Keeping strange macabre acts at bay!

For many years, Cameroon was known to be a country where it was just fine living.

Africa in miniature was at one time the catch phrase in trying to invite tourists to come visiting. Many of our cities or regions carry endearing mottos: “the most beautiful region”, goes one slogan while some are referred to simply as “where the sun sets” or “where it rises”.

Nothing really repelling, one would say, especially as some of our towns carry huge billboards proclaiming their friendship, as is the case with Buea or their hospitality, when it comes to Limbe.

Football has just been wonderful in giving this nation a place in the sky with its team “A” carrying a number of firsts: first African team to get to the quarter-final phase of a FIFA world cup tournament, first African team to beat a current world cup holder in the group stages of a world cup, first country to produce Africa’s player of the century etc.

Even if a few years ago Cameroon shamefully carried the banner of one of the world’s most corrupt countries and the football it so proudly carried right to the world scene was now a cause for real concern, Cameroon still has a reputation to defend on the same scene. Who then wants to toy with this hard-earned reputation?

Lately, there has been newspaper reports of happenings which even the most vitriolic detractors of Cameroon would hardly comprehend. In Friday’s edition of Cameroon Tribune, it was reported that a young pupil of hardly nine years had died in the hands of abductors who wanted a ransom from her parents before her release.

The nation is still in a state of shock; but one must refer to the other numerous other cases reported in recent weeks which point to an obvious behavioural shift from what has always been known to be a Cameroonian way of life.

This is exemplified by reported cases of such strange phenomena as hostage takings or the macabre killings of children hostages in acts that have never been known in our national way of life; in our national DNA, one would say. Hold your breath! “four-year old cut into pieces in Bafoussam”.

The various pieces of this pupil of a nursery school in the Tounganvilleneighbourhood in Bafoussam were placed before the entrance of the family home. Not far from there, in the Ndiengdam quarters of the same town a few weeks ago, a septuagenarian butchered his wife of many years before hanging himself in a near-by bush.

Just last Friday, November 6 the police in Bafoussam discovered a man with the headless body of a child in his travelling bag. This is the third case in less than three weeks in Bafoussam alone and there is little doubt that ritual crimes are gradually becoming a way of life, especially among the ranks of businessmen.

The region, because of the relative progress of its businessmen, once carried the horrid image of people who could easily be attracted into sordid deals in the search for money and profits; but many people have been proven wrong because of the known attachment to indigenes of this part of the country to hard work and the desire to attain results through hard work.

These repeated macabre acts, especially bordering on ritual killings, sound a very serious warning. Cameroonians have never been known to using the short cut to success. They have never been given to blood-letting and abhor the sheer mention of blood!

These are acts which should be fought against with the highest level of rigour, even if simply to save the Cameroonian brand name of a country whose achievements have always been predicated on hard work and self-emulation; best manifested in sports.