Health Services in Cameroon

I hear of a constant stream of deaths of relatives of friends and colleagues and in many cases lack of money for diagnosis and remedies seems to be the deciding factor. Also many people live far out in the bush and there is no possibility of getting to a health centre for a large part of the year because of the rains. However, getting to a health centre or hospital here does not always have a positive outcome.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, I went with a friend to visit his mother who was in a health centre in Pouss. She was clearly in a bad way and they were unable to diagnose her illness. The health centre has one nurse and no doctor. We brought her to the health centre in Maga where there is a doctor (or rather there was at that time but he has now gone to Belgium for a year’s training). There they diagnosed malaria. It is hard to understand why this was not possible in Pouss, given that it is by far the most common ailment here and most people suffer from it at least once a year. Everything has to be paid for, so we paid for the consultation and the medicines, and we also brought her meals which are not supplied here. She recovered but I think that if we had left her in Pouss she would have died.

Some months later the same friend became ill and went to the health centre in Maga, where they diagnosed malaria. He took the remedies which they prescribed but became extremely sick and I thought he was going to die. I brought him to a hospital in Maroua where they prescribed different remedies and said that what was prescribed in Maga was the main cause of his problems. Once he changed to the new remedies he recovered quickly.

Another friend had a sore eye. She went to the hospital in Maroua where they prescribed remedies which did not produce an improvement. Indeed her condition worsened. I gave her money to go to Douala, the industrial capital, a four-day round trip costing around twice her month’s salary as a nurse. Even if the trip was affordable she could not have paid for it since her salary was eight months in arrears. In Douala they said that the remedies prescribed in Maroua were adding to her problem. When she changed to the new remedies her eye improved quickly.

A volunteer in Maroua became ill. She went to the hospital many times and they diagnosed many ailments, including malaria and typhoid. The remedies that they prescribed did not produce an improvement (it is not unusual for them to give treatment for several illnesses without knowing which one, if any, the patient suffers from). She went to a hospital inYaounde, the capital city, but despite efforts there her condition worsened. VSO flew her to Canada, where she got effective treatment and she has since returned to Cameroon.

These are just a sample of instances where the health services were found wanting.

The previous minister for health is in prison having been convicted of pocketing huge amounts of money intended for health services.

Implications of Global Crises for Africa and Cameroon

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.

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.

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.

Photos of Foumban

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.

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.

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.