Letter From Yaounde to Buea

Dear Ngwa,

I saw you pompously conspicuous during the New Year handshakes with the Alpha and Omega of Cameroon.

How did you feel his hand; was it warm, cold, or soft? From the images I saw while watching TV during the handshakes, the king’s hands have grown very old and frail that they now look like the hands of a newborn baby. In spite of all the make-up, the looks betray an old and tired body.

Away from the handshakes, I like the way the man disowned the master of jabber and chatter who rubbished Transparency International’s classification of Cameroon. When the king cited “our development partners” and international organisations like Doing Business and the anti-corruption watchdog, CONAC; was he not thereby admitting TI’s indexing of Cameroon as a corrupt country? Did he not thus disown Issa and his chastisement of TI’s report on Cameroon?
By the way, I hear you guys over there in Ongola are rationing water quarter by quarter. Does the rationing also involve Etoudi? It is good you people too feel how we have been living here in the land of legendary hospitality. There was a trickle from our taps during the Unification celebration. After that, it seems the king screwed off the taps as he was leaving this erstwhile capital city of Buea.

During the preparation for the Unification celebration, peoples businesses and movements were disturbed in Buea with the laying of giant pipes. After the celebrations, when we saw no taps running and the authorities were confronted, they said the engineer who had drawn up the project for the laying of the pipes was short-sighted on the machine that would draw the water from the water-catchment point? With all the hydraulic engineers that we have around today - some of them PhDs, we cannot solve the problem of water?

Remember that the hydraulic network in the Banana plantations of the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, was laid by people who left primary schools and were trained in water works with the Public Works Department. As we speak, the bananas in Tiko have water every minute, but citizens have to carry containers and trek several kilometres to fetch water.

The situation has encouraged what is called open-air defecation and when the rains will come, you can be sure to hear of cholera epidemic.

I was in Bamenda for the end of year festivities and when I saw the state of the roads that your Chop People Dem Money politicians made so much noise about, I asked myself whether these people have souls; whether they have what we referred to in our primary school days ‘guilty conscience’?

What is happening to the national broadcaster? When you watch state TV, the sound comes before the images. The radio signals at times go off.

Would you believe that the national airline has only two and a half planes but 700 and something workers? And that is same with the other State corporations.
Yet you guys shamelessly spend money and time on useless things like New Year wishes. All just eat and drink.
Greet Manka’a and the kids.

Ngwa