I have this uncle I am not on good terms with; or rather, who is not on good terms with me. For some reason which I am yet to comprehend, one day, out of the blue, I became his least favourite nephew.
My sister knew of this tension between him and me but never understood the gravity of the whole thing until one day when she flew in from abroad and we both went to visit said uncle. It was when our uncle refused to shake my hand that she realised how badly our relationship had deteriorated.
On our way back, she told me she had no idea things were that bad and that when we had spoken about it hitherto, I always laughed it off. That I never seemed to be bothered. I told her “why bother about the things you cannot change? Especially those you cannot understand.”
That answer captures the state of my frame of mind for a long time. It has helped me in many ways, especially in filtering out the toxic things in my life. I used to think it was purely the product of my personal experiences and self-discovery, but the more I look around I realise that it is more a product of my environment with the source of the issue being…
Cameroonians and our ability for turning serious things into a laughing matter.
Social media has had a great part in this. We use to laugh about stuff before but now with Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, we all have similar places where we can all meet and turn our problems into derision and laugh at them and spread them with viral efficiency.
It started with the Bidoung Challenge. A magnanimous display of the great level of ‘kiss-assery’ that is polluting our politics. I thought it would have been time for us to come together to talk about elitism in our society and question the moral rectitude of our leaders who are subservient to the point of making complete fools of themselves on national TV just so they can fall into the good graces of a human being whom they have unfortunately elevated to a demi-god status.
What did we have instead? A laugh contest on social media to see who could pull off the best Bidoung Challenge.
Then there was the PB HEV scandal. Something that should have had some heads on a spike by now, and what did we have instead? Another laugh-fest to see who could come up with the most creative #32GigsIsTheNew500Giga meme.
Then we had the constitutional council hearings, the tontinard episode, the recent glissement de date and now we have people joking about the cabinet reshuffle and the triumphant entry of Momo John of God into the honeypot.
Make no mistake, I know many people have denounced this and have often shared these memes as an act of denunciation, to expose and "caricaturise" the gross incompetence and lack of vision of the people who are in leadership positions.
But after laughing what do we do? Apart from sitting down next and continuing with our lives until the trend dies.
I understand that pretty much like my relationship with my uncle, it is hard to understand why things are the way they are. I mean, we all know it is greed and yet we don’t understand how much greed a person can have to ‘roll over a whole generation in flour’ this much while we sit back and watch the whole kitchen burn around.
I tend to think it is both a blessing and a curse. Perhaps more of a curse. If anything, it has blessed us with a sense of resilience. Cameroonians are likely able to cope in other environments that are harsh too because we already know what it is like to live under Biya for 30+ years.
But then, like with my relationship with my Uncle, it is a curse too. We accept the status quo to our own detriment. I tend to think we laugh things off as a means of dealing with the issue. It is some sort of psychological crutch, a wall to lean on. Some kind of coping mechanism which is as dangerous as it is unhealthy.
But what can we, a generation of young people, do about it? We can’t just laugh it off as I did with my uncle. The stakes are much higher than that. I am inclined to think that this laughter and resilience harbours a deep-seated frustration and disillusion against the system and is something like a pressure cooker that when it explodes will have disastrous consequences.
At this point, I have no solutions to offer. I would love to say we should stop laughing so much. But that does not offer any concrete solution either. Perhaps the only solution I can bring to the table is to write about it and open our eyes to what a serious issue this is.
Cameroon looks to me like a nation of sad clowns. Laughing on the outside but crying inside. But I have also seen what evil clowns are made of and what they can do. We are at the edge of the precipice, and anytime now we are going to switch from Krusty to Pennywise.
- Wandji Wilfred
P.S** Krusty is the sad clown from “The Simpsons” who tells bad jokes, drinks a lot and is unhappy with life. Pennywise is the evil clown from the movie “IT”
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