Episode 10: Cameroon-Africa in Miniature

Explorer the Republic of Cameroon with us today!  This is one of Africa's most bio-diverse countries with its ancient forests, Mandrills, waterways, Mount Cameroon, and The Big Five!  

Let's explore what it means to be a multilingual African nation with two European official languages.  We'll look at the politics and the culture and see how they may be connected.  

Send your feedback to Sankofasojourns@gmail.com and if you'd like to be a podcast guest and represent your country-let me know.  Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIN-@SankofaSojourns and check out @SankofaSojourns on YouTube!  

If you enjoyed this episode, like it, share it, rate it and follow us on your podcast platform so you never miss an episode.    

Resource link: 

Link to documentary Cameroon Crossroads of Diversity | Africa From Above https://youtu.be/TNugLK3Ffgs?si=5l-NemCC5YTm2TOk

Come on Explorers!  Let's journey through Africa, one nation at a time!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This episode comes with a trigger warning because we're going to talk about enslavement more than we normally do. The practice of enslavement is probably as old as war. People have enslaved their captives for centuries. Read your scripture. Any scripture. Slavery in Africa didn't start with Europeans, but they made it a worldwide enterprise and took it to a whole nother level. There are some accounts that claim slave trading in the Sahara dates back as far as 3000 BCE. Most of the enslaved were from the Bantu region from Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. This was the Trans-Saharan slave trade. The dark-skinned Africans from the region south of the Sahara were considered exotic. And as early as 146 BCE, African women were captured, transported across the Sahara Desert, sold into enslavement in North African Arab slave markets, and forced to work in the homes of ancient Romans, among others. And we know what that meant for them. Now the character that Denzel Washington played in the last gladiator movie starting to make some sense. Now in the trans-Saharan slave trade, labor was needed to work the Saharan salt deposits, among other things, and the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Middle East had long held a demand for slaves. Some North African and Middle Eastern exports like horses were so valuable in the Sudan region that those kings had no problem exchanging some of their scarce human resources to secure things like horses and weapons. However, the problems involved in marching captives across the dry hot Sahara Desert were huge. It's estimated that about half the captives died on the trip through the desert. So did many of their captors. Although we can't be sure, it's generally supposed that the Trans-Saharan slave trade transported between 6,000 and 7,000 captives a year. But once the transatlantic slave trade picked up, the demand for African captives was seemingly endless. At its height during the 18th century, each year about seven times as many enslaved people were leaving the western coast of Africa than were ever marched across the Sahara Desert. As the beast for the peculiar institution of slavery grew in the New World, and that's what they always call it, especially here in the American South, they would call it the peculiar institution. It led to the decline of the Trans-Saharan slave trade. The Portuguese and many other Europeans realized that they could sail directly to Africa instead of dealing with Arab middlemen. So the Trans-Saharan slave trade dwindled a lot as the transatlantic slave trade grew. But while the transatlantic slave trade ceased, the trans-Saharan slave trade is still alive today. Africans migrating to look for better lives are at risk of being captured and sold into slavery. Libya, Mauritania, the Sudan, they all still have active slave trade. Even if it's illegal. And apparently it's still going on and it's not being done in secret. The governments of those nations know about it. The United Nations knows about it. The Trans Saharan slave trade. Follow us on all our social media platforms. It's Sankofa Sojourns everywhere. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, you name it. And travel with us. We'll be sojourning in November. We're going to Africa Town in Mobile, Alabama. But we have some sojourns coming up in June. We're going to Elizabeth, New Jersey. In September, we'll be in Rawway, New Jersey. So come on, sojourn with us. Now, explorers. Today our journey takes us to one of the most biodiverse countries on earth, meaning everything that you see in biology, you'll see in this country. So much of it, almost everything. The country is called Africa in miniature because it does have a little bit of everything you're going to find on the continent. So today we explore Cameroon. We may also say Hyude. Because in Cameroon we're going to speak lots of different languages. It's an Anglophone country and a francophone country. So in Cameroon, you're going to speak English, you're going to speak French, you're going to speak lots of languages, and you're also going to speak blends of languages. But we'll get into that later. So welcome to the Republic of Cameroon. That's their official name. They have two official languages, French and English. The capital city of Cameroon is Yaounde, but Douala is the largest city. Cameroon is the 22nd largest country in Africa. So it's about a mid-sized country. The currency there is the Central African CEFA. Now the average age is 18-19. So that's a fairly young population. Now the population now is almost 31 million people. And I would say that's doubled in the last 25 years or so. Cameroon is in the region of Central Africa. Its neighbors are Nigeria, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea. It lies on the bite of Africa, so it's a coastal country, and that's part of the Gulf of Guinea and also the Atlantic Ocean. It sits at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa. It's categorized as being in both places, sort of. So they call it the hinge of Africa. Now Cameroon has mountains, thousands of ancient trees and forests, wildlife. You can actually see the big five there. Remember, we talked about the big five? Lions, leopards, cape buffalo, elephants, and rhinoceros. Are rhinoceroses or rhinoceri? I think it's rhinoceroses. They have primate forests and they're extensive. So when I say primates, I'm talking monkeys, I'm talking all different types of apes, mandrils. These are all extensive, huge forests in Cameroon. And they're taking measures to safeguard all the different diverse animals because they have poachers that go into the forest and kill the animals and sell them in markets for meat. So Cameroon is taking it very seriously. They protect their animals, they have lots of different preserves that they're creating so that they can maintain safe spaces for animals to live in their natural habitats. Now, I said that it's on the bite of Biafra. So according to the National Ocean Service, a bite is a long gradual bend in the shoreline that forms an open bay. So the Bight of Biafra extends from Niger to Gabon, and it's named after the area that's now Cameroon. That area was called Biafra, maybe because of the Biafada people who were there, and some also say it could have been a combination of two evil words that when you translate them loosely, it meant come and take, because we know what happened in that region. Not only the Trans-Saharan slave trade, but also the Transatlantic. So there are different theories as to why that area was called Biafra, but you may also have heard of Biafra because of the Nigeria-Biafra War back in the 60s and 70s. We don't know the exact origin of the name, but what we do know is that between 1501 and 1866, it's estimated that one and a half million Africans were transported across the Atlantic from the Bight of Biafra. If you do your African ancestry, you will probably see Cameroon in the list of DNA matches because so many of us came through Cameroon to get to the rest of the world. The Bight of Biafra is also called the Bight of Bani. Now the countries on the shore of the Bight encompass parts of modern-day Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Nigeria. Northern Cameroon is part of the Sahel. Remember, we talked about the Sahel. It's that semi-arid area. So there's a short rainy season and a long dry season. And that the Sahel is that transition zone between the dry, dry Sahara Desert and the humid African savannah lands below the Sahara Desert. The central highlands of Cameroon is where you'll find Yaounde, the capital city. Now the weather there is warm, it's humid, they've got marked rainy seasons. You're gonna feel the rain. And then they also have their dry season as well. In the south, it's hot, very humid, and has heavy rains. And all this talk of humidity and deserts is making me thirsty. Let me get some water. The temperatures across the nation in Cameroon range anywhere from zero Celsius, which is about 32 degrees Fahrenheit, to 35 degrees Celsius. And remember, we're gonna multiply the Celsius number by 1.8, and then we're gonna add 32, and that way we'll be able to figure out what it is in Fahrenheit. So 35 Celsius is about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. So the best time to visit Cameroon is generally between November and February when it's drier. So it's difficult to get around during rainy season in Cameroon. It's better to come when the rainy season is over, and that way there'll be less mud, it'll be drier, and it'll make it easier for you to hike Mount Cameroon. Now, let's talk about the government of Cameroon. Cameroon has a president, and it's supposed to be a republic. In name, it's a unitary presidential republic. So it's a highly centralized system with strong presidential power. Now, presidential power is so strong in Cameroon that some would consider the president an authoritarian leader. The president has been in power since 1982. He's currently 92 years old. He's supposed to have seven-year terms, and the terms were limited to two terms. But in 2008, those term limits were abolished because I guess they weren't being followed anyway, because he had been in power since 1982 at that time, too. Electoral fraud accusations and protests are met with violence on the part of the government, and people are killed and putting down the protests. Politically, they also have a lot of tension in the Anglophone regions because the people that live there have some grievances. And we'll get into that a little later, too, because as I said, in Cameroon, you will speak English and you'll speak French. But let's talk about the first people of Cameroon. The oldest known inhabitants of the area were hunters and gatherers. The Baaka, Baabinga, Bambuti, Bakula. Remember, these are the people. Now their presence predates the Bantu expansion and any other migrations. So remember the Ba toi of Burundi? These were the Baaka of the area that became Cameroon. We don't say pygmy anymore because it has rude connotations. You also use pygmy to describe animals that are small in stature. So you don't want to go around calling people pygmy necessarily. Let's decolonize. So you can say the baka. Or in another country, the batwa, right? But not pygmy. So over the centuries, Bantu-speaking people moved south and west. Now, also other people, Sudanic people, Chadic people, also settled in the north and the far north of the region that's now called Cameroon. So the Baka, the original people, were not replaced. They still live there in southeastern Cameroon. They are still there today. Now, their relationship with the other groups who migrated later is complex, but they did do trade, exchange culture, but there was also some marginalization of those people, of the Baca people, because remember, these are people who are more forest dwellers. They don't come with lots of cattle and farming. So sometimes they tend to get marginalized and also they're smaller in stature. But the Baca maintain their deep forest knowledge. And the later groups who came to the area relied on them for their survival. Now, in general, there's a cultural divide. There are similar groups further south in Cameroon as well. They're looking for grazing land, you know. And then you'll have the people who live in the south, which has more forests and hills, and those are the agriculturalist people. They're not nomadic. They stay, they plant, they grow things, and they live in permanent communities and permanent villages. The north is predominantly Muslim, whereas in the south, the people are predominantly Christian, and quite a few practice African spirituality. Now, most of the population you're going to find in the cities. So that's where the density is. You know, it's greatest in the western highlands. Remember, that's where the capital city, Yaounde, is, and it's lowest population in the southeastern interior. So again, most of the people live in urban areas. There are over 275 ethnicities in Cameroon. Now, the Bamileke is one of the largest. Now you have the Bam. Then you have the Beti and the Beti Fang, which encompasses the Iwundo, the Bulu, the Fang. You have the Basa, and then you have the Duala people. And remember, the Duala is the name of the largest city in Cameroon, but there's also an ethnicity called Douala, and there's also the Bakweri people, the Tikar, and the Fula. The Fula show up everywhere, don't they? So again, a shout out to my soul relatives, my pull relatives, languages in Cameroon. Again, if they have over 275 ethnicities, you can imagine how many different languages they have. And Cameroon is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world because they have so many languages, and because there's you know also English widely spoken and French widely spoken. Now, Fulfulde, the language of the Fulat people, is also widely spoken. So when I greeted you with Jamna, that's Fulfulde, that's the language of the Fulani people, and that is like means are you at peace? Now they also have a language called Camtok. So Camtok is sort of like Cameroon talk, and it's a creole. Now some people call it a pidgin language, but I find that to be a little derogatory. So I prefer to say it's a mixture, it's a creole, it's a language. Now in the 70s, a new Creole language was created because African people are very innovative. So in the 70s, a Creole came about called Cam Franglais. Come for Cameroon, Fran for French, and Anglais for English. So come franglais is another Creole language that some people will speak in Cameroon. And also when I greeted you and I said, Hi you day. Tell me what I said. Right. It was how are you? So if you listen to the Cameroonian Creole, you'll hear a lot of English. You'll hear a lot of things that you might hear in the Gulagie region in America. And if you're a person of southern extraction like me, these words sound very familiar. And you can kind of understand them. Now, Cameroonian English and Nigerian English is also very similar. There's a young lady, and she's a Nigerian biker, and she's biking all across Africa. And she goes to different countries, and it's interesting when she goes to places where they speak their version of English, how well she can communicate with people from countries far, far away from Nigeria because their version of English is very similar, and it's very similar to the one that we ended up creating here in America. Now, the dominance of French in English is in all formal settings, has been pushing down the indigenous languages. So the younger people, they speak French, they speak English. So the indigenous languages are dying. You know, because people just adopt the language of business and commerce. But on the bright side, there are still so many different languages, and the ability to operate in different languages just really just enhances Cameroon's richness. It's a different culture and it promotes togetherness while also promoting diversity. I applaud the multilingual. Cameroonians. Now the people there are mainly Roman Catholic. That's the biggest religion. It's about 38% of the people practice Roman Catholicism. About 26% of them are Protestant, 20% Muslim. And then another 5% practice indigenous African spirituality. Again, the belief in the spiritual essence of everything, including the weather. Then about 11% of the people identify as atheist or just other as far as their religious beliefs. Now, when you're talking business in Cameroon, they grow cacao, coffee, bananas, palm oil, rubber. They have oil there. Now they discovered a lot of oil in the 70s, but then they started to lack the resources in the 80s, but there's oil there, black gold. And then we have timber, aluminum, where they process the aluminum. You know, they actually take the aluminum and make it into things to export. And they also do something called sand mining, which I've never heard of. Sand mining is very hard work. It's like salt mining. If you ever heard of somebody like, oh, they have to go work in the salt mines. That's because that is hard work. So is sand mining. You're going under the water to bring up sand that you can take and use for construction. But when you're using cement and mixing sand into it, you need the sand. So sand mining is a job there. It's a career. Cameroon has strong natural resource potential, but since their infrastructure has so many problems and weaknesses because of the government corruption, they have a lot of uneven development. So they've got lots of potential in Cameroon because it is so biodiverse. Let's talk about the people that came to Cameroon. The Germans are the first to f officially colonize it, and they didn't get Cameroon until the Berlin Conference. But they weren't the first people to come to Cameroon. The Carthaginians came down from North Africa as early as 500 BCE. They established trade routes, traded gold, salt, and that's right, people. Remember, we just talked about the Trans-Saharan slave trade. So Carthage is what would be today Tunisia. So that area. So people were coming down from North Africa into Cameroon looking for free labor. Now in 1472, the Portuguese came. And they liked what they saw, so they came back to explore. One of the things they found were large colonies of prawns. You know, those big giant shrimp, those prawns, gambas. That's what they found. They found lots of those. And I mean, I would come back too if I came to a country and discovered these giant shrimp. So they called the water that they found them in the Rio dos Camarão. That's the river of shrimp in Portuguese. And so the Rio dos Camarão became Camarão, and that became Cameroon. And so that's where they get the name. We know that the Portuguese wanted to establish themselves as the captains of the transatlantic slave trade. They made that clear since the 1400s. And by the 1500s, Cameroon had become a major source of Africans to be trafficked and sold to the Americas and the New World. As we know, the trans-Saharan slave trade declined a lot as the transatlantic slave trade increased. But when it was abolished in the early 1800s, the transatlantic slave trade, that is, Cameroon leaned into agriculture and trading with Europe. So this led to Cameroonians becoming indebted to Europeans. The English sent missionaries to the area from England, from their colony of Jamaica, and even some African American missionaries went to Cameroon as well. And so a small English-speaking community began to grow, and it began to be considered elite to speak English. So the Anglophone elite was born. Then the Berlin Conference came, and Germany got Cameroon. England thought they would get it. They named it German Cameroon. They spelled it with a K and they put a U instead of two O's. But it was basically German Cameroon. They began to focus on growing and exporting cacao, palm oil, tea, tobacco, and rubber. They also needed to build roads and railways so they could move products from inland to the coast. So what did they institute? Think about it. That's right. Forced labor. So slavery was abolished, and instead, people were conscripted to work for free, to build railways, and grow these different crops. Forced labor. It was brutal. Then World War I happened, and we've seen it in other parts of the continent. When Germany loses the war, they also lose their colonies. So the League of Nations took the colony of German Cameroon and divided it and gave Great Britain a little part up in the East, and they called their little part British Cameroons. And that's where they spoke English. France got the West and most of it. They got about ten times as much of Cameroon than England did. And they called it French Cameroon with a U, R-O-U-N. The French and the British treated their territories differently. The British stopped forced labor, but they paid very little attention to the territory. They were focused on the bigger fish they had to fry, which was Nigeria, Ghana. They actually brought in Nigerian civil servants to run Cameroon, to run their British Cameroon. The French played it differently, and they kept forced labor in effect until the 1940s. So the people of British Cameroon and French Cameroon, they knew they were all one people. So as we've seen, after World War II, a lot of nationalism took place in Africa. A lot of people said, okay, let's become our own nation again. So in 1945, a labor union was formed, and they had strikes in Douala. And then in 1948, the nationalist people, the people who decided to make themselves a nation, formed a socialist party called the UPC, Union de Popula de Cameroon. The UPC called for reuniting the two Cameroons, and they wanted independence from England and France. So the French cracked down because, as I said, they didn't let go of free labor practices and forced labor practices, and they were invested in keeping this colony. But the French cracked down at the UPC fought back. In 1956, France began preparing for the independence of Cameroon, realizing that this colonization is not sustainable and I guess no longer profitable. More political parties grew, and France supported the moderate parties, the ones that would keep the ties with France. So parties like the Democrats in Central Cameroon, led by Andre Marie Mbida, and the Union Camerounaise, or the UC in the north, led by Elij Amadou Ahijo. In 1958, Aijou worked with France but called for independence, while assuring the French that he would maintain ties with them. Between 1955 and 1962, there was a lot of fighting for independence and over 15,000 people were killed. The bulk of them were Cameroonian citizens, just civilians, not soldiers. Finally, on January 1, 1960, Cameroon won their independence. The colony of Cameroon, French Cameroon, became the Republic of Cameroon. And Elaj Amadou Babatura Aizhou became their first president. Now there was some bizarre ruling, and the United Nations stepped in to decide the fate of British Cameroons. They called for a vote to find out if people wanted to become part of the newly independent Federation of Nigeria or the new Republic of Cameroon. So when this happens, when an outside entity steps in and you know organizes a vote on a particular issue, that's called a plebiscite, where they take it to the people. That was in the national spelling bead the other day, too. And I think I saw it on Jeopardy. So that's a good word to remember: plebiscite. The people of the South voted to join with the Republic of Cameroon, and the people of the North voted to become part of Nigeria. That's how you get the present-day layout of Cameroon. Now in 1972, the president unified French-speaking Cameroon and British-speaking Cameroon. The Anglophone population was the minority. Because remember, France got ten times as much land as England did. So most of the people of Cameroon spoke French as their official language. So the Anglophone minority felt that they were being absorbed into the Francophone world and that they were being erased. And they didn't support that. Because they had separate ways of doing everything. They had English-speaking schools versus French-speaking schools. They even had separate courts. So this merger did not go smoothly. It led to the Anglophone crisis, which is still happening today. English-speaking Cameroonians feel marginalized by French-speaking Cameroon. So this reunification of the British land and the French land, and to try to make it one country that's Cameroonian wasn't a complete reunification. And the minority groups feel like they lost a lot during the merger of the two territories. And in the mid-2010s, the crisis began to heat up and it became violent in 2016, 2017. People are killed. Lots of people were killed. And they still have people being killed now in this anglophone crisis. Now, President Aizhou, the first president, ruled for 22 years. He became an authoritarian ruler who ruled over a one-party nation. There were lots of payoffs, lots of corruption, lots of unrest, and eventually President Aizhou handed power over to his prime minister, Paul Bia, in 1982. In 1984, there was a coup attempted, but President Biah put the coup down in a few days. President Aizhou was accused of leading the coup, and he died in exile in Dakar, Senegal in 1989. Now there were rumors of another coup in June of 2025, but those were false rumors put out on the internet. President Paul Bia is still in power. He was just, quote, re-elected, unquote, in October. Again, as I said, he's 92. But with these conditions, internal fighting, leaders who won't leave, people being dissatisfied with the government, and authoritarianism, well, you judge for yourself what the future of Cameroon looks like if they don't change. So let's talk about the way they are in Cameroon and start with the ways of knowing. The educational system in Cameroon is divided into primary school, secondary school, high school, and tertiary school. So tertiary school meaning college, university. So primary school. Primary school is six years long and from the age of six to age twelve, and it's compulsory. And while primary school is free, parents do have to pay for uniforms and books. So if you see someone raising funds to help with schools in different countries, it may not always just be for tuition, but it also could be a fund created to help with books and school supplies and uniforms, things like that. Because these things are not cheap, especially in a country where you don't make that much money to begin with. The fees for secondary school are high. A lot of people can't afford it. So the literacy rate in Cameroon is about 72%. They do have lots of colleges and universities, both public and private, there. But they're expensive. And the people who can afford to leave and go study abroad, they do. In 2019, a movement and the government called the Major National Dialogue gave the English-speaking regions more autonomy in managing schooling and education. And the government formed the National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism in 2017. So these are things being put into place by the government to ensure the use of English and French in both schools and in public offices. In Cameroon, there are so many ways of knowing. They include oral storytelling, where storytellers gather everyone around in a circle and they tell stories, and the stories talk about life and lessons and history and knowledge. And it's really interactive. It's not just the speaker, the speaker is in the circle speaking, but the community is answering. There's a definite call and response aspect to it. Now they also have religious teachings as a way of knowing, but society also teaches you. You learn the norms of your society. You learn what to do, what not to do. And then you also learn those mores, right? Those little nuances that teach you the difference between right and wrong, show you which way to go in our society. So this is how you learn in Cameroon as well. These are the ways of knowing that are all part of the fabric of Cameroonian society. Now, as far as science and technology, they have the Cameroon Academy of Sciences. It's a non-government organization, so it's not formed by the government. It's what we would call an NGO. Now, their mission is to promote excellence and relevance in science and technology, and then to take that information and provide advice to the government. So they take scientific knowledge and research and use it to advise the government on innovation and improvement for the country. Cameroon is also committed to the entire digital framework. They're enhancing everything digitally. They are building technology parks. So in America, you might hear of Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Think of technology parks. So they're building these in Cameroon. They're also making digital equipment there. They're also manufacturing things. They're also creating content. They're encouraging content creation. They're also encouraging infrastructure building. So all of it is growing in Cameroon. The digital world is booming in Cameroon, and the youth are leading the charge. Now, as far as the arts of Cameroon, we will start with the culinary arts. Now, there's a dish called ndole. That's the national dish of Cameroon. It's a stew and it's made with ndole leaves or what you call bitter leaf. And it has peanuts, crayfish, beef, and spices. Now this is supposed to be a very hearty dish, and it's also supposed to smell amazing. And you eat it with myondo. So myondo is ground cassava wrapped in banana leaves and steamed or ground plantains wrapped in, you know, mashed plantains cooked in banana leaf. So ndole and myondo seems to be what you have to eat when you go to Cameroon. And it's the modern times, I'm sure, if you don't eat meat, someone would prepare one for you without meat. Now they eat sauces with swallows, right? So eating a stew with the meondo, that's what you will call a sauce and a swallow. So fufu, they do eat fufu there. And they also have the tradition of wrapping foods in banana leaves for cooking. I see that in a lot of the food that I was looking at because I do like to look at the food videos of the country and really see what you know what do I eat when I get there. One thing I discovered about Cameroon is they eat a lot of different animals that we eat than you might eat in the Western world. So if you're adventurous, you may have something new and unexpected. But make sure it's not something endangered or illegal, right? Because that's what happens too sometimes. And if it seems suspicious, avoid it. Now, as far as their creative arts, they make masks in Cameroon. I watched an amazing video of a man making bronze masks and what they call lost wax mold casting. He explained that his handcraft is dying because it's expensive. So he has not taught it to his children. It's too expensive to keep up the tradition. That made me feel like maybe there's something that needs to be done so that these ancient traditions are not lost. They also make handmade instruments, and it's quite common for storytellers to make their own instruments out of different natural fibers and different things. They use that when they're telling the story to hammer the points home. So they have some drum-based instruments, they have some flute-based instruments, but they have beautiful handmade musical instruments. And textiles and fabric, that's also part of the arts of Cameroon. Your appearance matters, how you look matters, how you dress matters, and depending on where you're going to be, it would dictate what you would wear or how you would wear it. Clothes matter in Cameroon. They have African Fashion Week. It's one coming up in Yaounde in June. So June 4th, if you're into fashion, go to Yaounde, Cameroon, and support African Fashion Week and see what's on the cutting edge coming out of Cameroon. Now, Cameroon has some notables known around the world usually for their athletic prowess. That's usually the people that you'll know. But we also have actress Constance Ajuma. Now you may see her name pop up on an American television show or in an American movie. She was a stunt woman in Black Panther for the Doro Melaje. Yes, so Constance Ajuma. Now you may have heard of the soccer player or around the world. We're gonna decolonize. Most people call it football. So footballer Andre Onana. You may have heard of basketball players. I know you heard of Joel Embiid if you follow the NBA. And there's Pascal Siekam, also from Cameroon. Now Cameroon is world-renowned for their soccer team, for their football team. The indomitable lions of Cameroon. They made World Cup history four times. Now this is a World Cup year that I'm recording this, so just keep that in mind. Now the first time Cameroon made World Cup history was in 1990 when Roger Milla or Albert Roger Mila became the oldest goal scorer in World Cup history. He was 38 at the time. He was retired, but he returned to play at the request of the president of the country. That year, Cameroon made history again by becoming the first African team to advance to the quarterfinals. Woo woo-woo. Yes, Cameroon. And then in 1994, Mr. Milan, Monsieur Milan, broke his own record and scored another goal in the World Cup. And he was 42. That record still holds. That's been since 1994. He still holds the record of being the oldest goal scorer. And the fourth history-making moment came in 2022 when Cameroon became the first African nation to beat Brazil in a World Cup match. If you know anything about football, you know what a powerhouse team Brazil was, especially then, right? Brazil. So they were the first African nation to beat them in a World Cup match. So Cameroon is proud of their footballing. Now, they're very proud of, as I said, of their football. And you can go on YouTube and watch Roger Miller. He's known around the world for his corner flag victory dance. It's really cute and it's really funny to me how this African man set the whole world on fire just by wiggling his hips. But go and watch Roger Milla's victory dance. Now the people of Cameroon, they have a lot of respect for their elders, a lot of respect for their leaders. Maybe that's why they can live under an authoritarian ruler for so long. But proper manners, hospitality, these are all musts in Cameroon. They work together a lot communally to resolve issues. So those gatherings in circles to work out problems that still takes place in Cameroon, especially in the villages. But it's the way that the people treat each other too. So even if you may not see it formally, I'm sure it's in the way that they deal with one another. So when you're in Cameroon, you're gonna shake hands with people, you're gonna give greetings, you're gonna ask how they're doing, you're gonna ask how their families are doing. You're gonna take your time and be patient because it shows that you care, and that's how it's done in Cameroon. Memory in Cameroon is captured in film, books, dance, and also music. So I want you to go and look up Cameroonian dance and give yourself a treat. So be sure to check out Makosa Dance, which means dance in the Duala language. They also have traditional dance in the Bonsol tradition and other traditions. So you'll see dancers that use a bottle and a spoon as the instrument. You also might see someone, you also may see someone dancing with a bottle on their head, balanced on their head, as they do these motions and hip gyrations and go up and down. It's fascinating, it's fabulous. You gotta check it out. And now, I would not be able to talk about Cameroon and not talk about Manu de Bango. So Manu de Bango back in the 70s, he set the music world on fire with his hit Soul Makosa. If you were alive in the 70s, which I was, you heard Soul Makosa on the radio, and when it played at a party, and I'm talking party, I'm like five, six years old. We were getting down to Soul Makosa. So I don't have the rights to play Soul Makosa, but I did make you a little Makosa beat, so we can hear a little bit of just a general idea, but it's like a high life music, it's got a lot of funk to it. A little bit that I could find on the internet for you and put together just so you can get a feel for it. The clash of cultures still goes on in Cameroon, right? But so does the connection, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, it's also still there. And there's a beauty to that. It fills me with gratitude. So to the Cameroonian people, I want to say merci beaucoup. And ajarama. So I'm saying thank you in French, but I'm also saying it in Fouful Day. So in the meantime, people, like, follow, and share this podcast. We're now in 34 countries. We're still on six continents, but I want to say welcome, Sweden. Hello, hello, hello, and thank you to all of our loyal explorers here in the U.S. and over in the UK for not missing an episode in Tower Hamlet, London. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And Dublin, Ohio. Have it missed the beat. So thank you. And I want to welcome our newest explorers in Omaha, Nebraska, Milpitas, California, Lewisburg, North Carolina, and Portland, Oregon. And shout out to all my listeners around the world. The Explorers Club is growing. Keep sharing the podcast, keep inviting others to listen to. Share an episode with someone you know would enjoy it. Share this episode. Okay, let's get the word out because we want as many people to be informed about Africa as possible. But as we reflect on Cameroon, we're gonna do some breathing together. So we're gonna breathe in to the count of six, hold, and then breathe out to the count of eight. Because when you breathe in and breathe out a little longer than you breathe in, that helps regulate and calm your central nervous system. So let's breathe in to the count of six. Breathe in through your nose. Always breathing in through your nose, not through your mouth. So that you can push the breath down into your belly. Two, three, four, five, six. Hold it a little. Breathe out. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Breathe in, two, three, four, five, six, eight, hold. Breathe out, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Last time in two, three, four, five, six, hold. And out two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. So as we prepare to part ways, I will not say adieu. I won't say goodbye. I'll say putule, which means see you later. With all the ups and downs, the people of Cameroon still know who they are and what they stand for. As we close out, imagine what you can create from all the beautiful contradictions that make you who you are.