Up Station Mountain Club

Small Bit of Cameroon-- diagnosis of dysfunction

Ex-Peace Corps volunteer, Wendy blogs about recently attending a Cameroonian forum in London, headlined by presidential hopeful, Dr. Christopher Fomunyoh. The most remarkable thing about that posting was not the content of the meeting, but her poignant description of the most maddening aspects of the Cameroonian character. These are the dysfunctional traits that hamper progress and success as a society. She describes these kindly, almost endearingly. Hopefully, most people would receive these diagnoses in the same spirit.

The entire evening was wildly entertaining in that while in Central London, I was transformed back to that crazy country. I felt as if I was sitting in a fancy conference room at the Hilton with Cameroonians. The talk was held at the Knightsbridge Business Center and wasn’t an easy venue to find. We got quite lost and was really late. The invitation said the talk would begin at 4:30pm. When we showed up nearly an hour late, the event still hasn’t started. In fact, true to Cameroon form, we began at 6pm.

Although there were roughly 30 of us in a room, at least half were taking pictures as if it were the UN General Assembly. This is typical; Cameroonians love photos and giving events legitimacy. They always loved the certificates that I would give out when they “graduate” from business classes. Later, cell phone rang throughout the talk. My favorite part, though, was when people ask questions, they don’t just get to the point. They would take 5 minutes to introduce themselves, give some background opinions, and then ask the question. This quirky habit gets really painful in ceremonies when speeches are given. Finally, there naturally needed to be a photo de la famille at the end. Cameroonians always insist on taking a large group photo at the end of every event.

via www.asianpolyglot.com

Toil and Delivery - New Book by Bill F NDI

Bill NDI's Toil and Delivery can be as playful and loaded as the clues in a cryptic crossword puzzle, which is to say that they are marked by a strange, energetic hybridity. They occupy a dynamic space between nursery rhyme and visionary Romantic verse, between the colloquial and the archaic, between post-modernity and anachronism. They are local and global, political and personal, Western and non-Western. With experiences traversing both Africa and the West, Bill F. NDI is one of those poets who gives meaning to the word globalisation. He embraces poetry as a material act in a troubled world, with poetry's power conveyed with typical irony.

 

 

 

Bill F NDI/Toil and Delivery

BBC alleges Cameroon’s Hayatou and two other FIFA Execs took bribes*

On a Monday night when focus was on the FC Barcelona versus Real Madrid clash in the Spanish league, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) programme, Panorama, has alleged that three top FIFA executives, including Cameroon-born Issa Hayatou, took bribes from a sport marketing firm in the 1990s.

The alleged bribes are included in a confidential document listing 175 payments totalling about $100m (£64m) from defunct sports marketing company International Sports and Leisure (ISL) routed via a series of front companies in Liechtenstein, the programme said.

The list obtained by Panorama also includes details of 100,000 French Francs (£12,900) paid to Issa Hayatou, the Fifa vice-president and President of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the BBC reported on its website.

The British media organization says Hayatou, a former chairman of the Cameroon football Federation, did not respond to the allegations when contacted by Panorama.

Continue reading: BBC alleges Cameroon’s Hayatou and two other FIFA Execs took bribes*

Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef on Barefoot Economics and Poverty

Democracy Now speaks with the acclaimed Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef. He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. "Economists study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics, make all the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know about poverty. But they don’t understand poverty," Max-Neef says. Max-Neef contends that the present economic model based on "growth" and greed, is really a neoliberal religion and will doom mankind in the very short run.

Just (Re)Published: Socrates in Cameroon: The Life and Works of Bernard Nsokika Fonlon

Nalova Lyonga. Socrates in Cameroon: The Life and Works of Bernard Nsokika Fonlon. | 190 pages | 203 x 127 mm | 2010 | Langaa Publishers, Cameroon | Paperback

Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, 1924-1986, rose from humble origins to become one of Cameroon's most famous sons. He was a scholar, a poet, a politician, a philosopher, a man of action and a man of courage. He was never too busy to see someone who was troubled, never too tired to take up the case of the oppressed or the downtrodden. He was a man who could communicate, with style, in half a dozen world languages but who could also use Pidgin English if it meant putting his listeners at ease. He was a man who moved in opulent circles but who collected for himself not money but the hearts of those who got to know him. It is easy to use superlatives of someone like Bernard Fonlon, easy to make him sound like a sage or a saint; it is less easy to describe the humour and the courtesy and the gentleness that irradiated all that he said and did.

This book describes briefly the life and times of a man whose story incorporates the history of a young nation and whose autobiography, The Pathfinder, has all the excitement of an adventure novel. We could use a lot of words and still not get to the heart of the matter because ordinary words are for ordinary men and Bernard Fonlon was unique. To those who knew him, no introduction is necessary; to those who did not know him, no short introduction is enough. Bernard Fonlon did not leave a worldly legacy to his family and friends and country. He left much more. He left ideas that can never be buried and ideals that will challenge new generations.

About the Author

Nalova Lyonga is Professor of Literature and Deputy Vice-Chancellor in charge of Teaching and Information and Communication Technologies, University of Buea, Cameroon.

New Book: The Challenge of Culture in Africa by Bernard Fonlon

Bernard Nsokika Fonlon. Challenge of Culture in Africa. From Restoration to Integration. 96 pages | 203 x 127 mm | 2010 | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | Paperback

This book was first published as a two-part essay in 1965 and 1967 in ABBIA – Cameroon Cultural Review – under the title “Idea of Culture”. Its main argument is that indigenous Africans cultures must be the foundation on which the modern African cultural structure should be raised; the soil into which the new seed should be sown; the stem into which the new scion should be grafted; the sap that should enliven the entire organism. This culture, the object of imperialist mockery and rejected, needs rehabilitation. However, such rehabilitation of African culture cannot be a mere archaeological enterprise. It will not answer to dig up the past and live it as it was. Not only is African culture not without its imperfections, times change and African culture must adapt itself, at every turn, to the changing times. In restoring African culture, it is imperative to steer clear of two extremes: on the one hand, the imperialist arrogance which declared everything African as only fit for the scrap-heap and the dust-bin, and, on the other hand, the overly enthusiastic and rather naive tendency to laud every aspect of African culture as if it were the quintessence of human achievement.

About the Author

Professor Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, M.A., Ph.D., (Nui) Dip. Ed. (Oxon), born 19 November 1924 in Nso, North West Region of Cameroon, died 26 August 1986. He was a government minister and leading intellectual of Cameroon. A man of diverse abilities, Fonlon was characterized as the Cameroonian Socrates. He was a major promoter of bilingualism, as reflected in the journal Abbia: Cameroon Cultural Review that he founded in the early 1960s.

Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang in a poetry reading and performance

The Wilde Auditorium at University of Hartford in Connecticut, USA, recently hosted Anglophone cameroonian poet Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang. Dr. Ashuntantang read/performed from her new collection of poems A Basket of flaming Ashes. It was a fusion of poetry with the rhythms of west African drums and steel pans from Trinidad and Tobago. Click here to watch Dr. Ashuntantang in action.

Just Published: Indigenization of Language in the African Francophone Novel

Vakunta, Peter W. 2010. Indigenization of language in the African francophone novel: a new literary canon. New York: Peter Lang. Available from Amazon.com

Indigenization of Language in the African Francophone Novel: A New Literary Canon discusses the question of indigenization in the African Francophone novel. Analyzing the prose narratives of Nazi Boni, Ahmadou Kourouma and Patrice Nganang we contend that African literature written in European languages is primarily a creative translation process. Recourse to European languages as a medium of expressing African imagination, worldview, and cultures in fictional writing poses problems of intelligibility.

Interview: John Fru Ndi - Cameroon's Opposition Leader

Interview conducted by the BBC World Service

Click here to watch Fru Ndi's Interview with France24

Twitter Partners With MTN to Establish an SMS Shortcode in Cameroon

Originally published on Scribbles from the Den

Thanks to a partnership between the microblogging platform, Twitter, and MTN Cameroon, MTN subscribers in Cameroon can now send tweets from any mobile phone. To get started, they simply  text "START" to 8711.  Using this shortcode means not having to pay international SMS charges when using Twitter from Cameroon - standard messaging rates apply, but receiving tweets is free.

For details watch the following interview with Jessica Verrilli, Director of Strategic Initiatives & Corporate Development at Twitter. Interview conducted by Edouard Tamba during the Africa Media Leaders Forum in Yaoundé.

Note: Short codes (also known as short numbers) are special telephone numbers, significantly shorter than full telephone numbers, that can be used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones or fixed phones (Wikipedia)

 

 

 

Bamenda: The Return Of The Prodigal Fon By Joseph M. Ndifor

by Joseph M. Ndifor

Loaded with many titles, some as quaint as “Fon of Fons”, Cameroon’s Paul Biya comes rolling into Bamenda this November. It was in Bamenda, twenty seven years ago in 1983, during his maiden visit as Head of State, that he cajoled the teeming crowds that had assembled to see their august visitor. 

 

Tailored and poised on the podium during that visit- he was just fifty then- and like most politicians attempting to identify with his audience, President Paul Biya told them he considered the Northwest Province ‘second home.”  Implicit is the fact that considering a place “second home” in such words means one identifies with its people, their struggles, concerns, and aspirations. Being conferred a title-as Biya was, by the Bamenda fons during that first visit- moreover carries many expectations. Chief among these expectations is the notion that he who wears the title “Fon of Fons” could properly be regarded as a “Bamenda Man-the leader and representative, if you will, of the grass fielders. But over the years, and with all that has befallen the Northwest province politically, Cameroonians, figuratively, have a clearer sense now of what a quintessential “Bamenda Man” is. For the purpose of this article, let’s bring out those metrics to measure if President Paul Biya could be considered a Bamenda Man.

(Music) Lift Up Your Voice - Gospel Musical 2010

Here is the theme song of the Gospel Musical 2010 competition. The song was composed by Achalle, Terence Nkenyui, Kenny Great and Steveslil, and produced by Emile Ngumbah at DRIMP Multimedia. (Courtesy of Nexdim Empire )

ho 

The Bamenda Military Hospital

By Innocent Chia

If it comes as a surprise to any, the building of the Bamenda Military Hospital remains top secret, until now that The Chia Report is breaking this story. Billed to be unveiled during the Commander-in-chief’s two day visit to Bamenda (Nov. 28-29) this end of month, the Biya camp has earmarked the portion of his speech where he makes the announcement as the hallmark of celebrations marking 50 years of Cameroons Armed Forces.

 
While enthusiastic Biya supporters, like the short-lived former Minister of Transport John Begheni Ndeh, are putting their money where their mouths are, popular sentiments, especially Southern Cameroons nationalists are decrying the celebrations as the braggadocio of a colonizer.

Continue reading "The Bamenda Military Hospital" » @ www.chiareport.com

 

Seeds?

Seeds?, originally uploaded by fakoman.

Southern Sudan–World's Newest Nation–Starting From Scratch

Juba– As world capitals go, this surely would rank among the more modest. No grand boulevards; only a few two-lane roads. No commanding monuments; only some grim government buildings rising from dirt lots that turn to muck when it rains. Nothing, however, captures the unassuming air of Juba better than the warm equatorial wind that blows through the city, sweeping across muddy fields and grassy pastures, and deposits into the face of the unwitting visitor that distinctive scent of informality: cow manure. Juba is a work in progress, but as the capital of Sudan's semiautonomous south its profile could soon increase dramatically. On Jan. 9, the Texas-sized region of some 8 million people is scheduled to hold a referendum on whether to secede from northern Sudan.

Read the whole story: McClatchy

Of Police Harassment, Arrest, Detention and the Law

The state of Arizona in the United States of America, has signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal immigration. The bill aimed to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants went into law July, 29, 2010. But with some restrictions, following a ruling by a judge, whose pen watered some critical segments (which is under debate) of the law.

By Yemti Harry Ndienla

Being it in Arizona or Cameroon, my worry in this thin is strictly “humanitarian” because I know what law enforcement officers can do to innocent law abiding civilians. Without undermining the job of these people who risk their lives in protecting those of others, permit me say here that in some cases their excesses are awful and worrisome. Yes, and they behave similarly world wide.

Continue reading Of Police Harassment, Arrest, Detention and the Law on Prince Report

SOUTHERN CAMEROONS: THE BEST OPTION

The Cameroon’s minister of communication has declared in essence that the Government of Cameroon will not have dialogue with SCNC/SCAPO not just because the
two organizations “want to divide the country” but because they have
not been transformed into political parties as a condition precedent following the 2009 ruling of the African Commission on Human and the
People Rights. The minister’s outing, far from lowering the SCNC case, has only greatly helped to expose the characteristic lawlessness of
the government he ever paints as infallible. The reality is starkly staring everyone in the face.

Continue reading SOUTHERN CAMEROONS: THE BEST OPTION on Prince Report

Cameroon graft crackdown is political witchhunt - civil groups

Culled from Trustlaw

DOUALA, Cameroon (Trustlaw) – Cameroon’s high profile anti-graft operation has turned into a political witch-hunt ahead of next year’s presidential election, civil society groups say.

Public support for the crackdown is dwindling amid suspicions it is being used as a way to remove certain influential people from power, activists say.

The government has denied the allegations and strongly defended Operation Epervier (Sparrowhawk) as a crucial weapon in the fight to stamp out graft in Cameroon, once considered the world’s most corrupt country.

The operation has seen the arrest of dozens of former government ministers, parliamentarians, senior civil servants and managers of state-run corporations.

But activists, lawyers and media reports say the operation is cherry-picking its targets and doing nothing to lower levels of corruption.

“We have put people in jail, but we have done absolutely nothing within the system to stop the next guy from doing the exact same thing,” said Kah Walla, head of Cameroon Obosso, a Douala-based civil society group.

Walla said the operation has failed to deter rampant corruption across the country because people believe it is directly linked to political infighting within the ruling party of President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 28 years.

“It has not escaped our minds that the people who were put in jail are primarily those who were suspected of setting themselves up as successors to Paul Biya,” said Walla, who plans to run for president.

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY

Cameroon was ranked 146 out of 178 nations in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index in 2010, an improvement on 1998 and 1999 when it was ranked the most corrupt country in the world. Some officials believe recent government efforts to combat corruption, including Sparrowhawk, have contributed to this progress.

“Cameroonians complained about corruption and said nothing was being done about it; now people are being arrested, tried and sentenced and they say it is politically motivated. What do they want at the end of the day,” said a senior ministry of justice official who did not want to be named.

Some of the government’s bilateral partners also voiced support for the overall anti-corruption drive saying graft has been a serious impediment to the country’s efforts to attract investment and the impact of the campaign will come gradually.

Click to continue reading Cameroon graft crackdown is poiltical witchhunt -civil groups

Wanaku Releases A New Album

Minneapolis-based Wanaku, singer, guitarist and philosopher has released a new album, Bei Samoh. He was again backed by his group Sunplug'd. Click below to sample the album and to purchase downloads or CDs. 

Book a gig with Wanaku and Sunplug'd

 

 

Wanaku and Sunplugd

^{Photographs courtesy of Leakybrain (flickr)}

Lyrics of No More War:  Download NoMoreWarFin 

A Few Good Men

By Joseph M. Ndifor

When the FBI zeroed in on now convicted U.S. Congressman, William Jefferson, finding thousands of dollars hidden in his freezer, few fugitive Cameroonian embezzlers took notice that the Congressman was partly a casualty of a dragnet, spawned as far afield as Nigeria. “They can run”, Ronald Reagan once declared, “but can’t hide.”

 Having campaigned on an anti-corruption platform in 2003, President Olusegon Obasanjo stuck onto his promise, bringing in a hard-charging lawyer named Nuhu Ribadu, to wean Nigeria off its recurrent headache of embezzlement. And for close to four years, Ribadu took on Nigeria’s corrupt governors, and was about closing in on arresting James Obori, governor of the oil-rich Delta State, when he was abruptly fired in late 2007 by then- elected President Umaru Yar’Aduaa.   Nigerians were stunned by the move, and their reaction fierce, including a blistering editorial from Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, in which he compared Ribadu’s sacking to an “assassination”. But Nigerians haven’t heard the last word from Nuhu Ribadu: as I write, he’s journeyed back to his native Nigeria, from the U.S., where he’s been living in hiding following threats on his life. He is expected to mount the political podium, and declare his candidacy to become Nigeria’s next president in its 2011 presidential election.  

Dragonfly, waterlily bud

Dragonfly, waterlily bud, originally uploaded by fakoman.

Paleness of green.

Invitation to Death in Geneva 1961:Explicating the Assassination of Moumié with Fishing Metaphors

By Emmanuel Konde
 
I read Dibussi Tande’s “France’s Dirty War in Cameroon: The Assassination of Félix-Roland Moumié (I)” and felt compelled to explore the narrative from a different perspective. 

Introduction 
 
The assassination of Cameroon’s UPC leaders Ruben Um Nyobé and Félix-Roland Moumié could not have been executed successfully without the complicity of trusted comrades within their party.  We are reminded of the suspicious work of Théodore May Matip in the assassination of Um Nyobé and, in the case of Moumié, the shadowy figure of Tchaptchet looms large in the horizon.  Granted, we cannot know with any degree of certainty the roles that Mayi Matip and Tchaptchet played in the assassination of Um and Moumié, respectively; for, in matters of this nature, those who know are invariably silent or tell tales intended to mislead; and those who do not know are always speculating. 

Dahlia

Indigenization of the English Language in Kole Omotoso’s The Combat

By Peter Wuteh Vakunta 

Contemporary African fiction seems to harbor seeds of a literary revolution discernible in the stylistic choices made by creative writers.  In an attempt to call colonial legacy and cultural imperialism into question, the ex-colonized tend to write in a domesticated version of the imperial language. Kole Omotoso’s The Combat (1972) exemplifies this style of fictional writing in the postcolony. This Nigerian novelist indigenizes the English language by employing appropriative strategies in ways that transgress the sacrosanct canons of the Language. Like Achebe (Morning Yet, 1975), Omotoso tends to domesticate the English language by implanting Africanisms in his text in a bid to convey certain culture-specific realities as the following example shows: “He began to dress; his pants, his singlet— it had large black patches of dirt under the armpits—then his khaki pair of trousers; over it he put a green dansiki which was torn on the shoulders” (3). Omotoso resorts to the indigenous language word dansiki in a bid to fill in a cultural gap. The vernacular term dansiki is used in this novel to describe a long traditional loose-fitting robe worn by men in different parts of Africa, notably Nigeria. Wearing a dansiki is a marker of social status in many countries in Africa.   This reality does not exist in the English culture; that is why Omotoso resorts to loan words.

Cameroonians: Stand up and say NO to the Bretton Woods and the NWO

By Aloysius AGENDIA in Participating in Positive Change

During my Economics lessons in school, our teacher told us that privatisation was a key element in developing the economy of any country. According to him, privatisation does not only allows for competition- hence better services, but that it also pumps in more money to the government coffers, money which could be used for other things. This is academically true and it is good if it is well implemented.

 However, all that is theory as privatisations nowadays has nothing to do with improving services, but just the control of power and profits. The privatisation especially that preached by the World Bank/IMF is rooted in allowing a totally free market in all sectors with little or no government control.  It is just like the economic partnership agreements APE signed by many African countries with some developed nations. Privatisation in Cameroon and most of Africa has had no  impact in quality services.

 That is exactly what has partly increased misery, disease and poverty in Africa- the wanton privatisation and liberalisation deals imposed by the proponents of the New World Social and Economic Order, partly represented by the IMF and World Bank. The agenda of this clique, most of whom are controlled by freemasonry, greed, imperialism  and sheer wickedness, is nothing short of making sure   that the world economic forces are driving by a few within a particular group.

 This demonic group would therefore be able to easily (as it is already the case in many African countries) control the political institutions. As the former USA president once said, "They who seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers call this a new world order. It is not new and it is not order." - Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 On November 10, 2010, two representatives of this neo-colonial, anti development and poverty aggravating body- the IMF/World Bank, in person of Mary Barton Dock, Director of Operation in the World Bank and, Jamal Saghir, Director of UN “Sustainable” Development-World Bank/Africa Region once again reiterated the need for the Cameroon government to restructure one of the few left state companies, Cameroon Telecommunications; CAMTEL. According to these folks, any development and the eventual kick off of the Cameroon economy will pass through the eventual privatisation of this company and liberalisation of the sector.

 DIDN’T THEY KNOW?............. Continue reading here