Marching!

Cameroon is fighting Boko Haram. We hear about successes of the military in fighting them every now and then. The nation is really behind the army to secure peace in this country. And with a reason! Cameroon is a safe haven in the middle of countries with a lot of violence, Boko Haram in Nigeria, wars in Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo, security issues in Chad. Cameroon is really safe compared to all these places.

For me, being Dutch, I understand that people are proud of their army. I can even understand that people and councils are collecting money or food to support the army. I am not happy that the construction of the road from Kumbo to Bamenda is put on hold as the budget reserved for that seems to be going to the army now to fight Boko Haram, but even that one I can kind of reason.

What strikes me here all the time though, is how militarized national holidays are. On Youth Day, school children march in front of the oga’s or big men of Kumbo. On Women’s Day, women march, on Labour Day, workers march. This marching is taken serious. The school right in front of the Knowledge for Children office has practised marching for Youth Day for weeks. So, weeks of teaching are disturbed because children will march and have to practise to march in line. Apparently marching is seen as more important than reading or counting.

People here are always shocked when I tell them I never marched in my life. I joined parades, I joined protest marches but I never really marched like a soldier. For Cameroonians, it is impossible to think about that. They start in nursery school and many continue until they are adults.

The 20^th of May is National Day. This day celebrates the unity of the Anglophone (British) and Francophone (French) Cameroon. Sounds like a reason to celebrate to me indeed! But again, everyone comes out to march. The focus during National Day is on the army, police etc. In short, during National Day, men in uniform march. I can’t help that I find it difficult to take a too fat man, stuck in a too narrow uniform, marching very seriously very funny. So at least I enjoyed that part of the day.

In Kumbo however there are only few men in uniform. So the school children march again, political parties march and before you know it you find yourself in the Grand Stand of Kumbo for three hours, watching how people march.

I hear that in some places (or some years?) the marching is more like a parade with dancing and shows. At least in Kumbo this year, that was not the case. The MC even announced that this day was to honour the army, so all marching should be like the army.

Celebrating Queens Day, dressing up in orange!

It is understandable that people want to support the army in this time. But is all this marching really so serious? Is there not a more fun way to honour the army and celebrate the peace and unity of the nation? Or am I just weird that I think marching in the burning sun, waiting for hours and marching for five minutes, is not a fun way to celebrate your peace and unity?

I went to a school the next day and many children, boys and girls, said they wanted to be a soldier when they grow up. So apparently, the message is reaching them. Maybe I am very patriotic, but I am afraid I prefer our crazy orange events for Kings Day over all the military show off!

Water is Life

When you live in Europe, water is always there. You take it for granted and you can’t imagine that you will be without water. Here in Kumbo, there is a yearly water crisis around March and April. This is the end of the dry season and that is causing problems. However, this year even my Cameroonian colleagues say it is very bad, much worse than normally. And nobody knows why.

In the past two years I found out that being without light is annoying, especially if it takes for days. You can’t charge your computer or phone, you can’t keep food for long as the fridge doesn’t work and the nights are very long and boring as it is dark by 7PM.

Tap water...

But being without water is much more complicated. Did you ever think about for how many things you need water? Try to cook without water, you can’t wash your vegetables, you can’t even boil rice or pasta or potatoes. Or, think about all the dust that you catch when you walk home. If I wear my sandals my feet are totally red of the dust and there is no water to wash them. Or, how hygienic is it to flush your toilet only twice a day to save water?

I store water and I really learnt techniques to save water. For example; flushing the toilet twice a day, washing dishes once in two days and use that water again to flush the toilet. Or wash your vegetables in water in which you can then wash the dishes (and then you can also flush the toilet again).

Many Cameroonians have a borehole and a pit toilet on their compound. We don’t have any of these in our house. So I need to bring jerry cans to fill in the office if there is water there. And be careful to not spill water and fill everything as soon as water comes on. That means that I might find myself filling jerry cans and buckets by 3AM or so.

Years ago I saw a TV program in which Paul Rosenmöller was visiting women in Niger. I still remember that he was following them to the well were they were getting water. That well was something like 7km from their houses and they had to walk there, fill their jerry cans and walk back.

They were telling that sometimes the well was dry and they didn’t find water. Rosenmöller asked what they did in these cases and the women said; well we walk back and try again tomorrow. And we sleep thirsty.

I remember it very well as I couldn’t imagine a life like this. How horrible should it be? Now I feel it even more. I am lucky enough to be able to find water in town and have someone who can help me to carry it in a car to my house. But when the water is off in both the office and my house I really start to worry. I can’t imagine how it would feel to always wonder if you would find water today. Or to walk every day for 14 kilometres to get water, and then you can only pray there is really water when you arrive.

Water will become scarce in the world in the next decades. I have learnt here how horrible it is to be without, and I also learnt how to save water. If everybody would save water like we are forced to do here, the scarcity will become less. So, save water to save lives!

Malaria is a very bad sick

Marching trough Tatum to create awareness

Many people know that the 1st of December is World Aids Day. But did you know that 25^th of April is World Malaria Day? I think in the Netherlands it is not really commemorated. With a reason of course, there is HIV in the Netherlands, but no malaria.

Yearly, almost 600.000 people in the world die from malaria. Most of these are children below than five years old, living in Africa. This means that every minute, a child in the world dies from malaria. In Cameroon, malaria causes 40% of all deaths of children below five.

Compared to other regions in Cameroon, the prevalence in the North West Region is quite low. But still, malaria is an issue. Therefore, we decided to commemorate World Malaria Day with our Health Scouts. Together with our partner organisations Afoni Children of Hope Foundation and Rural Development Foundation we organised a day in Tatum.

Knowledge for Children invited the Health Scouts of four schools in and around Tatum and also the Mayor of Tatum was represented by his fourth Deputy. Unfortunately, the population of Tatum did not really come out. We were already warned by Afoni Children of Hope Foundation who are based in Tatum that it is very difficult to bring the people of Tatum together for events like this.

Two mosquitos trying to bite children under the net

But, the children of the four schools showed that they are very well aware of malaria and know how to prevent it. We marched through Tatum while the pupils were singing a song about malaria. We dressed up two children as mosquitos and made them bite other children. When we reached the grand stand, some children were hiding under the mosquito net to show that the giant mosquito could not reach them.

It was interesting to see how much the pupils know about malaria and how to prevent it. A nurse came from the Health Centre to talk to the pupils and even the class one children knew very well what we were doing (malaria day!) and what to do to prevent malaria. They all know how to use a bed net, they know they have to keep the environment clean, clean away bushes and wipe out puddles of water to prevent mosquitos from breeding.

Health Scouts of IPS Tatum singing and dancing

The children were showing all of this in sketches, songs and dances. One Health Club was acting out a community which showed wrong behaviour; using donated mosquito nets for fishing, to protect crops in the farm from birds, to carry beans from the farm etc. The second Health Club showed a community which is being sensitized in which parents help each other to understand the use of net. In the first sketch, the last Club showed a community which is sensitized very well, where people sleep under the net and clean the environment. Children also read poems, sang songs and danced. Two secondary school students read poems as well.

We are very proud of the Health Scouts. Not only because they showed that they really know what to do, but also because they are able to sensitize other people through their sketches and songs. Although their parents didn’t come for the event, I hope they will listen to their children as they really know what to do to prevent malaria. 

Junior Health Scouts of GS Tatum Dancing

Remote schools

‘My name is Nervis. I am in class 5 of GS Kimata. Our school has only one teacher, the head master. We are sitting six on a desk’.

‘I am the head master of GS Kimata, the lone government teacher of the school. The school is in somebody’s premises, under a hut of one classroom accommodating all classes. (…) Fowls and goats oftenly interrupt classes thereby causing ineffective teaching/learning process’.

Can you imagine a classroom in the Netherlands where teaching is disturbed because chicken or goats are entering the class? Or where you can’t be taught when it rains as the rain will just come in? Or where you have to share a bench with 5 other children? Or where there is no water, toilet or teacher?

The pupils of GS Kimata
in their school

All of this is happening in Government School Kimata, one of the schools I visited last week for the Remote Schools project Knowledge for Children wants to do with three partner organisations. The school is relatively well accessible, at least the car can reach and it is quite close to the main road. However, the school is in deep need.

They have one hut in which almost 250 children are taught. The lower classes face one side, the higher classes face the other side of the hut. But there is no wall or something to separate them, leading of course to a lot of distraction.

There are two teachers; the head teacher who is also responsible for all administration of the school and a lady who is a family member of the person who offered space on his compound to construct the hall. She is not trained as a teacher but should teach at least three classes at the same time.

The school has two very small blackboards (what doesn’t give them enough space to teach three classes), the benches are borrowed from a neighbouring school and of course there are no books or charts or other teaching materials.

The parents, the Fon (the local king) and the rest of the community are very committed, but they are also very poor. The community consists mainly of survivors of the Lake Nyos disaster in 1986. They are not allowed to go back to their ancestral villages. They make a living through farming, but all farming here is small scale and doesn’t enable them to make much money.

No matter how remote,
the flag should be on top!

As the school is a government school, there is no school fee. However, the Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) tries to collect money to pay the second teacher. As many parents have no means to contribute, the PTA is not able to do anything else in the school, like building a classroom. So that is why the children are in a hut.

As the attitude of parents, head teacher and the Fon is very positive, we hope to be able to really help this school. We plan to train the teachers, do income generating activities for the women to bring more money to the school, provide benches, books, materials, pay fees for very needy children and more. And in this special case, we will try to find a partner who can help them to construct a building.

We don’t want to do this only for GS Kimata. For us, this school might sound as a horrible exception, but there are many schools like this in that area. Some are not even accessible by motorbike. Therefore we hope that, with our partners Benekin, Rural Development Foundation and Afoni Children of Hope Foundation, we can do something for these remote schools to enable to pupils to get good education and be able to lead their communities out of poverty in the future! 

News

Everybody who has read Joris Luyendijk’s great book ‘Het zijn net mensen’ (translated into English as ‘Hello Everybody!’) will remember how Luyendijk describes how news is ‘produced’. Demonstrations with only a few people are filmed in a way that this few people look like a huge crowd, or people hiding new baby clothes under the ruins of a bombed house to show to the TV.

He also describes how ‘news’ in a dictatorial regime is very different from news in a European country. I am not sure how the media here in Cameroon is controlled. I think there is more freedom than in the countries in the Middle East where Luyendijk writes about. However, politicians here also have quite some control over the media.

When I lived in Nigeria, we often knew of Boko Haram attacks through BBC or Dutch news far before something was published in the Nigerian media.

Here in Cameroon, I am often also the first one to know about attacks of Boko Haram in Cameroon. However, the Cameroonian armed forces are also fighting back and having success. They kill terrorists and recently they freed a German hostage. If something like that happens, it is big news and we will see reports about it for days.

I think we see the influence of politics in media here. Of course, if the army kills Boko Haram terrorists, the government is proud and informs the media. The Dutch would do the same! And I can also imagine that the government is less ready to publish about attacks of Boko Haram.

In the Netherlands, journalists can travel to a place if something is happening, they can look around, interview people, see what happens. Here is it all more complicated. First, not every journalist has the means to travel all the way to the Far North. But also, as a journalist you depend on the politicians. If you publish a story they don’t like, they might not talk to you again.

That might be similar in Europe. But a big difference is that politicians here pay journalists to write about them. Even us as Knowledge for Children, if we have news, we have to pay journalists to cover it. In the Netherlands, I simply sent a press communique and most newspapers and radio stations would report based on that or call for an interview. Here you first pay.

That also means that if I have a problem with someone, I can pay a journalist to write very bad stories about him or her. People tell me that this is what really happens during elections. For normal Cameroonians, this is also bringing problems. Because, how do you know what is true and what is propaganda? Even for Boko Haram news, we often depend on foreign information. One of my good friends has a brother in the army fighting Boko Haram. Sometimes I call my friend with news and he checks with his brother and it turns out to be true. Sometimes the brother even has to check it with other soldiers so the Dutch news knows about it before the people risking their lives for it.  Sometimes my friend gets upset; ‘I have been watching the news on the Cameroonian national TV just before you called and they didn’t mention it! How come that Dutch media know before us?’

And regarding Boko Haram, my impression is that the Cameroonian government is really trying their best to stop them. The Cameroonian army seems to be more organised than the Nigerian one. (In Nigeria it also seems that many soldiers collaborate with Boko Haram).

But, the problems are there. Many people are internally displaced because of it. Many schools along the border are closed because the army needed the buildings, or even worse, because Boko Haram took it or attacks schools and kidnaps children. Nigerian refugees live in camps in Cameroon and can’t go back to their houses.

I hope Cameroon, together with other countries, will be able to keep Boko Haram out. Cameroon is a safe and stable country in this region. We are surrounded by so many countries with problems, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo… Let’s do it the African way and let’s pray that Cameroon will ‘live long’!

Religion(s)

Before I first travelled to Benin in 2006, I read a book that starts with a passage in which the taxi driver tells the author that ‘this is the place where the minister was blown up’. Knowing that Benin had had some revolutions in the 80s, she thought that there was a bomb explosion. But, no… The minister was a victim of voodoo; he was blown up as a balloon until he exploded.

In Benin, people told me that 60% of the population is Christian, 40% is Muslim and 80% believes in Voodoo. Or, most people combine their traditional religions with imported ones. I also heard that the reason why Christianity and Islam could get easy access to Benin was mainly because the people had so many Gods already, they could easily add one.

This is also shown by women who go to church every day, but wear beads around their stomach to protect their fertility against evil spirits, or people dripping drinks on the floor for their ancestors before or after saying prayers.

For Cameroon, I have not really found which percentage of the population is adhering traditional religions. According to Wikipedia it is around 6%. But I guess these are only the people who only follow their traditional religion while most people combine imported and traditional religions.

For example, His Royal Highness the Fon of Nso is the traditional ruler of Kumbo. He is also the chief religious authority in charge of the heritage of the ancestors. That means the jujus are related to the palace for example. But, the Fon is also a Muslim who went for Hadj (pilgrimage).

A belief I heard from various people is the power of thunder. Some people seem to be able to control the thunder. I know people who are high educated and very European or American in their beliefs who do belief in this. Some people told me stories like one day it was sunny and then all of a sudden thunder came. One classmate disappeared during the thunder and was found back in a field kilometres away. It is said that traditional religious leaders can send thunder to do this kind of things.

Last week I was in a Knowledge for Children school. Some time ago, books were stolen from this school and till now they didn’t find the thief or the books. The head teacher contacted the local Malam (an Islamic scholar, one of the religious leaders of the village). According to the Malam, the books are somewhere close to the school in a bag. They will come back he says. And if not, he will send the thunder to destroy them. I am not too sure if I should believe this. But I hope the books will be found and brought back to the school!

Feeding the hippos

Sometimes, development can be so easy! Our partner organisation RDF is a grass root organisation of Mbororo people, a nomadic tribe. They work mainly for their own community. I admire their passion and commitment, but also their projects.

For example, in one of their communities, there was no access to clean water. So they decided to install a tap where everyone can easily get water from. Once they installed it, they found out that the women of the (mostly traditional Muslim) community would hardly leave the house. They used to go to the river together to carry water and wash dresses. But now that there was water in the community, they didn’t have to go there anymore.

Instead of telling them; well you have clean water now you have no reason to complain, RDF saw a new problem here. The women were not able to meet each other that much anymore, they had to wash their dresses at home.

So, they installed a basin at the water tap where the women can wash their dresses. Sometimes they saw women who came to wash the same dress every day, to be able to meet the other women. But, at the water basin, there was no space to dry dresses. So as soon as the dresses were washed, they had to go home to dry them.

Again, RDF saw the problem and decided to solve it. They put a fence around the tap. If needed, they can tell the men of the village that they did it to keep the animals out (Mbororo people are keeping a lot of cattle). At the same time, the women started to use the fences as a place to dry their dresses. Now, they can spend a lot of time together, they have access to clean water, they don’t have to walk far anymore to reach the river, they don’t have to carry water from very far. But the social aspect of the river has just moved to the tap.

For me, this example shows how simple it can be. But it also shows how important it is to involve the local people. I heard a story from another partner organisation. They work with disabled people and someone in Europe decided to donate a wheelchair for one of their beneficiaries. Very nice of course and people here need wheelchairs.

Where it went wrong is that they sent an electrical wheelchair. Looking at the roads here, this is very difficult to use. And then, no potential beneficiary has access to electricity. And even if they would have, it might be too expensive for them to charge the wheelchair every day. So now they have a wheelchair which no-one can use while many people are in need of a wheelchair.

In Knowledge for Children we call this ‘feeding the hippos’ based on the great Ted Talk of Ernesto Sirolli (the first 5 minutes are great, the rest is of less interest to me). I believe that involving your beneficiaries, following up with them and looking at your projects and its side effects, is the best way. We keep trying!