided to help Cameroon prevent the virus from crossing over by ensuring that nobody leaves Nigeria. In addition, no water or bread will leave Ikom to Cameroon because these might as well be contaminated by the virus. “This is serious!” I explain to myself. Everyone knows it is an open secret that Ekok depends on Nigeria for basic daily survival needs like drinking water, bread, salt with our roads being very bad. I see myself standing at the Nigerian side, in the rain, under the sun, for close to four hours. I am angry. I am tired. No going forward. No going backward. I am confused. I make a few phone calls to some people who matter in Cameroon. But nothing can be done to help. The order to send back non-Cameroonians is from above! Then an argument arises between the Nigerian frontier police and the customs officials. The custom officials are bent on holding all Cameroonians in Nigeria while the police say Nigeria has not closed its borders. This argument goes on for some time. Finally, the chief police officer who was already enjoying the comfort of his home and family is called. When all attempts by him to make the custom officials see reason why they should let us go fails, he tells them in a definitive tone that he has not received any instructions from Abuja to close the border and says he will take responsibility for opening the border and letting us go. That is how we got liberated, but at no small cost.
The gates are flung open for us to pass. As I go through the Nigerian security checks, the first group of officers I meet asks me to pay one thousand Naira (equivalence of 3,300frs) for having exceeded my stay in Nigeria by one day, or I go back to Calabar and use the sea route by which I came. My explanation that I could not travel on the appointed date because no vessels from Nigeria were allowed into Cameroon falls on deaf ears. After settling this group of officers a second group at the immigration office asks for 500 Naira before they would stamp the Exit Visa on my passport. Another officer collects my passport and insists on my settling him with 200 Naira before leaving the hall. In the adjoining hall is a group of men. They ask for my yellow card plus 300 Naira. I ask why and am told it is the formality that I must settle. I try to plead but nobody listens to me. At the end I give them some money and as I am about to pass through the last barrier, a man in another room calls and asks me to report to his office. He collects my passport immediately I step in. Another settlement has to take place I muse. This man insists on my paying 300 Naira. I tell him I had spent all the money I had. He asks me to sit down on a bench while he attends to others. When I realise begging will not help me and that I am wasting my time there I grudgingly give him what he wants and storm out in anger and cross over to the Cameroonian side. The situation is more complicated for those who have only their National Identity cards and have bought articles from Nigeria.
I join the others who had done with settlement to walk across the bridge. We struggle with our luggage in the dark, trudging through mud and pools of standing water on the bridge that separates the two countries, to the Cameroon frontier police post that is perched three metres away from the end of the bridge. But home is not what I had imagined. What greets us as we step off the bridge is a terrible stench as if we were stepping into some police cell. I try to get to terms with my new environment, and nose around for a reason for the stench.
I join the crowd which is made up of Cameroonians like me, who are returning home from Nigeria, as well as those from Asia, Europe and America who got to either Lagos or Abuja and were told that no flight leaves Nigeria to Cameroon. When I inquire why there are so many people on the bridge a miserable-looking woman replies, ‘We are waiting for the medical team to screen us for Ebola before we can go into Cameroon. The frontier barrier has been destroyed.’
‘Why was the barrier destroyed?’ I ask.
‘250-300 people were held up at the frontier. They were frustrated because nothing was happening for four days.’
‘When is the medical team coming?’ I ask, hoping it would be in the next ten minutes at most.
‘I don’t know, madam.’
‘Where is the medical team coming from?’ I ask.
‘Mamfe, I hear. They are taking so long that as far as I know, they may be coming from Buea or even Yaounde.’
‘How long have you been waiting?’ I ask.
‘Fifteen hours. I came just after the medical team had left. They had just finished screening the more than two hundred and fifty people who destroyed the gate and let them through.’
‘And you have been waiting for fifteen hours?’
‘Yes. And all these people. The number has been increasing every hour.’
‘Why don’t they keep a team here to screen people as they arrive and let them through?’
‘Madam, that’s the question everyone has been asking. Imagine standing here for fifteen, twenty, thirty hours being bitten by mosquitoes, burnt by the sun and soaked in the equatorial rain. There are no toilet facilities. There is no drinking water, no bread, nothing. Nigerian security is retaliating for their business-minded citizens not being allowed to come to Cameroon. So they are not letting through any water or food.’
‘What if the medical team does not come soon?’ I ask.
‘We will just keep waiting until the day they come.’
‘The day?’
‘Yes, the day. The people who were liberated earlier today had been grouping here for four days.’
‘Four days!’ I exclaim.
I am at a loss as to what to do. My frustration is total. I join the throng of people on the bridge and we wait and wait. Hunger and anger consume me. All I have in my travelling bag are a few clothes and my academic papers. By midnight more and more people have joined us and we are all crowded on the bridge and in the small police post building, where we spend the night on our feet or on the floor. The stench of urine and faeces emanating from the back of the building and the pools of standing water on the bridge combines with the unhealthy sweat from so many unwashed bodies leaves a nauseating sickening feeling in the air.
In the morning we receive information that the medical team will arrive soon. We are all looking forward to it. By noon nothing has happened. Instead, it is rumoured that the governor of the South West Region has given strict instructions that no car or bike should be allowed to leave Ekok. We are still to leave the border for Ekok town. So that is the least of my worries. Get to Ekok first, then think about how to progress from there, I tell myself.
This afternoon, after I have spent 24 hours at the border posts, we are allowed to trek to Ekok town. It is a trek an Ebola patient will certainly not survive. We pay boys to carry our bags. When we reach Ekok town we are bundled into an empty building with no lights, no toilet facilities and no beds. This it to be our accommodation until the medical team arrives. Later in the evening, Nigerians and other nationals who are officially resident in Cameroon join us. Finally at 10 p.m., the ‘medical team’ arrives. It is the doctor from Eyumojock. We go through the ‘screening’. This is how it happens: Eau de Javel is poured into water. We file in and water is poured for us to wash our hands. Some is also poured on our feet with our shoes on. Then you are cleared.
Once I am cleared (after midnight), I leave the ‘quarantine’ building and go to look for a hotel. I find a run-down inn and finally crawl into a sorry-looking bed with tired sheets. After spending so many hours on my feet and on the bare floor this bed feels like a king’s bed. I sleep the sleep of the dead.
This morning, all two hundred of us rush to the Ekok motor park. Only one bus and a few cars are available to travel to Mamfe or Bamenda. The strongest people amongst us battle their way onto the vehicles. We stragglers are left waiting, in the hope that information reaches Mamfe that there are passengers waiting at Ekok. But we may as well be waiting in vain, given that the order that no vehicle be allowed to leave Ekok has not been revoked. Even that is not my biggest worry.
This is my greatest worry: What if one person among us (two hundred travellers) actually came with Ebola from Nigeria? The chances are we might all have become contaminated in the past fifty hours from being held promiscuously together, and we would now be taking the virus to two hundred different Cameroonian families.
