Bessi Fomukong Youths Wake-up

Bessi Fomukong Youths Wake-up

History has it that in the yesteryears, Bessi Fomukong used to have a very strong youth force that spearheaded development affairs in the village from roads rehabilitation through community work during which the sides were cleared, gutters traced for runoffs and potholes filled to construction projects like their church, water reservoir (in neighbouring Wumnembit village) and their weekly market known as Kwe where the youths built local kiosks out of bamboo, sticks and planks.

The Kwe market used to pull together hundreds of buyers and sellers right from Mbengwi and beyond. Every summer holiday, the roads from Njimboh to Gyiewor, Funechoh, Mufong, Sang, from Kwe to Mbengbu, Baaminip, Tonebessi to G.R.A used to be maintained by Bessi youths, supported by their parents. Cultural week activities during third term holidays that usually ended with a disco night in the school hall used to pull attendees right from Munam, Mbengeghang, Mbengwi and other far off places. The village was known by then as Down Town because of its topography; though on a plane, to get there, one has hills to descend.

In the sporting domain, Bessi Fomukong used to have a very solid football squad that was a hard team to defeat by their opponents.   The village had one of the best football fields and handball courts in those days, very leveled and covered with grass. Tournaments used to take place in Bessi pulling close to 500 spectators.

At some point in time the membership of the Bessi Fomukong traditional council and session of P.C Bessi Fomukong was mostly made up of youths. Things were in order until the discovery of huge deposits of Kaolin, also known as china clay or in local palance, "Calabar chalk" a soft, white clay mineral used in a wide variety of applications, including ceramics, paper production, cosmetics, and medicine in the village.

Mining "Calabar Chalk" in Bessi Fomukong 

The discovery became a blessing to the villagers but on the hand also a curse; a blessing in that at least 500 persons now depend directly or indirectly on the mining of this mineral, men and women, boys and girls even children, everyone has something to do and make money in the chain of mining, transportation, marketing etc. The extraction of Kaolin from beneath the earth in Bessi has created employment to hundreds of not only youths of the village but also those from neighbouring villages and communities.

Unfortunately, the level of drug, alcohol abuse has increased in Bessi Fomukong because of this. Many miners believe that consuming strong gins and hard drugs gives them strength to work. After sales, many usually indulge into squandering the money reason why year in year out their lives still remain thesame though there are a few doing something useful like building houses, dressing well, buying new electronics and assisting their families. The level at which new houses are being constructed in Bessi is on a steady increase thanks to the mineral.

The community spirit that used to reign supreme amongst Bessi youths and villagers has disappeared. Everyone now looks more at their personal gains than community gains. After all these years of exploiting Calabar chalk in Bessi, there's been no single  project in the village jointly realised for the benefit of all with proceeds generated from the mining business. The village is still without a hall, the Kwe weekly market is in bushes, many roads leading into and out of the village are deplorable, the sporting fields are in the wild with no goal posts, water crisis still continue to plague the locals, the palace of Bessi Fomukong is made of a structure one has little or nothing to desire about.

Nowadays even when community work is announced, there's a poor turnout. Everyone now focuses only on Calabar chalk exploitation which is of course for their personal gain. It is estimated that at least a billion francs has been generated eversince the mining process stated. What if some hundreds of thousands were sacrificed by all to rehabilitate the roads leading to Bessi or to build a community hall or to plant new goal posts on the fields or to rehabilitate and put to use the abandoned structures in the Kwe market or to rehabilitate the palace or to engage in a water supply scheme to the village like digging boreholes, wells etc?

Yes, all of these are possible if and only if the exploitation process is coordinated and all involved prioritise the development of the village as benefit from the natural resource. The situation is more sickening to see that a solar electrification project of the village funded and realised through Sino-Cameroon relationship some years back is being abandoned to crumble and no one seems to care. Poles have been falling, cables rolling on the ground even across roads and everyone crosses on them with cars bikes and foot  unperturbed. The dry season will soon be around, there'll be bushfires and certainly the cables and poles will be burnt and that will be the end for the villagers to enjoy solar light. To get new poles even if it's untreated eucalyptus trees, plant them and remount the cables on them simply needs all to come together and jointly see it a a problem needing solution but since despite rolling on the ground, electricity is still flowing through the cables and reaching individual homes, everyone sees it as normal.

Other villages that haven't got such a blessing are in reality progressing more than Bessi. Certainly the day there'll no longer be calabar in Bessi, that's when many persons will come back to their senses to realise that life has to be about community first and there's no way a village will have such a mineral and there are no visible projects in the village realised for the common good of all with proceeds from it's exploitation. The people may just be lucky that because of the Anglophone Crisis the Cameroon government hasn't stepped in to control it's exploitation like done with other minerals in other regions.

By now a foreign or national company would've bought all the kaolin deposits and the locals have nothing to say or do. It's high time the Bessi Fomukong Cultural and Development Association together with the palace, traditional council, youth association and other stakeholders step in to enforce the ploughing back of profits generated from the exploitation in the development of the village without which in some years to come, the village will be under developing while individuals are enriching themselves.