Douala, July 24 – They drive these beat-up jallopies everywhere, don’t they? Toxic fumes puffing from cheap Korean bikes. Myriads of lowlifes and down-and-outs. They scream; they yell; they are obnoxiously smug and unfriendly. Douala, less fetid than six months ago, granted, but always so untidy, unruly and oh, yes, so ugly, so dirty. I was born here. Why then, pray tell me, do I feel a furious loathing for this place that grimly refuses to evolve into a friendly and modern town?
From the vintage point at Le Méditerranée, the open air meat market for fast women just across from Akwa Palace, where I am nursing my pipe and drinking burgundy, I can see the life of this town and the future of all of Cameroon fleeting past. Everything was better here 50 years ago, when I was a pre-schooler. That is a terrible finding. This country is not doing well. At all.
In these circumstances, this scribe apologizes for even considering dealing with trifles like football. Thankfully, I have to report, nobody seems to care about football. Twelve days here, in Douala, in July, and not a single conversation about football. Nothing about the famed Championnats de vacances that used to be a constant fixture here at this time of the year. It is stunning to gauge how far the people here seem to be removed from football.
I must confess I am rather pleased with the way things seem to be going. Football has not brought us much happiness lately, and by the look of things, it will get worse. After South Africa and our dismal performance, it would be safe to predict dire circumstances ahead for Cameroon football. Nothing has been done to analyze what went wrong; nobody in charge of the game has taken responsibility for anything; no building programme is in the works. Everybody is covering themselves, eyes as usual glued to the pork barrel.
So it is really comforting to see a positive response by ordinary Cameroonians to a culture of mediocrity and unaccountability fostered by Mr. Iya, the MINSEP and their cronies. Ignore them; ignore football and get on with your lives. Football is nothing in this terrible country, and the people who have hijacked it with the blessing of our highest authority are a loathsome bunch not even worth our wrath.
