Resignation

Recently a friend emailed me and she pointed out a contrast between my recent correspondence and that when I first arrived in Cameroon. At first I had given the impression of being completely engaged in my situation, whether positively or negatively, yet somehow I seemed to have become disengaged from all of it - the politics, the work, the social life. I think that to some extent this is true. I've stopped writing here regularly not because of any inherent change in what is happening day to day - what's going on in my life and the lives of others in Yaounde and Cameroon in general has not become any more or less interesting since I got here - rather it is the way I relate to it all that has changed.

Part of this can be put down to the fact that upon arriving in a new place everything seems new and interesting, your senses are alerted by the change, you are forced to think about different things, and you are equally forced to think about familiar things in different ways. After a while that is bound to fade as unfamiliar sights, sounds, thoughts and situations become familiar, and I think that is a natural process (whatever that means). Yet there is an element of it that is unnatural too. There is nothing 'natural' or automatic about my disengagement from my work, for example. It is partly based on real, identifiable discrepancies between my own values, methods and expectations and those of my employers. It is also partly based on other feelings, drives and reactions that I have not (yet?) been able to identify with any degree of sureness. But it is there, and it has become increasingly apparent that it is not going to go away.

The upshot of contemplating these things among others (I will go into more detail in a less public space) is that I have resigned from my position here and will be back in the UK some time in July. In some ways it's sad; it feels too soon to be preparing to come home, there are certain people I will not want to leave, and in fact I am less and less sure that 'home' - in terms of a country or city - is an idea that particularly has resonance at the moment. But there are also so many things to look forward to. I am already looking forward to seeing my family, and it will be good to reconnect with friends around the country and maybe beyond. And it will be good to be able to look forward again, bettered by these experiences and ready to make positive choices for the coming months and years.

I had originally started this entry with just a few little missives about things that have been happening in my life and in Cameroon, but it was too dull to leave as it was. For the sake of posterity, however, here is a slightly modified outline of some of the things that Cameroon and I have been up to recently:

A few weeks ago I went on a crazy run through the outskirts of Yaounde called the 'Hash'. They do it every week in a different part of the region and make a game out of it by putting markers for you to follow, some leading to dead ends and others leading to the right route, which on this occasion led through small rivers, fields of crops, up and down remote muddy hills and through small villages. By the end of it I was a mess and had been bitten/scratched on my legs more than any man should, but the route was beautiful enough to make it worth the effort. A strange feature was that many of the young children we ran past were shouting hello to us in Chinese and shouting 'le Chinois / la Chinoise' instead of the usual 'le blanc / la blanche'.

Speaking of which, it seems that the Chinese are coming to Cameroon, if not quite en masse then something close. A Chinese firm has just won (with heavy government involvement) a huge contract to develop several sports stadiums around the country over the next few years, and another Chinese firm is expected to win the contract for a new deep sea port development. Quite what Cameroon will do with these stadia once they are built I'm not sure, as upkeep and full utilisation of resources are not strengths of this nation. Yaounde already has a large stadium and it certainly wouldn't be amiss to wonder if there aren't more pressing needs to be addressed with this kind of monetary investment. On the bright side, it should create some jobs (although the majority of workers will be Chinese people shipped in to do the job) and it's surely better than nothing, but it's somewhat painful to see such prioritisation when you are in a country with 240,000 children under 17 orphaned by HIV/Aids, poor economic infrastructure, insufficient and inadequate schools and hospitals, and low-paid, corrupt public sector employees. The new deep-sea port, intended for Kribi, will probably have quite an impact if it goes ahead, as it will divert a lot of resources and commercial activity from the current commercial hub and biggest city - Douala - and will drastically change the character of Kribi which is a fairly small fishing town.

More recently I went to the Manengouba mountains with some friends for a long weekend. It was really stunning and nice to get away from 'the city' (I never thought I'd think of Yaounde in that way, but there it is). We stayed in Villa Luciole, which I'd highly recommend for its beauty and home grown food, if not for its 'guides' who left us stranded at the top of a hill for about an hour without telling us where they were going or how long for. At least we had plenty of time to take pictures (see above and below):

Again, it was hard to believe (a) that this is the same country as the dry, arid north and (b) that such beautiful, lush landscape could not provide a basis for greater prosperity. Call these simplistic thoughts if you will, but the variety of Cameroon's landscapes and the extent of its underdevelopment are two things that will stay firmly impressed in my mind as long as I am here, and probably for a good while after. At times it almost felt like we were in rural England, as we meandered through rolling green hills past grazing cattle.

Speaking of cattle, one day recently when I was walking to work I found my path blocked by a herd of said animals. In many places this wouldn't have been surprising, but this was in the relatively upmarket Bastos area where expats live and the roads are paved (no coincidence in those two things of course). Normally all you get is streams of yellow taxis and 4x4s owned by NGOs and international organisations. Speaking of which...

On Friday there was a function (party) at the British High Commissioner's residence (house) in honour of the Queen's birthday. I knew it was likely to be a fancy affair having been informed to wear a suit, but the row of huge, shiny, expensive vehicles lined up in front of the place was really something to behold. Many of them had small diplomatic flags just to the side of the front lights - I saw a fair few Union Jacks as well as the Cameroonian and American alternatives. I had no idea there were that many big, costly cars in all of Cameroon. To see such a conspicuous display of wealth in one place was quite strange. The party itself was good fun as there was a fantastically well-stocked free bar and more or less every expat I know was there. National anthems were sung, food was eaten, drinks were drunk, and the obligitary toast to Paul Biya (President of Cameroon) was met with a gratifying silence. I enjoyed that! Perhaps the Cameroonians present were embarrassed to salute Biya in the presence of so many foreigners, knowing what we all think of him, or perhaps they just weren't feeling that nationalistic. It was the Queen's birthday after all.

Speaking of nationalistic Cameroonians (hmm, starting to struggle now), we went to see the national team play against Cape Verde recently. It was fun even if Cameroon's victory was fairly predictable from the start. Here's a picture of Eto'o, Cameroon's best and most loved player, who could probably get a round of applause for farting they like him that much. Incidentally, Cameroon are up to 13th in the most recent world rankings - impressive.

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.

Dogs

There are a couple of dogs that live in the flat next door to me, horrible little things, too small to be fun like big dogs, yet still noisy and messy. They seem to have engaged in some sort of territorial war with me and often I'll come home to find little gifts of excrement in front of my gate so that I have to step around them to get in the door. This weekend away gave them the perfect opportunity to step it up a notch and I arrived home to a veritable feast of piss and shit, so much so that getting in the door felt a little bit like playing a sick version of Twister, tiptoeing in the gaps and contorting myself to get through the door without covering my shoes in the stuff. And just now as I was walking past the neighbour's door on the way to my flat, a venomous, growling ball of white fluff flung itself from the door and tried to attach itself to my ankle. No harm done, but if this continues I may be forced either to defacate on their premises in retaliation or simply kick the things to a hideous and brutal death.

Weekend in Limbe

I spent the Easter weekend in Limbe with some of the Embassy gang. It's a small town in South West Cameroon, notable for being on the coast, close to Mount Cameroon (a volcano and west Africa's tallest peak at 4,095m) and home to an oil refinery that was controversially neglected in choosing a location for the terminus of a new oil pipeline to Chad. Francophone Kribi, in the president's home region, was chosen over Anglophone Limbe, and it is widely believed by the Anglophone minority to have been a stitch up. From Limbe you can also see Equatorial Guinea's Bioko Island, one of those islands whose location makes you wonder why it belongs to the country it does rather than the one right next to it (the Falkland Islands come to mind, for example).

To get there you have to drive through Douala, which bore obvious signs of the recent unrest. The majority of the petrol stations we passed had the prices smashed out and a couple were still closed. One had a burnt-out car in the forecourt and its petrol pumps ripped out, and several had smashed windows or other smaller signs of violence. Those belonging to Total seemed to be the worst hit, I wonder if this has anything to do with their being a French company. Driving through Douala is always chaotic, and on the way back we witnessed a small accident as a woman was hit by a motorcycle, stumbling and falling backwards from the road and leaving the motorcyclist and his motorcycle in a small heap on the road. Luckily he was travelling at a low speed and she was robustly built, so it seemed that no major damage was done. I was surprised and relieved to see how calmly it was dealt with, having heard many reports of road accidents ending in heated arguments, violence and sometimes mob murder in other parts of the continent.

Limbe itself is very nice, the sands are volcanic grey which is unusual, but it has a very relaxed feel to it, and the ever-present mountain backdrop is something I really appreciated. Our hotel had a great view over the town, the sea was warm, and the beach was quiet with delicious fish available on tap from the beachside restaurant. We also went to visit Buea (pronounced "boy-ah"), which was the German colonial capital for a short while, passing through the Tole Tea Plantation on the way. Buea is at about 1,000m altitude and has a nice cool, airy feel. It looks an interesting little place but we didn't have time to hang around unfortunately.

The tea plantation was interesting too, at one point we stopped to have a drink and some food that we had with us and started to attract a fair bit of attention. First the woman who works on that part of the plantation came to see what we were up to, then the guy who said he guards it. He came with a bit of attitude, telling us that "snapping" (photography) is prohibited and that he would have to take our memory cards away and call the management. Although he had no real basis for doing that, our will to be co-operative (and perhaps the thought of the group of men with machetes we'd just passed who were working on the land) made us try to reason with him a little. It worked to some extent, although in the end it was the language of the bribe that came through. Two meatballs, some small pieces of cheese and a packet of biscuits apparently meant that our photos were no longer a problem.

Just before he left with the goods, now all smiles, he mentioned that had we been French there would have been a *real* problem. We didn't sit and challenge him on his racial stereotypes, preferring to let him wander off on his merry way to share his spoils with his cohorts. A few minutes later the manager actually turned up anyway and chatted amiably with us about the problems they are having with privatisation for a few minutes before carrying on about his business. The hatred of all things French is apparently not unusual in this part of the country: the restaurant that evening had "Freedom Fries" on the menu. In a token act of resistance to this frog-bashing I ordered "fries, French fries", before settling down to a very tasty and cheap meal, followed by a bit of a dance at "Dreams", Limbe's nightlife hotspot.

When we first got to Limbe I'd completely forgotten that there is an oil refinery there. As we drove through the town on the way to the beach something stood out - a paved residential road running parallel to ours. It immediately made me wonder why it was like that, until the entrance to the refinery came into view and the connection between the oil wealth and the paved road became obvious. It's a small thing, but it was reassuring to feel that I'm starting to get some sort of sense for the way things are here, so that unusual things stand out on an instinctive level as well as being identifiable on a rational level.

Real-life Cluedo

This morning I was called to an impromptu meeting downstairs, where it was reported that a laptop had been stolen from the office yesterday during working hours. Everyone sat around discussing people's movements yesterday and what guests had been coming in and out of the office. We checked the guard's log book and talked with the receptionist about guests and any periods when she had been away from the desk and unable to keep an eye on visitors.

As everyone gave their spiel and tried not to say what they were really thinking, I had trouble taking it seriously. It felt like one of those Murder Mystery weekends that people go on, or like a game of Cluedo. Was it the driver with the suspiciously full rucksack, the visitor with the inconspicuous briefcase, or the pasty looking westerner with a wobbly moral compass (me)?

After a fair bit of discussion one member of staff put forward his considered view on the matter. He felt that this should be handled by people who are trained to conduct investigations and who are experienced in the relevant procedures. This went down quite well, it was a thoroughly thought-out and eloquently phrased view. It's hard to disagree with him on this point, but the fact that it requires discussion to conclude that the police should be the ones to conduct any investigation is quite revealing.

Although I've only heard one person say it explicitly, there's a distinct undertone that it was someone within the office who took it. This is manifesting itself in general suspicion and, particularly given the recently announced redundancies, a slightly fractious working environment.

The activities of an expat in Yaounde

So far this expat has...

...played...
football
poker
mario kart on the n64
tennis
cricket against the Cameroon national team
table tennis
wii sports
djembe and some other percussion
darts
golf


...been...
to a parade for International Women's Day
jogging
salsa dancing
to a meat-market club for westerners
to a Cameroonian club
swimming
to a couple of different drumming circles
to some expat parties

...eaten...
paella
plantain
chicken - lots of
beans - lots of
fish
salad
quesadillas
rice
apples
pasta
malaria tablets
spaghetti meatballs
lentil soup
pizza
couscous
bread
bananas
lasagne
tacos
curry

...drunk...
water
beer
whiskey
water
fruit juice
schnapps
wine
water
water


p.s. £37 profit on poker last night, running total is £109 from 3 games