|
Cameroon: Separatist Clashes Shut Down Schools
[All Africa] It is a bright Tuesday morning, with children hawking goods to drivers and passersby on the congested streets of Yaounde. The number of these sidewalk sellers is increasing with the ongoing conflict in Cameroon...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... 's English-speaking northwest and southwest regions, where fighting between armed separatists and government troops has shut down schools and sent thousands of children fleeing to safer ground. Among the sidewalk peddlers is 16-year-old Delphine Tabe. She says she has been a hawker for more than a year since she fled from her village in Lebialem, an administrative unit in the southwest. "I am selling boiled groundnuts to have money and help my mother who is in the hospital. She was beaten by Cameroon gendarmes after a military man was killed in our village. My mother almost died. Our school was burned and students were beaten. Since that day in May 2017, we escaped to Yaounde and we do not have money to go to school." Delphine says her chances of pursuing her dream - becoming a teacher - are gradually slipping away as she has no one to sponsor her education. Instead, she has to look for money to help her sick mother. In the kitchen at the house where Delphine lives in Yaounde, food is being prepared for 32 people. Emmanuel Nembo, a 52-year old government worker originally from Lebialem, says that a year ago, he had only five mouths to feed. The number went kaboom!as people from the southwest fled their villages and pleaded for him to feed and shelter them. Emmanuel says he is praying for the crisis to stop because many have been coming and he can no longer offer help. "We are stretching an olive hand of peace. Those in the bush should give a chance. Come back home, to their homes so that they could meet their mothers, brothers and sisters," he says. Posted by: Fred 2018-06-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=516786 |