One of the trending news of these past two days was drummed up by a tweet made by Nigerian journalist, Mimi Fawaz. As many of you must know, she was chosen as one of the two hosts of the AFCON draw ceremony.
In a now-deleted tweet that was published on Sunday, Mimi Fawaz talked about "playing hide and seek in her hotel room with a mosquito." For all intents I personally believed it was an innocuous tweet aimed at 'giving gist' about her experience that night.
Many Cameroonians did not take that lightly and verbally assaulted her, some with a lot of crass words. She tweeted an apology this morning (en francais s'il vous plait) but that did not really attenuate things as more insults poured her way.
It's quite hypocritical, to say the least, to see how Cameroonians banded to to insult a foreigner who they believe "insulted their country." For one it wasn't even in an insult, and secondly this overzealous show of patriotism is unwarranted and just plain idiotic.
What stands out most from this incident is the atypical Cameroonian violence. We are an extremely violent people. And this is usually expressed with words. I've had enough discussions with Cameroonians who have traveled to other countries on this continent who always juxtapose the difference in politeness and openness between Cameroonians and Kenyans, Ghanaians or even Senegalese people, for example. Someone was asked once about the most striking experience they first had when they went abroad, and she replied "being in traffic and not one person honking." I think of Cameroon and I just laugh.
And it is worrying.
This shroud of super patriotism hides or should I say even protects the perpetrators of the heinous crime that is bad governance, from the accountability and responsibility that they have to face. Because one person will have to complain about untarred roads for every angry Cameroonian to say "don't you also have untarred roads in your country?"
A couple of years ago, I was listening to Akere Muna on the radio being interviewed on the slight jump of Cameroon on Transparency International's list of most-corrupt countries. The journalist couldn't hide the delight in his voice when he asked Akere Muna how he felt about Cameroon doing better on the index.
Akere Muna asked him "if your son comes home with a 3/20 at the end of the first term, and then comes home with a 4/20 average during the second term, are you going to throw a party for him because he improved by one point? Or are you going to be worried because he is way below average?"
Cameroon is that father that wants to throw a party.
I've always said that Yaounde is a big village. It is one of the ugliest capital cities on the continent. It only compares to some war-torn cities in Eastern Europe. Someone mentioned a mosquito and the whole place went haywire. In January people will be landing in that glorified bus park we call an airport. Many of you will cut your veins when people start complaining about that plus all the old taxis you have plying your dusty roads.
Tino once said 'the humility of a Cameroonian starts at the airport in Addis Ababa'. Perhaps many of us have not been exposed to the outside world to see that a lot of the infrastructures we are hailing here are just basic in other countries. Starting with the Douala Grand Mall. You'd think people would go to YouTube to even educate themselves about these things. But nope! It's easier to go spit venom on Mimi Fawaz's tweet.
Our problems are bigger than a mosquito in a hotel room. Someone mentioned (and rightly so) that the hotel in question should have issued an apology to their guest for having her stay not as good as she should have. But we live in a country where even customer service is an elusive concept and people never thought in that direction.
January is coming. We know our leaders naa? Many things will not ready by then and people will complain. At this rate we will run out of insults. Make all man tighten trouser.
Cameroon Obosso!
W.W