Experiencing Cameroon's Challenges Through My Teaching Journey | Aye Brandon Kiven

Teaching has brought me closer to Cameroon's challenges. I started teaching in Menchum Valley where I had the opportunity to experience some of those roads that terrify drivers. Going to Beba in the rainy season was always an unpleasant experience—spending a night in Befang in the merciless cold because it had rained and the vehicle couldn't continue, coming down the vehicle or motorcycle for it to pass a treacherous area, pushing or supporting the vehicle or motorcycle on more than one occasion. Then there were the dusty roads in the dry season.

I lived among hospitable and hardworking people whose conditions were not pleasing to the human spirit. Poor school and health facilities, poor farm-to-market roads, no electricity, and irregular supply of healthy water. The water we fetched from below one of the hills was not kind to me.

Many of the school children struggled for food, especially those who came from other quarters and neighbouring villages to school in Mbamba, where the school was located. Many parents also struggled to pay their children's fees and buy study materials.

After three years in Beba, I was transferred to Guzang in August 2016. And the calls for judicial and educational reforms began in October and November respectively, now Anglophone Conflict. In late 2018, the governor of the Northwest Region granted me an audience where I briefed him on the Community Approach to resolve the Anglophone conflict. The same proposal I sent to Yaoundé.

Many months later, some unidentified persons burnt a section of the house I was living in in New Town. The fire did not touch my property, but everything except my bed frame disappeared (from looting). It was a tough moment for me.

The air swallowed my calls for genuine and inclusive dialogue, and school resumption everywhere in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon.

The news that I was now going to be teaching in the North petrified me. Because the hot climate in Douala and Limbe had been hostile to me on three occasions, sending me to the hospital. So, learning that the climate in the North was wilder, got me thinking hard. And I was knocked down twice during the 2024-2025 academic year. But I am happy that someday I will look back and say I taught in the North.

Seeing people struggle is not new to me. But teaching in these remote areas has enhanced my consciousness about the fact that millions of Cameroonians are going through a lot. Here in the North, when many of the children come to school looking miserable, some of them crying of hunger, it cuts deep. Because I believe Cameroon should not be at this level. The poverty here is very ugly like that in many other places in Cameroon.

I pray we realize that what we need is not discrimination, not conflict, not regional bias, not indifference towards other regions' challenges, but a focus on how to defeat all these challenges together. We need a ceaseless hunger for a better Cameroon. A Cameroon where every citizen belongs. A Cameroon where fairness breathes. A Cameroon where every citizen serves selflessly when given the chance to lead or serve the public. And above all, a Cameroon where citizens understand that we do not wait for love—we live it.

Let us shine for one another like the star on our flag.

• Aye Brandon Kiven