By Atia Tilarious Azohnwi
In the weeks to the build up to Cameroon’s presidential elections last October, many locals of the North West and South West regions in the peripheries had to flee as it was perceived violence between Non-State Armed Groups and State Forces would soar.
This group of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Sodiko a neighbourhood in Bonaberi Douala saw that it was time to leave their homes in Mile 16 Buea and other places they considered unsafe.
They escaped from their homes together with their children, carrying along with them small bags of clothes, abandoning the life they knew behind to the safety of the country’s economic capital.
“The situation had reached alarming proportions and we could not stay back despite our love for home,” Mami Glory Ayuk says from this uncompleted building in Sodiko.
“We got to Douala stranded and were lucky to find this uncompleted building with its owner generous enough to let us have two rooms. All males, 13 of them, sleep in one room while we the women sleep in this other room. We ease ourselves in this stagnant water behind here and we survive on the benevolence of people of good will,” Flora Malah, a career seamstress says.
She says they just met at the location and have been forced to bond together to face their challenges. In all, 27 of them live in this small location, having to spread cloths on the roughly cemented floor to sleep.
“We go for days without eating. Sometimes, the boys have to go out and do odd jobs so we can survive. I am a seamstress but I could not take any of my tools along with me as I ran to safety,” Malah furthers.
She is however thankful that Fred Muvunyi, Africa editor at Deutche Welle bought her two sewing machines recently. Muvunyi had in October 2018 visited the new home of these IDPs and decided to help them a few weeks later.
They have since had support from persons like Salatiel, Agbor Balla and other people of goodwill.
Mami Ayuk Glory, Flora Malah and the 25 others putting up with them in this swampy Sodiko neighbourhood of Bonaberi Douala are some of over 30,000 Cameroonians from the English-speaking North West and South West regions of the country who now live in a sorry situation. The children are unable to get education given that food and shelter have become more important than anything else.
Discrepancies between the French and English academics, legal and administrative systems which have always existed concurrently, as well as cries of political and economic marginalisation, crystallised into a series of protests and riots in 2016.
That soon turned bloody as the government, in a bid to quell dissent, first ordered a three-month internet shutdown and deployed soldiers.
In January, separatists including Julius Tabe, the leader of the interim government of “Ambazonia” – the self-declared state consisting of the Anglophone regions – were arrested in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on charges of terrorism.
Back in Cameroon, young untrained fighters are embroiled in a battle with government soldiers, countering sophisticated weaponry with homemade guns, machetes and charms called “odeshi” to make them invisible and invincible.
Trapped in the middle of all this are the estimated six million Anglophone Cameroonians who form roughly one-fifth of the population.
Local groups say the number of people displaced from both regions has doubled to around 200,000 people over the last month and there are about 50,000 refugees in Nigeria.
The International Crisis Group, which says the international reaction has been muted, estimates that at least 2,000 people have died in the conflict, with another 170,000 displaced.
An unknown number of people are also sleeping in open forests in the absence of formal camps. There is a shortage of toilets and proper hygienic conditions for menstruating girls and women in the informal host communities.
Beyond the detentions and displacements, there are concerns about the lingering trauma that could significantly hamper the healing and reintegration process for survivors.
Widows who have lost their spouses to flying bullets, children separated from their parents and citizens who have lost their incomes could have no life to return to.
But for Ayuk and Malah, they can’t wait to come back to the place they call home. They look up to the stakeholders in the on-going conflict to give peace a chance.
“We just want to go back to our normal lives. We want to be able to fend for ourselves and our families. We need to give our children a better life. I pray that this thing will end soonest,” Malah says with a heavy heart.