Nomads: The Memoir of a Southern Cameroonian

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1 1 n life, it is mainly events that get people thinking and questioning about virtually everything, especially their identity, and so they look back to see where they are coming from in order to understand the present and so try to fathom what the future holds for them. In the land of my birth, those of us once referred to as Southern Cameroonians, and later West Cameroonians, have had just too many things visited upon us as a result of our reunification with La République du Cameroun for us to forget that easily. A few examples are the closing of the Bota oil mill, which produced and exported palm kernel oil; the engineered fall of Powercam and the deliberate transformation of the Yoke dam into ruins—Powercam was the corporation that used Yoke dam to supply West Cameroon with affordable electricity; the shutting down of Victoria wharf which led to the demise of Victoria’s economic might, given that it was through this wharf that West Cameroonians imported and exported without having to pay taxes to a different province, region, or nation; the programmed collapse of Cameroon Bank, which made available inexpensive loans without the reigning bribery and corruption in existing banks; the unfortunate but deliberate transformation of our police force into an disorderly bunch even as the unique West Cameroon Police Mobile Wing Force was being disbanded; the arrival of gendarmes and “uniform brutality,” divide and rule, and the nation’s only state of emergency so far, an expression which belies what we experienced during those months. I 2 I was doing just that—thinking, questioning and looking back—as I marveled at the beautiful weather while looking up at the peak of Mount Fako which was still buried under a heavily dense cloud, signs that the rain was far from over. Yet it had just rained and the air smelled fresh, with a cooling effect in the nostrils. This was my favorite season, unlike the dry season with all that dryness, heat, and humidity in the air, depending on the city in which one finds oneself at the time. The dryness is what I dread for it makes it difficult for one to breathe; it is as if the air scrapes the inside of one’s nostrils as it streams through. I was sitting on the balcony of the top guest room of my elderly friend’s two-storey building around Mile 17 Buea Road, enjoying the view all around me with my brain racing. It was too much for me to swallow with indifference: the name of my little country which today, on the map, looks like a poorly drawn triangle with a hump on the back, had been changed one time too many for me to continue ignoring this practice. It seemed like an exercise in futility to me as it led to nothing significant in particular other than more expenses on the part of an already financially challenged government. Now, for example, they had to immediately do away with countless letterheads with the country’s old name on them and pay expensively to print new ones. In keeping with this ridiculous culture of waste, they would award the contract to a fraudulent contractor, from overseas, embarrassingly, with relations to someone in a position of power. They would also have to carve new rubber stamps used as government seals and so much more, but what are these in terms of cost and waste compared to the impending redesigning of the country’s currency so that it carries the portrait of the new leader? The waste becomes 3 obvious when one realizes that they do this just to satisfy the ego of a new president who has hardly achieved anything for the nation yet, unlike his mentor and predecessor whose portrait on our currency apparently scared him. I was just a kid the previous times this happened, yet I had to struggle to get used to the new name of my beloved country, only to begin all over again as a young adult this time, as my country’s name is changed, once more, on the whim of the president, it seemed to me. As a result, the nation had migrated nominally from Southern Cameroons through West Cameroon in the Federation of Cameroon, then The United Republic of Cameroon, and ultimately to The Republic of Cameroon; quite a journey, and were these nominal...