THE SMELL THAT HAUNTS CAMEROON

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

The question of a healthy environment is currently one of great concern here in Cameroon. The problem is so intense that I believe that if a rigorous scientific study were to be carried out to see how clean the environment is, the result would be a disappointment. So the ministry of the Environment and Nature Protection (MINEF) on the one hand, and the Ministry of Public Health (MINSANTE) on the other hand, should take note.


Where the stench is coming from

You do not have to look far to see to what extent our backyards (in the large sense of the word) are filthy. If you are in any Cameroonian town, just look at the back of houses and homes or other buildings, including government offices and you will see all types of dirt. It is worse in the “social” vicinities such as drinking spots. All around, there are layers and layers of rubbish that have accumulated over a long period without being removed, and worse still, without being noticed. These include broken bottles, plastic bags (which scientists and researchers have found that they can take decades of years to decay, if at all). Other garbage items one can readily see include cigarette butts, bits and pieces of paper, decaying particles and morsels of food, torn and abandoned garments, and many more.

Perhaps you would think that where food is sold, especially the make-shift “restaurants” that today abound in the urban settings, the situation is better. The plain truth is that there is no difference in such places. In fact, it would appear that the women (it’s mainly they) who cook and sell food “out” would care to clean up their “spaces” before beginning the day’s business. However, far from it, they simply arrive, install their equipment and start selling over yesterday’s dirt which is superimposed on the previous day’s dirt, which in turn is juxtaposed between the dirt deposited previously. And so, it is some kind of embedded composition like the utterances and phrases in a linguistic corpus. What that means is that customers who eat regularly at a particular food selling spot will the nest day return to the same filthy environment they left the day before.

If a visitor does not have a strong and resistant stomach, they may through up on approaching what pass for “public toilets”. A vast majority of them do not have toilet seats; neither do they have flushing facilities. They stink firstly because users do not care to position themselves well before “delivering the goods” , and secondly because the custodians of the places do not know or do not care to know that the hard ware stores and pharmacies sell products that can not only “kill” the acrid smell, but also chemically treat the decaying and smelling waste. One would find ones self between a rock and a hard place, to quote that typically American expression, if what one needed was a toilet to pass stool. This is because most public conveniences are intended just for people who want to make water. And if questions are put to the “tenants” nearby about what they do when they want to go to stool, they throw up their shoulders nonchalantly. The bold ones say they go to the nearby bush, while the philosophical ones tell you that while at work, they do not feel the need to go to stool.

Normally, one would have expected that since the trend nowadays is for “food women” to sell in an Off License, so that people who come there to drink (and drinking in Cameroon is always bizarrely the first consideration over eating food) can also “eat something”, adequate steps would be taken for customers to feel at home when easing themselves. But that is not the case. And so what one finds is that as “eating out” as such gains ground, the amount of filth gathering momentum is also on the rise. To be fair to the trend, food sales in drinking places in Cameroon is a relatively new phenomenon. One would recall that some twenty years or so, these make-shift “restaurants” were largely unknown in Cameroon. At the time there were only Off Licensees, and heavy drinkers who left home serene could spend such a large part of the day drinking that when they returned home in the evening stinking of alcohol and cursing their wives, or out rightly drunk – or at least tipsy- but starving. Today, with the mushrooming of “eating places”, they can order something to eat while drinking. In fact, some observers have reported that as a result of this unprecedented availability of food out of home, Cameroonian men now look healthier.


No place too high to be touched

So widespread is the phenomenon of “public filth” in our country that even the political capital Yaounde and the economic capital, Douala have not been spared. In fact, there are times when they seemed to compete with each other for the top position on the filth league table. It is common to find heaps of refuse lying around uncollected by the Local authority. Actually, there used to be a time when inhabitants of Yaounde gave descriptions to their homes to friends and relatives by citing the number of refuse heaps one had to pass by on the way to the destination. Nonetheless, to be fair to the authorities, the national Refuse Disposal, HYSACAM, which has for months now been cleaning up the South West Regional capital of Buea, is doing its best. But then, that best is not good enough. HYSACAM alone can not clean up the whole of Cameroon.


The adverse effects on us

Such unhygienic living conditions undoubtedly pose a health threat to everyone, the vulnerable such as children and old people included. That is not all: free for all dirt also greatly tarnishes the image of our country in the eyes of foreigners who are visiting either for new business opportunities or one of our many tourist havens, especially when one considers that Cameroon has a lot to offer the world, being what has come to be known as “Africa in miniature”.


What way forward?

The solution to this problem lies in collective effort. All of us are involved and must put our hands to the plough. All of us. Cameroonians overseas can provide refuse collection equipment and tools, notably to local Councils. They can also set up an NGO that can work here in Cameroon permanently. Local authorities such as the Municipal Councils and the City Councils should tighten the rules for refuse collection and water drainage and ensure they are observed to the letter. Each Cameroonian should wake up to the need to refrain from throwing litter indiscriminately and actually get in the habit of picking up rubbish when they spot it anywhere. “Food women” who sell in public and Off License owners who act as their landlords and landladies should get in the habit of cleaning up at the start of the working day and at the end of it. Those who sell food could even go the extra mile by pausing once in a while during sales to eliminate existing dirt before carrying on with the job.

Where is the old sanitary inspector?

Over and above everything else, the age-old but now long-forgotten “sanitary inspector” should be made to come back to the Cameroonian environment and make it “breathe” properly again. I knew the sanitary inspector in my very early years on earth. It seems to me that sanitary inspectors were the creation of the erstwhile state of West Cameroon who later on lost their place in society as the two sub cultures (Anglophones and Francophones) gave up their respective Federated States to form a single Republic, strove to adjust and readjust. But the sanitary inspector was a powerful and unavoidable man in society. He was both feared and revered. If any compound was informed that the sanitary inspector would be visiting, all hands immediately went on deck in a bid to spruce up the whole place before he arrived for his inspection. Of course, if a compound “failed the test”, the penalty was heavy. So everyone fought hard, very hard not to fail it. That led to the prevalence of a clean environment. I advocate that not only should we reinstate the sanitary inspector, we should actually go further and appoint enough of them so that in the towns, each quarter can have one and in the sub divisions, each village should have at least one, depending on the size and population of the village.


Copyright 2011

THE FINAL NUMBER

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

I have run the race
And fought the good fight
Today I`m at my tether`s end
The die is cast
And the curtains, drawn.

But like Gbagbo, I`ll go at my own pace
Because I know my right
I have no more fences to mend
I know the Lord`s kingdom is vast
The only thing I want right now is another prawn.


Copyright 2010

THE RUN AWAY RIVER

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

The river ran along, alone, all alone
And not even the pastor could match it
Flat-bottomed prostitutes brought wheel barrows
And saber-rattling men cried out for blood
As if they were another Bismark
The Iron Chancellor
So why didn`t they stop the river?

Copyright 2010

THE PRESIDENT`S VISIT

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

No birds chirped
No serpents hissed
No toads croaked
No horses brayed.

But everyone including the Commissioner
Clamored for a garland
Then an empty altar bowl
And cowrie beads without the dames
All of that
Just to make the loudest noise for the president.

Copyright 2010

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

I had Kenyan tea
And the river bank
A handful of warriors
And out I went
To greet the newly crowned queen.

Copyright 2010

STRANGE PREMONITION

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

It`s tail was grey
And it`s forequarters, smoke-coated
But where were Mr Bechem and Pa Haman?
Even Kate in all her wisdom
Couldn`t have predicted this unfolding.

Copyright 2010.

LIVING AS A DIASPORAN

By Tikum Mbah Azonga

Response to a question put to me by MICRO WAVE on camnetwork.

Yes, Micro Wave. My answer to your question is that I have lived outside of Cameroon. I was three years in France and fifteen years in Britain.

In the end I came to realize that I was helping the "nationals" of those countries to realize their national dreams at my expense, including paying taxes to them and cleaning up their backyard and educating their young ones. Even so, I was saddled with the additional battle of having to justify each day that I was "good enough" to study, live and work in their country. But then, that never stopped them from wondering loudly to me why I had to leave my "bush country where people live on trees with monkeys" in order to "invade" them, take away their jobs and even women.

Here in Cameroon, I still fight battles. But there`s a marked difference: they`re MY battles, in my own backyard; and I pay taxes to my own country. A lot of us in the Diaspora moan about Paul Biya. Some even upload on to this forum, photographs that according to them depict Cameroon as a "bad" country. That may be so. But your Texas or DC neighbour who sees the images will still identify them with you, whether you like it or not. It`s an albatross around our necks. And talking about uploading pictures, since you live in the US, why not also upload those of George Bush`s atrocities in Iraq or the spoils of the oil spill, or the abject poverty in the slums of America. In the end, we are like "civilized African monkeys" mounting the stage to entertain our White neighbours, thinking that we are vilifying the country of our birth.

Paul Biya may be a bad president. Yes, but what are you doing to give us a better one? Are you throwing in your weight behind a credible opposition leader who can take over? Paul Biya may have brought immense suffering to Cameroonians. But what have you done to alleviate it apart from shouting from your ivory tower? This is Christmas. Did you send Father Christmas gifts here for any of the children? How many wells have you sunk in the rural areas in a bid to provide potable water? How many children have you sponsored in school? Have you ever reacted to any disaster here in Cameroon, such as the Lake Nyos explosion, the Nsam Fire Disaster, the Mount Cameroon eruption, etc? In short, what do we have to show for all the talking?

While Billy is using his camera to mock the country, NGOs such as PLAN INTERNATIONAL are using theirs to mobilize funds for rural development in the country. Find out for yourself the work done by this and other NGOs so far.

I hear some people say Paul Biya should be stopped from running for president again. But tell us how, where and when. Tell us who will do it, accompanied by whom. This reminds me of the clan of mice that moaned the fact that the house cat was decimating their numbers. So after deliberating in a meeting, the mice decided that the best thing to do would be to tie a bell round the neck of the cat so that it would alert them whenever the predator was approaching. When it now came to who actually would tie the bell round the cat`s neck, everyone stepped backwards and there was no one to do it. Like I once said, it is not by wishing that Paul Biya will not run that he will also not run. As far as I am concerned, if the constitution allows him to run, he should run. But the constitution also allows others to run such as the opposition parties and single candidates of the lack of Kah Wallah. At least she is not just talking! Aren`t we tired of making exactly the same noises day in day out?

S.T, Muna once aptly remarked that “people come and go but the nation remains”. Paul Biya is not the first president of Cameroon and will surely not be the last. Even so, there is enough room for all of us in the”house”. The next elections are in 2018, as things stand. Those of us who find next year`s elections too close can look ahead. After all, politics is like football. It`s not screaming and hurling abuse. It is strategizing and self control.



Copyright 2010