After Ghana, the next stop on my West Africa tour was Cameroon.

I had high hopes for Cameroon, as I really enjoyed Cote d’Ivoire when I visited some years ago, and as part of francophone Africa I was expecting them to be somewhat similar.

Well…I was wrong.

The first drama happened as soon as I landed in Yaoundé, the capital – myself and some other athletes who were also on my flight lost our bags. This was NOT ideal as we had to compete in 48 hours. Luckily only one of my bags got lost, so I still had my rackets and my shoes, but all my clothes were in my other suitcase.

In the end we were sent away with a form and told they’ll call us when the bags arrive.

Getting a taxi to the apartment was simple enough, I had to do it the old school haggling way, but I got a nice enough driver who spoke a bit of English.

The funniest part was when we drove through a police check and he slowed down until the cop came to the side of the car, then zoomed off.

“I am the chairman!” he said, laughing.

I later learned that drivers do this all the time – they know the cop is just going to make up some nonsense and ask for money, so they just don’t bother stopping. They know nothing will happen because the police don’t have any police cars to chase them. Pretty funny.

My apartment for the week turned out to be comfortable, however the area it was in totally disappointed. I had chosen to stay in Bastos, supposedly the nice expat area in Yaoundé, but on my first walkabout the following morning, I discovered there was literally nothing around me.

One restaurant down the road was the only place to eat within walking distance, there were three restaurants on Google Maps nearby, but when I went looking for them, all were all non-existent.

Nobody seemed to stare at me too much, meaning foreigners aren’t uncommon in the area, but I was surprised that there were just zero stores or restaurants around.

To make things worse, there is no Uber or food delivery! In Ghana I had been using Uber and Uber Eats daily, but here things were going to be a lot more interesting. It was like going back to my early backpacking days in 2010 – no phone, no internet – just real-life exploring.

Since there was nothing in the streets around me, I walked a little futher, and still didn’t find much other than a Chinese supermarket. It wasn’t even a normal store, it was like a house that had been converted into a supermarket, behind a normal residential gate and everything. The only reason I knew it was there was because I saw it on Google Maps. I knocked on the gate, and a local man came out who spoke no English. But I said “supermarket?” in French and he nodded and pointed me in. That already was odd, but once inside, I realised there was also a Chinese restaurant in there.

I walked in and the owner seemed shocked to see me, but I used my broken Chinese to ask if he’s serving food right now, and he said yes. So it turned out my first meal in Yaoundé was a big plate of Chinese dumplings.

After returning back home, I went down the road to look for a taxi, and after five minutes I realised – this isn’t going to work. I can’t be walking down here searching for taxis every day when I have a tournament to play.

I texted my landlord and asked if she knew of a taxi that would be willing to be my driver for the week. I’ll pay him $10 or $20 per day and he can just drive me everywhere. She said she knew the perfect person and sent me a number.

That’s how I met Richard.

Richard picked me up the next day and became my one friend in Yaoundé. First stop – take me to the mall to get some groceries.

The mall he took me to was called Playce Yaoundé, a small but modern shopping mall with mostly clothes shops and a big Carrefour supermarket.

Since my kitchen wasn’t great, I stocked up on canned goods and survived on tuna, corn and chickpea salads with healthy spoonfuls of olive oil, three times a day, plus a disgusting amount of mandarins and apples for dessert.

Then later that afternoon, it was time to head to the stadium to practice.

Richard didn’t actually know where the badminton stadium was, so we had a little adventure hunting for it while we chatted and got to know each other. The big bonus was he spoke great English, unlike most people in Yaoundé, where the dominant language is French.

One thing you notice while driving around Yaoundé, and forgive me for not taking any photos but it just never crossed my mind, is how poorly designed the city is. The way the roads are laid out and where they’ve built things around the hills, where the shops have been placed and so on, it just makes no sense. So often Richard would be trying to manoeuvre down a road and I was thinking “He’s going to try driving down there?” Sometimes I would laugh, and he’d laugh back, knowing exactly what I was thinking.

“Welcome to Cameroon!” he would say.

The following afternoon my bags still hadn’t arrived, so I needed to improvise. I was scheduled to compete the next day, and BWF rules require you to wear a playing kit with your name on the back.

I told Richard the mission, and off to the mall we went.

Finding sports gear in there turned out to be harder than I thought. I bought some fake Nike shorts from Carrefour, and then after browsing every store, had to settle with some black cotton tees.

I explained to Richard I needed someone to print my name on the back, and he knew exactly where to go.

When we got to the place, there was no indication it was a printing place, or that a business even existed there at all. Just one building in a big row of buildings. It didn’t even have a front door. I followed him down the side alley, up some stairs into a small room, and there I found a bunch of printing machines humming away.

Richard translated into French what I wanted, and they said they could have it done in a couple of hours. Perfect!

After dropping me at the stadium, he called me a few hours later saying the printers called and he’s on his way to pick up the shirt. Price – about $4. Seriously I don’t know how I would have survived Yaoundé without him.

Turns out it was all for nothing though.

That night, I get a phone call from another athlete. It’s almost midnight.

“Our bags have arrived!”

Last time my bags got lost on the way to Thailand, the airline delivered them to my hotel for free. Not the case in Cameroon.

I call Richard.

“Are you working now?”

“I’m always working!”

“Can you take us to the airport?”

He picks me up, then we go pick up two other athletes from their hotels. It’s about a one hour drive out to the airport. We drive through the Yaoundé nightlife, streets full of Cameroonians drinking the hours away.

“What would happen if I walk down this street right now?” I ask Richard.

“Everything would be stolen from you in five minutes,” he laughs.

“But what if I’m walking with you?”

“Ahh with me! Nothing can happen if you’re with me.”

We all laugh.

We get to the airport and head to the luggage desk. They point us to a huge stack of bags in the corner, but none of our bags are there. Please tell me we didn’t come all this way with no bags.

Then a guy calls us over. We follow him into a room in the back. Once he opens the door, we see our bags right there in front of us.

“Phew!” we all sigh with relief.

“So you’re happy?” the man says loudly.

“Yes very happy thank you.”

“I also want to be happy,” he says, staring at us.

The other two guys freeze. It’s their first time in Africa.

“Ah we don’t have anything, man.”

“You have something…”

“We really didn’t come with anything,” I say, pulling out my pockets.

“Okay just go,” he says, waving us out.

As we’re walking back to Richard’s car, they say to me, “That guy wanted money, right?”

I nod.

“Oh man!”

Yeah, it used to shock me too, mate.

The next day, after I’d finished my games, I went walking around the stadium to try and find something to eat. If I’m in Cameroon, I need to try some Cameroonian food, right? So I went searching. The main street by the stadium looked busy enough to have some food options, but also didn’t look like the safest street in the world. I left my bag in the stadium so nobody could rob me, and went wandering. Ten minutes in and I’d found a few small shops selling things like burgers and chips, samosas, but as for a local food joint that didn’t look like it would nuke my stomach … nothing.

This seemed to characterise a lot of my week in Cameroon – wanting to see and try things, but not finding much to see and try.

I called Richard to come pick me up. When we arrived home, I reached into the front pocket of my bag to pay him. It was empty. I grunted with a puzzled look on my face. Richard’s face quickly changed to the same look. He knows that’s where I keep my cash, because I pull it from there to pay him each day.

“My money’s gone.”

I searched all the other pockets in my bag, then just quietly laughed to myself. Someone robbed me. Obviously while I was outside the stadium hunting for food.

“Sorry man I’ll need to pay you tomorrow.”

“No problem, no problem.”

The rest of my days in Cameroon were just sitting in the stadium, sitting in traffic with Richard, and eating tuna and corn salads in my apartment.

By the time I left, myself and some other athletes were chatting and we all agreed, Cameroon is pretty rough. Many people seem to be on edge all the time, there’s a palpable tension in the air. And after you’ve spent a week there, you sorta understand why. Things are just not easy, even the most basic things like finding somewhere to eat lunch.

I’ll be honest – once I hopped on the plane, I was happy to be leaving. Next stop – Nigeria!