Constitutional Amendments: game over

"The Peoples' Representatives in Cameroon's National Assembly last Thursday, 10 April 2008, formally endorsed the bill amending and supplementing certain sections of the 1996 Constitution. As the adopted bill awaits promulgation into law by the Head of State, the uncertainties that surrounded its sailing through parliament can now be laid to rest."

So, after all of that, what seemed inconceivable just a month or so ago - that the constitutional amendments would go through with barely a murmur of protest - has happened. So Biya doesn't have to stand down in 2011 any more, and he lives to fight (rig) another election.

If there is an introductory course in Dictatorship then this should be in the textbook.


Dictatorship 101

Q1: You are facing understandable anger at the economic malaise, waste of resources and endemic corruption that have characterised your excessive period in power, what do you do?

A1: Kill and imprison protestors, shut down opposition media, increase police presence on streets, fill state-controlled media with pro-government propaganda and make a few showy concessions to keep people quiet (e.g. put up public sector pay, arrest a few politicians on corruption charges).

Teacher's comments: Very good. This is a tried and tested method that almost never fails. I'm not sure that you needed to make those concessions, you probably could have got away with just the brutality and media control. Still, it might make your life a little easier, so why not. A good answer overall. B+


Q2: The last time you amended the constitution to give yourself extra time in power, you committed yourself to leave office in 2011. However, you like being in charge: you get lots of money and prestige and can line the palms of all your friends, family and associates with dirty money. Besides, the thought of retirement doesn't appeal to you. There's only one golf course in Yaounde and that's a bit rubbish. What should you do?

A2: Distract population (see answer to Q1) and amend constitution while nobody's looking so that you can stand for re-election in 2011. Then rig election according to standard procedure.

Teacher's comments: Excellent, a perfect answer. This is where those concessions really come in useful. You are well on your way to becoming a model dictator! A+

Kousseri / Chadian Refugees

Last week I travelled to the Far North of the country, over 1500km away, to see the work my organisation is doing with the 8,000 or so refugees who remain in Cameroon from the original 30,000+ who fled fighting in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, just across the border, in February.

A representative from our organisation has been up there setting up educational and recreational facilities for the children in the camp with the support of UNICEF. We also secured funding from the British High Commission in Cameroon to provide clothing for the 2,000 children in the camp (see my earlier post - my agonising over what items to include in the proposal came to nothing as we were forced by UNHCR to change it anyway!), and used money from our own organisation at an international level to provide 32,000 blocks of soap, thousands of water pots and some sardines.

Going to a refugee camp for the first time I had certain expectations about what it would be like. However it was both more normal and more surreal to me than I had been able to imagine. On arriving at the camp I immediately participated in a distribution of school books to young children. I was actually quite shocked by the commotion when we drove up with the boxes of books in our 4x4. Kids running everywhere, and a cacophany of noise, followed by clamouring and shouting as we took the boxes from the car. Order of sorts was more or less maintained and people seemed to perceive and respect a basic boundary between 'us' and 'them'. But there was a constant slight tension. Some people would try to sneak in, parents would shout at members of our staff about various things, crowds would gather outside the makeshift classrooms where we were distributing the materials, being quite literally fended off with a stick at times. One of my colleagues took pictures of me giving out books and they're pretty funny to look at - you can see that at the time I was very uncomfortable and unable to compute what was going on. Posing for photos felt totally wrong, and the whole situation was a little overwhelming, so I have this glum, accusatory expression, while pretending to give a book to a child who is eagerly waiting for it.

Of course there was a positive feeling involved. Seeing the pleasure some of the children got just from receiving something new and shiny was heartwarming, and any serious moments of reflection would lead me to see that this was a positive thing to be doing. But it was tempered by evident problems with what was happening. Some children had their books stolen immediately after leaving, others were the wrong age for the books they were given, some were probably inadvertantly missed out, some would take the books but not go to class, and so on.

In any case, those first moments were very surreal, more so than I could have expected. It felt like stepping into a news report. It's sad in a way that my conception of surreality here had its parameters set by television, but that's just the way it is I suppose.

But it was also interesting how quickly that surreality broke down, to reveal more normality than I expected too. Just people, of certain kinds with certain concerns, needs, priorities, expectations, strengths and weaknesses, trying to get on with their lives and do the best for themselves and their families in whatever way they thought was best. Just like everyone else in this world.

There were certain issues in the camp itself during the time I was there. Recently the refugees who had been hired as teachers (15 out of 30 – the other 15 are Cameroonian) went on strike over their pay (having somehow heard that teachers in other refugee camps get paid more) and UN staff were informed of plans from certain refugees within the camp to orchestrate violence against UN and NGO staff as a protest against the lack of food (rations were running low and the next distribution was not due). None of the demands made by the refugees were ceded to, and the teachers have returned to work. The day after the threat of violence was heard no humanitarian staff entered the camp, which made it clear how easily the assistance being offered could be removed, and since then activities have continued as normal, although there is still tension in the camp and staff are cautious. I'll reserve judgement on this situation here, but it's certainly thought-provoking.

Other issues connect to the local Cameroonian population. A lack of latrine usage in the camp has led to contamination of local water supplies and illnesses within the population of Kousseri. Despite the availability of water within the camp refugees have been using local water supplies too, and this has led to shortages. These things and others are causing resentment among residents. In June the refugees will be moved to a site a few hundred kilometres south of Kousseri, near Garoua. This is purportedly to avoid the seasonal rainfall that could drastically affect the camp as it is located on a known flood plane. However I suspect that part of the motivation is also to separate the genuine refugees from those who are deriving benefits from the camp but who are not genuinely seeking refuge in Cameroon. There are reportedly many people who commute from the refugee camp to N’Djamena in Chad for work and then return at the end of the day, and others who one suspects are not in dire need of assistance. I have also heard that some people in the camp are armed rebels involved in the conflict in N'Djamena. It may be anticipated that only those in greatest need will be willing to travel the several hundred kilometres to Garoua and cut off their link with Chad.

That is not to say that only those in dire need of assistance should receive it, but it is to acknowledge that unfortunately there is only a limited pool of resources with which to handle refugee situations. So there may be more urgent situations elsewhere to which certain resources could be diverted. In any case, a number of things impressed me about the whole thing. I couldn't help but be impressed at the co-ordination of resources, the sheer volume of collective will to do something that is essentially only of benefit to other people. All this infrastructure, all these materials, all these millions of pounds being spent, all these people working extremely long hours in very difficult conditions, and for what? To help perfect strangers. I love that. And to think that it's being replicated all over the world.

The northern region of Cameroon is very dry and hot. Temperatures are normally around 40 degrees and it's basically desert. It's in stark contrast to the lush tropical south-west where I was just a couple of weeks ago. My lingering impressions are of dust, goats, villages of small round huts with pointy roofs, muslims, cattle, and intense heat. I have one particular memory of a man on a motorbike driving behind us in the orange dust with several metre-high stacks of trays of eggs strapped in a very makeshift way to his motorbike, weaving through the heavy traffic, missing pedestrians and other cars by millimetres and looking ridiculously precarious. My first experience of being engulfed by the Harmattan wind, with its attendant sandstorm, was pretty memorable too, but there are so many more - I find travelling in unfamiliar surroundings to be an incredibly powerful stimulus - it's just the impressions don't stay long enough and are not easily enough recountable. Sadly.

On the flight home I was like a little boy, overstimulated and finding everything unusually fascinating. We were in a tiny propellor-driven plane run by the World Food Programme, which seats around 12 people, and from the seats you can see right into the cockpit. I found it fascinating to watch them, and was really surprised how many things they had to do and how co-ordinated an effort it was. Real teamwork between the two pilots. They did so many little things - fiddling with dials, flicking switches, reading gauges - that I wondered what the implications of them forgetting to do one of those things would be. I mean, it can't be the case that missing one of those things out would have awful consequences, as it seems so easy to forget one. In which case, what is the need for it. Hmm.

And then flying out over the desert, watching the layout of a city in the sand, then the scenery turning gradually greener... anyway, it all reminded me of something in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which I think there's a lot of truth. There's a section where a student is asked to write an observational piece about a building in his local area, and he thinks he has nothing to say. The teacher encourages him to focus first only on the brick in the uppermost left corner of the building and see what he can find to say about that - the texture of it, its colours, its shape, its role in supporting the building... anything. The success of this exercise in producing a vivid, lucid piece of writing from the student suggested that the problem wasn't that the student had nothing to say about the building, but that there was too much for him to say. So much that it prevented him from knowing where to start.

I sometimes think about this. Imagine a 2p piece, for example. Not much to say about it, surely, it's a pretty mundane item. Round, copper-coloured, very functional. But when you look closer you can see there is no uniform colour, that's a simplified abstraction imposed by your mind. Really it's lots of different colours - some bits are lighter and darker, more or less tarnished, there are specks of dirt, the pattern is weathered in a certain way, certain parts shine and others are dull. Then think about its history. How many times has this 2p piece been used and in what ways? Probably thousands or tens of thousands of times. Each time, it's been used in a unique transaction with its own meaning and history. A different person each time, in a different part of the country, going about very particular business. Maybe an old man buying a loaf of bread in Scarborough, maybe a 16-year-old illegally buying his first pint in a Swansea pub, nervous and scraping change together. All of you have touched this same coin, had it in your possession for a certain period of time and then passed it on to the next. And then think about the way it was made. All the different elements that had to be taken from the ground, transported and fused together to make the metal, and all the people, places and times involved in those processes. The machines it took to press the thing, the designer who made the template, the committees that discussed the profile of the Queen's nose, how majesterial she looked. You can go on and on...

When I get in one of these moods the whole world seems like a playground. Everything is interesting, and it's just a case of revelling in it. Unfortunately, it's quite rare, and I'd love to know why. It feels like something is pushing down on my perceptions, squashing them flat to make everything smoother and more functional. I don't know, and in any case this is a massive tangent. But it sprang from this travel to the north and seemed worth mentioning.