BLANCHE

I was a student in Buea from 2006 to 2009. I started my family there. It was in this city that I met my first love and had my child. I am passionate about cinema and the only school I could go to for training was here in Yaounde. In 2016, in October, when the crisis started, my fiancé, who had stayed in Buea had to leave the country. I went there to move our small belongings from the flat we were renting and look for a place to keep them. Then I had to return to Yaoundé to continue my studies. This was my first contact with the crisis; I would say it was a day filled with fear, disappointment and uncertainty for the future.

A friend of my fiancé's agreed to take my son and me in while we moved. I also got her to keep our things in her house. A few days later she started behaving strangely towards me. I understood that she wanted to go back on her word. I had to look for other places where I could keep my things. In the meantime, I called my teachers to explain the situation to them so that they would give me some time to sort out my problems before returning to Yaoundé. They were understanding.

One day, soldiers entered a school and the pupils were beaten and some girls were raped. That day, I was in that area and I was trying to get to Mile 17 to get a bus ticket to Yaounde to catch my exam. If you are a regular in Buea, you know that whenever there is a strike, the army is always involved. It is always a confrontation and the students are beaten. What happened that day, I realised that I would not travel anymore. So I decided to go back to my fiancé's friend's house, but at midnight she threw me and my son out, saying that the father of her baby was not comfortable with our presence. He said that my fiancé had not told her that we were going to keep our things at her house. I was lost. I lost all my things. I looked for somewhere to go. I wrote to a cousin who I knew was in Buea but she didn't respond to my messages even though I got acknowledgements every time. Fortunately, I remembered a friend of mine who had once helped me in a situation where I was sick with malaria. This girl, younger than me, had helped me get to the hospital. When I wrote to her on Facebook, she reacted immediately and told me about her house. I didn't expect my cousin, my own family, not to react to my distress.

My son had to go and live with my father in Kumbo. Studying with a child is not easy, especially in a film school. We have practical work and internships. In my final year of study, my father took the risk of coming to take my child. It was very difficult for me to leave my child. The separation was very difficult because I have never been separated from him since I gave birth to him.

When my father went back to Kumbo with him, it was traumatic, especially in the first few months, because of all the things that were said on the internet about the war. There were things that my father hid from me. He told me later that he didn't want to stress me out.

I can swear that even the family I had here in Yaoundé was not willing to help me. Before my fiancé's trip, I was living with my aunt who kicked me out because she had problems with my father and did not like the way he treated her in the family. She preferred me to leave her house. I called the teacher to explain the situation that morning and he asked me to bring my son to school. I had an exam that morning which I passed. Later at school they looked for a room where I could move in with my son. Foreigners, French speakers, kept helping me. People who were not even from my ethnic group.

If something is wrong, it is the system, not the people. I was homeless twice during the war and only French speakers helped me. Here in Yaoundé, I was sheltered by an "ETON" family (ethnic group from the French-speaking part of Cameroon) for nine months before I could find my own accommodation. Everything I had, such as the photos of my son and the pots my mother had left me, were lost when I moved to Buea. Things that were very dear to me. So when I think about the war, I think about the relationships we share with people. Good people are good people, no matter where they come from. Evil is evil and will never change. I had this grace that the people I met didn't see me as just an English speaker or an "Ambazonian" (the name taken by the independentists) but as a human being