Le Cameroun est l'Afrique en Miniature!
I left Cameroon 2 months ago, and since then I had promised myself to write something about the last moments of my live there. Ok, like usual I had the typical excuses of ‘no time’, ‘no mood for today’, but someday it would be the time to see the old pictures and to realise that I was there... even I would have never expected to be there, at least not for almost 1 year.

As expected, my main motivational motor for coming here was the opportunity for travelling. But why travelling ??? interesting question, since at the end how important should be to take pictures to every old churche or famous building in somewhere thousand kilometers far away from home ? I mean, besides me, who cares? Definitively it is not about telling others ‘look, I was here’, but to meeting people and saying ‘look, I come from this place’. I think that the second one is more exciting.

Travelling in Cameroon has been one of the best learning experiences I have ever had in this intent of independency (alright, the concept of learning experience might sound very familiar to most of my friends). Anyway, it was not only taking a bus or a train and going somewhere unknown, but also getting to know new people everyday and to realise how interesting can be to value what I have, only by the time that I don’t have it... Landscapes and food in Cameroon are wonderful, and still I could remind me about the rainforest in Peru. My god ! I have realised that in Peru I can find almost everything which is available in the world ! (I think I should call this text ‘Le Peru est le monde en miniature’). Coming back to my african temporally home country, I still remember quite good the weekend I went to Mont Cameroun, that bunch of earth of 4070 meters above sea level and all that nature I saw there. Of course the ascension had to be done by walking... from the rain forest, the climate and flora changed together with the altitude and by 2000 mts it was possible to see the savana, by 3000 mts it was very cold, and on the top I could just see rocks and to receive a freezing wind... something like being in the moon at night. Mont Cameroun was borned due to constant volcanic activity in the region (this mountain appears alone in that whole region, like an island in the middle of the rain forest), because of this, it is still possible to see some vulcan activity close to the top and even black sand. The landscape is just amazing (I definitively love mountains), green and black hills one after the other, with an overview of the sea and the main cities of Buea and Douala. A couple of NGOs are trying to develop eco-tourism in this region, I am totally glad to hear about any kind of environmental initiative, but it is still cool to feel that I was walking in a region, where few visitors come...

Some months later I went also to another region in Cameroon, full of mountains, but more crowed with cities and town (and tourist initiatives which mainly try to get as much money as possible from the rare foreigners that come to visit). The North West of Cameroon is well know for being the touristic focus of the country... it is important to understand, that tourist focus is meant in the sense that it has enough hotels and infraestructure for receiving people aiming to have relax and to travel with comfort in a car, and surrounded by lots of towns with markets for souveniers and ‘musicians’ and ‘kings’. All this is then not relevant at all for me. Well, yeah, Bafoussam and other surrounding cities are nice... like usual, I had to be quite careful when purchasing things, since people tended to take the best price (let’s say, they thought I was a rich guy from France). One of the nicest experiences was to stay in a friend’s family, something that I am not that used to... it is very nice, because in such a way, I complement this lack of moments with my family, while visiting the family of others. As we think, distance strenghts relationships...

Another region that I found really exciting in Cameroon was the North. This upper half of the country is really different from the souther rain forest, where most citizens life. This Sahel zone is simply the closest to the Sahara, and thus, climate and geography are more difficult for people (at least for the ones like me, which are very used to facilities). There is not much water, it is extremely hot and very poor. Most of the people here are muslims, so it is quite common that buses make stops in the middle of the road, so people can get down and pray for some minutes. Since I was not praying, I used to pick up some delicious mangos and to buy some water. This was however, my first direct contact with Islam...

In between I had been doing small travels to other towns close to Douala and Yaounde. But every town I see and every landscape I enjoy, reminds me to Peru... I swear, my home country has every single geographical attraction that I can imagine.

On the 28/07/2006 it was the time to say good bye to Cameroon... I have been thinking for many nights about my how I felt when leaving... it is true that I would miss lots of things, but I also was quite happy going to Germany, visiting a couple of friends and coming back to some confort. Sub-Saharan Africa is definitively a very hard place to live and this has enforces my passion for economics around developing issues. I still believe that the private entrepreneurship is the simple base for development, however poverty can not be saw just on articles or on the TV. I think it can be very exciting to work in development, while having fun. If everyone could have the chance to go there, for sure much more would be done for the world... by enjoying it.