The Friends of Cameroon has designed a stunning, multilingual “pagne” (the six-meter length of African cloth) that incorporates the Peace Corps logo, the continent of Africa, and the names of all the countries where Peace Corps has ever been active in Africa. FOC is now taking orders for the cloth for imediate shipping.
Each piece is enough cloth for one woman’s outfit or 2 to 3 men’s jumpers. The cloth also makes a creative table cloth, window curtain, wall decoration, and more. The pagne project helps to fund development projects in Cameroon, including four HIV/AIDS education projects that FOC funded in 2006.
We arranged for another printing of the pagnes in Cameroon and have a limited number available. Since they sold out last time, do not delay to place an orders. Normally, the price is $38 plus $6 shipping per piece.
Ordering information
To order the cloth, which will ship immediately, send a check for the number of pieces you would like made out to “Friends of Cameroon.” Please send payment to:
FOC Pagne
13201 Stravinsky Drive
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A new site, CultureCrossing.net, is requesting your help. Please check out the Culture Crossing Questionnaire. They would like to have this completed by any and all who have experience in Cameroon. Just download it, answer the questions as best you can and email to the address listed.
Below is information about CultureCrossing.net:
CultureCrossing.net is a community built guide to cross cultural etiquette and understanding for living, working and studying in the global community.
CultureCrossing.net is an evolving database of cross-cultural information about every country in the world. This user-built guide allows people from all walks of life to share essential tips with each other about how to navigate our increasingly borderless world with savvy and sensitivity. Easy to navigate, free to use, and organized into topics such as communication styles, eye contact, gestures, taboos, dress, negotiations, meeting etiquette, school rules, gift giving, and more; CultureCrossing.net provides an opportunity for travelers, businesses and students to:
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FORUM: discussion forum monitored and moderated by CultureCrossing.net staff experts
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Culture influences our behavior in countless ways—subconsciously guiding our actions, reactions and interactions. In order to successfully engage with the global community, it’s essential to understand how culture affects the way we socialize, communicate, and do business. Managing a multicultural team? Transitioning to a life abroad? Developing international partnerships? Just curious about world cultures? No matter who you are, CultureCrossing.net will facilitate all of your international experiences and deepen your cross-cultural understanding, which in turn will cultivate peace in our interconnected world.
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CultureCrossing.net was founded by a few individuals with a passion for exploring the world and a commitment to fostering cross-cultural awareness and understanding. The organization also relies on the support of a team of professionals, students, and community members from around the globe to build, manage and grow our ever-expanding database.
Michael Landers
Director - Culture Crossing
Email: michael@culturecrossing.net
www.culturecrossing.net
Cameroon’s descent
By Ozong Agborsangaya-Fiteu
International Herald Tribune
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Central Africa cannot afford another failed state - but it may get one nonetheless.
Leaving Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, after a recent business trip, my colleagues and I settled into our airliner’s seats and breathed a sigh of relief. We had planned a retreat for emerging African leaders to devise practical ways to produce change within their individual countries and institutions. We had selected Yaoundé as the meeting place because of Cameroon’s presumed political stability, relatively reliable infrastructure and easy access.
But within days of our arrival in my country, riots and protests ignited by the rising costs of fuel and food resulted in a nationwide lockdown.
Much of the public’s frustration is due to the stark need for political reform. Cameroon’s 75-year-old president, Paul Biya, suggested in his New Year’s address that he intended to modify the Constitution to extend his term in office beyond 2011. Biya has been in power almost as long as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Under his rule, Cameroon has endured endemic corruption, weak institutions, official impunity and fraudulent elections.
During our trip, I found the presence of armed security forces across the capital’s hilly landscapes frighteningly reminiscent of the atmosphere in Rwanda and Burundi in the mid-1990s. Thousands of ordinary citizens suspected of participating in the protests were arbitrarily rounded up and detained, subjected to summary trials and harsh sentences, some for up to six years in prison. Witnesses reported that many people in custody were beaten, tortured and abused. There were also reports of dead bodies floating on the Wouri River in Douala, the country’s economic capital, although it is unclear how many people died.
Even more disturbing is the inflammatory and divisive rhetoric by some high-level government officials seeking to incite hatred and manipulate ethnic differences. In a country with over 125 different ethnic groups, this is a sinister game that could trigger inter-community conflict.
The president recently made good on his New Year’s promise. The ruling party has formally introduced a bill that would amend the Constitution to allow Biya to run for another seven-year term after his current mandate ends in 2011.
It is unclear what may happen next. Resentments were simmering long before Biya’s New Year’s speech - resentments that could have been addressed, but weren’t. Instead, the president ignored all warnings in his bid for increased power. The outcome could be very scary indeed.
Although calm appears to have returned, for now, the human rights situation is seriously deteriorating. The few human rights lawyers in the country are overwhelmed. Intolerance and hate speech are rising. Campaigners for a civil society report that the government has them under surveillance and that their family members do not feel safe.
There also are reports of increased arms trafficking into the country, with ordinary citizens buying and burying guns in their backyards - “just in case.”
The international community could take steps to help prevent a crisis. Unfortunately, promises of preventive measures and “never again” rhetoric regarding Africa rarely translate into action on the ground. I fear that the international community will wait until it is too late to prevent a major conflict in Cameroon - and will then have to spend massive resources in response to a humanitarian crisis.
Today, many people are trying to leave the country. But most of Cameroon’s neighboring countries are themselves collapsing states and cannot provide a safe haven.
Unless there is clear political reform that will allow citizens to finally enjoy basic civil liberties - including full freedom of expression, free elections and the rule of law - a crisis is inevitable.
Cameroon is another Central African country where time is running out.
Ozong Agborsangaya-Fiteu is senior program manager for Africa at Freedom House.
Since the organization was established in 1987, the Friends of Cameroon has funded more than two dozen village-based development projects in Cameroon, valued at more than $30,000. Projects have been located throughout the provinces of Cameroon, and have included a foot bridge in Kumba in the South West, a safe for Maga Health Clinic in the Extreme North, a beekeeping project in Njinikom in the North West, and a school for the deaf in Yaounde. Projects typically are in the health, education, and community development sectors.
The most recent projects funded were four community-based development projects worth 1.589.670 CFA ($3,117) FCFA, were located in Makak in the Center, Mvangan in the South, Batouri in the East, and in Yagoua, Extreme North Provinces, and focused on HIV/AIDS education and outreach. The projects were selected for the various methods proposed to reach out to local communities and educate the populations about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and how to protect against the deadly disease. The proposals were submitted by local organizations working in concert with Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to the areas.
FOC projects have included:
FOC support of $621 to the Club des Jeunes Aveugles Rehabilites du Cameroon helped the group, made upof blind and vision-impaired persons, expand their poultry business in Yaounde with the purchase of a freezer for their store.
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In 2004, FOC funded the purchase of a cassava grinder for the Neyokoty Ariey Cooperative in the Acha Etemetek village. The grinder, purchased for $820, helped the village group to expand its business while making the grinding of cassava more easily availableto the local community.
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One of FOC’s earliest projects was the construction of a footbridge crossing the Kumba River, easing the travel of villagers to the main market in Kumba. FOC contributed $1000 towards the construction of the bridge.
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In the Eastern Province, FOC support of $1,000 helped to purchase a mixed gas and electric refrigerator for the health clinic in Sokamalam, shown with the health center chief Nguel Isiclure. The fridge is used to store vaccines and allow the clinic to reach more people. The project was guided by PCV Jennifer Goldman.
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FOC supported the “Modern Beekeeping Project” of the Boyui Young Farmer’s Club in the North West, which allowed them to purchase needed equipment to improve their hives (such as the one under the arrow) and expand their honey production and group income.
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FOC project requirements
In order to be eligible for FOC funding, the applicant must live in Cameroon, be Cameroonian and/or working in Cameroon with either a private, non-profit organization, a cooperative or registered non-profit, or a village-based organization for by villagers for a communal purpose. The majority of the members of the applicant organization or the majority of the beneficiaries must be Cameroon citizens. It is required that the applicant is planning to provide, in cash or in kind, a minimum of one-fourth of the total cost of materials and/or labor of the project(s) supported by FOC funds.
The Friends of Cameroon was established in the United States in 1987, and the group’s members include persons who worked and lived in Cameroon as Peace Corps Volunteers, staff of the U.S. Embassy, USAID, and missionaries. The primary function of the organization is to keep members informed about Cameroon, continue to link those who served there, and to support small, community development projects in the country.
After a failed attempt to privatise Cameroon’s State-owned carrier, government has finally decided on an eventual burial of the company
(From The Herald, adapted from Jeune Afrique)
Cameroon’s lone international carrier, Cameroon Airlines (CAMAIR), is currently in the throes of death. On 14 March, government placed the company on liquidation after refusing to renew the contract of Paul Ngamo Hamani, provisional administrator since 23 February 2005.
In his place will be appointed two co-liquidators; one to work on financial aspects and the other on judicial aspects, “without stepping on toes”, announced Lazare Essimi Menye, Cameroon’s minister of Finance.
At the same time, a new management team was put in place on 19 March, to ensure the resumption of CAMAIR flights (suspended more than two weeks ago), especially to and from Paris. This route represents 80 percent of the carrier’s traffic and much of its revenue.
Flights were scheduled to resume on 22 March. But this date was rather tentative as authorities were still in search of a strategic partner to manage the new subsidiary of the carrier, CAMAIRCO, created by President Paul Biya in September 2006.
Will this change of outfit be sufficient to save CAMAIR? It is doubtful, considering the erratic nature of the handling of the dossier. Appointed on 19 March, Adolphe Sammet Bell, who has worked with the carrier for 30 years, is the sixth manager of CAMAIR in a little over a decade. While he was second in command, government tried for four years, in vain, to privatise the company.
“With a renewable six-month contract, Paul Ngamo Hamani lacked visibility. He was also not given the means to develop a real plan to re-launch the company,” a source close to the dossier said.
Despite these, he managed to reduce the bloated staff of the company from 1309 to 800 employees, thereby reducing the monthly salary from 700 million to 400 million FCFA.
This is an outstanding performance, but it was still insufficient to save a company pressed down by an 80 billion FCFA debt and which owns only one plane, the famous Dja (Boeing 767-300), currently impounded at the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport.
Meantime, the search for a strategic partner does not seem to be advancing. Since the second call for tender in June 2007, nothing has changed, partly because government does not seem to know its destination, after annulling the provisional adjudication constituted by the Belgian company, Brussels Airlines, and a Cameroonian venture capital company, Cenainvest.
“It is not necessary to go through a privatisation. CAMAIRCO can maintain its public status, on condition that the private partner is given total liberty to manage the company, following the respect of a cahier des charges determined by the State,” explains an expert who is working on the dossier.
While waiting, the American carrier, United Airlines, that was once mentioned as being interested has not yet made a move.
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