Cameroon

When I was in Berlin in 2003, I met a linguistics professor from Cameroon, who was doing a project on English-speakers from different regions. He wanted me to participate—he’d been having trouble finding Australians (which seems odd to me—we’re everywhere in Europe) but I was leaving to go to Prague—I met him on the train that was taking me to the bus station. I would have been interested to hear more about the project. When I think of Cameroon, I think of meeting this man briefly, and this sudden sense I had of Cameroon as a place, one that I had never thought about before. It was a spotlight on my ignorance.

Cameroon has two different dates of independence, from 1960 and 1961—it had to gain independence from both France and the United Kingdom. Perhaps a result of this split in the dates for independence, rather than celebrating an independence day on either 1 January or 1 October, Cameroon instead celebrates its National Day on 20 May—though 1 October is celebrated as Unification Day, and 1 January is a public holiday anyway for the New Year.

The nation is formed from the union of the two former colonies—French Cameroun and British Cameroons. Now the country is the United Republic of Cameroon. Comparatively, Cameroon enjoys political and social stability—there has been (imperfect, and not always well-maintained) development of agriculture, roads, railways, industries… but there is still a great deal of poverty, and the government of Paul Biya—president since 1982—engenders widespread corruption. Biya did initially start out moving toward a more democratic government, but a failed coup d’etát put an end to that. In 2006 Biya did initiate an anti-corruption move. The jury’s out. Since 1990, there has been pressure from some areas of the former British Cameroons for secession as the Republic of Ambazonia—and the Cameroons National Council declared it an independent state in 1999, though the declaration has not been recognised. The press in the country is curtailed in its freedoms—there is a lot of self-censorship in the media to avoid possible consequences. On the other hand, there is a high level of religious freedom.

Reading about Cameroon’s geography is awakening my wanderlust—the country has coast, desert, mountains, rainforest and savannah. Just writing those words makes the idea of empty places open in front of me.

Today’s poem is by the poet Mbella Sonne Dipoko—I found it using Google Books in the pages Penguin allowed me to view of an anthology of modern African poetry…


Our Life

An ailing bird over the desert made its agony
A song blown through the air
As at the oasis
Drawers of water said
How long it flies oh how touching its song

The winged hope that proved to be a dream
(Masked our destiny with a black hood)

As in the cities we said the same prayers
As in the villages we espoused ancestral myths
Transmitting our frustration our life our mortality
To the young country of tomorrow and day after tomorrow
Flattering ourselves with the charity of the blood-donor’s love.

— Mbella Sonne Dipoko