Please excuse the grandiose title of this blog. I recently hosted a workshop for VSO volunteers on current global crises and their implications for Africa and Cameroon. Given Cameroon’s dearth of statistics and volunteers’ limited access to the internet it is difficult to find relevant information on Cameroon and on Africa but, in addition to discussing past crises and what we might learn from them, we pooled what thoughts and information we had so as to understand what is happening around us as well as possible.
Food Crisis
The global food crisis is much in evidence in Africa. In Cameroon the price of cooking oil has nearly doubled in the past year, the price of rice has trebled in the past year and the price of sugar has multiplied more than ten-fold in the past few years. Fish from the lake have become expensive in Maga as stocks dwindle due to over-fishing and because buyers from Chad, Maroua and Kousseri are outbidding local purchasers. Separately, a few scares about avian flu (with some substance) have caused a lot of poultry to be killed and eaten and a rise in poultry prices has followed.
The food crisis has resulted in increasing poverty. In the Far North of Cameroon a significant proportion of people do not have enough money to feed themselves and their families and the food price rises have increased this proportion. People were particularly badly affected at the start of the school year, many failing to pay the fees for their children. A high proportion of people had a bout of malaria in September/October, the period of highest risk at the end of the rainy season, and many could not afford medecines. Lack of medicines has clearly contributed to the high mortality rate.
There have been demonstrations in several countries. In Cameroon there were riots in February. The stated cause was the change in constitution to enable Paul Biya to remain as president but the underlying causes included increases in food and energy prices, as well as unemployment among the young. The government imprisoned the organisers. They bought the numerous public servants off with salary increases but now many salaries are in arrears.
A minority benefits from high prices, e.g. rice growers, the majority being affected adversely. There is a need for redistribution of the benefits of price rises.
Africa is on the receiving end of food tariffs and subsidies by the US, EU and Japan and this has distorted the economics of its food production and caused some viable crops not to be grown locally.
Population growth is a long-term cause of hunger, particularly strong in the Far North of Cameroon where families with more than 10 children are common. Birth control would help but is almost never mentioned here.
Energy Crisis
The price of petrol has roughly doubled in the past year and in addition to the direct effects on the cost of travel, there are knock-on effects on the price of products, such as food, which need to be transported. Cameroon has some oil (in the Bakassi peninsula) but is trying to become independent of this source of finance.
Given Cameroon’s climate, solutions to the difficult problems of production and storage of solar energy would be particularly beneficial.
Climate Crisis
Deserts in Africa are increasing (including in Cameroon), there are drought, famine and violent storms (recently in Chad, Togo and Morocco). Nomads who roam between Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Chad and the Central African Republic rearing livestock are finding less grazing and fewer watering holes (the Maga council’s tax revenue from the nomads is declining). Lake Chad is contracting. These problems are contributing to migration. Zones where malaria is prevalent are expanding.
Africa is adversely affected by practices in developed and emerging countries. Ideally countries which are net polluters should pay countries such as Cameroon for retaining forests, e.g. using the proceeds of a global carbon tax.
Financial Crisis
Africa has not been affected directly by the financial crisis although some African banks are part of multinational groups. However Africa/Cameroon are affected by reduction of economic growth in developed countries (e.g. Cameroon’s exports of wood to the US have collapsed, putting over 40,000 jobs at risk). Tourism will be affected but is not well developed in Cameroon. Iimmigrants will not be able to afford to continue payments home at their current level.
Credit will be much more difficult to come by and loans will be more expensive. Aid from developed countries is likely to be reduced. Developing countries, including most African countries and Cameroon, are being bypassed in remedial discussions involving the developed and emerging countries and at best the developing countries can hope not to lose out. The massive rescue packages in the developed world dwarf aid to developing countries.
Lower demand in developed and emerging countries will have a beneficial effect on petrol and food prices. There could also be some negative effects, for example I have some fears that local rice growers who are paying heavily for fertilisers for the coming season will find that the price of rice has fallen by the time that they harvest their crop. Recent heavy falls in the price of crude oil have yet to be reflected in the price of petrol at the “pump” in Cameroon (outside of cities such as Maroua, petrol is only sold at stalls at the road-side in cans, in litre bottles, or in smaller quantities). Immigration to developed countries will be less attractive and this should have a beneficial effect on the brain drain from developing countries.
Some commentators believe that Africa will gain relative to other continents as a result of the financial crisis but its lack of influence in world economic affairs has to be a concern, as mentioned earlier.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Some Aspects of Religion and Tradition in the West and Far North
Although Foumban seemed predominantly Muslim, Christianity (mainly Protestantism) is also strong in West Cameroon. In fact Islam, Christianity and traditional religions have roughly equal shares there (an invention of one of the Bamoun kings was a religion that was a fusion of all three, but this did not last). We passed a large number of Christian, mainly Protestant, churches along the road, some very impressive constructions. There are also pockets of Christianity in the Far North, some quite fundamentalist. One volunteer in a village in the Far North told me about a church service that she was obliged to attend since the school she works in is strongly religious. She said that the preacher worked people into a frenzy and demanded that “fornicators and masturbators” come forward and repent, whereupon several complied.
The brand of Islam in Foumban is very modern whereas in the Far North it seems a little more fundamentalist and less flexible, e.g. with respect to dress, the role of women and frequency of prayers. In the Far North work is punctuated by prayers and buses stop for prayers. One of the practices which I least like here (because it seems to imply that women are subservient to men), and which happily is not very common, is that when some women need to address a man for a purpose such as to buy a bus ticket they crouch before him and present their money on outstretched palms of their hands, from which the man removes the money and in which he places the ticket and any change. A few women in the Far North are completely hidden behind black veils but some of them greet me quite cheerily when we pass on the road. Most Muslims of every age seem to practise, though a surprising number drink alcohol on the quiet (some of them hide their drinks underneath the table between hasty gulps). Nowhere in Cameroon have I seen any signs of militancy or sympathies with terrorist causes.
Last month in Maga I had to endure lound music and shouting from a neighbour’s wedding celebration which lasted four days and continued through each night. I was told that the bride-to-be’s mother invites her friends to a party at which they make contributions to wedding expenses, then the father, then the bride-to-be and then the groom-to-be each has a party, and after all that they have the marriage. A dowry is paid to the bride’s father (or to an uncle, if the father is dead). In both regions marriages are still arranged by parents, uncles and aunts. In an earlier blog I mentioned that a friend had been persuaded by his parents to marry a girl whom he had not previously met. Since then she ran off with another male friend and happily my friend does not have to go through with this arranged marriage. I heard of a particularly disturbing case of a young man who wanted to marry a young girl but his family could not afford the dowry. There was another suitor who was able to pay the dowry but the first young man deliberately made the girl pregnant to prevent the marriage. He later lost interest in the girl and did not marry her, which led to him having custody of the child, once weaned. It was brought up by one of his female relations. There can be somewhat devious aspects to the marriage transaction, as I learnt when a local man died at the age of 97 leaving 40 children, the youngest being aged 10. I commented on the fact that if one has a child at the age of 87 one clearly will not be able to provide for all its schooling. I was told that this is only considered important if the child is male and that in this case he can be married to a 14 year old girl who will have her education terminated and will be sent to work in the fields to provide for her husband’s education. Hopefully this practice is not very common.
It is currently Ramadan which is observed strictly here in the Far North (I have not been to the West during Ramadan). In Maga the range of foodstuffs available in the market is very restricted (but prices are higher than usual), the local bank closes early and work in general is at a slower pace since people pray more and are listless from hunger and from getting up very early. The first call from the mosque is at 3:00 a.m. rather than the usual 4:30 a.m. (in fact on some nights non-stop preaching is broadcast from the mosque). I think the 3:00 a.m. call is to wake the women so that they may cook a meal which can be eaten before dawn. During the day not even a drink of water can be taken, which must be very unhealthy since it becomes extremely hot most days. A practice which I find disturbing is that some Muslims (thankfully few) spit every minute or two all day (I think spittal is considered impure) and must therefore deplete what fluids they have. After sunset (6:30 p.m.) there is a big meal which starts with a sort of soup called “buie” which is easy to digest. The few who can afford it have another meal later. There will be a big feast at the end of Ramadan and everybody seems to need a new “boubou” (this is a traditional outfit, and the way people feel about it reminds me of the attitude to holy communion outfits among poor families in Ireland). Times are hard this year since the global energy and food crises have really hit prices here and severely affected people, many of whom were already struggling to make ends meet. Also Ramadan this year coincides with return to school, which has to be paid for and for which a new school uniform is also needed.
Ramadan is clearly a significant spiritual experience for most Muslims. A friend’s bar in Maroua which is usually buzzing every night of the week does virtually no business, even at week-ends. However it is said that some Muslims eat more during Ramadan than in other months because of the tendency to gorge themselves before and after the long day’s fast. I have heard different versions of the prohibition of sexual relations during Ramadan, one being that only those who are not married must desist from sex during Ramadan. I know of just one teenager who does not always observe the fast and does not always go to prayers. Other teenagers pray in my house and at times ask me to pray with them.
p.s. The prayers at the end of Ramadan were very impressive in Maga. A huge number turned out in colourful outfits and prayed in a large field beside the Mosque. I am told that business was booming in the bars in Maroua.
The brand of Islam in Foumban is very modern whereas in the Far North it seems a little more fundamentalist and less flexible, e.g. with respect to dress, the role of women and frequency of prayers. In the Far North work is punctuated by prayers and buses stop for prayers. One of the practices which I least like here (because it seems to imply that women are subservient to men), and which happily is not very common, is that when some women need to address a man for a purpose such as to buy a bus ticket they crouch before him and present their money on outstretched palms of their hands, from which the man removes the money and in which he places the ticket and any change. A few women in the Far North are completely hidden behind black veils but some of them greet me quite cheerily when we pass on the road. Most Muslims of every age seem to practise, though a surprising number drink alcohol on the quiet (some of them hide their drinks underneath the table between hasty gulps). Nowhere in Cameroon have I seen any signs of militancy or sympathies with terrorist causes.
Last month in Maga I had to endure lound music and shouting from a neighbour’s wedding celebration which lasted four days and continued through each night. I was told that the bride-to-be’s mother invites her friends to a party at which they make contributions to wedding expenses, then the father, then the bride-to-be and then the groom-to-be each has a party, and after all that they have the marriage. A dowry is paid to the bride’s father (or to an uncle, if the father is dead). In both regions marriages are still arranged by parents, uncles and aunts. In an earlier blog I mentioned that a friend had been persuaded by his parents to marry a girl whom he had not previously met. Since then she ran off with another male friend and happily my friend does not have to go through with this arranged marriage. I heard of a particularly disturbing case of a young man who wanted to marry a young girl but his family could not afford the dowry. There was another suitor who was able to pay the dowry but the first young man deliberately made the girl pregnant to prevent the marriage. He later lost interest in the girl and did not marry her, which led to him having custody of the child, once weaned. It was brought up by one of his female relations. There can be somewhat devious aspects to the marriage transaction, as I learnt when a local man died at the age of 97 leaving 40 children, the youngest being aged 10. I commented on the fact that if one has a child at the age of 87 one clearly will not be able to provide for all its schooling. I was told that this is only considered important if the child is male and that in this case he can be married to a 14 year old girl who will have her education terminated and will be sent to work in the fields to provide for her husband’s education. Hopefully this practice is not very common.
It is currently Ramadan which is observed strictly here in the Far North (I have not been to the West during Ramadan). In Maga the range of foodstuffs available in the market is very restricted (but prices are higher than usual), the local bank closes early and work in general is at a slower pace since people pray more and are listless from hunger and from getting up very early. The first call from the mosque is at 3:00 a.m. rather than the usual 4:30 a.m. (in fact on some nights non-stop preaching is broadcast from the mosque). I think the 3:00 a.m. call is to wake the women so that they may cook a meal which can be eaten before dawn. During the day not even a drink of water can be taken, which must be very unhealthy since it becomes extremely hot most days. A practice which I find disturbing is that some Muslims (thankfully few) spit every minute or two all day (I think spittal is considered impure) and must therefore deplete what fluids they have. After sunset (6:30 p.m.) there is a big meal which starts with a sort of soup called “buie” which is easy to digest. The few who can afford it have another meal later. There will be a big feast at the end of Ramadan and everybody seems to need a new “boubou” (this is a traditional outfit, and the way people feel about it reminds me of the attitude to holy communion outfits among poor families in Ireland). Times are hard this year since the global energy and food crises have really hit prices here and severely affected people, many of whom were already struggling to make ends meet. Also Ramadan this year coincides with return to school, which has to be paid for and for which a new school uniform is also needed.
Ramadan is clearly a significant spiritual experience for most Muslims. A friend’s bar in Maroua which is usually buzzing every night of the week does virtually no business, even at week-ends. However it is said that some Muslims eat more during Ramadan than in other months because of the tendency to gorge themselves before and after the long day’s fast. I have heard different versions of the prohibition of sexual relations during Ramadan, one being that only those who are not married must desist from sex during Ramadan. I know of just one teenager who does not always observe the fast and does not always go to prayers. Other teenagers pray in my house and at times ask me to pray with them.
p.s. The prayers at the end of Ramadan were very impressive in Maga. A huge number turned out in colourful outfits and prayed in a large field beside the Mosque. I am told that business was booming in the bars in Maroua.
Perhaps it is not appropriate to consider sorcery under the heading of religion but it is interesting to note that most people in the Far North believe in it. In fact I have not spoken to a person who does not believe in it. Recently in Maga, Guirvidig and Pouss there were similar incidents where suspected sorcerers were beaten up by the crowd and then handed over to the police. They were reputed to have the power to remove a testicle from anybody who shook hands with them. It is hard to work out what was really going on since even university educated people believe in sorcery. I think the explanation may be that sorcerers in Nigeria are prepared to pay large prices for boys' testicles for use in their rituals and perhaps those who forcibly remove them (hopefully not their parents) use sorcery as a smoke screen.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Foumban and the Bamoun
We spent a week in Foumban. It is a very interesting town since it is the seat of the Bamoun dynasty. The current king of the Bamoun, who is the local Islamic sultan, is the 21st in a line that stretches back many hundred years. Some of his predecessors were quite inventive, e.g. one invented a new language and script and wrote a history of the Bamoun in this script. We visited the king’s palace which has a museum containing lots of interesting artifacts, including some of the past kings’ inventions. Foumban is also Cameroon’s centre for arts and crafts and acts as a channel for exports (including some from other African countries) to Europe and the United States. It has an interesting museum of arts and crafts and an extensive “artisanat”.
Most people in Foumban are either Bamoun or Foumban. I don’t know much about the latter except that they are the traditional ennemies of the Bamoun. I met a large number of Bamoun since I visited the family of a Bamoun friend. I attended a ceremony for the death of her mother at which around 100 uncles and cousins gathered in a large room for prayers followed by a feast at which everybody was given gifts of coins, sweets, dates and kola nuts (which have some hallucinogenic properties) as well as local dishes. There were as many women as men but they were housed in the periphery and did not take an active part other than helping to prepare and serve the food.
There was also a similar but more extensive ceremony for the anniversary of the family’s “grand-father”. I should explain that the Bamoun are made up of “families” which trace their origins to some past king. Nearly everybody I met was part of one large family, which is not surprising when you consider the effects of polygamy (one king had 681 wives). Each family has a grand-father who acts as its chief and representative. When a grand-father dies his eldest son becomes grand-father. When the previous grand-father died last year his eldest son was already dead so the latter’s eldest son, a student at Yaounde university, became grand-father. He was very personable and looked a bit like Tiger Woods. There was a very large crowd at the previous grand-father’s anniversary ceremony, including a representative of the king (the king had gone to Beijing for the Olympics). It was held in the open, with marquees beside the mosque, and there were many prayers from the immam and speeches from notables.
While I was there an uncle died and I was able to observe a Muslim burial. He died at night and was buried the following morning. The body (with no coffin) was placed in a narrow trench at the bottom of the grave and planks were placed over it before the earth was put in. Only men took part actively in the prayer ceremony which preceded the burial, the women having done a sort of wailing, rather like Irish keening, in the house before the removal (I was kept awake one night in Maga by horrendous wailing when a neighbour died suddenly). After the burial the deceased’s close male relations sit around for a couple of weeks and receive the salutations of visitors. There is a ceremony, which is similar to the anniversary ceremony, after a few days and again after 40 days as well as on each anniversary thereafter.
Although women had a secondary role in the formal ceremonies in the Muslim household that I visited in Foumban, women and men otherwise mixed on a fairly equal footing there, except that virtually all the preparation of food was done by women (in Muslim households in Maga women are more in the background except when they bring food). The clear leader of the Foumban household was a grand-mother who was a sprightly 85 (in Cameroon, life expectancy is in the low 50s, but probably higher than this in the West and lower than this in the Far North, where people die at an alarming rate). She had brought up many of her grand-children, as well as her own children, and probably also children and grand-children of her late husband’s other wives. The household currently has a number of women and children. The women could be her daughters, wives of her sons or the equivalent of her fellow wives. These women currently live in this household rather than with their husbands, who work in places such as Douala and Yaounde. The children, though not full brothers and sisters in every case, relate to the “family” in the household and refer to the other children as brothers and sisters. Not all the children of the women in the household live there, some being brought up by other relatives. If this sounds complex, it is!
The main form of amusement in Foumban each evening before dusk was a football match on a pitch carved out in a most unlikely space at the intersection of a few dirt tracks. It was of quite an irregular shape because of the adjoining buildings and there were undulations and some steep inclines over which occasionally an over-enthusiastic player would plunge, to loud cheers. Motos regularly passed through while the football was in progress. The standard of football was actually quite high but methods of scoring goals included bouncing the ball off adjoining walls to score on the rebound, and hitting the ball into a tree above the goal in the hope that it would drop into the goal.
Most people in Foumban are either Bamoun or Foumban. I don’t know much about the latter except that they are the traditional ennemies of the Bamoun. I met a large number of Bamoun since I visited the family of a Bamoun friend. I attended a ceremony for the death of her mother at which around 100 uncles and cousins gathered in a large room for prayers followed by a feast at which everybody was given gifts of coins, sweets, dates and kola nuts (which have some hallucinogenic properties) as well as local dishes. There were as many women as men but they were housed in the periphery and did not take an active part other than helping to prepare and serve the food.
There was also a similar but more extensive ceremony for the anniversary of the family’s “grand-father”. I should explain that the Bamoun are made up of “families” which trace their origins to some past king. Nearly everybody I met was part of one large family, which is not surprising when you consider the effects of polygamy (one king had 681 wives). Each family has a grand-father who acts as its chief and representative. When a grand-father dies his eldest son becomes grand-father. When the previous grand-father died last year his eldest son was already dead so the latter’s eldest son, a student at Yaounde university, became grand-father. He was very personable and looked a bit like Tiger Woods. There was a very large crowd at the previous grand-father’s anniversary ceremony, including a representative of the king (the king had gone to Beijing for the Olympics). It was held in the open, with marquees beside the mosque, and there were many prayers from the immam and speeches from notables.
While I was there an uncle died and I was able to observe a Muslim burial. He died at night and was buried the following morning. The body (with no coffin) was placed in a narrow trench at the bottom of the grave and planks were placed over it before the earth was put in. Only men took part actively in the prayer ceremony which preceded the burial, the women having done a sort of wailing, rather like Irish keening, in the house before the removal (I was kept awake one night in Maga by horrendous wailing when a neighbour died suddenly). After the burial the deceased’s close male relations sit around for a couple of weeks and receive the salutations of visitors. There is a ceremony, which is similar to the anniversary ceremony, after a few days and again after 40 days as well as on each anniversary thereafter.
Although women had a secondary role in the formal ceremonies in the Muslim household that I visited in Foumban, women and men otherwise mixed on a fairly equal footing there, except that virtually all the preparation of food was done by women (in Muslim households in Maga women are more in the background except when they bring food). The clear leader of the Foumban household was a grand-mother who was a sprightly 85 (in Cameroon, life expectancy is in the low 50s, but probably higher than this in the West and lower than this in the Far North, where people die at an alarming rate). She had brought up many of her grand-children, as well as her own children, and probably also children and grand-children of her late husband’s other wives. The household currently has a number of women and children. The women could be her daughters, wives of her sons or the equivalent of her fellow wives. These women currently live in this household rather than with their husbands, who work in places such as Douala and Yaounde. The children, though not full brothers and sisters in every case, relate to the “family” in the household and refer to the other children as brothers and sisters. Not all the children of the women in the household live there, some being brought up by other relatives. If this sounds complex, it is!
The main form of amusement in Foumban each evening before dusk was a football match on a pitch carved out in a most unlikely space at the intersection of a few dirt tracks. It was of quite an irregular shape because of the adjoining buildings and there were undulations and some steep inclines over which occasionally an over-enthusiastic player would plunge, to loud cheers. Motos regularly passed through while the football was in progress. The standard of football was actually quite high but methods of scoring goals included bouncing the ball off adjoining walls to score on the rebound, and hitting the ball into a tree above the goal in the hope that it would drop into the goal.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Journey to Foumban
I took holidays in the first half of August, spending most of the time in Foumban in West Cameroon. August is not a good time for holidays in Cameroon since it is at the height of the rainy season but part of my logic was that anywhere is better than Maga in the rainy season. I have been lucky in that the rainy season was late this year and there were no really bad rains before I left. Such rains can make it impossible to go outside one’s house for several days because everywhere there is mud up to the knees. We have experienced some very violent storms in Maga with extremely heavy rains, making the local roads impassable and flooding the village, but fortunately they were usually followed by a sunny spell which dried the roads sufficiently for travel (one theory is that there is a progressive reduction in rainfall due to global warming, but on the other hand, Chad which is on the other side of the Logone, has had severe flooding this year). The more lasting effect of such storms has been disruption of the electricity supply, since poles are blown down or simply snap in the wind or are hit by lightning, also with disruption of the water supply (since the pumps are electric). On average we have had power and water around one-quarter of the time over the past few months. However I was very lucky with my holidays in that I left and returned to Maga in fine weather (there was a lot of rain while I was away) and the electricity was turned on a few hours before I returned.
Having escaped from Maga to Maroua I headed south to Yaounde and then to Douala. The journey to Yaounde was the reverse of my original journey to the Far North and the contrast was remarkable in that what had been virtual desert had turned green and rivers that had been dry were now flowing strongly. As we headed further south towards Yaounde the vegetation became lush and exotic. This intensified to something like tropical rain forest on the onward journey to Douala, which is close to an area reputed to have the greatest amount of rainfall of anywhere in the world.
Douala is the economic capital of Cameroon and is bigger than Yaounde. It is at the mouth of the Wouri river and has a large port. It is very industrial and is not a pleasant place in which to stay. Many of its districts have high levels of crime and are very dangerous. After spending two nights there we went to the bus station which serves West and North West Cameroon. When we arrived at the bus station a swarm of aggressive representatives of bus companies descended on us and practically fought each other over us. Eventually the winner took our luggage and put it on top of a bus and told us to get in. Such buses only leave when they are full and it became apparent that the bus was not filling quickly. Whenever prospective customers were spotted our driver started the engine and drove back and forth as if the bus was about to leave, so as to panic them into jumping in, but it took six hours to fill the bus. The journey took another six hours but we found out later that there are other, more expensive, bus companies whose buses leave at fixed times from central Douala, which do not pack so many people into the buses and which have fewer stops along the way.
North of Douala we drove through fertile countryside with lots of fruit and vegetables, including mangoes, pineapples, grapefruit, avocados, extensive plantations of palms, bananas and papayas, corn, millet, ground nuts and cotton. As we drove into the hills of West Cameroon we got an impression that life there is much easier than in the Far North. The fertile land supports many villages, the houses are reasonably solid rather than mud huts and cars and buses are much more plentiful and in much better condition.
If one looks at the map, it appears that one can get to Foumban much more directly by road from Ngaoundere. However the road is so bad that it is only passable in the dry season from November to February, and then with difficulty and some danger from bandits (even the bus on the busy road from Maroua to Ngaoundere had armed guards). One has to go south to Yaounde or Douala and then go back north to Foumban. The road from Ngaoundere to Yaounde is also bad (though passable most of the time) and most people and goods go by train. The effect of the bad roads is that the North and Far North are almost cut off from the South, West and North West. One consequence is that there is a far narrower range of fruit and vegetables in the North and Far North, the quality is lower and prices are much higher. Much of the fruit in the Far North comes from Nigeria. A good road from Foumban to Ngaoundere would open up the North and Far North to the foodstuffs of the West and North West, and also allow some trade in reverse, e.g. of rice.
There was an amazing number of police roadblocks between Douala and Foumban at which we had to stop, even more than in the Far North. In the latter case there is some financial exchange between the bus driver and the policeman (at least four times on the 80 kilometer journey between Maga and Maroua). In the West the bus probably would have passed a test of road worthiness and the documentation, including a list of passengers with their identity card numbers, was in order. Perhaps there were other vehicles for which it was worthwhile for the police to check, or perhaps in both cases the police act as a deterrent to bandits. It is possible also that the trouble in the neighbouring Bakassi Peninsula was the reason for the vigilance (the Bakassi Peninsula was disputed between Cameroon and Nigeria and although the International Court of Justice ruled that Nigeria should cede it to Cameroon in 2002 (the hand-over formally happened on 14th August 2008) there are armed groups which still resist Cameroonian rule, causing ongoing conflict in which over 100 people have died in the past month).
On the last leg of the bus journey, from Bafoussan to Foumban, a man got on the bus and gave a sales pitch on a number of Chinese medicines. In each case he looked for 15,000 fcfa but due to lack of response quickly dropped his price to 500 fcfa, sometimes adding bonus products at this price. The most popular product was a liquid which you held in your mouth for 10 minutes and which did all sorts of wonderful things such as healing gum disease and bad teeth. Somebody asked if it was any good for ear aches and the salesman immediately launched forth on the great benefits that it brought to the ears. I think it is indicative of the African belief in quick remedies that most people on the bus bought this product. His last product was a cream that is rubbed on the genitals to cure or prevent sexually transmitted diseases. There were a few takers for this product but it was not clear whether they needed a cure or just prevention.
When in Foumban I wanted to visit some VSO volunteers in two villages around 80 kilometers further north. I was told that the road is very dangerous in the rainy season, but what really killed the idea was news that some people had just been killed by bandits on that road.
Having escaped from Maga to Maroua I headed south to Yaounde and then to Douala. The journey to Yaounde was the reverse of my original journey to the Far North and the contrast was remarkable in that what had been virtual desert had turned green and rivers that had been dry were now flowing strongly. As we headed further south towards Yaounde the vegetation became lush and exotic. This intensified to something like tropical rain forest on the onward journey to Douala, which is close to an area reputed to have the greatest amount of rainfall of anywhere in the world.
Douala is the economic capital of Cameroon and is bigger than Yaounde. It is at the mouth of the Wouri river and has a large port. It is very industrial and is not a pleasant place in which to stay. Many of its districts have high levels of crime and are very dangerous. After spending two nights there we went to the bus station which serves West and North West Cameroon. When we arrived at the bus station a swarm of aggressive representatives of bus companies descended on us and practically fought each other over us. Eventually the winner took our luggage and put it on top of a bus and told us to get in. Such buses only leave when they are full and it became apparent that the bus was not filling quickly. Whenever prospective customers were spotted our driver started the engine and drove back and forth as if the bus was about to leave, so as to panic them into jumping in, but it took six hours to fill the bus. The journey took another six hours but we found out later that there are other, more expensive, bus companies whose buses leave at fixed times from central Douala, which do not pack so many people into the buses and which have fewer stops along the way.
North of Douala we drove through fertile countryside with lots of fruit and vegetables, including mangoes, pineapples, grapefruit, avocados, extensive plantations of palms, bananas and papayas, corn, millet, ground nuts and cotton. As we drove into the hills of West Cameroon we got an impression that life there is much easier than in the Far North. The fertile land supports many villages, the houses are reasonably solid rather than mud huts and cars and buses are much more plentiful and in much better condition.
If one looks at the map, it appears that one can get to Foumban much more directly by road from Ngaoundere. However the road is so bad that it is only passable in the dry season from November to February, and then with difficulty and some danger from bandits (even the bus on the busy road from Maroua to Ngaoundere had armed guards). One has to go south to Yaounde or Douala and then go back north to Foumban. The road from Ngaoundere to Yaounde is also bad (though passable most of the time) and most people and goods go by train. The effect of the bad roads is that the North and Far North are almost cut off from the South, West and North West. One consequence is that there is a far narrower range of fruit and vegetables in the North and Far North, the quality is lower and prices are much higher. Much of the fruit in the Far North comes from Nigeria. A good road from Foumban to Ngaoundere would open up the North and Far North to the foodstuffs of the West and North West, and also allow some trade in reverse, e.g. of rice.
There was an amazing number of police roadblocks between Douala and Foumban at which we had to stop, even more than in the Far North. In the latter case there is some financial exchange between the bus driver and the policeman (at least four times on the 80 kilometer journey between Maga and Maroua). In the West the bus probably would have passed a test of road worthiness and the documentation, including a list of passengers with their identity card numbers, was in order. Perhaps there were other vehicles for which it was worthwhile for the police to check, or perhaps in both cases the police act as a deterrent to bandits. It is possible also that the trouble in the neighbouring Bakassi Peninsula was the reason for the vigilance (the Bakassi Peninsula was disputed between Cameroon and Nigeria and although the International Court of Justice ruled that Nigeria should cede it to Cameroon in 2002 (the hand-over formally happened on 14th August 2008) there are armed groups which still resist Cameroonian rule, causing ongoing conflict in which over 100 people have died in the past month).
On the last leg of the bus journey, from Bafoussan to Foumban, a man got on the bus and gave a sales pitch on a number of Chinese medicines. In each case he looked for 15,000 fcfa but due to lack of response quickly dropped his price to 500 fcfa, sometimes adding bonus products at this price. The most popular product was a liquid which you held in your mouth for 10 minutes and which did all sorts of wonderful things such as healing gum disease and bad teeth. Somebody asked if it was any good for ear aches and the salesman immediately launched forth on the great benefits that it brought to the ears. I think it is indicative of the African belief in quick remedies that most people on the bus bought this product. His last product was a cream that is rubbed on the genitals to cure or prevent sexually transmitted diseases. There were a few takers for this product but it was not clear whether they needed a cure or just prevention.
When in Foumban I wanted to visit some VSO volunteers in two villages around 80 kilometers further north. I was told that the road is very dangerous in the rainy season, but what really killed the idea was news that some people had just been killed by bandits on that road.
Monday, August 11, 2008
My Work
Decentralisation in Cameroon
The context of my work with the Maga Council is that Cameroon is in the process of devolving responsibilities from central to local government. The aspiration to do this has been around since the 1970s, there was a flurry of activity in the 1990s and in 2004 laws were published detailing such things as the responsibilities of the councils. The expanded services for which the councils are responsible include water and sanitation, local roads and infrastructure, primary education, local health services, town planning, development of local economic activity and local environmental issues. A law setting out how resources, both human and financial, are to be transferred from the state to the councils to enable them to fulfil their additional responsibilities has not yet been published and the 2004 laws have not yet been enacted. However the state has withdrawn somewhat from meeting local needs and the people look to the councils to meet their needs, which are acute.
Much good work has been done on the planning of decentralisation, mainly with technical assistance from the German equivalent of Irish Aid, supplemented by its Dutch and French counterparts and by financial assistance from these and the UK and Canadian governments. In the limbo created by the devolution of responsibilities without the corresponding transfer of resources, one constructive contribution would be to strengthen the capacities of the councils so that they may use their current resources as effectively as possible and be positioned to take on their extra responsibilities when resouces are made available. VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) for whom I work is one of a number of organisations which have adopted this response. VSO has already experience of strengthening the capacities of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and CSOs (civil society organisations) and with the help of local councils in Canada and Wales has adapted this process to the needs of the councils in Cameroon. The Maga Council is one of ten forming a pilot group, four of which have volunteers at this stage.
Strengthening Capacities
The capacities in question are such things as the ability to manage human resources, the leadership of the mayor and his executive, financial management, two-way communication between the council and its citizens, provision of or outsourcing of services, project formulation and management, and cooperation with state bodies and with international development organisations. The capacities are enablers of good governance, in which there is participation of all relevant individuals in decision making, clear allocation of responsibilities with accountability for carrying them out and transparent communication with availability of relevant information. I am currently in a diagnostic phase in Maga in which, with a working party of councillors and council employees, we are studying all available documentation on policies, procedures and standards relating to capacities and carrying out a large number of interviews with councillors, staff, representatives of state organisations, NGOs and CSOs. When these activities have been completed we will agree on how strong the council is on each capacity, present our findings to all councillors and staff and agree priorities for addressing the weak capacities. We will then propose a five-year plan for strengthening the capacities. VSO will work with the council over the five years and will bring in people with expertise appropriate to the proposed actions. The objective is to enable the council to do things such as planning and managing projects, rather than supply volunteers to do such things for it.
My work to date has included delivering workshops to describe the process we have embarked on, to explain the capacities and how they contribute to good governance and to highlight the need for good governance and that without good governance any projects initiated have a high likelihood of failure and of losing the confidence of international development organisations. The most important element of the workshops is a play which illustrates the need for each village to have a management committee to look after things like pump maintenance and charges for pump usage. When I visited villages, as described in an earlier blog, I was struck by the lack of good governance at village level and the futility of providing new facilities such as pumps in such circumstances. I decided that this was where we should start, rather than just concentrating on improving the capacities of the council, and rewrote the play proposed by VSO in this context. This message has been taken up by many of the councillors. They perceive the need to improve the governance of their villages and we now have requests to present the workshop to all the chiefs of the villages (at village level, the main power tends to reside in the chief who is appointed through traditional processes and is not necessarily, and not commonly, the elected councillor).
The Current State of Maga’s Council
The Maga council has 41 councillors elected by the people who in turn elected the mayor and his four deputies. The council meets once per quarter and delegates certain powers to the mayor, who in turn may delegate to his deputies. The council can form committees - in the case of Maga there are committees for finance, development and social affairs. The council also has employees, 18 in the case of Maga. The most important of these is the Secrétaire Général, who is essentially the chief executive (the mayor being the chairman). There is also a Receveur Municipal (a sort of financial controller) and a Comptable Matières (a sort of bean counter who keeps track of everything the council owns).
The reality in Maga is that most of the work is done by the mayor and the Secrétaire Général, who are extremely busy. The Receveur Municipal, some of the local tax collectors who report to him, and one or two others, also appear to do a moderate amount of work. Some others turn up at the office from time to time but just seem to chat, and some are rarely if ever seen. The concept of work here is very different from the Western concept. For example, on Tuesdays there is a market in neighbouring Pouss and while the tax collectors have a valid reason for going there, it seems to be accepted that everybody goes there and that there is really no need to turn up to work in Maga on that day.
One of the reasons for the inactivity of many employees is that the council is in severe financial crisis and there is no money for the materials needed for their work. The present council was elected in July 2007 and around that time also a new Secrétaire Général and Receveur Municipal were appointed. The new administration found that accounts had not been prepared for five years. This exacerbates a situation where taxes collected by the state but normally passed to councils (under pre-decentralisation legislation) are running several months late. Salaries of employees are around four months in arrears and because of the problem with the accounts the council is prevented from having recourse to short-term borrowing to pay them. This has resulted in severe hardship since the salaries are barely adequate for the very large families which are common here and the world food and fuel crises have increased prices dramatically. Employees of the council say that they have to find other ways of making money and don’t have time to come to work. The new administration has reconstructed the accounts for the past few years and is in the process of getting them approved.
The council building is somewhat run down. Most lights have no bulb, many of the electric sockets don’t work and there are air conditioning units, none of which works. The council has a PC, a printer and a photocopier but all are broken down, were sent to Maroua to be fixed around a year ago and there has been no follow-up. Even if these worked there is a need for a generator since the electricity supply is so unreliable. The council has a helicopter landing pad but no toilet (this is a big problem when I arrange a day-long workshop for a large number of people). I asked if helicopters often use the landing pad and was told that one landed in 1982 (I think it contained the previous president of Cameroon who performed the official opening of SEMRY and the lake). There is also an airstrip dating from those times but it is in disuse.
It is evident at this stage that in the case of Maga’s capacities, we are starting from a very low base indeed. No external organisation has ever worked with it on any of the relevant capacities. It is also clear that bringing about change in the Maga council will be very difficult indeed. The level of education of staff is very low, most having left school well short of completing the ‘bac’ (the equivalent in francophone Cameroon of A-levels in anglophone Cameroon, both of which mirror the French and English systems). While the staff all speak French, only around one-third of councillors speak French, the others speaking various local languages such as Mousgoum, Fulfulde and Arab Choa. Almost nobody speaks English. The multiplicity of languages makes workshops extremely challenging!
Barriers to Change
As indicated earlier, the state’s commitment to devolving power to councils under decentralisation is ambivalent. The state has a strangle-hold on the councils using a large cumbersome control organisation (the ‘tutelle’), starting with provinces and their Governors and ramifying down to structures at council level where the Sous-Préfet is the local strong man (as described in the blog on democracy in Cameroon). All significant decisions of the council have to be referred to the Sous-Préfet, and upwards by him, as appropriate (including the approval of the accounts). The Secrétaire Général, Receveur Municipal and Comptable Matières are state appointees and if the council needs to recruit staff with competencies such as third level qualifications it effectively has to look to the state to provide these also. This parallel structure is quite inappropriate under decentralisation but it is not clear what is to happen to it.
Cameroon has been rated by Transparency International as the most corrup country in the world in each of the last 10 years and one can only speculate on what vested interests might block the dismantling of the tutelle. Corruption is reputedly endemic also within councils (I don't have evidence of it in Maga). It is possible that dealing with resistance motivated by corruption will turn out to be the biggest challenge in strengthening the capacities of councils.
The context of my work with the Maga Council is that Cameroon is in the process of devolving responsibilities from central to local government. The aspiration to do this has been around since the 1970s, there was a flurry of activity in the 1990s and in 2004 laws were published detailing such things as the responsibilities of the councils. The expanded services for which the councils are responsible include water and sanitation, local roads and infrastructure, primary education, local health services, town planning, development of local economic activity and local environmental issues. A law setting out how resources, both human and financial, are to be transferred from the state to the councils to enable them to fulfil their additional responsibilities has not yet been published and the 2004 laws have not yet been enacted. However the state has withdrawn somewhat from meeting local needs and the people look to the councils to meet their needs, which are acute.
Much good work has been done on the planning of decentralisation, mainly with technical assistance from the German equivalent of Irish Aid, supplemented by its Dutch and French counterparts and by financial assistance from these and the UK and Canadian governments. In the limbo created by the devolution of responsibilities without the corresponding transfer of resources, one constructive contribution would be to strengthen the capacities of the councils so that they may use their current resources as effectively as possible and be positioned to take on their extra responsibilities when resouces are made available. VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) for whom I work is one of a number of organisations which have adopted this response. VSO has already experience of strengthening the capacities of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and CSOs (civil society organisations) and with the help of local councils in Canada and Wales has adapted this process to the needs of the councils in Cameroon. The Maga Council is one of ten forming a pilot group, four of which have volunteers at this stage.
Strengthening Capacities
The capacities in question are such things as the ability to manage human resources, the leadership of the mayor and his executive, financial management, two-way communication between the council and its citizens, provision of or outsourcing of services, project formulation and management, and cooperation with state bodies and with international development organisations. The capacities are enablers of good governance, in which there is participation of all relevant individuals in decision making, clear allocation of responsibilities with accountability for carrying them out and transparent communication with availability of relevant information. I am currently in a diagnostic phase in Maga in which, with a working party of councillors and council employees, we are studying all available documentation on policies, procedures and standards relating to capacities and carrying out a large number of interviews with councillors, staff, representatives of state organisations, NGOs and CSOs. When these activities have been completed we will agree on how strong the council is on each capacity, present our findings to all councillors and staff and agree priorities for addressing the weak capacities. We will then propose a five-year plan for strengthening the capacities. VSO will work with the council over the five years and will bring in people with expertise appropriate to the proposed actions. The objective is to enable the council to do things such as planning and managing projects, rather than supply volunteers to do such things for it.
My work to date has included delivering workshops to describe the process we have embarked on, to explain the capacities and how they contribute to good governance and to highlight the need for good governance and that without good governance any projects initiated have a high likelihood of failure and of losing the confidence of international development organisations. The most important element of the workshops is a play which illustrates the need for each village to have a management committee to look after things like pump maintenance and charges for pump usage. When I visited villages, as described in an earlier blog, I was struck by the lack of good governance at village level and the futility of providing new facilities such as pumps in such circumstances. I decided that this was where we should start, rather than just concentrating on improving the capacities of the council, and rewrote the play proposed by VSO in this context. This message has been taken up by many of the councillors. They perceive the need to improve the governance of their villages and we now have requests to present the workshop to all the chiefs of the villages (at village level, the main power tends to reside in the chief who is appointed through traditional processes and is not necessarily, and not commonly, the elected councillor).
The Current State of Maga’s Council
The Maga council has 41 councillors elected by the people who in turn elected the mayor and his four deputies. The council meets once per quarter and delegates certain powers to the mayor, who in turn may delegate to his deputies. The council can form committees - in the case of Maga there are committees for finance, development and social affairs. The council also has employees, 18 in the case of Maga. The most important of these is the Secrétaire Général, who is essentially the chief executive (the mayor being the chairman). There is also a Receveur Municipal (a sort of financial controller) and a Comptable Matières (a sort of bean counter who keeps track of everything the council owns).
The reality in Maga is that most of the work is done by the mayor and the Secrétaire Général, who are extremely busy. The Receveur Municipal, some of the local tax collectors who report to him, and one or two others, also appear to do a moderate amount of work. Some others turn up at the office from time to time but just seem to chat, and some are rarely if ever seen. The concept of work here is very different from the Western concept. For example, on Tuesdays there is a market in neighbouring Pouss and while the tax collectors have a valid reason for going there, it seems to be accepted that everybody goes there and that there is really no need to turn up to work in Maga on that day.
One of the reasons for the inactivity of many employees is that the council is in severe financial crisis and there is no money for the materials needed for their work. The present council was elected in July 2007 and around that time also a new Secrétaire Général and Receveur Municipal were appointed. The new administration found that accounts had not been prepared for five years. This exacerbates a situation where taxes collected by the state but normally passed to councils (under pre-decentralisation legislation) are running several months late. Salaries of employees are around four months in arrears and because of the problem with the accounts the council is prevented from having recourse to short-term borrowing to pay them. This has resulted in severe hardship since the salaries are barely adequate for the very large families which are common here and the world food and fuel crises have increased prices dramatically. Employees of the council say that they have to find other ways of making money and don’t have time to come to work. The new administration has reconstructed the accounts for the past few years and is in the process of getting them approved.
The council building is somewhat run down. Most lights have no bulb, many of the electric sockets don’t work and there are air conditioning units, none of which works. The council has a PC, a printer and a photocopier but all are broken down, were sent to Maroua to be fixed around a year ago and there has been no follow-up. Even if these worked there is a need for a generator since the electricity supply is so unreliable. The council has a helicopter landing pad but no toilet (this is a big problem when I arrange a day-long workshop for a large number of people). I asked if helicopters often use the landing pad and was told that one landed in 1982 (I think it contained the previous president of Cameroon who performed the official opening of SEMRY and the lake). There is also an airstrip dating from those times but it is in disuse.
It is evident at this stage that in the case of Maga’s capacities, we are starting from a very low base indeed. No external organisation has ever worked with it on any of the relevant capacities. It is also clear that bringing about change in the Maga council will be very difficult indeed. The level of education of staff is very low, most having left school well short of completing the ‘bac’ (the equivalent in francophone Cameroon of A-levels in anglophone Cameroon, both of which mirror the French and English systems). While the staff all speak French, only around one-third of councillors speak French, the others speaking various local languages such as Mousgoum, Fulfulde and Arab Choa. Almost nobody speaks English. The multiplicity of languages makes workshops extremely challenging!
Barriers to Change
As indicated earlier, the state’s commitment to devolving power to councils under decentralisation is ambivalent. The state has a strangle-hold on the councils using a large cumbersome control organisation (the ‘tutelle’), starting with provinces and their Governors and ramifying down to structures at council level where the Sous-Préfet is the local strong man (as described in the blog on democracy in Cameroon). All significant decisions of the council have to be referred to the Sous-Préfet, and upwards by him, as appropriate (including the approval of the accounts). The Secrétaire Général, Receveur Municipal and Comptable Matières are state appointees and if the council needs to recruit staff with competencies such as third level qualifications it effectively has to look to the state to provide these also. This parallel structure is quite inappropriate under decentralisation but it is not clear what is to happen to it.
Cameroon has been rated by Transparency International as the most corrup country in the world in each of the last 10 years and one can only speculate on what vested interests might block the dismantling of the tutelle. Corruption is reputedly endemic also within councils (I don't have evidence of it in Maga). It is possible that dealing with resistance motivated by corruption will turn out to be the biggest challenge in strengthening the capacities of councils.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Cameroon's Reunification Holiday
On the 20th May each year Cameroon celebrates the reunification of the country, which undid the divisions of the French/British colonisations. This is Cameroon’s biggest holiday and in the morning there were parades of all the local schools, some of which put on performances of traditional dances and displays of arts such as karate. The mayor did a walk-past in dashing blue, accompanied by his three male deputies (his fourth deputy was with a group of females from the local opposition party). The Sultan of Pouss was given some sort of decoration. He came with his usual retinue, who were weilding swords on this occasion (literally), and he brought along a group of musicians playing traditional instruments. It was a really colourful and enjoyable occasion and provided illustrations of protocols and hierarchies and also of other less seemly aspects of Cameroonian life, such as its rather aggressive crowd control.
Everybody seemed hyper for the day, even though the majority are Muslims and don’t drink alcohol, and the way motos were speeding around was quite alarming. Also, much activity continued into the evening, which is quite exceptional in Maga. My celebrations started the evening before with a reception in a local bar, “Evasion”, laid on by the lycée. I went along with Halidou, Ruth and Lady Diana. The latter two turned out to be almost the only ladies present but despite this they went ahead with the “tour d’honneur”, a sort of ice-breaking exercise which is used to start off dances. This consists of nominating attractive ladies to take the floor with the most notable men present. Once the music starts the men grab the ladies in embraces which are otherwise entirely out of place here. The music was supposed to last for 30 seconds but happily for Ruth and Lady Di, they cut it much earlier than this. Dancing continued throughout the night, almost entirely with men. To my surprise, Westlife seem to be the most popular band here and Celine Dion and Phil Collins also seem very popular.
On the evening of the holiday I was invited to a soirée in the Sous-Préfet’s residence. There were over 100 hundred guests, including lots of ladies on this occasion. People were decked out either in traditional dress or in suits, and I felt conspicuous for not wearing a suit. After arriving we were shown to our seats and then waited for a couple of hours while nothing happened. People conversed, if at all, in hushed tones and I remember thinking that there was no sound of laughter. The food when it finally arrived was really good, with fish, chicken, beef, lamb and probably goat, together with salads, rice, pasta and other local vegetables such as plantains and nyams. After the food was cleared, there was a bout of the tour d’honneur to start the dancing. It was rather like the session of the previous evening except that there was a much better supply of ladies and the notables were more notable. It did indeed break the ice, and very quickly there was quite a good party atmosphere and lots of dancing.
Everybody seemed hyper for the day, even though the majority are Muslims and don’t drink alcohol, and the way motos were speeding around was quite alarming. Also, much activity continued into the evening, which is quite exceptional in Maga. My celebrations started the evening before with a reception in a local bar, “Evasion”, laid on by the lycée. I went along with Halidou, Ruth and Lady Diana. The latter two turned out to be almost the only ladies present but despite this they went ahead with the “tour d’honneur”, a sort of ice-breaking exercise which is used to start off dances. This consists of nominating attractive ladies to take the floor with the most notable men present. Once the music starts the men grab the ladies in embraces which are otherwise entirely out of place here. The music was supposed to last for 30 seconds but happily for Ruth and Lady Di, they cut it much earlier than this. Dancing continued throughout the night, almost entirely with men. To my surprise, Westlife seem to be the most popular band here and Celine Dion and Phil Collins also seem very popular.
On the evening of the holiday I was invited to a soirée in the Sous-Préfet’s residence. There were over 100 hundred guests, including lots of ladies on this occasion. People were decked out either in traditional dress or in suits, and I felt conspicuous for not wearing a suit. After arriving we were shown to our seats and then waited for a couple of hours while nothing happened. People conversed, if at all, in hushed tones and I remember thinking that there was no sound of laughter. The food when it finally arrived was really good, with fish, chicken, beef, lamb and probably goat, together with salads, rice, pasta and other local vegetables such as plantains and nyams. After the food was cleared, there was a bout of the tour d’honneur to start the dancing. It was rather like the session of the previous evening except that there was a much better supply of ladies and the notables were more notable. It did indeed break the ice, and very quickly there was quite a good party atmosphere and lots of dancing.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Visit to Waza Wildlife Reserve
The Waza wildlife reserve, which is billed as the best in West Africa, is around 100 kilometres north of Maroua. Four of us hired a car and headed north early one morning. It was a beautiful clear day and the journey to Waza turned out to be very pleasant. We drove mainly through an almost perfectly flat plain but with mountains rising like islands, mainly in the distance. Those nearby were heaps of rocks which must have been thrown up in some volcanic eruptions. We drove through the small town of Mora which had a surprisingly lavish “Palais de Justice”. The road was quite good but we had the customary incident, which in this case was a blow-out after hitting a pot-hole at speed.
At the entrance to Waza we picked up a guide and then spent the day driving on rough tracks through the reserve. There were some watering holes with lots of birds: marabouts, “grues coronets” (crested cranes)?, herons, occasional ostriches and some birds of prey (which looked like eagles) soaring overhead. There were lots of gazelles and various other bigger animals in much the same mould. The most evocative animals we saw were giraffes, which usually kept at a distance and watched us warily. There were lions and elephants there somewhere, and other animals such as jackals, but we did not see them. We did not see any snakes but I see them occasionally in Maga.
While for me this was a significant experience, being my first visit to a wildlife reserve, I think that Waza must now be a shadow if its former self. Poachers are not controlled effectively and have greatly reduced the wildlife. We came across a group of poachers wading through a watering hole and guiding the fish to an area where they could catch them. When they saw our guide, who is a bailiff, they quickly ran off into the bush. There was one particularly extensive watering hole which was almost completely devoid of wildlife and the guide said that it used to teem with life but the poachers had taken everything. Despite these comments, I thoroughly enjoyed the day and will go there again, perhaps to get a glimpse of lions and elephants.
At the entrance to Waza we picked up a guide and then spent the day driving on rough tracks through the reserve. There were some watering holes with lots of birds: marabouts, “grues coronets” (crested cranes)?, herons, occasional ostriches and some birds of prey (which looked like eagles) soaring overhead. There were lots of gazelles and various other bigger animals in much the same mould. The most evocative animals we saw were giraffes, which usually kept at a distance and watched us warily. There were lions and elephants there somewhere, and other animals such as jackals, but we did not see them. We did not see any snakes but I see them occasionally in Maga.
While for me this was a significant experience, being my first visit to a wildlife reserve, I think that Waza must now be a shadow if its former self. Poachers are not controlled effectively and have greatly reduced the wildlife. We came across a group of poachers wading through a watering hole and guiding the fish to an area where they could catch them. When they saw our guide, who is a bailiff, they quickly ran off into the bush. There was one particularly extensive watering hole which was almost completely devoid of wildlife and the guide said that it used to teem with life but the poachers had taken everything. Despite these comments, I thoroughly enjoyed the day and will go there again, perhaps to get a glimpse of lions and elephants.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Development of Maga
Maga’s artificial lake was constructed in 1979. This was part of an extensive development plan by SEMRY, an organisation which was formed to develop the Logone plain with international financial backing. Canals were built from the lake to provide irrigation for the cultivation of rice and other crops. The new town of Maga grew up close by and a lot of people moved from Gurvidig and Pouss into it. SEMRY built a village with good facilities and a hotel, Safari Danay which still operates to a surprisingly high standard (e.g. an Irish country house from the Blue Guide or a good Logis de France). As part of the plan some factories were built, for example a rice packaging factory. A fish processing factory was also built separately by the Japanese. These are either closed or greatly run down at this stage. Unfortunately SEMRY was state-owned and its senior management were political appointees, which resulted in bad management. Global economic problems and SAPs hit very hard in the 1990s. Regulations have not been enforced, e.g. there has been serious over-fishing. SEMRY is now bankrupt and most of the extensive infrastructure that it put in place is in disrepair. This is a scenario which I need to investigate further to see what lessons can be learnt from it and what things can be salvaged.
Last year SEMRY failed to pay its employees for many months. However its Chief Executive continued to build a luxurious house for himself at its expense. When a staff delegation took this up with him he hurled abuse at them. What followed is referred to locally as a “peasant revolt”. The Chief Executive escaped and has not been seen since but his house was razed and in the resulting unrest two people died, one of them a policeman. A staff committee currently runs what is left of SEMRY.
Last year SEMRY failed to pay its employees for many months. However its Chief Executive continued to build a luxurious house for himself at its expense. When a staff delegation took this up with him he hurled abuse at them. What followed is referred to locally as a “peasant revolt”. The Chief Executive escaped and has not been seen since but his house was razed and in the resulting unrest two people died, one of them a policeman. A staff committee currently runs what is left of SEMRY.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Mayday
Despite its financial crisis, the whole of the council went to Yagoua, capital of the district which includes Maga, to march in the Mayday parade. I went with them, decked out in Cameroonian dress. Transport was in the back of a truck but after I had climbed into it, hitting my head off an iron bar in the process, the mayor fished me out and told me I was to go in his 4X4. He did not come with us since his mother had died and he was in mourning. Even in the 4X4 it was an arduous journey. I am repeatedly surprised by roads even worse than those I have been on. To make matters worse, there had been rain earlier which turned the road into mud, and at times the 4X4 skated all over the road which had a significant drop on each side.
The 80 kilometer journey was interesting since it followed the Logone south for most of the way (in the northerly direction the road goes around 200 kilometers to Kousseri, which is across the river from Njamena, the capital of Chad). There was good vegetation, due to the river, and the recent rains had begun to produce some patches of green. There were places where we could see people wading back and forth between Chad and Cameroon. A friend told me that she was washing clothes in the Logone one day and a man whom she knew waded across from Chad. He was well dressed but just waded to whatever depth was necessary. When he saw her he borrowed her soap and soaped both himself and his clothes, remaining fully clothed. He then rinsed off and continued on his way, letting the sun dry him.
Yagoua turned out to be quite a nice town with lovely trees and some small hills (a rarity in the flat Logone plain). Before the parade started there was some entertainment. At one stage a senior council official with whom I have a lot of dealings took me by the hand to see some traditional dancers. He pulled me through the crowd towards the front and continued to hold my hand as we watched. Homosexual acts are illegal in Cameroon but it is quite common for men to hold hands. Despite this, I felt ill at ease and in order to disengage I decided to take a photo. After taking the photo I was slow to put my hand back down since I was afraid that he would grab it again. When I finally put my hand down I found that my wallet was gone. In addition to my money and my bank cards (with which I had completely failed to access money in Cameroon) it contained an identity card which I had been issued after arrival. Being without this card is a serious matter since it creates circumstances in which policemen look for significant bribes. Another member of the Maga party who was watching the dancers had his mobile phone stolen.
We went to the local police station and reported the theft. They told me that my wallet would probably turn up but without my money. Cameroon has a benevolent type of pick-pocket who, provided that the wallet contains enough money, actually throws the wallet through the window of the police station at night. I got a phone call from the Yagoua police to-day to say that this has duly happened and that the wallet contains my indentity card.
The parade, when it finally took place, was a farce. We marched no more than 300 metres in the space of a few minutes. However a few of us piled into the 4X4 and joined a cavalcade of similar vehicles which formed a sort of secondary parade around the streets of Yagoua, much to the glee of the local children.
As usual, I was one of a privileged few who were invited to lunch by a local person who turned out to be a most agreeable and thoughtful host. He was very interested in where I was from and produced an atlas so that I could show him where Ireland is and what countries I had flown over when going to Cameroon.
The 80 kilometer journey was interesting since it followed the Logone south for most of the way (in the northerly direction the road goes around 200 kilometers to Kousseri, which is across the river from Njamena, the capital of Chad). There was good vegetation, due to the river, and the recent rains had begun to produce some patches of green. There were places where we could see people wading back and forth between Chad and Cameroon. A friend told me that she was washing clothes in the Logone one day and a man whom she knew waded across from Chad. He was well dressed but just waded to whatever depth was necessary. When he saw her he borrowed her soap and soaped both himself and his clothes, remaining fully clothed. He then rinsed off and continued on his way, letting the sun dry him.
Yagoua turned out to be quite a nice town with lovely trees and some small hills (a rarity in the flat Logone plain). Before the parade started there was some entertainment. At one stage a senior council official with whom I have a lot of dealings took me by the hand to see some traditional dancers. He pulled me through the crowd towards the front and continued to hold my hand as we watched. Homosexual acts are illegal in Cameroon but it is quite common for men to hold hands. Despite this, I felt ill at ease and in order to disengage I decided to take a photo. After taking the photo I was slow to put my hand back down since I was afraid that he would grab it again. When I finally put my hand down I found that my wallet was gone. In addition to my money and my bank cards (with which I had completely failed to access money in Cameroon) it contained an identity card which I had been issued after arrival. Being without this card is a serious matter since it creates circumstances in which policemen look for significant bribes. Another member of the Maga party who was watching the dancers had his mobile phone stolen.
We went to the local police station and reported the theft. They told me that my wallet would probably turn up but without my money. Cameroon has a benevolent type of pick-pocket who, provided that the wallet contains enough money, actually throws the wallet through the window of the police station at night. I got a phone call from the Yagoua police to-day to say that this has duly happened and that the wallet contains my indentity card.
The parade, when it finally took place, was a farce. We marched no more than 300 metres in the space of a few minutes. However a few of us piled into the 4X4 and joined a cavalcade of similar vehicles which formed a sort of secondary parade around the streets of Yagoua, much to the glee of the local children.
As usual, I was one of a privileged few who were invited to lunch by a local person who turned out to be a most agreeable and thoughtful host. He was very interested in where I was from and produced an atlas so that I could show him where Ireland is and what countries I had flown over when going to Cameroon.
Democracy, Cameroonian Style
The president of Cameroon is Paul Biya. He has been in power for 25 years, is 75 years old and has recently changed the constitution to enable him to stay in office for a further term. Announcement of this change was the spark that ignited the riots which caused our departure to Cameroon to be delayed, although there were already many underlying sources of grievance, including huge increases in food and fuel prices. The Government puts the number of deaths in the riots at 40 but NGOs say that the real number is greater than 100. I have heard it remarked that Biya wants to stay in office since he would be jailed for embezzlement if he resigned. There was a census in Cameroon in 2004 and the results have not yet been published – some allege that this is because its publication would make the rigging of elections more difficult.
Cameroon has an elected parliament and has provision for a senate but this has not been implemented. Parliament can make laws but many of them are ignored. The prime minister and all ministers are appointed by the president and don’t need to be members of parliament. The president also appoints the people who head up Cameroon’s 10 provinces, and these people have much more power than government ministers, the latter mainly filling an advisory and standard setting role. There is a cascade of appointments from provincial to divisional, sub-divisional, district and council level. The Sous-Préfet is at council level and is the most powerful person at that level. The councillors are elected and they in turn elect the mayor. The mayor appoints deputies from among the councillors to form his Executive. Apart from this he inherits his management team. There is a Secretary General at council level who is appointed by the Sous-Préfet but is a member of the mayor’s team. In practice he is the most powerful person on the mayor’s team, and there are a number of other state appointments on the mayor’s team. Thus the mayor needs to achieve things by influencing rather than by authority. Laws providing for decentralisation of responsibilities were published in 2004 but they have not been enacted, and a further law which is to provide for transfer of resources to councils to enable them to fulfil the new responsibilities has not yet been published. Thus councils are in the invidious position of being expected by their electorate to provide water, schools, health centres, roads and many other services but they don’t have the means to provide them. Meanwhile the state is not filling this gap. Maga’s 41 councillors are all from the opposition party. This is a result of a weird system where each party puts forward a list of candidates and the electorate vote for the lists. Maga’s councillors feel that they are marginalised by the state (ironically, in one of the villages that I visited the chief and his notables were government supporters and felt marginalised by the council).
The chiefs are traditional leaders from families on which their succession is based. There are lots of princes and princesses. Their local power on issues such as ownership of land cuts across state authority at times. They perform a bottom-up function for the state on matters where consultation is sought and they organise local committees to look after matters such as maintenance of wells and pumps. They also act as tax collectors for the councils and the state. The meeting in the Sultan’s palace referred to earlier was attended by all the chiefs in the area and at the meeting each chief was given pre-signed and pre-stamped receipts for taxes which are levied annually on all adults (around €2 per annum). Police frequently stop people to check on their identity cards and if they don’t have a receipt for tax payment presumably they will have to pay a higher bribe than would otherwise be the case.
Cameroon has an elected parliament and has provision for a senate but this has not been implemented. Parliament can make laws but many of them are ignored. The prime minister and all ministers are appointed by the president and don’t need to be members of parliament. The president also appoints the people who head up Cameroon’s 10 provinces, and these people have much more power than government ministers, the latter mainly filling an advisory and standard setting role. There is a cascade of appointments from provincial to divisional, sub-divisional, district and council level. The Sous-Préfet is at council level and is the most powerful person at that level. The councillors are elected and they in turn elect the mayor. The mayor appoints deputies from among the councillors to form his Executive. Apart from this he inherits his management team. There is a Secretary General at council level who is appointed by the Sous-Préfet but is a member of the mayor’s team. In practice he is the most powerful person on the mayor’s team, and there are a number of other state appointments on the mayor’s team. Thus the mayor needs to achieve things by influencing rather than by authority. Laws providing for decentralisation of responsibilities were published in 2004 but they have not been enacted, and a further law which is to provide for transfer of resources to councils to enable them to fulfil the new responsibilities has not yet been published. Thus councils are in the invidious position of being expected by their electorate to provide water, schools, health centres, roads and many other services but they don’t have the means to provide them. Meanwhile the state is not filling this gap. Maga’s 41 councillors are all from the opposition party. This is a result of a weird system where each party puts forward a list of candidates and the electorate vote for the lists. Maga’s councillors feel that they are marginalised by the state (ironically, in one of the villages that I visited the chief and his notables were government supporters and felt marginalised by the council).
The chiefs are traditional leaders from families on which their succession is based. There are lots of princes and princesses. Their local power on issues such as ownership of land cuts across state authority at times. They perform a bottom-up function for the state on matters where consultation is sought and they organise local committees to look after matters such as maintenance of wells and pumps. They also act as tax collectors for the councils and the state. The meeting in the Sultan’s palace referred to earlier was attended by all the chiefs in the area and at the meeting each chief was given pre-signed and pre-stamped receipts for taxes which are levied annually on all adults (around €2 per annum). Police frequently stop people to check on their identity cards and if they don’t have a receipt for tax payment presumably they will have to pay a higher bribe than would otherwise be the case.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Visits to Villages
A man (Moussa) from a local development organisation was doing a survey of deep water pumps in the Maga area and I accompanied him in order to get to know the villages, their chiefs and their needs (Halidou acted as interpreter since practically nobody in the villages speaks French). The night before we started I asked Moussa how he planned to spend the days and he said that he might just work for the morning since it gets extremely hot. He turned up as agreed at 7:00 the next morning and casually remarked that if we went far out into the bush we might not make it back that night. I hastily threw a few things, including a torch and a mosquito net, into a bag and joined him in his 4X4. We visited a lot of villages that day, crossing extremely difficult terrain by following what looked like animal tracks, and ended up in a very remote village where we slept in the open. We hung our mosquito nets from poles that we stuck in the ground and the villagers gave us mats to sleep on. They were not expecting us but killed a chicken and cooked it with rice for us. They also gave us boiled milk straight from the cow. At that stage we had eaten nothing for 14 hours. The next day we visited several other villages but I ran out of filtered water and insisted that we go to Guirvidig to buy some (and some bread for breakfast/lunch). Moussa worked through the week-end and into the next week but at least he agreed to go back to Maga at night.
The deprivation of the villagers is enormous. Most of the deep pumps are broken or working badly. Many villagers are faced with drinking water from shallow, unsafe and unreliable wells or bringing water large distances from other villages. In some cases the villagers, and particularly their children, drink water from ponds and swamps used by livestock. As you go further into the bush the tracks that serve as roads virtually disappear. For several months in the rainy season many villages are completely cut off (even in Maga there are weeks when you can’t go out of your house and when it is impossible to go to a neighbouring village even in a 4X4). The rainy season brings high risk of disease since there are no refuse collection services anywhere and no latrines in many villages, with the result that all sorts of stuff is floating around. There are risks of flooding (I have come to realise that there is also an appreciable risk of flooding in Maga because the ditch of the artificial lake sometimes breaks). Many villages have no school and many of their children never go to school (particularly girls, who have to fetch water and perform other chores), even in the dry season. Where villages have schools, more often than not they have fallen into disuse because the villagers are unable to pay teachers or because the villages are too remote to attract them.
When we were sitting in one village talking to the chief I noticed a large flock of birds flying by. They looked rather like a flock of starlings but the flock was enormous and flew past continuously. It still had not passed when we left, half an hour later. I was told that they were “bêtes” which eat grain. The likelihood is that most of the harvest will be wiped out. The defence against these birds is to spray them at night from a plane in order to exterminate them. The last time that this was done was 2001 and they have since recovered and are now everywhere. The local remedy is to cast nets over trees at night and then bring the birds to Maroua to be eaten, but this makes a trivial impact. The government has put in place a service, including planes, to spray the “oiseaux granivores” but I am told that the resources have been diverted to other, probably private, uses.
Although our arrival was unexpected, large reception parties materialised in most villages. Some came with spears, bows and arrows, swords, machetes, and other weapons. In one village there was a fierce-looking man on horseback with a bow and arrows who offered to bring me riding (which I declined). I asked him what he used the bow and arrows for and he said that they were for defence against bandits and lions. I don’t think that there are lions in the vicinity but in another village later that day we were told how they had killed a bandit with an arrow.
The deprivation of the villagers is enormous. Most of the deep pumps are broken or working badly. Many villagers are faced with drinking water from shallow, unsafe and unreliable wells or bringing water large distances from other villages. In some cases the villagers, and particularly their children, drink water from ponds and swamps used by livestock. As you go further into the bush the tracks that serve as roads virtually disappear. For several months in the rainy season many villages are completely cut off (even in Maga there are weeks when you can’t go out of your house and when it is impossible to go to a neighbouring village even in a 4X4). The rainy season brings high risk of disease since there are no refuse collection services anywhere and no latrines in many villages, with the result that all sorts of stuff is floating around. There are risks of flooding (I have come to realise that there is also an appreciable risk of flooding in Maga because the ditch of the artificial lake sometimes breaks). Many villages have no school and many of their children never go to school (particularly girls, who have to fetch water and perform other chores), even in the dry season. Where villages have schools, more often than not they have fallen into disuse because the villagers are unable to pay teachers or because the villages are too remote to attract them.
When we were sitting in one village talking to the chief I noticed a large flock of birds flying by. They looked rather like a flock of starlings but the flock was enormous and flew past continuously. It still had not passed when we left, half an hour later. I was told that they were “bêtes” which eat grain. The likelihood is that most of the harvest will be wiped out. The defence against these birds is to spray them at night from a plane in order to exterminate them. The last time that this was done was 2001 and they have since recovered and are now everywhere. The local remedy is to cast nets over trees at night and then bring the birds to Maroua to be eaten, but this makes a trivial impact. The government has put in place a service, including planes, to spray the “oiseaux granivores” but I am told that the resources have been diverted to other, probably private, uses.
Although our arrival was unexpected, large reception parties materialised in most villages. Some came with spears, bows and arrows, swords, machetes, and other weapons. In one village there was a fierce-looking man on horseback with a bow and arrows who offered to bring me riding (which I declined). I asked him what he used the bow and arrows for and he said that they were for defence against bandits and lions. I don’t think that there are lions in the vicinity but in another village later that day we were told how they had killed a bandit with an arrow.
Marriage, Life and Death, Cameroonian Style
Parents here expect their children and grand-children to look after them in old age. They try to have their daughters married from as young as thirteen (for which they receive a dowry) and press them to have as many children as possible, with the result that many girls drop out of school. As far as I can judge, the wives get spent at an early age and the husbands take other wives, also young, retaining or divorcing the former wives. It is not unusual for men in their fifties, and even sixties, to take young wives and to continue to have children. There is a local chief who has 47 children and his sixth wife is currently pregnant. They don’t seem to consider whether they will be able to support the children, but look to the state or council to provide facilities for them. Men also have a lot of extra-marital affairs with “free women” and illegitimate children abound. It does not look as though there is any real bond between husband and wife in most cases, other than contractual.
Part of the logic here is that mortality will be high and that lots of children are needed to provide enough survivors to look after the old. A link does not seem to be drawn between the high birth rate, the lack of capacity of water supply, schools and health facilities, and the general worsening of very impoverished conditions. Illness and death are everywhere here. Within my small circle of friends in the space of a few weeks, there have already been numerous deaths, including children and people of all ages. Most have been caused by malaria, and this is not the bad time of the year (which is from October to December, after the rainy season).
Halidou’s mother fell ill and I went with him to visit her in the Pouss hospital. The hospital can accommodate around 15 patients, has almost no equipment and has only one qualified nurse and no doctor. It serves around 50,000 people, and some Chadians also cross the Logone to go to it. Halidou’s mother seemed extremely unwell and they were unable to diagnose her illness (which turned out to be malaria). I gave him money to have her brought to the Maga hospital, which has some equipment and a doctor, where she was diagnosed and given treatment. She has now recovered but I think she would have died if left in Pouss. All medical treatment has to be paid for and most people cannot afford to pay and just do without it. I have heard many stories of people who have died for lack of money to pay for treatment and medicines (which cost trivial amounts in our terms).
The mother of another friend has been having some sort of fits and she and everybody else thinks that she has been put under a spell by somebody. She probably has something like cerebral malaria but even the best educated people believe in sorcerers. There are of course local “healers” with dubious methods.
The bonds between parents and children are also weak in many cases. Children are left to roam unsupervised, and with no rubbish collection service they are constantly sifting through bags of decaying material, some of which they eat. On one occasion I tried to burn some rubbish but did not do a good job and decided to let the fire smoulder and then dispose of it. Later I heard a sound outside my window and saw three young children (less than four years old) at the spot where there had been the decaying remains of fish and other food, but there was none left. Not surprisingly, child mortality is very high. Apart from illnesses, accidents are frequent. In the past few weeks two children have drowned in the lake, another has had his foot crushed while trying to catch onto the side of a truck and another broke both his wrists in a fall from a tree after he was attacked by bees.
There is currently a financial crisis in the Council and employees have not been paid for five months. Nearly 100 employees are affected (including teachers and others employed by the council) and several have told me that they go for days without eating. Most have families, the average size being around 10. When some food is available, the father gets first call, then the mother and then the children, if any is left.
Part of the logic here is that mortality will be high and that lots of children are needed to provide enough survivors to look after the old. A link does not seem to be drawn between the high birth rate, the lack of capacity of water supply, schools and health facilities, and the general worsening of very impoverished conditions. Illness and death are everywhere here. Within my small circle of friends in the space of a few weeks, there have already been numerous deaths, including children and people of all ages. Most have been caused by malaria, and this is not the bad time of the year (which is from October to December, after the rainy season).
Halidou’s mother fell ill and I went with him to visit her in the Pouss hospital. The hospital can accommodate around 15 patients, has almost no equipment and has only one qualified nurse and no doctor. It serves around 50,000 people, and some Chadians also cross the Logone to go to it. Halidou’s mother seemed extremely unwell and they were unable to diagnose her illness (which turned out to be malaria). I gave him money to have her brought to the Maga hospital, which has some equipment and a doctor, where she was diagnosed and given treatment. She has now recovered but I think she would have died if left in Pouss. All medical treatment has to be paid for and most people cannot afford to pay and just do without it. I have heard many stories of people who have died for lack of money to pay for treatment and medicines (which cost trivial amounts in our terms).
The mother of another friend has been having some sort of fits and she and everybody else thinks that she has been put under a spell by somebody. She probably has something like cerebral malaria but even the best educated people believe in sorcerers. There are of course local “healers” with dubious methods.
The bonds between parents and children are also weak in many cases. Children are left to roam unsupervised, and with no rubbish collection service they are constantly sifting through bags of decaying material, some of which they eat. On one occasion I tried to burn some rubbish but did not do a good job and decided to let the fire smoulder and then dispose of it. Later I heard a sound outside my window and saw three young children (less than four years old) at the spot where there had been the decaying remains of fish and other food, but there was none left. Not surprisingly, child mortality is very high. Apart from illnesses, accidents are frequent. In the past few weeks two children have drowned in the lake, another has had his foot crushed while trying to catch onto the side of a truck and another broke both his wrists in a fall from a tree after he was attacked by bees.
There is currently a financial crisis in the Council and employees have not been paid for five months. Nearly 100 employees are affected (including teachers and others employed by the council) and several have told me that they go for days without eating. Most have families, the average size being around 10. When some food is available, the father gets first call, then the mother and then the children, if any is left.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Neighbours and Friends
The people here are very friendly, rather like Irish people in rural areas, and I am gradually getting to know some neighbours. Apart from an existing volunteer, Ruth, who has been extremely helpful, my first contact was with a sixteen year-old boy, Kalifa, who introduced himself on my first morning. He told me that he used to act as “petit frère” to the volunteer who was in my house before me. He is very resourceful and street wise, he has fixed all sorts of things for me, sorted out all sorts of problems and has even shown me how to cook a number of local dishes. He is one of a number of youths who tend to turn up at my house around meal times. In Cameroon, no matter how little you have for a meal, if anybody turns up you share it with them. I am quite happy to share but I keep finding that my provisioning and shopping schedule are derailed and I seem to have to go shopping at least once a day. Some of my neighbours and colleagues have invited me to dine with them. In one case a man whom I had met in the town invited himself to dinner one evening, offering to bring cooked fish if I would prepare a salad to go with it. It turned out a very pleasant evening.
Ruth teaches English in a local school and I asked her if she could suggest somebody who could give me some French conversation practice. She introduced me to Halidou, a 30-year old man who teaches French in the local school. This has turned out to be a significant breakthrough. He is very intelligent and speaks not only French and English but several local languages, including Fulfulde, Mousgoum and Arabic Choa. In my first two weeks at work I visited the chiefs of around 50 villages in the area and most of them do not speak French (none speak English). Halidou, who is employed by the council but is seconded to the school, came with me (it was during the school holidays). He was able to fill me in on the background to everything, as well as translating. He is some sort of national volunteer and is paid very little and treated badly. Cameroon’s graduates, of whom he is one, find it extremely difficult to get work and one option for them is to work as a volunteer and at least get experience. Last week-end he got engaged. For years his parents have been pressing him to marry but he resisted up to this. He finally gave in and consented to meet a 17 year old girl at their request. He met her for the first time on Saturday, got on well with her and agreed to marry her.
I have scripted a play for a workshop which I need to run with all the councillors and with the local dignatories. A local group of actors have agreed to do it for me and they come to my house to rehearse. They are young, energetic and talented. Their main strength is improvisation, which is not good news for me since I am trying to communicate particular messages and I never know when they are going to take off at a tangent and abandon the script. One of them is referred to as “Princess Diana”, being a princess herself (this distinction is not what it seems since the chiefs tend to have so many children). There are some original names here: one very assidous student at the local school is referred to as “A-B-C-D”.
The mayor has introduced me to all the important people in the area. These are a mixture of elected representatives, such as the mayor and his executive, state-appointed representatives, of whom the Sous-Prefet is the most important, and traditional chiefs, of whom the Sultan of Pouss is the most senior. The latter has an impressive palace in Pouss as well as a house in Maga. The mayor brought me to the palace in Pouss on the first day and after we had taken our shoes off we were brought into a very large room with sofas around it and carpets on the floor. When the Sultan entered with his retinue we bowed respectfully and all conversation was restrained and at his bidding. He is extremely tall, as are most of the Mousgoum tribe of which he is part. The mayor sat under him and talked up to him, and on subsequent visits to the palace the only person who sat at his level was the Sous-Prefet. On one occasion there were around 50 men in the room and a select few, including myself, were invited to lunch with him (lovely beef, lamb, chicken and fish, plus vegetables and sauces). He turned out to be quite genial. He took pity on my efforts to eat with my hands sitting on the floor (the Cameroonian way of eating), without staining the carpet and my clothes, and he produced two chairs – one for me to sit on and the other to use as a table. I was quite embarrassed but it seemed to amuse him, and of course all the others. Ruth lives in his Maga house and shares a lovely big living room. He has frequently asked her to become his sixth wife, which she has declined. His fifth wife, who was 14 and was an “esclave” since his religion only permits four wives, ran away, causing a scandal. He has also offered to marry Ruth to one of his sons.
Ruth teaches English in a local school and I asked her if she could suggest somebody who could give me some French conversation practice. She introduced me to Halidou, a 30-year old man who teaches French in the local school. This has turned out to be a significant breakthrough. He is very intelligent and speaks not only French and English but several local languages, including Fulfulde, Mousgoum and Arabic Choa. In my first two weeks at work I visited the chiefs of around 50 villages in the area and most of them do not speak French (none speak English). Halidou, who is employed by the council but is seconded to the school, came with me (it was during the school holidays). He was able to fill me in on the background to everything, as well as translating. He is some sort of national volunteer and is paid very little and treated badly. Cameroon’s graduates, of whom he is one, find it extremely difficult to get work and one option for them is to work as a volunteer and at least get experience. Last week-end he got engaged. For years his parents have been pressing him to marry but he resisted up to this. He finally gave in and consented to meet a 17 year old girl at their request. He met her for the first time on Saturday, got on well with her and agreed to marry her.
I have scripted a play for a workshop which I need to run with all the councillors and with the local dignatories. A local group of actors have agreed to do it for me and they come to my house to rehearse. They are young, energetic and talented. Their main strength is improvisation, which is not good news for me since I am trying to communicate particular messages and I never know when they are going to take off at a tangent and abandon the script. One of them is referred to as “Princess Diana”, being a princess herself (this distinction is not what it seems since the chiefs tend to have so many children). There are some original names here: one very assidous student at the local school is referred to as “A-B-C-D”.
The mayor has introduced me to all the important people in the area. These are a mixture of elected representatives, such as the mayor and his executive, state-appointed representatives, of whom the Sous-Prefet is the most important, and traditional chiefs, of whom the Sultan of Pouss is the most senior. The latter has an impressive palace in Pouss as well as a house in Maga. The mayor brought me to the palace in Pouss on the first day and after we had taken our shoes off we were brought into a very large room with sofas around it and carpets on the floor. When the Sultan entered with his retinue we bowed respectfully and all conversation was restrained and at his bidding. He is extremely tall, as are most of the Mousgoum tribe of which he is part. The mayor sat under him and talked up to him, and on subsequent visits to the palace the only person who sat at his level was the Sous-Prefet. On one occasion there were around 50 men in the room and a select few, including myself, were invited to lunch with him (lovely beef, lamb, chicken and fish, plus vegetables and sauces). He turned out to be quite genial. He took pity on my efforts to eat with my hands sitting on the floor (the Cameroonian way of eating), without staining the carpet and my clothes, and he produced two chairs – one for me to sit on and the other to use as a table. I was quite embarrassed but it seemed to amuse him, and of course all the others. Ruth lives in his Maga house and shares a lovely big living room. He has frequently asked her to become his sixth wife, which she has declined. His fifth wife, who was 14 and was an “esclave” since his religion only permits four wives, ran away, causing a scandal. He has also offered to marry Ruth to one of his sons.
Friday, May 9, 2008
No smoking, spitting, fighting, stealing or vomiting on the bus
This was the notice above the windows of a minibus which I took from Maga to Guirvidig on the latter’s market day. The bus only leaves when it is full, which means that an incredible number of people are packed in, and there are others on the top and also hanging out of the back (on the way back from the market there is all this plus all sorts of bulky objects bought at the market piled high on top). People sit facing each other in rows along the length of the bus and their knees are carefully interleaved with no room left to move in. A boy near me had a cock in his lap which tried frantically to escape every now and then. As we sat sweltering in the heat waiting for the bus to leave (this can take hours) somebody’s mobile played “Jingle Bells”.
I was at the front of the bus and could see into the cab (which contained three people in addition to the driver). The seat of the cab opened up to reveal the engine. Before starting, the driver connected some wires, put water in the radiator and sucked some liquid through a tube into his mouth, spat it out and syphoned the liquid into something else. After all that the battery barely turned the engine, which would not start, and then the guys hanging out of the back of the bus pushed it (fully loaded) until it started. The gear changes were incredibly jarring. I soon came to realise that the bus had absolutely no brakes and on one occasion a car blocked the way and for what seemed like an eternity the bus free-wheeled up to it and bumped into it. The driver didn’t even get out to see if there was any damage. We passed some police sitting under a tree and free-wheeled to a stop down the road from them. The driver gave some money to one of the guys hanging out of the back who ran back and gave it to them, presumably to avoid having his vehicle checked for road-worthiness. Most buses that I have been in since then have been equally bad and have had theirs radiators topped up every 15 kilometers or so. Broken down buses are regular sights, their passengers sitting patiently under a tree. I was on a bus recently which broke down over ten times between Maroua and Maga. Each time repairs were done with the help of bits of tubing, plastic bags, etc. To my relief the bus eventually made it to its destination, albeit many hours late.
The state of everything here is precarious. To-day I was in the local chief’s house and a young boy took out a bicycle. The chief asked him if it was road-worthy. The boy said “yes” but immediately the front wheel fell off and then the handlebars also fell off.
I was at the front of the bus and could see into the cab (which contained three people in addition to the driver). The seat of the cab opened up to reveal the engine. Before starting, the driver connected some wires, put water in the radiator and sucked some liquid through a tube into his mouth, spat it out and syphoned the liquid into something else. After all that the battery barely turned the engine, which would not start, and then the guys hanging out of the back of the bus pushed it (fully loaded) until it started. The gear changes were incredibly jarring. I soon came to realise that the bus had absolutely no brakes and on one occasion a car blocked the way and for what seemed like an eternity the bus free-wheeled up to it and bumped into it. The driver didn’t even get out to see if there was any damage. We passed some police sitting under a tree and free-wheeled to a stop down the road from them. The driver gave some money to one of the guys hanging out of the back who ran back and gave it to them, presumably to avoid having his vehicle checked for road-worthiness. Most buses that I have been in since then have been equally bad and have had theirs radiators topped up every 15 kilometers or so. Broken down buses are regular sights, their passengers sitting patiently under a tree. I was on a bus recently which broke down over ten times between Maroua and Maga. Each time repairs were done with the help of bits of tubing, plastic bags, etc. To my relief the bus eventually made it to its destination, albeit many hours late.
The state of everything here is precarious. To-day I was in the local chief’s house and a young boy took out a bicycle. The chief asked him if it was road-worthy. The boy said “yes” but immediately the front wheel fell off and then the handlebars also fell off.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Pictures from Maga
Since I wrote my blog on Maga I have been out on the lake and have seen the hippos. It was a lovely still day and it has left a lasting impression on me. I felt privileged.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Maga
After dinner I was brought to my house. It turned out that the electricity was not switched on so a person whom I later learned was the mayor’s third deputy helped me put up my mosquito net by torch-light and I went to bed, leaving it to the morning to get my bearings. To my surprise I was told that there was a guard on duty every night and that he sleeps in an adjoining shed.
By Maga standards my house is good. It has a living room, a bedroom, a shower and a flush toilet. The electricity was switched on the next day but then the water failed for a few days. When the water came back I found that there was a blockage in the drain from the shower (this has still not been fixed but I take my showers standing in a big basin). There are bats in the roof and they fly around the living room and bedroom at dusk before going out and at dawn after they return. Sometimes they get trapped between the curtain and the window and make an awful racket until I release them in the morning. They sometimes fly around during the day also. I don’t mind them but their droppings accumulate and I have heard of a person who died from rabies after being bitten by a bat so I should get something done about them. Lots of lizards, some multicoloured, come in and run around the place. Mosquitos are not much of a problem at this time of the year but I am told that they are a serious problem in the rainy season, which could start any time from late April and continue until late September.
Maga is a very quiet town with mainly Muslim people. They are very courteous and have strict protocols which they go through when they meet. They congregate in groups sitting on the ground under trees. The children are extraordinarily well behaved and are expected to do things for adults without payment, such as running to the market to buy things. The one thing that I would hold against the people is that when a white person goes shopping they multiply their prices and if you are not prepared to expend a considerable amount of time haggling you are constantly ripped off (or “bouffé”, as they somewhat impolitely call it). Happily there is a bar, “Chez Rose”, hidden away in a back street. Even some Muslims slip in there for a drink.
The range of things which one can buy here is very restricted. There is very good fish, coming from the lake which supplies the region. Given that we are approaching the end of the dry season I was surprised to find so much water in the lake. The Logone river fills the lake in the rainy season and the lake supplies water to the river in the dry season. I have watched fishermen cast small nets in canals off the lake and pull them in, usually with two or three fish per throw. Over-fishing and poaching are problems. Also the lake is man-made and has led to the drying up of many small lakes where fish used to be caught and to the elimination of some of the swamps, with a consequent loss of wildlife. I have yet to go out in the lake to see the hippos but heard that one attacked a man near Maga a few days ago and was killed by the local people. The Maga football team are referred to as the “hippos”.
A lot of beef is also available locally. The plain in which the Commune de Maga is situated and which extends north to Lake Chad is used to graze cattle. Nomadic cattle herders come here from Niger, Nigeria and Chad, covering enormous distances in search of grazing for their herds. The creation of the artificial lake has adversely affected the grazing and the availbility of watering holes for the livestock. Also some local people have established farms and have fenced off areas through which the nomads used to pass. This has given rise to conflicts with significant loss of life. In theory the state owns all the lands and levies taxes for grazing. In practice the traditional chiefs continue to allocate ownership rights in their areas.
By Maga standards my house is good. It has a living room, a bedroom, a shower and a flush toilet. The electricity was switched on the next day but then the water failed for a few days. When the water came back I found that there was a blockage in the drain from the shower (this has still not been fixed but I take my showers standing in a big basin). There are bats in the roof and they fly around the living room and bedroom at dusk before going out and at dawn after they return. Sometimes they get trapped between the curtain and the window and make an awful racket until I release them in the morning. They sometimes fly around during the day also. I don’t mind them but their droppings accumulate and I have heard of a person who died from rabies after being bitten by a bat so I should get something done about them. Lots of lizards, some multicoloured, come in and run around the place. Mosquitos are not much of a problem at this time of the year but I am told that they are a serious problem in the rainy season, which could start any time from late April and continue until late September.
Maga is a very quiet town with mainly Muslim people. They are very courteous and have strict protocols which they go through when they meet. They congregate in groups sitting on the ground under trees. The children are extraordinarily well behaved and are expected to do things for adults without payment, such as running to the market to buy things. The one thing that I would hold against the people is that when a white person goes shopping they multiply their prices and if you are not prepared to expend a considerable amount of time haggling you are constantly ripped off (or “bouffé”, as they somewhat impolitely call it). Happily there is a bar, “Chez Rose”, hidden away in a back street. Even some Muslims slip in there for a drink.
The range of things which one can buy here is very restricted. There is very good fish, coming from the lake which supplies the region. Given that we are approaching the end of the dry season I was surprised to find so much water in the lake. The Logone river fills the lake in the rainy season and the lake supplies water to the river in the dry season. I have watched fishermen cast small nets in canals off the lake and pull them in, usually with two or three fish per throw. Over-fishing and poaching are problems. Also the lake is man-made and has led to the drying up of many small lakes where fish used to be caught and to the elimination of some of the swamps, with a consequent loss of wildlife. I have yet to go out in the lake to see the hippos but heard that one attacked a man near Maga a few days ago and was killed by the local people. The Maga football team are referred to as the “hippos”.
A lot of beef is also available locally. The plain in which the Commune de Maga is situated and which extends north to Lake Chad is used to graze cattle. Nomadic cattle herders come here from Niger, Nigeria and Chad, covering enormous distances in search of grazing for their herds. The creation of the artificial lake has adversely affected the grazing and the availbility of watering holes for the livestock. Also some local people have established farms and have fenced off areas through which the nomads used to pass. This has given rise to conflicts with significant loss of life. In theory the state owns all the lands and levies taxes for grazing. In practice the traditional chiefs continue to allocate ownership rights in their areas.
M. le Maire de la Commune de Maga
I was collected in Maroua by the mayor of the Maga local council and my future boss. He is a very imposing person and the girls fall for him in a big way. He is turning out to be very personable, popular, enlightened and progressive and I expect that he will make me work very hard since he has great ambitions for his locality. It consists of three small towns and their environs with a total population of 100,000. They are on the shores of Lake Maga which stretches for 25 kilometers from Guirvidig in the west through Maga to Pouss in the east. Pouss is on the Cameroon side of the Logone river and Chad is on the other side. Happily the nearest bridge is 200 kilometers away but bandits still cross by boat and have caused some deaths in towns north and south of Pouss, but not in Pouss as yet.
The journey to Maga was difficult. I met the mayor in the morning and he said that he would return shortly to collect me when he had met his wife. He has three wives and three houses, one of which is in Maga. Unfortunately he could not track down his Maroua wife until late and it was getting dark as we left. He has the rare luxury in these parts of a 4X4 jeep and a driver who always goes around in it with him and hangs around wherever he is. On a subsequent trip the mayor carried a rifle which he explained was because he was visiting some areas in the bush where bandits kidnap, rob and murder rich merchants. He comes from a warrior tribe, the Mousgoum, he has a short fuse and I certainly would not take issue with him when he has his rifle at hand! On my first trip from Maroua to Maga, after I was installed together with my luggage, and feeling squashed since there was already a lot of clutter in the jeep, three women, two children and all their clutter were somehow piled into the area behind the back seat. I think they were neighbours for whom he was doing a favour but I am not sure since although men are introduced meticulously, women are generally ignored.
The first 30 kilometers of the road were incredibly bad and the trip from Ngaoundere to Maroua paled into insignificance when compared to this (I was to find on a return trip to Maroua that they had “resurfaced” the road with earth, which is fine now since we are still in the dry season…). Happily there was extremely little traffic on the road since the area is extremely poor. After 30 kilometers the road suddenly assumed a very good surface (like an Irish road, but I am told that the rainy season will wash parts of it away). This lasted for another 30 kilometers. When I asked why this part of the road, and not the 30 kilometers nearer Maroua, was properly surfaced I was told that prior to resurfacing it was by far the worst part of the road. At this stage we stopped for Muslim prayers. We then continued on a bad road for about 15 kilometers to Guirvidig. Here we called into the mayor’s second house. After removing my shoes I sat in a very big room with sofas on every side and a big carpet on the floor. The mayor had told me that he had 13 children and I counted seating space for himself, the three wives and all the children (but this may be spurious since they usually sit on the floor). He opened a bottle of whiskey (which I expect was a huge honour, and probably rather risqué on his part) and poured me a large tumbler full. I had eaten nothing in 10 hours and politely took a few sips and explained as best I could that it couldn’t be taken in such quantities. We then continued the further 12 kilometers to Maga where he invited me to dine with him at his Maga house. This was on a carpet in the open-air and consisted of fish deliciously cooked. He also had the thoughtfulness to send his jeep around for me the next morning and bring me for breakfast (again fish) since there were no provisions in my house.
The journey to Maga was difficult. I met the mayor in the morning and he said that he would return shortly to collect me when he had met his wife. He has three wives and three houses, one of which is in Maga. Unfortunately he could not track down his Maroua wife until late and it was getting dark as we left. He has the rare luxury in these parts of a 4X4 jeep and a driver who always goes around in it with him and hangs around wherever he is. On a subsequent trip the mayor carried a rifle which he explained was because he was visiting some areas in the bush where bandits kidnap, rob and murder rich merchants. He comes from a warrior tribe, the Mousgoum, he has a short fuse and I certainly would not take issue with him when he has his rifle at hand! On my first trip from Maroua to Maga, after I was installed together with my luggage, and feeling squashed since there was already a lot of clutter in the jeep, three women, two children and all their clutter were somehow piled into the area behind the back seat. I think they were neighbours for whom he was doing a favour but I am not sure since although men are introduced meticulously, women are generally ignored.
The first 30 kilometers of the road were incredibly bad and the trip from Ngaoundere to Maroua paled into insignificance when compared to this (I was to find on a return trip to Maroua that they had “resurfaced” the road with earth, which is fine now since we are still in the dry season…). Happily there was extremely little traffic on the road since the area is extremely poor. After 30 kilometers the road suddenly assumed a very good surface (like an Irish road, but I am told that the rainy season will wash parts of it away). This lasted for another 30 kilometers. When I asked why this part of the road, and not the 30 kilometers nearer Maroua, was properly surfaced I was told that prior to resurfacing it was by far the worst part of the road. At this stage we stopped for Muslim prayers. We then continued on a bad road for about 15 kilometers to Guirvidig. Here we called into the mayor’s second house. After removing my shoes I sat in a very big room with sofas on every side and a big carpet on the floor. The mayor had told me that he had 13 children and I counted seating space for himself, the three wives and all the children (but this may be spurious since they usually sit on the floor). He opened a bottle of whiskey (which I expect was a huge honour, and probably rather risqué on his part) and poured me a large tumbler full. I had eaten nothing in 10 hours and politely took a few sips and explained as best I could that it couldn’t be taken in such quantities. We then continued the further 12 kilometers to Maga where he invited me to dine with him at his Maga house. This was on a carpet in the open-air and consisted of fish deliciously cooked. He also had the thoughtfulness to send his jeep around for me the next morning and bring me for breakfast (again fish) since there were no provisions in my house.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
