Return to Cameroon and its Cholera Outbreak
on Tomas in Africa (Cameroon), 30/Oct/2010 10:38, 34 days ago
We returned to Cameroon early in October so that I may resume work with the Maga council while VSO continues to look for a replacement for me. We flew into Douala and the next day went to Yaounde. We had to spend a few days there waiting for a booking for the train to Ngaoundere. The transport system was choked up because of an African Cup qualifier match in Garoua between Cameroon and the Congo. Other than flying, which is very expensive and somewhat unreliable (since I wrote this I have heard that all flights to Maroua have been suspended indefinitely), the only way to get to Maroua in the Far North is through Ngaoundere and Garoua. FIFA had been asked to relocate the match because of a cholera outbreak in Garoua but this request had been refused.Maroua is referred to as the epicentre of the cholera outbreak, which extends to Nigeria to the west, Niger to the north, Chad to the east and to North Cameroon, which includes Garoua, to Maroua’s south. Cholera is endemic in the Far North of Cameroon but this year’s outbreak is the worst for over 20 years. The most recent figures which I could find from the health ministry are from 26th September when 7,247 cases had been recorded in Cameroon (6,000 of these in the Far North), including 483 deaths. Local people believe that the real numbers are far higher than these. The Far North has a population of 5,000,000 and clearly its outbreak is bigger than the Haitian outbreak which is currently getting much media attention. While the Far North has not had the scale of devastation of the Haitian earthquake, the severe rainy season there has brought its own destruction, as mentioned in a previous post, and has created conditions conducive to the spread of cholera. The mortality rate of cholera sufferers in the Far North is much higher than in most affected areas due to the poor infrastructure and health services in the area. Less than 30% of people have access to safe drinking water and there is one latrine per 4,000 people. Médecins sans Frontières has set up treatment centres in Maroua and in Mokolo, a village around 60 kilometers to the west. The government has launcheda campaign, mainly in schools, to promote awareness of good practices to avoid transmission of the disease and this appears to be working well. It also has a phase two plan aimed at providing infrastructure to reduce the risks in the future by building 50 new deep wells and repairing 200 which arebroken. However to put this in context, Maga is one of around 30 counties in the Far North and it needs 190 new wells and needs more than this number of existing wells repaired. I am very keen to work on the preparation of Maga’s development plan, for which state funding came through while I was away.I got a very warm welcome from a large number of people on returning to Maga. My bicycle is not yet working but every time I walk somebody gives me a lift on their moto. The rains have lingered longer than usual this year, the countryside is greener than usual and many rivers passed on the journey from Yaounde to Maroua were fuller than I have ever seen them. The elephants which leave the Waza wildlife park for a few months towards the end of the rainy season to roam have travelled much longer distances than usual and have caused a lot of damage to crops on their way. I have never seen them, even on visits to the park.The violent storms this year damaged much of the millet crop and some of the rice crop in Maga but conditions are favourable for the coming red millet crop (sorghum?). The level of Lake Maga is very high but the dyke has not been breached, as had been feared. It is currently difficult to catch fish because the water is too deep but fish stocks will benefit. By all accounts most of Maga was flooded for a large part of the rainy season and many houses made of mud have crumbled. I am in a privileged position of having a house made of concrete but there were two out-houses in my enclosure which are now rubble. Before leaving Maga the mayor and I had got agreement from SEMRY, a local development organisation, that they would use their machinery to prepare the (mud) roads for the rainy season if I paid the fuel costs. I handed over the money for the fuel in May but unfortunately some authorisation problems in SEMRY delayed the work until the worst of the rains were over. It still made a small difference because channels were dug at the sides of the roads into which the flood waters flowed. Now the mounds of earth removed from these channels are dumped along the roadsides but I am assured that they will eventually be smoothed out. Hopefully all this will make a significant difference for the next rainy season.When I first returned to Maga there had been no electricity or running water for over two weeks but happily these have been fixed now. My first journey to Maga was difficult since the bus broke down and a second bus had to be sent from Maroua. This also broke down several times and it got stuck in the mud and people had to get out and push. One of our breakdowns was beside a tiny village and I was gratified to see a poster on a tree giving advice on cholera. My trips to Maga have been much more difficult than the trips back, as though the buses don’t want to go there. A new bus company set up last year initially had good buses but the terrible state of the roads has taken its toll and the buses are now nearly as bad as the awful ones they replaced.Even the roads in Maroua are very bad after the rains and they make travel hazardous. On“surfaced” roads people weave from side to side avoiding potholes and on unsurfaced roads negotiating the humps and hollows is like skiing through a mogul field. The rules of the road are disregarded and it is necessary always to anticipate what other drivers and moto riders will do. While we were away a woman who sold koki (a dish made from beans) at the roadside next door to our house was killed by a car that went out of control and hit a pole which fell on her. Her baby survived. A few days ago a van went out of control near by and crashed into a wall. Our stretch of road in Maroua hashad its share of incidents. Last year Aicha saw a man being gored by a bullock just outside our house.We have had some macabre news from Foumban, Aicha’s home village. There is a police/army unit trained to track down the coupeurs de route (the bandits who hold up buses and other vehicles and rob the passengers and sometimes kill them). A member of this unit was in league with some bandits and he shot a moto-taximan in a hold-up. The latter survived and identified his attacker. Local people lynched him by putting a tyre doused in petrol around him and setting it alight. When we last visited Foumban this man’s father had shot himself and this was the main talking point.On a lighter note, I went to have my hair cut in Maga. The usual barber was not there and the one I went to immediately set upon me, taking huge chunks of hair off my head. I stopped him and walked out, but it was too late. My head looked like one of the local fields devastated by the storms. When I got to Maroua I got a local barber to reduce my hair to the lowest common denominator and now I look like Yul Brynner (for those of you who are old enough to remember him). Aicha has still not stopped laughing but happily I had lent my camera to somebody so she hasn’t yet been able to take photos for home.