Monday 2/25-The Strike Begins

The taxis unified and set a strike into motion. In Duoala, the port city where everything is imported from, the riots were very bad, businesses and schools were closed, with under 10 deaths being reported. We heard of this in Yaounde, but did not see any of it firsthand. It was very strange to be on the road and see no yellow taxis clogging traffic. ASOY decided to cancel after school activities and we were all allowed to go home right at 3:15. We stopped off at the store to get some extra food, just in case. At the local shop in our neighborhood people were started to stock pile things and this made us a little wary to see parents from school get cartloads of water.
The basis of the strike is gas prices. It was raised 16cfa in a matter of a few weeks. That is just a few cents to you and I, but it is a lot to the people here. It was raised twice, the second time was the night Cameroon beat Ghana in the Africa Cup soccer series (soccer is the national past time here) so the people wouldn't notice right off. They got it together and made sure no taxis went out Monday. Any that were out, were not picking people up, but had their flashers on so they wouldn't get stoned. It caused a lot of problems because so many people depend on them. Workers at out school couldn't make it in, many of the general public had to walk hours to get to their jobs, and local students couldn't make it to schoo. Our preschool teacher, Helen, walked and hour and a half to get to school.
At this point we weren't too alarmed. We felt bad for the people where the riots were, but it wasn't localized yet.