Seventeen Expressions Holding Cameroon Back
The writer argues that common Cameroonian colloquialisms—phrases like 'Le Cameroun c'est le Cameroun' and 'How man go do?'—encode defeatism and self-deception, functioning as linguistic sedatives that keep citizens mentally complicit in the status quo. By examining these expressions, the piece challenges Cameroonians to recognize how language perpetuates learned helplessness and voluntary servitude.
I love the TV show ‘Narcos’. It is one of the most absorbing and riveting TV shows I’ve watched. In one of the episodes of the first season, the character of Pablo Escobar says this: “Lies are necessary when the truth is very hard to believe.”
If I could, I’d probably change that to the motto of Cameroon, because honestly, nothing is more apt to describe the state that we all, Cameroonians, have sedated ourselves into:- perpetually telling ourselves lies that confine us in a state of mental servitude, no doubt because we are afraid to face certain hard truths squarely.
And it would seem we are afraid of the truth because it would wake us up from the willing prisoners that many of us locked ourselves into being. It means we would have to otherwise wake ourselves up from sleep and do something that will get us out of that illusion of comfort.
But funny enough, believing in the truth, the real truth, will grow this nation beyond what we could ever dream it to be. Sadly, the lies we keep telling ourselves have been nicely packaged into expressions which we throw around colloquially without any notion of the grave consequences they have on us. And what are some of these expressions?
Here it goes;
1. LE CAMEROUN C’EST LE CAMEROUN: Commonly used when we want to deny ourselves something (or someone else something) because Cameroon doesn’t seem to merit better than what it has. Also used in exasperation when the status quo is standing in the way of progress. This expression was made popular by a Cameroonian minister.
2. HOW MAN GO DO/ MASSA WE GO DO HOW?: A popular defeatist expression often used by people who do not want to speak up for their rights. Can be heard at the SNEC office when people...
This piece emerges from a moment of visible frustration with civic stagnation and institutional inertia in Cameroon, where citizens routinely resort to resigned acceptance rather than collective action or accountability. The writer positions these phrases as cultural artifacts that reveal—and reinforce—a deeper willingness to abandon agency in the face of systemic dysfunction.
The argument that language shapes and constrains thought remains urgent. In 2022, as then in the archive's earlier years, the piece offers a rare Cameroonian voice insisting that folk wisdom and colloquial habit can become intellectual traps, obscuring the possibility of change. It reads now as a diagnosis of learned defeatism that transcends its moment, relevant to any society where resignation becomes normalized through speech.