Archive for the 'News' Category
Five Education PCVs just finished their service in Cameroon.
Left to Right:
Ann-Marie Mark
RPCV Bertoua (East Region)
Education 2007-2009
Tara Smith
RPCV Baré (Littoral Region)
TEFL Education 2007-2009
(Tara received FOC funding for a latrine project in her village.)
Anne Raymond
RPCV Ewoh (Northwest Region)
Math Science Education 2007-2009
Barry Shapira
RPCV Dimarko (East Region)
IT Education 2007-2009
Reid Benson
RPCV Bdiang (East Region)
TEFL Education 2007-2009
A few more newly inducted Cameroon RPCV
(From Left to Right)
Joe and Debbie Schuld
RPCV Tiko (SW)
IT and TEFL Education 2007-2009
Alyssa Poucher
RPCV Gashiga (North Region)
TEFL Education 2007-2009
Dr. Matthew McGrath
RPCV Dschang (West Region)
Math Science Education 2007-2009
Rachel Witter
RPCV Ebolowa (South Region)
TEFL Education 2007-2009
Bradford Melius
RPCV Fontem (SW Region)
Math Science Education 2007-2009
New Education and Small Enterprise Development trainees arrived in Cameroon on June 5 and have already begun training in country. They will officially swear in on August 19th upon completion of training.
From left: U.S. Ambassador janet Garvey, Bamendjou Chief, and Peace Corps Director James Ham view the memorial dedicated on March 24, 2009 for John Granville.
online casinoAmbassador Garvey and PC/Cameroon Director Ham with PCVas and local leaders at the memorial.
Janet E. Garvey aux funérailles d’un Américain à Bamendjou
L’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Cameroun était dans lé région de l’Ouest pour commémorer la mémoire d’un de ses compatriotes élevé au grade de notable.
Hier, mardi 24 mars 2009, se célébrait le 24e anniversaire du Rassemblement démocratique du peuple camerounais (Rdpc). Dédaignant cette cérémonie, même si elle n’a pas fait l’objet d’une invitation officielle, l’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Cameroun Janet E. Garvey a préféré le village Bamendjou dans la région de l’Ouest à Yaoundé. La diplomate américaine a accordé la priorité au peuple Bamendjou. Peut-être à cause de l’honneur que cette communauté située à une vingtaine de kilomètres de Bafoussam accordait à un Américain. Janet E. Garvey venait assister aux funérailles organisées par le chef supérieur des Bamendjou SM Jean Rameau Sokoudjou en l’honneur de l’Américain John Granville, assassiné en décembre dernier alors qu’il se trouvait au Darfour (Soudan). C’est que John Granville, appelé Deffo Sokoudjou, avait été élevé au rang de notable en 2006 par Fo’o Sokoudjou Jean Philippe Rameau. “ Il fallait donc lui donner tous les honneurs qui lui étaient dus après sa mort et lui trouver un successeur parmi les notables ”, a expliqué le chef supérieur des Bamendjou.
La cérémonie d’hier a ainsi respecté tous les rites traditionnels exécutés lors des funérailles d’un notable en terre Bamendjou. Et Janet E. Garvet y a pris part avec beaucoup de joie, en compagnie d’une forte délégation de la Peace Corps (Corps de la paix américain), dont faisait partie le regretté Deffo Sokoudjou. Avec bien entendu des touches modernes comme la remise d’un cadeau par le directeur du Corps de la paix au Cameroun à Sa Majesté Sokoudjou.
Tôt le matin, il y a eu ce que l’on appelle la prosternation devant le chef supérieur, élément incontournable avant tout début de cérémonie présidée par le Fo’o. Et avant les différentes danses traditionnelles, l’on a eu droit aux allocutions de circonstance. L’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Cameroun, après avoir rappelé le rôle humanitaire joué par son compatriote dans cette communauté pendant des années, s’est dite satisfaite de constater que ses parents “ n’étaient pas les seuls à pleurer aux Etats-Unis ”. Le directeur national du Corps de la paix américain, James Ham, dans une allocution émouvante, a tout simplement espéré que l’œuvre laissée par le disparu ne périra pas.
Commémorer une grande œuvre
John Granville ou Deffo Sokoudjou, a en effet laissé une grande œuvre au sein de cette communauté villageoise. Arrivé dans le groupement Bamendjou en 1997, ce jeune volontaire avait été affecté au lycée local pour l’enseignement de la langue anglaise. Son caractère aimable lui valut une intégration sociale très rapide. Avec des Camerounais et certains de ses compatriotes, il s’investit dans l’encadrement des populations de Bameka, Batié, Bahouan, Bamendjou,… et anima plusieurs fronts de développement participatif. Il a œuvré pour l’extension et l’équipement de l’école primaire africaine bilingue, à la création d’une forêt communautaire à Bameka, à trouver des bourses scolaires et universitaires à des élèves, participer aux campagnes de vaccination, etc. L’on comprend mieux le choix de Janet E. Garvey d’aller honorer la mémoire d’un compatriote…
Par Alain NOAH AWANA A Bamendjou
http://www.lemessager.net/details_articles.php?code=40&code_art=26907&numero=1
Le 25-03-2009
Scams Warning
The U.S. Embassy in Cameroon has observed a dramatic increase in fraud in recent years targeting foreigners. These fraudulent schemes come in many varieties, ranging from simple pleas for donations to fictitious charities to elaborate fraudulent invoices on corporate or governmental letterhead. These scams can arrive in the form of unsolicited faxes, e-mails, or classified ads posted online. Fraud poses the risk of both financial loss and personal danger to their victims. The U.S. Embassy hopes this message will help alert the public to such scams in Cameroon. No one should provide personal or financial information to unknown parties by e-mail or via Cameroonian telephone lines. Likewise, the Embassy strongly cautions Americans against wiring funds to individuals not known to you personally for goods or services not yet performed or delivered. You may contact the Embassy’s commercial section or consular section before agreeing to send money to Cameroon for any reason.
Adoption/Wildlife Scams
Some of the most popular scams involve the adoption of children or animals over the internet. The perpetrators of child adoption fraud often claim to be indigent parents unable to care for a child or members of the clergy working at a Cameroonian orphanage seeking a good home for a child. Other versions of this fraud involve wildlife, including birds (often parrots), dogs (Yorkshire terriers and bulldog puppies are frequently offered), and monkeys. The scammers will begin a relationship with the victim by offering the fictitious child or animal for free, asking the victim to pay only a small amount to cover the cost of shipping. This will be followed by a never-ending string of additional requests, this time for more money due to ‘unforeseen expenses’, such as court costs, airport fees, customs duties, and medical costs. The scammers will claim that the fictitious baby or animal will be abandoned at the airport unless they are unable to pay a non-existent fee, and the victim will be threatened with the loss of thousands of dollars.
Americans should be very cautious about sending money or traveling to Cameroon to adopt a child from an orphanage they have only heard about through e-mails. The competent authorities for intercountry adoption are the Ministry of Social Affairs and the High Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance) that has jurisdiction over the place of residence of the child to be adopted. Cameroon does not have adoption agencies. In general, any orphanage may release an orphan for adoption. However, in order to help protect themselves and the children from the possibility of fraud or other serious problems, prospective adoptive parents are advised to consider first the list of accredited orphanages available at the Ministry of Social Affairs. Should prospective adoptive parents wish to hire a Cameroonian attorney to assist with the adoption, they can obtain a list of attorneys from the U.S. Embassy in Yaoundé.
A new twist in the conventional e-mail adoption scam has appeared recently, and this one occurs after the victim discovers that he or she has been fooled by a scam. Once the victim suspects fraud and breaks off communications with the scammers, a new e-mail message will arrive claiming to be from the Cameroonian FBI or some such police agency. These fictitious policemen will offer to recover the victim’s lost money. The scammers will then ask for a “refundable” fee to open the investigation or court files. No such police agency exists in Cameroon.
The U.S. Embassy notes there are strict legal regulations surrounding endangered species and the importation of any wildlife into the United States. Any attempt to purchase wildlife through the internet should be avoided.
Business Scams
Many business scams work on the false premise that the government has dictated all companies wishing to do business in Cameroon must be registered in Cameroon. The scammer will claim to be a government official who can guarantee that a contract will be given to the intended victim’s company. For their work, this fictitious government official will ask for a small commission, to come from the money the Cameroon government will pay for the goods. The victim is asked to add one dollar to the value of the goods sold, which will pay for the fictitious government official’s commission, and the seller will not lose money in the transaction. However, in order to get the large contract, the victim will have to register their company in Cameroon, which will satisfy the false legal requirement. The fictitious government official will introduce the victim to an attorney who will help the victim navigate through the business registration process. When the victim makes contact with this purported attorney (likely to be the same person as the “government official”), the victim will be given instructions regarding the registration process. While the various attorney, government, bank, document, and office fees may seem reasonable given the large profit promised, the victim will ultimately have paid thousands of dollars for a transaction that never takes place.
Another recently recorded scam involves individuals claiming to possess large quantities of vegetable oils (soybean, cotton, or palm) to supply raw materials for the biofuels industry. The scammer usually sends out a sales agreement asking the victim to sign and provide bank details, including an irrevocable LC (Letter of Credit). He will also claim to possess samples ready to be shipped to the victim, a well-calculated ploy to encourage the victim to start sending money, usually in small amounts but gradually increasing. In fact, Cameroon does not possess export production capacity for any such products. Local production is insufficient to meet domestic demand and the international market price for these vegetable oils is far lower than the domestic market prices – hence there is no economic incentive to export. In most business scams, transactions are requested to be carried out via Western Union or Moneygram rather than through reputable banks.
PEOPLE carry their produce to the market in Fundong, Cameroon, Africa. The deepening effects of the global food crisis and climate change are affecting Africa’s ability to eradicate poverty. GEORGE OSODI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Bloomberg Specials
Written by Alison Fitzgerald & Christopher Swann / Bloomberg News
Tuesday, 06 January 2009
Mbanda Leo Ganglii, like any farmer in Cameroon, must contend with roads that turn to mud in the rainy season and fertilizer prices he can’t afford. And then there is government corruption. A local agriculture official demanded a $572 kickback from a $1,850 government contract to provide plantain seedlings for other farmers, Ganglii said. After refusing, he said he was warned that the deal might not be renewed.
“The provincial coordinator called me and said since we are not ready to offer a bribe, the contract we just signed with the minister of agriculture will be the last,” said Ganglii, 36. His farm is in Boyo, about five hours northwest of the capital, Yaounde.
Incidents of this kind are impediments to improving food production in Cameroon and Africa as a whole, farmers say. While Cameroon is fertile and a variety of crops could thrive, it became a flash point in the food crisis this year when riots left 40 people dead. Its problems don’t result from war or drought. Mismanagement and outright graft have led to neglect of farming, said Joachim von Braun, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.
Cameroon has budgeted $309 million for the military in 2009 and $105 million for the president’s office and services to the presidency, compared with $106 million for agriculture, which employs 70 percent of its people.
“This is not a problem of natural resources,” von Braun said. “It’s a problem of leadership and governance and corruption.”
The condition of Cameroon’s agriculture is central to the tragedy in sub-Saharan Africa, where 236 million, or about 25 percent, of the world’s hungry people live. The total of undernourished grew this year to 963 million of the world’s 6.8 billion people, the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said this week.
Cameroon is “one of the best-endowed primary commodity economies” in Africa, according to the US Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA reports that 10 percent of the country’s roads are paved and 30 percent of the population is unemployed.
Even former Prime Minister Simon Achidi Achu acknowledges that with better roads and more efficient farming, the country could become a breadbasket for its own people and those of neighboring nations, instead of relying on aid agencies and foreign governments.
“If you drop a seed on the ground in Cameroon, something grows,” Achu said during a tour of his 200-hectare farm in Santa in the Northwest province, where he raises cattle, grows potatoes and farms fish, some of which he exports to Gabon.
Cameroon President Paul Biya, 75, has governed for 26 years. After the food riots in February, Biya’s administration responded with an emergency plan to solicit loans of almost $1 billion from the World Bank and others to double food production by 2012. Yet Ganglii and von Braun question whether indifference and unethical government will undermine the efforts.
The Biya regime didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. The presidency and the Agriculture Ministry didn’t answer a series of questions posed via e-mail and telephone to Philip Ekaney Metuge of the Ministry of Communications. Ganglii didn’t disclose the name of the Agriculture Ministry official who demanded a bribe.
In 2003 African delegates meeting in Maputo, Mozambique, set a target of spending 10 percent of their national budgets on farms, up from an average of 4.5 percent that year, according to von Braun’s research institute. Four of the 51 countries have met the goal, even though 70 percent of the continent’s workforce is in food production. The nations in June recommitted to spending 10 percent of their budgets by 2010.
Cameroon is among those that have fallen short, devoting 2.4 percent to agriculture in 2009, according to figures released by the government in November.
“You can blame the donors and the international lenders for the food problems in Africa, but the responsibility rests mainly on the national governments,” said Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, an advocacy group based in Nairobi, Kenya, and former deputy executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Program. “African countries have grossly underinvested in agriculture.”
Those that spend more on farms escaped the worst of this year’s food crisis. Malawi—which suffered from a famine as recently as 2002—now devotes 8 percent of its national budget to farming and 2.4 percent to the military.
Malawi subsidizes fertilizer, reducing the cost of 100 kilograms to $14 from $60 in a country where half the population lives on less than $136 a year. The 2007 maize harvest yielded a surplus of about 1 million metric tons. Malawi became a net exporter, sending 400,000 tons to Zimbabwe and selling 91,000 tons to the World Food Program.
“This is a great source of pride for ministers and government officials,” said Mark Ashurst, director of the Africa Research Institute.
At the same time, because of poor infrastructure, the World Food Program also distributed food to 1.4 million people in Malawi last year.
Cameroon imported 400,000 tons of rice last year and grew 100,000 tons, according to the Agriculture Ministry. It sold 25,000 tons of food to the World Food Program, which distributed 5,772 tons in Cameroon, about a quarter of it to refugees. Cameroonians also eat cassava, plantains, yams, millet, corn, chicken and fish.
Unlike Malawi, Cameroon has sources of wealth beyond its farm industry, including the 85,000 barrels of oil produced each day. At the average 2008 price on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the country’s oil would bring in about $8.8 million a day.
The Cameroon government’s $1-billion, three-year plan unveiled in June includes creating a farmers’ bank to make loans for expanding operations or buying supplies. Subsidies would cover half of fertilizer costs and tractor imports for large operations. A 15-percent import tax on tractors would be eliminated. The government would buy 50 community tractors for each of Cameroon’s 10 provinces to rent to small growers.
Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni said in November that Cameroon will provide financial and technical assistance to 5,000 young farmers next year, subsidizing fertilizers and pesticides and giving loans at reduced rates.
Susan Simon Wembe, who began her plantain grove of 2 hectares, also in Boyo, using just a hoe, might welcome a tractor and fertilizer. To sell her crop, she carries branches of plantains on her head or back 2 kilometers down a narrow, rutted mud road. It takes one-and-a-half hours on foot, she says.
“They are so heavy,” she says. “I get so tired.”
At the market, consisting of a few wooden sheds and tables beside a two-lane paved road, she and neighboring farmers offer plantains, peanuts, sugar cane and chickens to the patients and workers at a hospital. Wembe says a bunch of plantains standing 3 feet tall can fetch about 3,000 CFA francs ($5.90), the currency used in several Central African countries.
Buying the farm tools under the emergency plan requires foreign aid, said Rabelais Yankam Njomou, the technical adviser to Agriculture Minister Jean Nkuete, in an interview at the ministry in Yaounde. Nkuete canceled three appointments for interviews in three days before allowing Njomou to speak.
“The main way to solve this problem is to get money,” Njomou said.
People in the countryside see few signs of a government commitment to farming.
In Ndop, one of the main rice-producing districts, Samuel Wankii, director of the Upper Noun Valley Development Authority, works in an office beside a processing plant that can dry, parboil and bag 10,000 tons of rice a year. The plant sits idle, gathering cobwebs, because the government eliminated the budget, Wankii said during a tour. He demonstrated how he keeps the processor in working order in case the money ever comes back.
“In Cameroon, we do more talking than doing,” he said.
A few miles down the road, a group of young men perform the work that would normally happen in the processing plant, soaking and boiling rice in old oil drums, then spreading it on tarpaulins in a field across the street to dry. They then bag it by hand.
Cameroon is already receiving foreign investment—though it’s for football, not farming. China is financing and building $640 million of sports facilities—a soccer stadium in each of Cameroon’s four largest cities.
The African country’s soccer-mad populace has embraced the plan. Taxi driver Djindje Jean Marc says he hopes Cameroon will one day host the World Cup.
The gleaming steel of a turtle-shaped training center for athletes has already risen in Yaounde. It looms over the cinderblock shacks with corrugated metal roofs that line the roads beyond.
In smaller villages, such as Mvomeka’a in the South Province, most Cameroonians live in shacks made of mud bricks and sticks. Only 20 percent of Cameroon’s households have electricity.
Still, there are pockets of luxury. One country home in Mvomeka’a, designed by French architect Olivier Clement Cacoub, features a personal golf course and a 500-meter landing strip. It’s owned by President Biya.
In a 2007 report, Transparency International, a watchdog group, reported that 79 percent of Cameroon citizens said they had paid a bribe to receive a basic government service. Farmers say they must pay off local officials just to get access to government programs and research.
“For the least service to be rendered in either private or public administration, the official demands something in kind [gifts, sex with regards to women], or money [the most common means],” Transparency International, based in Berlin, said in the report.
What government funding there is seldom reaches the regions that need it most. A study by the Yaounde-based Citizens Association for the Defense of Collective Interests, a group that advocates food self-sufficiency in Cameroon, found that 5 percent of the money allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture actually reaches rural areas.
“They just share it among themselves,” said Amesinda Jonathan Jam, a farmer in Boyo who grows plantains and other produce. “Most people are not trustworthy.”
Since 2005, an anticorruption effort known as Operation Sparrow Hawk, which Transparency International says was started because of international pressure, has led to a growing number of arrests at state-run companies. Gerard Ondo Ndong, the top executive at the Inter-Communal Mutual Aid Fund, was convicted in June 2007 of misappropriating $26 million from the organization and sentenced to 50 years in prison, according to a 2008 Transparency International report.
In Cameroon, cases involving the ruling party “are not settled fairly in court, and bribes are often paid to secure a verdict,” Transparency International said. Critics “see the waves of arrests as the government’s attempt to please donors as well as a settling of scores within the Cameroon administration.”
Not far from Ganglii’s farm in Boyo, Lawrence Chiamoh talks of expanding his pork and poultry operation.
Chiamoh has about 100 roasters in a henhouse. A larger coop stands empty, and Chiamoh says he would like to fill it with 1,000 egg-laying hens.
“A person cannot always afford a whole chicken,” he said. “But anyone can buy an egg. Eggs sell.” An egg costs about 12 cents while chicken can reach $5.50 a kilogram.
He’s trying to get $6,000 in financing and says he slips extra cash to agriculture officials as part of this effort.
“This is Cameroon,” Ganglii said in an e-mail. “Poor farmers like us are enthusiastic enough, but some people of bad faith are there to block us. How therefore do we fight poverty, achieve food security? Only God knows.”
When life is more complex than just fields to tend, a passel of wives is more a financial strain than a status symbol.
By Alexis Grant | Christian Science Monitor, November 13, 2008 edition
Fongo-Ndeng, Cameroon
Benoit Ndi Wamba didn’t know exactly how many children were in his family. Like most Cameroonians born into large polygamous families, he never had a reason to count.
But with money tight after the death of his father, the 23-year-old was partly responsible for finding money to pay this year’s public school fees for his siblings. So he ticked off their names, one by one. There was lanky Jean, 21. Sylvain, 18, a top student. Janvier, an 11-year-old who wears, in this French-speaking province, a T-shirt that reads “Fabulous.” And Mr. Ndi Wamba himself was entering his first year of university.
Those were just his mother’s children. Then there were his other brothers and sisters, born to his late father’s other three wives. A handful of grandchildren and cousins also lived with the family, complicating the count. All referred to one another as brother and sister, explaining only after much prodding who, as Cameroonians say, has the “same mother, same father.”
Yet one thing was clear: With more than a dozen children who hoped to attend school this year, the Ndi Wamba family faced a pile of fees.
It was a problem Ndi Wamba swore his own children would never face; he would marry just one woman, he said, and have significantly fewer children than his father.
“If it was just my three brothers and me, we would not be having this problem,” Ndi Wamba said sternly, a folder of university enrollment forms tucked under his arm.
An increasing number of men in this central African nation are coming to the same conclusion, rejecting the polygamous lifestyles of their fathers and opting for monogamy instead. With the rising costs of school, healthcare, and food, it’s simply too expensive to have a large family, they say.
• • •
I met the Ndi Wamba family six years ago, when I was a college student studying polygamy. They were supposed to serve as a case study, but instead became my second family during the three weeks I lived with them in the village of Fongo-Ndeng, in western Cameroon.
When I returned this September for a visit, their lives had much changed. Nearly a year after the death of their 78-year-old husband, the four wives still donned all black, mourning not only his spirit but also the loss of his government pension. With the help of friends and family back home, I paid tuition for the women’s children and others who live on the compound, 18 in all.
Again I chatted with the women as they cooked over open fires on the ground in their kitches, alternating among the four dirt-floor houses that, along with their husband’s empty house, created a semicircle around an often-muddy yard. When he was alive, the husband, too, split his time among his wives, spending one night with one woman, the next with another.
Traditionally, polygamy has been a symbol of wealth and status, particularly in rural areas. Village chiefs until recently married as many as 25 women, while other men typically wed between two and eight wives.
The lifestyle has its advantages, mainly the production of a labor force to cultivate fields of corn, beans, and root crops like manioc. But modernity has taken its toll, even on families like the Ndi Wambas who have shunned other changes such as electricity and running water. Crops can feed many mouths, but only hard currency pays school fees, which start in secondary school around the equivalent of $45 annually and mount for higher grades.
“Before, maybe polygamy was good,” explains Charlotte Nguimfack, who has four children with her monogamous husband. “Life wasn’t difficult like it is now.”
While those economic difficulties are driving polygamy’s decline, other factors also are at play, including the spread of Christianity, which prohibits polygamy. And as more women become college-educated, some have begun to demand monogamy.
In the early 1990s, a quarter of married men in Cameroon had more than one wife, according to the country’s National Institute of Statistics. By 2004, just 11 percent were polygamous.
Likewise, the percentage of women who had at least one co-wife dropped to 30 percent in 2004 compared with 39 percent in 1991, institute data show.
Similar decreases are occurring in other countries across central and western Africa, says Savage Njikam, who oversees the University of Douala’s anthropology department.
“The more educated people are, the less likely they are to have the same household as their grandfather,” says Mrs. Njikam, a social anthropologist. “But you still will find educated women who will accept being second wives.”
Monogamous men and women cite another reason to avoid polygamy, one their polygamous counterparts are reluctant to discuss. Some multiwife households suffer from jealousy and conflict.
Sallahou Aboubakar, who grew up in Cameroon’s Muslim north in a two-wife home, says his mother’s disputes with her co-wife influenced him to choose monogamy.
“The wives don’t stay peaceful,” says Mr.. Aboubakar, who lives with his wife and their newborn baby in Yaounde, the capital. “It always causes problems.”
His wife’s aunt, Adamou Patou, overhearing the conversation speaks up to illustrate the point, telling a tale that has her family, all sitting on mats on the floor, roaring with laughter.
When her husband was alive, she says, she and her co-wife fought endlessly, mostly over where the husband would sleep. One morning, after the husband had spent too many nights with Patou, her co-wife entered the bedroom to find the husband freshly showered and back in bed. She threw a bucket of charcoal dust into the room, covering the bed and her husband in gray powder.
Despite such stories, some young Cameroonians continue to keep polygamy alive. Bertrand Folepe, who married his girlfriend when she became pregnant six years ago, took a second wife two years later at the urging of his parents. His father, who had eight wives, wanted him to marry a woman from his village.
Mr. Folepe didn’t protest; he is proud to carry on the tradition. On display in his family’s sitting room, which he shares with both wives, are portraits of each couple, side by side.
“If in the future I have a lot of money, I’ll take more [wives],” says Folepe, who makes a living selling small livestock.
Folepe, who lives with his wives and seven children in the small city of Dschang, has urbanized the polygamous lifestyle. Instead of dwelling in separate, adjacent homes like his family in the village where he grew up, his entire family shares one house. Each wife has her own bedroom, but the two share an outdoor kitchen, swapping cooking duties each week.
Other city-dwelling men have modernized polygamy differently, by creating separate households of independent families that share a father.
Even as traditional polygamy declines, it’s still common for men and women to have multiple partners, by either going outside their marriage or divorcing one spouse before marrying another.
Martha Ngum, head of the sociology and anthropology department at the University of Buea in southwest Cameroon, calls the latter trend “serial monogamy.” Women are driving the shift, she says, because they now attend university, work outside the home and are financially independent more than ever before.
But outside Cameroon’s cities, it’s still a man’s decision whether to take more than one wife and a woman’s responsibility to accept his choice.
Decades after accepting their husband’s decision to engage in polygamy, the Ndi Wamba wives now face another duty: providing for their many children without his financial support.
On the few days when the women aren’t cultivating the fields, they earn petty cash selling snacks at local markets. The wives hope their eldest sons, like Benoit, contribute small income. They also look to relatives for help; several of the children already have left the village compound to live with an uncle or grandmother.
For this family, the years ahead will not be easy. But as the Ndi Wamba women often say, “We must endure.”
