When we arrive at Nadegbe, a crowd is already gathered. We’ve come to help Nadebe and two other villages- Mama and Pandi- prepare a community development plan, basically a list of priorities of things that they’d like to see built or bought to help them develop the area. These villages will begin earning money from so-called ‘Community Forests,’ a section of the rainforest surrounding the villages which the inhabitants are given unique license to harvest and exploit, selling the wood to companies and collecting the profits, which are then used to buy the things they need. It’s a smart idea, and one that the Cameroonian government has been managing for the past 15 years- few communities are aware of it, however, and part of our work here is to spread the knowledge of this opportunity, and hopefully improve people’s lives by providing basic services.
The chief of Nadegbe greets us under a tin-roofed shelter, where a few padded chairs and a couch have already been set up. As the guests, we’re entitled to the seats of honor, necessary or not. The chief is wearing a shapeless olive felt hat and a white tunic with long purple stripes running down the side. He greets us formally, we introduce ourselves, and we get started with the plan.
When each of the groups have finished, they assemble as one, and we start going through the lists. Certain things, like schools and water sources are unanimous, and come to the top of the priority list. Other items, like the soccer uniforms, get pushed to the side, something that might happen someday, but it won’t be a priority.
The needs seem so basic, and it’s interesting to listen to the discussion. Cameroon is a far more developed country than most of its neighbors, but judging by this village, and the others nearby, you’d never know it. It seems odd that this is the same country where I see Cameroonians exercising on Precor elliptical trainers at the Hilton and using fiber-optic internet at their houses, while just a few hours down the road, people are struggling to get things as simple as clean water and a school that isn’t made of wooden poles and grass. I know that these people live a rarefied life in the capital, but still this disparity seems more pronounced than anywhere else I’ve worked so far. In Chad and Niger, by comparison, villages were still desperately poor for the most part, but even N’Djamena and Niamey weren’t all that much better off; they were certainly nowhere near as developed as Yaoundé, with things like overpasses, functional traffic lights, and a few genuine skyscrapers.
It feels ridiculous that things are this
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