CAMEROON, Bamenda :: There’s (still) a Body In Front of Our House

Megan and I co-wrote this morbid-but-true story together yesterday after seeing a dead body in front of our house and place of work.

It’s still here on Day 2. After the daily rains. It’s beginning to smell.

Here’s a photo outside our work window. It’s the ever-present crowd on Day 1:

Around mid-morning, a photo was passed around of the previous night’s first victim – the man the person on the other side of the dirt mound killed during a cell phone robbery. A chop to the back of the neck. As the story goes, a smaller crowd of anonymous locals took “matters” into their own hands and did worse. I won’t say “the law” because I’m unsure of what that means here.

What happened is clearly socially acceptable.

I’ve asked several people how they feel. Not one person even came close to condemning it, or, conversely, praising it. No “it’s just awful” or anything. It just is. They say, “he was a bad man” and similar justifying sentiments. As one proprietor footsteps from the corpse told me, “If he wasn’t a bad boy, his family would come and claim the body.” If there are strong emotions or opinions, they are closely guarded.

It’s difficult not to think about it, but DO NOT worry for us, or anyone here, as I feel like this is fairly normal. Or if not normal, accepted as the death penalty is in the United States. Yesterday, I asked if anything like this happened before to a smiling, forthright teen who lives in our same complex. She said, “Oh, yes. Definitely.” She recalled an event right outside our work/home address a few years ago that was “much worse.” They caught the supposed criminal, beat him nearly to death, covered him in rubber tires, then burned him alive. That was also for some crime in which “…the police will do nothing, because the criminals will bribe them and they’ll be back on the street in one day.”

She’s not the only one to say this is far from uncommon.

This girl also heard what happened the night of the vigilante killing, as she was up late into the night.

“I heard a yelling of ‘Teefe Mano’ [Pidgin English for 'Thief']. Then a fall, and a sound of someone yelling 3 times. Then silence. It was very quick, and thought nothing of it. I didn’t know what happened until my friend came over the next day to go to school together. I couldn’t face it, so I walked the other way up the road. I won’t see it.”

She’s stronger than most of us. As it’s hard not to look. We have photos, but some are not worth putting up. Why take them? It’s some need to document the completely foreign experience. Or our own messed up human nature. We may still put up a photo or two, as we feel it’s “newsworthy” and honest to an extent, but we don’t want to exploit the experience. PLEASE EMAIL US OR ADD COMMENTS on what you should think.

As for a comment from yesterday from a smart accountant coworker, who called this “jungle justice,” it’s not some racially tinged term. Many call it “jungle law” here in the Northwest province of Cameroon, and we are, after all, in the jungle. In the US, do you think I could say “Hey, it’s jungle justice” and leave it at that? But forget it, because it is what it is; and as I googled the term today, CAMEROON is the first story to come up (from 2006):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5111106.stm

An excerpt, which is eerily familiar (see anecdote above):

Mistrust

The attackers did not trust the police to bring the suspect to justice.

“Immediately he gives them money, he will be freed,” I was told.

“That is why we make sure we break one of their legs or any part of the body. It is well known that the police take a bribe and let suspects go.”

The same man said it was common for suspected bandits to be beaten to death in Limbe.

“It can happen today, tomorrow and the day after. These thieves are very busy monitoring people to rob. So we, too, are not sleeping.”

As he spoke, more people rushed to the scene, one carrying petrol – apparently to burn the suspect alive.

Another man described the lynchings as “our own way of passing a vote of no-confidence in law enforcement officers and judicial authorities”.

Local TV and radio are awash with reports about “jungle law” from around the country.

So this is Cameroon. 9 out of 10 hours are positive (or at least not painful), and the people are the MOST generous and sweet we’ve met in West Africa. But like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks taught Americans, there’s a dark underbelly to even the most innocent of locales.

Again, the full story is here. With a great New Yorker link about justice and revenge in the comment section, thanks to our friend Natasha.

Peace. Really.