Life

Cameroonian Albino mocked by people who believed she was ‘cursed’ becomes model

2, January 2020

Cameroonian Albino mocked by people who believed she was ‘cursed’ becomes model 0

An albino woman taunted because of her skin has defied negative comments from people who believed she was ‘cursed’ by becoming a model.

Christelle Mengue, 29, was born in Cameroon, Africa but raised in Paris, France as her family decided it was best for her safety to live with family there because people believed she was ‘cursed’ by a witch.

But the big move didn’t make it any easier for Christelle because she felt rejected by both the black and white communities.

She spent her teenage years dying her hair and wearing dark make up to mask her white skin after being mocked by bullies.

But she’s now signed with Models of Diversity – who campaign for greater diversity of modelling talent on the catwalk – and acts as an advocate for others with albinism and embraces her skin.      

Christelle, 29, was taunted because of her skin (Image: Caters News Agency)

Christelle, who lives in Sutton, Surrey said: “When I was younger, I knew I was different, but I had no idea why – even when I grew up in a white community in France, I didn’t feel accepted.

“I have six brothers, but I am the only one with albinism – perhaps one of my ancestors has it.

“In Cameroon, my family accepted me but the other people in my country thought I was cursed.

“Medics said I was disabled because of my condition because of the lack of melanin.

“My parents decided it would be best for me to live with my family in France, so I moved for a better life when I was five-years-old.

Christelle as a child with her brother (Image: Caters News Agency)

“Throughout my time at school, I was constantly taunted because of my skin, the kids would say I call me ugly, weird or a ghost.

“It got harder when I grew into my teens as the other girls started getting boyfriends and I was always the odd one out.

“I started dying my hair darker and wearing weaves along with putting dark foundation on so I would be accepted as a mixed-race girl.

“I suffered with low self esteem and had no confidence, but I eventually got sick of hiding – my hair was damaged from the dye and the makeup wasn’t my shade.”

At 19-years-old, Christelle was scouted by a French modelling agency and her whole outlook on albinism started to change over time.

Christelle as a baby with her brothers (Image: Caters News Agency)

She adds: “I grew up without a role model and I never seen anyone like me on TV or in a magazine.

“I had no idea what albinism even was so I took matters into my own hands and began researching and realised I am not the only one.

“People had very low knowledge of that condition .

“I was just starting doing research about my identity. I  wasn’t till I was 23-years-old that I was fully able to define myself as an albino and explain that condition to others.

“It doesn’t affect my brain and I am just like anyone else.

“For my first shoot, I looked back at the photos and realised I didn’t look that bad on photos and began to embrace my skin.

Now ten years on, Christelle features in Models of Diversity’s 2020 calendar.

She said: “I used to say I was a light skin mixed race girl but now I couldn’t be prouder of who I am.

“I want more people like me to step out of their comfort zones and become role models for others with albinism.

“I am sharing my story to promote diversity – I hope other people see the calendar and realise anything is possible.”

Source: Mirror.co.uk

Australia: Sydney fireworks to go ahead despite massive protest petition

30, December 2019

Australia: Sydney fireworks to go ahead despite massive protest petition 0

A petition to cancel Sydney’s famous New Year’s Eve fireworks and use the money to fight bush fires ringing the city has topped 260,000 signatures, but officials say the show will go on.

Sydney is spending Aus$6.5 million ($4.5 million) on this year’s fireworks display — funds that the Change.org petition argues would be better spent on supporting volunteer firefighters and farmers suffering through a brutal drought.

The massive fireworks display on Sydney Harbour “may traumatize some people,” the petition says, “as there is enough smoke in the air.”

Toxic smoke haze from bush fires raging across Australia has blanketed Sydney and other major cities for weeks.

Australian firefighters spend Christmas Day battling blazes

Entire towns have been left in ruins by devastating blazes in worst-hit New South Wales (NSW) state, where eight people have died and an area the size of Belgium burnt to cinders.

“2019 has been a catastrophic year in Australia for Floods and Fires,” the petition states. “All states should say NO to FIREWORKS.”

A City of Sydney spokesman said while they “appreciate the concerns” of the people opposed to holding the fireworks during a bush fire crisis, cancelling the celebration would have “little practical benefit for affected communities.”

“We began preparations and planning for the NYE celebrations 15 months ago. This means most of the budget, largely used for crowd safety and cleaning measures, has already been spent,” the spokesman said in a statement.

“Cancelling the event would seriously hurt Sydney businesses. It would also ruin plans for tens of thousands of people from across the country and overseas who have booked flights, hotels and restaurants for New Year’s Eve,” the statement added.

Sydney’s council added that it has donated Aus$620,000 to support the bush fire and drought response and would also promote a Red Cross disaster relief fund during the televised fireworks broadcast.

A volunteer from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service works to extinguish spot fires following back burning operations in Mount Hay, in Australia’s Blue Mountains, December 28, 2019. (Photo by Reuters)

A heatwave is due to sweep across parts of NSW in the coming days, with deteriorating bushfire conditions expected to hit Tuesday.

NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said he did not expect any impact on the fireworks, but he was prepared to cancel them last-minute if he deemed it to be too risky.

“The pyrotechnics organisations and local authorities are used to working with us around exemptions in the summer period, whether it is Christmas, New Year or some other event,” he said. “They know the arrangements, the procedures, and we will work through to make sure that risk is appropriately addressed and, where necessary, we won’t allow them to go ahead.”

The display, watched by an estimated one billion people globally, is worth Aus$130 million annually to the NSW economy.

(Source: AFP)

Southern Cameroons Special Status: Ambazonian crowned Miss Cameroun

29, December 2019

Southern Cameroons Special Status: Ambazonian crowned Miss Cameroun 0

French Cameroun political elites have reportedly started the process of granting the so-called Special Status to the people of Southern Cameroons as Miss North West, Audrey Nabila Monkam was allowed to win the prestigious Miss Cameroun 2020 crown on Saturday.

The Miss Cameroun contest has been a French Cameroun private preserve ever since it was instituted decades ago and remained one area where Southern Cameroonians complaint of marginalization.  The language and modus operandi of the beauty contest has always been French and never reflected the bilingual nature of the country.

Audrey Nabila Monkam’s victory was announced shortly after midnight on Saturday evening during the final of the Miss Cameroon 2020 national competition, contested by 20 young women.

The 24-year-old, 1.80m tall who took over the beauty crown from Caroline Nseke is a business law student who impressed the jury and the audience with her physical and intellectual attributes in the various outfits displayed during the auditioning. Holder of a degree in banking and finance, she is seen by her admirers as a genuine intellectual.

Monkam hails from the Northern Zone of Southern Cameroons ravaged by the war declared by the Biya Francophone regime against the people of Ambazonia.

It is worth mentioning that in recent years, controversies have surrounded every Miss Cameroon contest. Some media houses have even accused Ingrid Solange Amougou, promoter of the Miss Cameroon Show of encouraging unhealthy rivalry among Cameroonian beauty queens.

The Biya regime had even attempted to take the lead in organizing the contest to end the repeated scandals that tarnished the show’s image, before backing off under some form of international pressure.

By Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap

Once conjoined, Cameroonian sisters spend first Christmas as regular twins in Lyon

28, December 2019

Once conjoined, Cameroonian sisters spend first Christmas as regular twins in Lyon 0

Two Cameroonian girls born as conjoined twins, separated by doctors in Lyon in November, have spend their first Christmas as regular twins out of the hospital. Bissie and Eyenga Merveille are to return home to Cameroon in January.

Bissie and Eyenga Merveille were joined by the abdomen when they were born in November 2018. Doctors in France separated them in November during a five-hour operation that involved separating their shared liver.

One of the two girls had to undergo a heart operation two weeks later, but is now recovering.

“The little girl has gained weight and is recovering,” said the hopsital and the Chaine de l’Espoir, the charities that organised their transfer from Cameroon to France, in a statement.

The twins’ mother had taken refuge in a hospital in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, after being rejected by her family when she gave birth to conjoined, or Siamese, twins.

The charities took her case on, and brought her to France with the help of the Cameroonian government.

The family is being hosted in the le Val-de-Saône, where they will stay until a final medical exam before leaving back to Cameroon.

Source: RFI

200 PhD holders protesting on the streets of Yaounde, over joblessness: Is education still the key to success?

23, December 2019

200 PhD holders protesting on the streets of Yaounde, over joblessness: Is education still the key to success? 0

I should be writing about and wishing you, our readers, a merry Christmas, but one particular headline has preoccupied my mind throughout the week;news report about 200 PhD holders protesting on the streets of Cameroon, over joblessness, left me wondering whether education is still the key to success as we have always been told.

The protestors, all doctorate holders, the highest rank in academia sat on the streets and painted a picture of hopelessness, with some even getting beaten and injured by the law enforcers as they expressed their anger after missing out on jobs in government universities.

In an interview with the BBC, the desperate academics said they had been volunteering in state universities for years yet when recruitment was done, jobs went to less educated applicants, according to Nanan Herman, the spokesperson of the protestors.

But that country’s Higher Education Minister, Jacques Fame Ndongo, insisted that the recruitment was based on merit. An ordinary Cameroonian speaking to the BBC said seeing PhD holders protesting over lack of jobs is the most uninspiring development for young people in school.

Proximity is one of the aspects that guide the news media; the news must feel close and relevant to the target audience of a particular media outlet. So how close and relevant is news about PhD holders protesting over joblessness in Cameroon, thousands of miles away from Kigali?    

Well, a fortnight ago in Kicukiro, Lynette, a 20-year old neighbour of mine came to me seeking advice on a decision she was about to make. In her senior six vacation, Lynette is contemplating to suspend plans to join University and take up a job that pays Rwf250,000 (US$300) a month.

An eloquent debater with aspirations of becoming a lawyer, Lynette is a brilliant young Rwandan girl and I was curious to hear her thought process. So, I asked her to first tell me the reasoning behind her decision before I could offer my own advice on the same.

“I believe that, ultimately, education is only a means to a job and an income; if I am able to secure employment now where many graduates, I know are still jobless, I think it would be unwise of me not to take the opportunity,” she told me.

That mindset is increasingly becoming popular among young people of Lynette’s age. They look at the so called highly educated adults in their community and they don’t get the inspiration they need, to follow in similar footsteps. Many have chosen business over further education.

My friend, Emmanuel never went past senior three but he has turned his childhood passion for cars into a thriving business. Having learned how to drive at an early age, he started off as a sales agent, pointing whoever wanted to buy or sell, in the right direction. He got me my first car.

Last year, he opened his own business, a car rental service and last month, he added a fourth car, to his growing fleet. The irony is, in the same town where a senior three leaver is succeeding at business, Aimable, a recent graduate of Business Administration from a local university is still struggling to find his first job, nearly two years after he graduated.

In October, Aimable sat for his tenth job interview which ended negatively, further increasing his desperation. There are many like Aimable, not just in Rwanda but in Africa at large. According to the World Bank, there will be nearly 400 million young jobless people on the continent within a decade, if governments don’t step up their efforts in creating meaningful jobs.

“But I believe that instead of crying on the streets, these PhD holders should be creating jobs for themselves and others who are less educated; this protest is a major vote of no confidence in our African education system, especially if the most educated cannot survive without a state job,” the Cameroonian local further told the BBC.

Actually, it is not entirely true that the most educated people can’t thrive in private enterprise. On a recent trip within the region, I was checked into Grand Global Hotel, a facility that is owned by a couple both of whom are PhD holders. The two still have their formal employment in senior roles and the hotel is just an additional source of income.

Three years ago, my friend’s uncle, who had successfully run to represent his constituency in his country’s parliament was kicked out of the role after it emerged his academic credentials were suspect. Now he’s set to graduate with a degree with intentions to reclaim his position.

“So, my dear Lynette, your reasoning holds water; you indeed need that job. But as someone who has two degrees, it would be selfish of me to tell you that education doesn’t matter; get your qualifications because opportunities will always show up but they must find you equipped.”

Culled from The New Times Rwanda

French Cameroun: Parliament approves rise in higher education spending

16, December 2019

French Cameroun: Parliament approves rise in higher education spending 0

In the 2020 finance bill approved by parliament in Cameroon, the operating budget of the Ministry of Higher Education has increased by XAF13.4 billion (US$22.7 million) to XAF50.7 billion while its investment budget decreased by more than XAF10.2 billion. The reasons for this budgeting are still unknown but the presentation shows a real desire for change in higher education in the country, writes Idriss Linge for Business in Cameroon.

For university research, the budget is XAF11.6 billion and the stated objective is to increase the exploitation of research results on the priority development sectors of the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper within no more than two years. However, the budget does not indicate whether the university research budget will be allocated exclusively to public higher education or whether it will be extended to the private sector.

The integration of graduates from traditional higher education faculties is also been taken into account in the budget. An allocation of XAF8.1 billion is earmarked for it. With scientific and technological fields poorly equipped and literary studies disconnected from reality, the achievement of this objective must be monitored. Finally, XAF7.4 billion will be spent to increase the number of students in technological and vocational courses.

Source: University World News

Google coding champion whose Southern Cameroons hometown is lower off from the web

16, December 2019

Google coding champion whose Southern Cameroons hometown is lower off from the web 0

The first African winner in Google‘s annual coding competition is 370km (230 miles) from home, sitting outside his cousins‘ house in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, because the government has cut off his hometown from the internet.

As cocks crow in the background, 17-year-old Nji Collins Gbah tells the about the series of complex technical tasks he completed for Google between November and mid-January.

Nji had thrown himself into the contest, using knowledge gained from two years of learning how to code, mainly from online sources and books, as well as other skills he was picking up on the fly.

The prestigious Google Code-in is open to pre-university students worldwide between the ages of 13 and 17. This year more than 1,300 young people from 62 countries took part.

By the time entries closed, Nji had completed 20 tasks, covering all five categories set by Google. One task alone took a whole week to finish.

And then just a day after the deadline for final submissions, the internet went dead.

Nji lives in Bamenda in Cameroon‘s North-West, a journey of about seven hours by road from the capital (according to Google).

It is an English-speaking region where there are long-held grievances about discrimination and what people see as the Francophone establishment‘s failure to respect the status of English as an official language of Cameroon.

In recent months, disgruntlement has escalated into street protests and strikes by lawyers and teachers.

The authorities have responded with scores of arrests and a text-message campaign warning people of long jail terms for “spreading false news” or “malicious use of social media”.

Cutting off the internet, an act still unacknowledged by the government, is seen by rights activists as both punishment and a blunt tool for holding back dissent.

For an ambitious, tech-savvy though outwardly unpolitical teenager like Nji, whose school was already closed because of the protests, living without the internet was unthinkable.

As it was becoming clear that the outage was more than temporary, Nji received some unexpected news – he had been .

“I was really, really amazed,” he says. “It meant my hard work writing a lot of code had really paid off.”

But a champion coder without the internet will not stay on top of his game for long. Hence the trip to Yaounde.

“I wanted to get a connection so I could continue studying and keep in touch with Google,” says Nji.

In due course, he hopes to finish school back in Bamenda, and then study computer science at a good university.

As part of his prize from Google, Nji will spend four days in June at the tech giant‘s Silicon Valley headquarters, meeting its top engineers and gaining insight into one of the world‘s most successful enterprises.

“Hopefully I would like to work there one day, if that is possible,” he says.

At the moment, Nji says he is hard at work building his knowledge of artificial intelligence, neural networks and deep learning.

“I‘m trying to develop my own model for data compression, using deep learning and machine learning,” he says.

His eventual goal is a “huge step” forward in capabilities for data transfer and storage.

In a few days, Nji will turn 18, having already won international recognition for his achievements.

He admits to having gone back through previous years‘ Code-in prize announcements to double-check he was the first African winner.

When I ask, he says he has received congratulations from “a lot of friends and family and some people I don‘t really know”.

Has anyone from the government been in touch?

“No, no-one,” he says.

Back in Bamenda, a city of 500,000 and home to one of the continent‘s brightest young technologists, they wonder when the government will plug the internet back in.

Source: Wellston Journal

French Cameroun: Biya regime shuts down hundreds of schools

12, December 2019

French Cameroun: Biya regime shuts down hundreds of schools 0

The Cameroon government has shut down more than 260 schools that had been operating informally in the country’s francophone regions.

The schools had been opened to help absorb students fleeing the separatist uprising in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

I travelled to Douala where around 100 unregistered institutions have been closed.

The pupils who have fled the fighting in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions have painful memories.

“I left Bamenda because there was a war. They were killing people and they were shooting guns,” says one student.

“We couldn’t study in Bamenda because of the crisis. Anytime we are in school, bullets falling on top our classrooms, gunshots everywhere,” another adds.

A mother, Kerin Kongdem, told me how hard it is to find a school.

“The first school was closed by the authorities because they said it wasn’t authorised. So we’ve had to find a new one this year – just to pay the registration fee was not easy for us,” she says.

The school she found was also operating illegally and is one of many that have opened to accommodate the influx of English speaking learners displaced from the north.

We visited one of the illegal schools and the owner declined to speak to us for fear of closure.

Critics of the government say it’s not offering any alternatives for the children when they close the schools.

But the official for secondary education in Doula’s Wouri district, Sylvestre Fils Moukalla, denies this.

“The Minister of Secondary Education gave Parent Teacher Associations the express authorisation to build more classrooms in various schools. These PTAs mobilised enormous resources to build new classrooms. As a result, the problem of the influx has been resolved. In the Wouri for instance, all the children have found a classroom,” he says.

Some of the newly displaced parents are turning to home tutors to make sure their children don’t have to go back a school year.

“Even to feed the children isn’t easy so I decided to get a private teacher to see how we can manage to educate these children at home. I have just pleaded with this teacher. I don’t have money. I pleaded that whatever I have, I would give him. It’s too difficult for us. We are suffering,” Claude Ngwa, a father of seven told me.

BBC

French Cameroun: Measles Vaccination Team Attacked, Motives Questioned

12, December 2019

French Cameroun: Measles Vaccination Team Attacked, Motives Questioned 0

 Members of measles vaccination teams in southern Cameroon have been attacked and beaten by locals who say the serums triggered side effects that sent 12 children to local hospitals.

Many rural Cameroonians distrust vaccination campaigns, which have been organized as part of a national initiative to stop a measles outbreak that has afflicted a number of children.

Thirty-four-year-old Samuel Amougou, a vaccination team member in Cameroon’s commercial town of Ebolowa, is still recovering from wounds he sustained from angry parents who oppose the vaccination campaign. He says Roman Catholic clergy transported him and five other vaccination team members to Ebolowa regional hospital after angry parents harassed them last Friday in front of a local government school.

“They [the parents] did not want to hear any explanations. They did not allow me to speak. I just got blows [to] my face and all over my body, severe beatings on my face and all over my body,” Amougou said.

A hand of a child is being treated after swelling up following vaccination, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
A hand of a child is being treated after swelling up following vaccination, in Ebolowa

At the same hospital, Etala Suza, a 35-year-old trader and father of two, says his son also suffered side effects of the vaccine and has been hospitalized for several days.

Suza said after his son came home from school feeling tired, running a fever and vomiting, he, Suza, was told about the vaccination campaign for children in all schools. Suza said he was told by the child’s driver that the youngster threw up several times in the car.

Cameroon organized the national vaccination campaign last week to contain the current measles outbreak it said had infected more than 3,000 people, especially children. The health ministry reported that the most affected area was in the central African state’s northern border with Nigeria and Chad, where 17 children had died this month.

The government said but for the south region where the towns of Ebolowa and Sangmelima are located, the vaccination campaign went well in the country’s nine other administrative regions.

Nurse Christelle Manedji is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
Nurse Christelle Manedji is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon

Nurse Christelle Manedji of the Ebolowa regional hospital said medical staff attended to 12 children who suffered side effects of the vaccine. She said none of them died, as some people had claimed on social media.

Manedji said the first case they received was that of a 2-year-old whose diarrhea and vomiting led to severe fatigue; the second was that of a 3-year-old who had a convulsion and fever a day after she received a dose of the measles and rubella vaccine. She says they had been told to be ready to handle such cases during the vaccination campaign because there are normal reactions for some vaccinated babies.

Many parents in Cameroon’s south region do not trust vaccinations. They say traditional healers carry out traditional treatments that protect children. Many prefer African traditional medical practitioners, who are more accessible and available than hospitals, which often are very far from home, understaffed and lack medication. Others say Western countries create vaccines to stop children from being able to have babies when they are of child-bearing age. Some say the vaccinations are trial drugs that may paralyze their babies. Others claim their religious practices prohibit them from having children vaccinated.

Dr. Jeudi Debnet, superviser of the vaccination drive in southern Cameroon is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
Dr. Jeudi Debnet, supervisor of the vaccination drive in southern Cameroon is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon

Dr. Jeudi Debnet, the highest government officer supervising the vaccination campaign in Cameroon’s south region, says such allegations are unfounded. He said officials have given instructions for all affected children to be taken to the nearest health centers.

“All the children who go to the hospital [are admitted] with some effects of the vaccines should be taken care free of charge. We use vaccines that are going to expire in 2021. There are the vaccines that we are already using in routine immunization programs, so we just took the same vaccines to use during the campaign,” Debnet said.

Cameroon’s health ministry reports that progress has been made in persuading parents to have their children vaccinated. Vaccination coverage in towns is estimated at 80 percent, but in some villages in the country’s hinterlands, barely have three out of every 10 children are vaccinated.

Measles vaccines are displayed at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
Measles vaccines are displayed at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon,

The last vaccination campaign, between Dec. 4 and Dec. 8, targeted 3.3 million children between the ages of nine months and five years of age. The government says it is still considering launching a catch-up exercise for measles. The disease is caused by a virus that is spread through the air by breathing, coughing, or sneezing.

Measles is said to be highly contagious and can remain in the air, ready to infect, for up to two hours.

Source: VOA

Miss South Africa wins 2019 Miss Universe crown

9, December 2019

Miss South Africa wins 2019 Miss Universe crown 0

Miss South Africa was crowned Miss Universe on Sunday in Atlanta after a lavish ceremony filled with glitter and heartfelt speeches about female empowerment.

Zozibini Tunzi, 26, finished first ahead of the Puerto Rican and Mexican finalists in a flashy televised event, hosted by American comic turned TV personality Steve Harvey.

Television personalities Vanessa Lachey and Olivia Culpo served as backstage commentators, and a panel of seven women determined the winner.

Tunzi earned cheers during her closing speech, a new segment of the competition, in which she talked about wanting to empower young women to feel confident.

“I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me, with my kind of skin and my kind of hair, was never considered to be beautiful,” she said.

“I think that it is time that that stops today,” she said to thunderous applause.

Tunzi beat more than 90 contestants from around the globe in the 68th instalment of Miss Universe, which was held in Atlanta’s Tyler Perry Studios.

The two favorites ahead of the competition, Miss Thailand Paweensuda Saetan-Drouin and Miss Philippines Gazini Ganados, did not make it to the final 10.

The Philippines’ Catriona Gray, who presented Tunzi with the crown, took home the Miss Universe crown in 2018.

Although she did not make the finals, Miss Myanmar Swe Zin Htet made waves last week when she came out as the competition’s first openly gay contestant.

“I have that platform that, if I say that I’m a lesbian, it will have a big impact on the LGBTQ community back in Burma,” Htet told People magazine, using her country’s historic name.

Homosexuality is illegal in the southeast Asian country and is punishable by up to life in prison.

In 2018, the competition also featured Miss Spain Angela Ponce, who blazed a trail as Miss Universe’s first transgender contestant.

But the pageant has had a controversial past. Multiple contestants have alleged that US President Donald Trump would regularly enter the competitors’ changing room while he owned the organization from 1996-2015.

Additionally, Miss Universe continues to host the swimsuit competition, which has drawn criticism for objectifying the contestants, although that part of the pageant was not televised.

Source: AFP

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