Duty Not Free!

Evil Customs, Part 1.

You're moving to a Third World country where there is nothing. So, in addition to clothes, you have stuffed a number of new unread books, your best cooking pan, a big bottle of oyster sauce, a lot of bread spread and other goodies into your luggage. Actually, it's completely unimportant what is in your luggage. What matters is your white skin color. It is what instantly makes you a big, fat piece of pork meat, which everybody wants to get a slice of. Especially Customs.

After the plane landed in Yaounde Nsimalen, I was surprised to see so many people in what must be a restricted area around the airport luggage carousel (one that turned counterclockwise, I believe). There were much less passengers from the flight than these non-passengers who had no business being there but apparently were given the privilege to go in. Some of the airport staff also had no business being there but they were there, too, to earn some extra income. One promised me a safe passage through Customs for 25$. Without the help of someone like him, Customs would make me pay no less than 50$, he told me. I had nothing to declare, but he insisted they would find a way, regardless of what was in my luggage. I believed him, yet gave him an irritated "Don't you see I'm Asian? Try Western tourists..." look and with my luggage, I headed towards the exit where Customs officials were eagerly awaiting the people they could chop at. In Chinese, you don't rip people off - you chop at them. Of course, I had to open my suitcase and when my old, worn down and cheapest of HP laser printers appeared, they must have secretly thought, "There we go!" before they pointed to a direction in which I was meant to go in order to pay duty. Outside the Customs office were most of the foreigners I remembered from the flight, all with their suitcases open for a closer inspection. Then, the 25$ guy came out of nowhere, whispered something in my ear and pushed my cart towards the exit again, where the Customs officials were occupied this time and didn't spot me. Either the 25$ guy intended to compete with and be cheaper than Customs or they actually collaborated, it's just impossible to say. I never actually asked for any help and with nothing to declare, being told to pay anything was absurd, not to mention 25$. After some playful arguing, my soon-to-be coworker handed him 5$, which may well be about 50% of extra income for the day for him. Neither was this stunt of his allowed, nor was he happy with the 5$, which as a tip is respectable even in the West. He belongs to the group of people a friend of mine labels "the miserable poor".

But it’s true - Customs are evil. Yes, not everywhere in the world are they very corrupt, and their purpose may be to protect a country’s economy; but in the case of Cameroon, it is corrupt to the power of ten, there is little about the economy that it protects and since the country produces so little and relies on virtually all sorts of imports to even live, artificially high import tariffs only have a crippling effect on the economy. Correct me if I’m wrong, you economists out there. Namely you, Danial, start commenting here, show me some love. In a country that produces no green tea (it could and it should), we’re importing Chinese green tea to supply the people in the North who traditionally drink nothing but green tea. This is low-end stuff for extremely low-income people, and of what they pay, only about 30% is for the tea and for us. The rest is for transport, which includes fees paid to the leeches, oh I mean policemen, who demand money at every one of the countless roadblocks that mark the 1000+ km cross-country path from port to polygamist; and for taxes, lots and lots of it, which is primarily spent on excess office supplies and fancy cars for the president and his ministers, but also on parties and the soft, luxe, European-made toilet paper that they use at home.


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