The Weather Where Heather Is: Christmas in Cameroon. New Years (NOT) in Benin.

Partly cloudy, 101 degrees

Travel. A hobby or interest of most foreigners living in places like Nigeria. Also one of the top reasons I decided to pursue a volunteer placement. The sense of adventure and the chance to not only see, but truly experience, a different culture is what drew me to the VSO opportunity. Now I know you might be asking "But what drew you to Nigeria? It's a far cry from a tourist destination!" That, my friends, is a good question. One I still haven't quite answered, myself, but my thought was that Abuja would make for an okay place from which to travel.

Before arriving, I had BIG travel plans. How could I not take full advantage of the opportunity to explore a continent I had never yet stepped foot on? Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, Victoria Falls, and a safari or two were all in the so-called plans. None of these plans were concrete, of course, because I didn't know what the year would hold for me work-wise. It was with this I'll plan trips as soon as I can get a handle on what work will be like attitude that I arrived in Nigeria. Not long after my arrival, however, these dreams were flushed down the toilet.

On day 2, our passports were taken from our possession and we were given the disappointing news that we would likely not see them again until either the end of our placement or we were granted a resident permit/multi-entry visa. As a development agency, VSO doesn't pay bribes and to get anything done in the Nigerian immigration office, a bribe is often what is needed. Because of this, most volunteers don't ever get a resident permit or multi-entry visa and are thus forced to succumb to the long and painful process of requesting single re-entry visas any time they want to leave (and re-enter) the country. These re-entry visas not only take a couple months to process but can only be granted one at a time - meaning any travel outside of the country has to be planned at least a couple months in advance and spaced appropriately to allow for re-application in between. It was with this dictated timeline, and much aggravation, that I planned my travel for the year. A trip over the Christmas holiday, one in the Spring, and one at the end of my placement, in July, was what I decided on.

Choosing where to go over the Holidays was the hardest. In addition to a slew of destinations on my ever-growing list of places I want to travel, home was a top contender, for obvious reasons. Would I be able to enjoy the holidays away from home? Would I break down on Christmas Day, realizing I was thousands of miles from my family? These were questions I asked myself as I weighed my options. The opportunity however - having 2.5 weeks off work and being in Africa - won out. A trip to visit our neighbors - Cameroon and Benin was in order.

The plan was to spend 2 weeks in Cameroon with McKinley then hop over to Benin for the final week. Because McKinley planned to travel Benin with her brother, the latter part of the trip I was going to do (notice the tense of the verb here) solo. In the couple months leading up to the trip, we spent countless hours researching, planning, and booking what we thought necessary to make the trip go smoothly. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, not many things - transport, accommodation, etc - require reservations or forward-looking thinking and can be done on the spot in Africa. A Benin tourist visa, as it turns out, is not one of these things.

Because the timeline for retrieving our passports from Nigerian immigration and obtaining a Cameroon visa was tight, I was delighted to read in Lonely Planet that tourist visas were available at the Benin border. What I failed to realize, or even frankly think any more about after reading it, was that arriving by road (and crossing the border) is NOT the same as arriving by air. Minutes after stepping foot off the plane in Cotonou, I was forced back on to the plane by French speaking immigration officers. After an attempt to sweet talk them, which turned less and less sweet by the minute, I realized I was not making any progress. The three others, all Cameroonian, who were in the same boat (did not have visas) were not getting anywhere and the white-girl card was not coming to the rescue. It was a helpless cause. After being physically pushed toward the exit, I complied and stormed my way back out to the runway, where the Cameroon-bound plane was waiting. After a short trip back to Douala and 5 hours in the Cameroon immigration office, I was given a Cameroon transit visa (necessary because I was now illegally in their country after using my single entry tourist visa) and booked flights to get back to Abuja. Never did I think I would be so excited to be returning to Nigeria, but coming back was a welcome thought after the previous 24 hours.

Visa hiccup aside, I had a great trip! Though I'm not ready to return to Benin anytime soon, I loved Cameroon and would go back in a heartbeat. Additionally, I handled being away from home at Christmas much better than I imagined. I can attribute that mainly to being in a warm climate and disconnected from most things I associate with the Holidays. It's amazing how the weather impacts the Christmas spirit.