From Light to Darkness A Reporter's Experience

From Light to Darkness
A Reporter's Experience

Of recent I was in Douala and Yaounde. My journalism profession took me to these two big cities of the country. In the former, I was invited for a 3-day workshop on Fact Checking, Fake News and Data Journalism by ADISI-Cameroon. In the latter, I joined my colleagues of the North West Region to answer to a call from the Yaounde chapter of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists (CAMASEJ) that we pay them an exchange visit.

It was on Sunday July 21st 2019 that I left Mbengwi for the North West Regional Headquarters from where I boarded a bus to Douala. By 7:30pm I was in my hotel room in Yassa. For three days, we underwent the training. It was very enriching, intellectually. By Thursday, I left for Yaounde to wait on my CAMASEJ N.W colleagues who travelled in on Friday night. Again we were lodged in our hotel rooms in Obili. 

The Food Combination that Erupted a Crisis in my Tummy

That Friday night, our hosts welcomed us with drinks. It seems in the cities, the first question visitors are always asked is "What will you drink?" Next day we had sports, a friendly football encounter on the Presidential Guard's Stadium in Melen. I heard myself soliloquizing, "Look at me this small Mbengwi boy now playing football on such a playground in such a strategic and sensitive location."  

At the end, we of the North West Chapter won the match. By nightfall, we were catching fun till dawn. By 10am on Sunday July 28th 2019, I was in a bus herding back to where I came from. By 7pm, I arrived Hospital Roundabout, Bamenda and there stood a bike ridder beckoning on me to mount his bike for a ride to Mbengwi. Cab drivers were also hunting for my money but I went for the bike rider. 

I took him because we are friends. He leaves Mbengwi to work in Bamenda everyday and by evening, he goes back to Mbengwi because the money he makes in Bamenda triples what he makes in Mbengwi per day. As we speed off, along the way he got three different passengers. The first was an elderly man who pleaded to be carried from Nitop 1 Park to U.B Relax for 100Frs. After alighting, we met the second, an average woman who also pleaded to be carried to Nchoualang for 100Frs. Then the last we came across was a young girl who pleaded too that she has only 100Frs for Alabukam.

At every stop, my rider tried hard to convince his passengers to pay more but sorrowfully they pleaded that that was all they had. He too will contemplate and ended up carrying them. This is how poverty stricken inhabitants in the two warring English speaking regions of Cameroon are now. There's little circulation of money in the economy. Buyers can't offer stipulated prices for goods and servicers. Sellers and service providers too can't refuse the little amounts they are being offered because as you refuse, some other person is collecting and your goods will remain in your keeping.

Drinking Spree in Yaounde

That evening, as I stepped foot in Bamenda, everywhere was dark, no lights. Incessant power cuts are now a trend in the entire region for more than three months and still counting. The electricity utility company, Eneo has never offered any official public statement on the issue. Being at night, the roads were empty. It takes only the courageous to travel during such a time. Since Bamenda-Mbengwi is my road, I wasn't scared of anything. 

From time to time, my rider kept jumping in and out of potholes. He will tell me "Sorry", apologising for something he isn't responsible for, the bumpy nature of the road, but he feels compelled to say it so as to keep his client comfortable.

Before 8pm, I arrived my final destination, Mbon Motor Park, Mile 18 Mbengwi. I noticed some shops and bars were still open, bikes and taxis still steaming around the park. I heard music, I saw people and almost everywhere was lighted. It's not that electricity supply had been reinstated but because Mile 18 is the economic hub of the Momo Divisional Headquarters, Mbengwi, many business persons here had long  resorted to generators. 

Catching Fun at a Classmate's Business Place in Y'de

I will then trek home and as I opened my room with the aide of light from my phone, rats and cockroaches ran helter skelter. Within my one week stay away from home, they became the tenants. As I laid on my bed exhausted, the brief experiences I had in Douala and Yaounde kept march passing on my mind. I slept in good hotels with A.C and WiFi, water system toilet and shower but here I am, back to my one room whose rents I'm even owing for many months. I ate good food. In fact till date I still don't know some of the things I ate, some actually caused a crisis in my stomach whose lone solution was to completely empty the content of my bowels.  

Hundreds of thousands were spent on me for my lodging and feeding by the organisers, an amount that can house and feed me here in Mbengwi for years not days but I'm back to soon start playing hide and seek with my landlord. I felt uncomfortable with the flopping sound produced when using the water system toilet in the hotels but back home, oh how comforting it is when I hear the "toum" sound when using my pit toilet with which I'm accustomed. Talking about shower, that's for Yaounde and Douala. Here, you carry water in a bucket, take it to the bathroom (I don't want to describe how some bathrooms here look like) and use your palms to bathe.

Reporter Set for Friendly Football Encounter 

After sleeping like a corpse, I finally woke up to a Monday morning, ghost town day. Every Monday here in what's now termed "Ground Zero", we stay indoors. The practice was imposed on the two English speaking regions by proponents of secession and has since then, more than two years today been unofficially adopted as a normal way of life. As a bachelor, last week I was eating food I don't even know and abandoning some but today, here I am back to reality. Hunger is looking at me and I'm looking at him too. In Yaounde, with colleagues, we drank from one place to another; beer, whisky, wine, shots, ice. The music was deafening, the DJs mastered their consoles and their "Atalakus" could make you say "To hell with Amba."

In Yaoundé, I was taken to Washing Point where I enjoyed live music. I was taken to Cubana where I saw rogues, prostitutes, urban criminals. Boys and girls here smoke cigarettes and "shisha" alike competitively. Their dressing and dancing styles could provoke one shout "Blood of Jesus" if not familiar with such environment. As an adventurer, I was ready for anything, ready to experience any new thing worth experiencing so that I'll have stories to share.

Catching Fun with Colleagues

One may be tempted to ask me, "With all these enjoyments, why hurry back to Mbengwi?" The answer is simple, no place like home. When I go North, South, East and West, I will always come back home. Such experiences give one a false perspective of life. It's not a bed of roses reason why such moments are often short lived. Like Shakespeare said in one of his literary pieces, "Happiness is an occasional episode in a general drama of pain."

I'm certain any moment soon, I'll hear gunshots and start running for safety. I'll hear my landlord whistling around my room. I will read text messages from those I owe threatening I pay their money else... I will certainly have to let go some of "them" whose basic needs I can't provide. She will soon be asking me "I di chop love?" 

C'est la vie. That's life.