These gentlemen was having a brisk, sunday roadwalk near Tingere, on the road to Meng.
The red earth of Cameroon followed us anywhere. And in part, all the way home, on and in bags and items used when travelling and taken home.
The highway between Nguandere and Tingere. With a promising lane for people on foot.
The red soil in Cameroon is likely to result from the weathering of rocks that contain iron oxides. The most common type of rock that contributes to red soil is called basalt. As Cameroon have several former active volcanoes, the amount of basalt is not surprising. The process breaks down the basalt into smaller pieces, and then the smaller pieces are broken down further into silt and clay.
Add some rain, and a large truck, making the roadtrip even more exciting.
Much of the ground in Africa is called laterite and that is a clay which has been enriched with Iron and aluminium. The type of clay and soil has been developed over long periods of time by the heavy rainfalls and the intense heat.
Working on the highway, colourful and incredibly dusty work.
Unfortunate, this red soil does not result in very good farmland. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Cameroon’s soils are generally poor in nutrients and organic matter.
These dirt tracks roads are not paved with asphalt, concrete, brick or stone but are made from the native material of the land surface through which it passes.
The interesting part of this for roadtrips in Cameroon, is making the travels colorful. But, as dirt track roads without pavement makes up for 92,5 percent of all the roads, it means that travels here gets dirty and dusty. Out of a 121,884.7 linear kilometer network as of November 2021, 112,740.2 kilometers were dirt roads while 9,144.5 kilometers (7.5% of the network) were paved.
These numbers comes from the Ministry of Public Works in Cameroon.
