‘Sorry, but c'est la triste réalité’, ’c’est le Cameroun’
I cannot tell you how much my heart burns when I hear people utter those phrases as a reason to why we cannot do better. Most don’t even say it with an air of disappointment, they say it as in to display some sort of enlightenment they have attained that the rest of us are not privy to - like they know something we do not know and until will get that knowledge, they have no business talking to us.
How man can be so hopeless and in doubt of his own power in such an arrogant way is something I am yet to understand. Before you were born, the world was just at it was without you and that was the sad reality until your parents decided to have fun. Before we could take flights, I am even taking this too far, before we could ride in a 4 wheeled vehicle, the reality was use your feet or horseback. Before Ford took it upon himself to make the first powered engine vehicles, everybody sought stronger and faster horses to pull their carriages. Before we had the telephones on which you are reading this, you had to know me to ever know anything I said.
Basically, there have been a billion trillions of realities changed by normal people like you and me.
The worst part is hearing this mantra of hopelessness from people who I consider educated and smart and as time passes, I am beginning to hear it more often.
Recently, I have come to the realization that it is not really a matter of the circumstances being beyond repair that makes people to side with hopelessness but it is, rather, an excuse people use not to do the right thing on their part. It as an excuse to engage in the same practices we all know are responsible for our backwardness. It is an excuse to join in the squalor because we do not want the discomfort that comes with being required to do the things we claim with our mouths.
We find ourselves here because of the actions of some and the inaction of many. Cameroon is not beyond repair. What is true, though, is that as the days go by and we continue to neglect it, the damage becomes more fatal and the climb back becomes steeper. The solutions are there but we are not open to receiving them because we have fallen in love with our demise. It has to be ugly and distasteful for it to be Cameroonian.
When someone does something really good right here in Cameroon, we praise it by saying that couldn’t have been done by a Cameroonian. We have defined good as something foreign to our society. People don’t even believe it is possible for someone to leave Cameroon and come back to live here but that is a story for another day. How do we end up believing in this society that in order to succeed, we have to quarantine our morals?
Why are you so scared of doing the right thing?
’c’est le Cameroun’ - is the number one reason why we do not seek change actively.