We had already been through four different offices by the time we came to the office of the inspector of customs. The inspector himself was a man of imposing appearance – but in the shabby world of customs sheds, these things are all relative.
What had started out as a simple exercise in getting a child’s rocking horse (or rather, rocking lion) out of the freight section of the airport at Douala, Cameroon, was proving to be a drama whose proportions were rapidly outweighing the significance of the beast in question.
This is my second visit to Cameroon, the country that is to be the family home for the next year or so.
I had already been on a preliminary sortie, and had started to get a sense of the land and its inhabitants – the lava flowing out of the living volcano of Mount Cameroon, seen fleetingly in the moonlight; abundant rivers and waterfalls teeming with fish, crocodiles and, some say, mermaids; some 200 distinctive ethnic groups, jungle, pygmy and plain, who have largely defied deep conversion in the face of missionary and military onslaughts over the centuries; and, above all, the dense forest, the unexplainable jungle that spreads in infinite varieties of colour as far as the eye can see.
Watching the logging trucks descending to the coast down the treacherous northern highway, I had wondered, idly, where in the world all these meandering trailers of mighty tree trunks would finally come to rest. And in what form those same mighty logs would, inevitably, be re-imported into the innocent Africa from which they had been exported.
I didn’t think I would shortly be able to answer my own question.
I had spotted the charmingly crafted wooden animal on a street corner near Johannesburg zoo as I was preparing to return to Central Africa, and I thought it would make a fine gift for my two-year-old daughter. So I bought it, imagining, I suppose, that I could just walk into Cameroon with a wooden lion under my arm, and that would be that.
The inspector of customs saw things differently. So did some dozen of his colleagues, scattered in a maze of offices around the customs sheds, who had impounded the beast before I could step out of the airport.
The inspector was significant, not only because he looked significant, with his Clark Gable moustache and fine tweed jacket, but also because he was the first one in those many offices we had to trail through (picking up a growing bundle of stamps, receipts and permissions, at a cost) who actually took it upon himself to get out of his seat and come and see what the item in question actually looked like.
So we walked confidently alongside him, back past offices four, three, two and one, and into the cavernous warehouse where the innocent child’s plaything was sitting quietly in its battered box.
The inspector waved an inspectorly arm and ordered that the box be opened.
Inside was revealed the proud head of a wooden lioness, poking out of its packaging of old newspapers and cardboard shavings.
The inspector concluded that this was an expensive wooden carving being imported into Cameroon. He stalked back towards his office, myself and my three local facilitators (hired on spec) taking it in turns to try to convince him of the relative worthlessness of the item as we hurried behind him.
The inspector’s deputy, a short, wide man in a dark suit, was unconcernedly chewing on a large slice of watermelon in a distant recess of the office as we re-entered the inspector’s sanctum. He watched impassively as we argued with his boss.
The inspector was clear. “You trying to tell me that’s a child’s toy?” he sneered, referring to the rocking lion.
“I could give this pen to my baby to play with,” he continued, waving around a cheap, fake-gold fountain pen, made in China.
“But that does not mean that this pen should now be called a child’s toy, does it? So you see, monsieur, in terms of the inland revenue, customs and exercise [sic], and general practice in this country, that thing in the box must be regarded as no less than a wooden sculpture, and we know that sculptures have a certain value. I’m afraid I’m going to have to charge you 100 000 francs to bring it in.”
A hundred thousand Central African francs comes to about R1 000. The rocking lion had cost a mere R400 on that street corner near the Jo’burg zoo. Things were getting out of hand.
We begged the inspector to relent, to come and see for himself the rocking action of the animal, which would demonstrate that it had no use beyond a child’s amusement.
The inspector was adamant, but offered to negotiate. What sum did we propose? he asked, smiling his matinee idol smile, tapping the pen on the desk in front of him.
One of my informal agents reluctantly proposed 20 000 francs. The inspector laughed. Then he counter-proposed that we settle on a figure midway between his original 100 000 and the 20 000 we had offered – “Say, 60 000, gentlemen?”
We finally agreed on 30 000. With a last baleful look at us, he took the money and stamped our piece of paper.
It was 3pm when we finally left the airport. It had taken the four of us five hours to negotiate the release of this plaything – a total of 20 man-hours, not to mention the man- and woman-hours wasted by the dozens of bureaucrats involved in the charade.
We carried the wooden lion and its rocking mechanism into Cameroon. Logging trucks laden with jungle trees roared by in the opposite direction, heading for the port of Douala and the great wide world beyond.
Not only was I exhausted and somewhat out of pocket. I also felt like I was carrying coals to Newcastle.
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