Cameroon’s New York Times Advertisement Supplement: An Exercise in Futility

By Samira Edi

The June 7, 2007 issue of the New York Times Magazine contained an eight-page advertisement supplement on Cameroon which was allegedly cost the Cameroonian taxpayer $250,000 (About 120 million FCFA).

This is another exercise in futility or are we to say Cameroon is being preened and pimped about for the Bohemian Westerner? Have we been bewitched in Cameroon? No matter how much they slice and dice it, the most virulent of all the viruses killing the country is corruption.

And corruption as endemic in the forces of law and order, financial establishments like the ports, etc could not be eradicated in the next 20 years. All these grand gestures by the Ministry of Tourism are but tokenistic and expensive adverts to glamorize and paper over the cracks of a much bigger pandemic.

Why should Cameroon be selling its image abroad, when a place like the heart of the economic Capital “city” Douala - Akwa - is the miniature nerve centre in a corner of hell? The Avenues King Akwa and Amadou Ahidjo are teeming with a ragtag of spivs, feculent heaps of living matter, microscopic and non-microscopic, all battling for space with a hodge-podge of traffic: dilapidated rattletraps, old bangers and air-polluters with the world’s most reckless drivers from hell!!

Well, it is not without reason that Douala is “fondly” called the armpit of Africa. Its bug-ridden streets, pest-infested backyards, crumpling houses, pot-hole ridden roads are not exactly the stuff that makes a fantastic selling point of any city. Step over the tarmac of the Airport and one is greeted by a whoosh of negativity right from the first encounter with those men and women in Uniform.

Go into any shop on the street and the attendants give you a once over like you’ve stepped into a protected zone.

Again, foreigners go to Cameroon Embassies abroad and immediately get a poignant whiff of what to expect in the country of their intended visit: disorderliness and dirt, a rude and sloppy staff, and maybe a taste of corruption.

That $250,000 would be better spent training our extremely debauched Police Force the fine art of Civic responsibility. Money should go to better train primary school teachers; those marauding forces of stupidity and ignorance, who are also responsible for miss-educating Cameroonian pupils at a very young and impressionable age. Most of them lack the most basic communication skills.

But more than anything else, the puss that infests the police force in Cameroon needs pressing urgently......We should out all the Brigadier Sabari as the great guru from Dimbokoro, Alpha Blondy would say of the police force: Brigadier Sabari.  Néko koutoubou sakidi!!

Cameroon must clean itself amongst its own people before trying to sell its sorry image abroad. Gawd! Rescue us from these “well-intended” agents du Gouvernement!

Samira

Comments

[Ma Mary]

Samira-you can "cosh" with the best, my dear daughter. Your description of Camerounese Embassies, those experiments in excrementation brought me some shameful memories of the times that I identified myself as a Camerounese.

This is like the man who puts on a three thousand dollar suit and perfume after neglecting to shower for a month. Doubtless, some Americans will poor their funds like the hapless 419 victims. Others will be tough customers, the likes of which Binya and company have never seen.

[SJ]

We welcome the French puppet, Mr. Paul Biya, to continue his PR campaign in the US. The more PR he buys here, the more he invites scrutiny to, and exposure of the true nature of his governorship of his French colonial enclave called la Republique du Cameroun (Republic of Cameroun):

1) Max Bardet, a French helicopter pilot in French Cameroun (la Republique du Cameroun) between 1962 and 1964 testifies that, "in two years, the regular army took the Bamileke country, from the south to the north, and completely ravaged it. They massacred between 300,000 to 400,000 people. A true genocide."

2) Imagine if the Hutu extremists in Rwanda remained in power and became entrenched after the 1994 French genocide in Rwanda. In Mr. Biya's country, he represents the entrenched continuation of a junta that conducted France's first modern genocide in Africa. It was conducted under France's tutelage directed by the following French governors and Pro-Consuls of the country Mr. Biya is attempting to sell to the American public: Messmer, Ramadier and Ahidjo. All the young cadres in the 1950s, 60s and 70s including Paul Biya were part of that French contrived and tutored system that participated in this French genocide in Mr. Biya's country.

3) Mr. Paul Biya's country, la Republique du Cameroun, is the only country on earth that neither commemorates nor celebrates her day of independence from France (wink, wink), JANUARY 1, 1960. A generation of Camerounese do not even know when their country became independent!

4) As Paul Biya puts millions of dollars in the pockets of already well-off American spin doctors like the Lobbying Firms, PR Firms and The New York Times; real doctors and nurses in public hospitals in his country went on strike this week because they have not been paid for 15 months.

5) This PR campaign is part of the election rigging strategy that Paul Biya has put in place for the forth-coming elections according to an informant. By instrumentalizing the "newspaper of record" that they believe the American elite reads, the French puppet Paul Biya hopes the image he's painting as a benevolent "peace keeper" in a country poised for growth should naturally justify the "overwhelming victory" of his corrupt party in the electoral masquerade ball being planned for July 22, 2007.