Discussing politics

When I lived in Kumbo, I had a good friend. He has the same deficiency as I have; we love to discuss about world news and politics. He moved to Yaoundé last year, but now I am also here so we can have our (pretty much endless) discussions again.

For me, these discussions are very interesting. He is from a completely different background than me. I grew up in a pretty left-orientated and progressive Dutch family, as a woman. He is a Muslim man from a relatively traditional (though educated) background. So the worldviews we got from home are pretty different.

Sometimes I feel kind of sorry. For example, when we talk about terror attacks. These terrorists attack in name of his religion. He is very clear; this is not my Islam. We agree that these terrorists are mainly using the religion to mobilize people. But still, it has consequences for Muslims. Populist politicians blame all Muslims, not distinguishing between these people misusing religion and the normal Muslims who also reject this.

Another ongoing discussion topic is politics. The role of France and other Western countries in the Middle East and Africa, the weapons distributed which are later used against Europeans in other countries etc. As many Cameroonians, he has some sentiments against France (Cameroon used to be mainly a French colony).

What I hear more often from Cameroonians is that they feel that the West (especially France) wants to keep their influence here. They want Cameroon to be like them. That of course leads to the following discussion topic; what is the best government system, democracy or something else? We didn’t really agree yet but so far we came to the conclusion that for a real democracy you need people how are sufficiently educated to make an informed choice, and media that are free enough to provide the information you need for this informed choice.

I believe this is also what went wrong in the UK. The decision to stay or leave the EU is so complicated, you can hardly expect people who are not working in this field every day to really understand the consequences. From here you get, of course, to the next topic; Brexit… And from Brexit you get to all the new female leaders; May, Merkel, Clinton… And from there to the populist men who all seem to have foreign women (Thanks for that insight Andre!) and from there…

As you see, our discussions are just endless. I am already looking forward to the next one!