Pictures of Maga's Reunification Day Parade

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.

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.

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.