Geraldine Sinyuy reports from Cameroon on her IHRAM project, concerning internally displaced persons within Bamenda City

Brief Report on My Activities Under the Auspices of IHRAF 2023 Fellow. March 12, 2023.

My work is based on the negative effects of the war, particularly the experiences of the internally displaced persons within the North West Region of Cameroon, Bamenda City. I have been sorting out internally displaced persons and interviewing them for a while now. I record the interviews and then document them so that at the end of the day, these shared stories will become a book that recounts the agonies of the IPDs within this specified area.

I cannot count how many times I have had to shed tears as I listened to some of the horrible experiences that the interviewees have had to go through and are still going through. I have met a young girl who has gone through sexual harassment from someone her father brought in in the guise of a guest, but was a secret would-be husband of the teenage girl. She was forced to sleep on the same mattress on the floor of the house where she and her father were living with this very guest. They were internally displaced. However, the man did not succeed in molesting the girl, because she developed a method of escape. Every night she sneaked out of the room and stole her way into a church hall where she spent the night on the pew and only returned to the house early in the morning when the Christians came into the church for mass.

I also interviewed one young girl who has lost her both parents to the crisis. She only depends on her very aged grandmother who can hardly walk. I actually teach this girl and one day I saw her crying in class. I asked her what the problem was and she told me that she was thinking about her dead father. I consoled her and told her to rather work hard in school so that her future will be better. Early this month I saw her crying in class and twisting her waist. She had menstrual cramps. I sent her home. The next day I asked her how she was doing and she said she was better.  I then enquired from her and she said she was an IDP. I asked her whether she got medications for the pains she had the previous day and she told me that her grandmother went and borrowed the pain killers for her. I gave her some money to go and pay the debt. She also told me that she had no sanitary towels as well as some exercise books.  The next day I offered her exercise books and sanitary towels. There was also another young displaced female student to whom I gave exercise books.

Earlier on, I met I single mother who is an orphan of both parents. During the interview I realized that she dropped out of school right in the primary school. She expressed the wish to go to school in order to know how to read and write and also to help herself. I then took her and paid her registration fees for First School Leaving Certificate Examinations and she was very happy. If she succeeds, then I can enroll her in an evening adult school if I have the financial support to do so.

One of the students whom I helped did not see her first term report card in school because her grandmother has not had the means to pay her school fees. If I have the means I will help her pay the fees. One other student expressed the need of an income generating activity and I hope to give her some little cash with which she can be buying some little things and retailing in order to generate income for her school needs.

A few days ago my husband and I were just walking through one neighborhood and I came across a very desperate family. An internally displaced young man with four kids all under 11. The youngest child is 3years plus but can’t walk. He is completely malnourished and the mother is nowhere to be found. The man lives in a slum-like single room with his four kids and he does only odds jobs. He is a loader at the car park. His wife disappeared the night houses were being burnt in his village. By then, this little child was just one week old. The elder sister to this little child has been asked to drop out of school in order to cater for her younger brother since there is no one else to look after him when the father goes to the moto park to look for work daily. She is just 8 years old. She does laundry for her little brother, takes care of him and does other chores in the house. I wept bitterly when we interviewed this man and heard about his sad story. I wept most for this innocent little girl who now has to lay down her life for her little brother and the rest of the family. They have no food; they go hungry for days. My husband and I gave him some money to get medicated soap for the child whose entire body was covered with rashes.  In days to come we will get some clothing, shoes, and food for the children and perhaps some nourishing milk for the malnourished baby who is already suffering from rickets.

Although everyone has been affected by the war, their female counterparts are hit hardest. Most of the young mothers I interviewed got into marriage unprepared and with no legal documents signed just because they needed some protection from the men or simply a place to live in. One most shocking one is of a young lady who is currently separated from the young man. She received a call one day that there was a man somewhere who needed a wife. That call came from her neighbor who had moved to the city. She hesitated, but since the war was raging on she had no other choice than accept to go and marry this man. The man has been torturing her until she lately had to run away. They have a little daughter and the man seized the baby from her. The young lady is now living on her own and struggling to survive on odd jobs. She would like to go back to school since she dropped out of school due to the crisis.

It has always been my passion to help young girls and this project has come to fan the flames of my humanitarian activities. I have applied to the local government for a certificate to operate a Common Initiative Group called Rising for Girls Organic Farms and Products.

Reported by

Dr. Geraldine Sinyuy

Email: sinyuyg@gmail.com