The Road to Yoko

The village I lived in as a little girl is about 180 miles north of Yaounde, but that takes all day, sometimes more than 12 hours. A couple days after I got to Cameroon, we set off for Yoko.

Driving through the forest in beautiful, and there's a fair amount of good pavement for the first 1/3 of the journey.

Soon, you come to the Sanaga, which we used to cross by ferry. It's a large, majestic river, and a Tarzan film from the 70s was filmed in the forests along it. The bridge across it is not so majestic, but seems to be sort of holding its own. :)

Everyone has to get where they're going somehow, but I doubt this was what this goat had in mind for the day. :)

This giant tree had fallen across the road. Fortunately it had been cut and cleared before we got there. When I was little, we once had a tree close this size across the road that we had to deal with!

We traveled in a caravan with other folks who had come for the dedication - here we are stopped for lunch along the road. Seven herds of zebu were driven by while we were stopped.

Puddles of this size are fairly easily dealt with. Ones like this - not so much! This one was made over the course of the rainy season by many logging trucks all getting stuck and spinning their wheels, and is now deep enough to swallow a Corolla. Fortunately, they had bulldozed a way around several days earlier.Unfortunately, a logging truck had already gotten stuck in the detour!
The clue that we're getting closer to Yoko - but the district of Yoko is so huge that this sign is actually still close to 100 miles away from Yoko!Mt. Fui, an inselberg (like Stone Mountain, GA), is about 30 km from Yoko. It's sacred to the people of this village, but with permission, they'll let you climb it.The last few kilometers before Yoko is a spectacularly beautiful teak forest - when you see the teaks, you know you're almost there!And on the way into Yoko, the banner advertising the dedication - the slogan was "A work of unity among Christians. A unique event for the Vute people" - not that the unity is unique, but Yoko has been blessed by very fruitful collaboration between the Catholics and the Protestants, who worked together on the translation.