Meet The Wretches Of Bangem

On the atlas of Cameroon, Bangem is a small, poor forgotten country. Of the more than 1.2 billion people worldwide still living on less than $1.25 a day, according to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Bangem people are part of the wretched lot.
By Azore Opio

Bangem’s is a sophisticated tale of how an entire Division has been munched in the clammy claws of deception, betrayal and corruption. When you are in Bangem, you see eyeball to eyeball with poverty, misery, agony, despondency and all.
Bangem is the headquarters of Kupe Muanenguba Division in the South West Region. It is a sub-division of intense contradictions. A series of ill fortunes and wastage have reduced Bangem people to want. Compared to the vast majority of the inhabitants of this world, the Bangemians are rich indeed, yet are consumed by abject poverty, making the contrast between what the Bangem politicians say and what actually obtains in Bangem shamefully stark.
The dismal state of roads in the subdivision has been a constant source of exasperation, hopelessness, vexation and underdevelopment for the long suffering people.
The Bangemians, who, could be said, are victims of politically induced poverty, are caught in the struggle between backwardness and civilisation.
The rainy season in Bangem commences in May and lasts through October. For six months, there is continual rainfall – roads are knee-deep in sticky mud. There is little that the Bangemians can do but to remain confined to their villages. During these torrentially wet months, the Bangemians suffer immeasurable deprivations and hardship.
Early in August 2014, a landslide occurred at the entrance into Bangem town along the Melong-Bangem road. Then in October, the landslide escalated making access into Bangem by road near impossible. The landslide apart, the road linking Melong and Bangem has not been maintained for more than three years now. The landslide plus the unmaintained road have done one of many things to the landlocked Division. Bangem has been cut off from the rest of the country; families whose residences are close to the landslide area feel endangered as homes could be eroded down the valley into the fast-flowing River Mbweh; the lives of pedestrians, particularly schoolchildren going to the GBHS Bangem and other institutions are threatened.
It will be recalled that two schoolchildren were barely rescued last September from drowning in the valley where the landslide occurred.
The arteries of Bangem are clogged with rotting farm produce. Farmers are unable to sell their produce such as cocoa, coffee and food crops like plantains and maize go to pot on the farms as buyers can no longer enter Bangem to purchase the produce. Above all these anxieties, many parents have been unable to send their children to school this year due to lack of money, while prices of goods and services have soared.
Despite repeated peaceful strike actions carried out by women in September 2014 to drive government to redress these issues, nothing has been done.
So, what can be done to assuage the Bangemians? Those who live in Bangem, and whose lives hang on the balance of precarious landslides, say government or the Bangem Council should build an embankment around the landslide area to avoid further soil collapse and institute a reforestation or tree planting programme in the area.
The Bangem Council and the relevant decentralized technical government ministries should conduct a survey to divert the road to a safer point or area; government should hasten up the maintenance of the Melong-Bangem-Tombel road and the Bangem-Nguti road to relieve the population in this Division from suffering. Lastly, farmers’ capacities to store, process and transform food should be improved.
It is usually not said publicly, but in private circles, Bangemians say their politicians cost too much in terms of stolen votes, achieve too little and leave too late. Their departures, however, usually leave no tears. For the most parts, the politicians and the government have continued to ignore the immediate needs, plight and appeals of the Bakossi people. For many years, Bangem has become an obsessive, if not a disgusting topic of rueful discussion amongst those who know the subdivision. And even those who do not know it.
The politicians of Kupe Muanenguba appall all but party officials. They live on high notes and to be thought of by their masters as great people. They do their voters a bad turn, revealing that they are more important than good governance, and none of those things is their own vanity.
Bangemians and their kith and kin in Kupe Muanenguba have begun realizing that development is not going to them quickly any time soon. They are aware that their perceptions in the past about political gains are shifting.
The Bangemians area clearly very worried about their welfare. They wish they could wake up one morning and find their land transformed; their roads turned into rivers flowing with milk and honey; the deep holes in their roads filled with gold and diamonds and their hills covered with butter.