Away from Africa

ESSACA  Since Cameroon’s independence in 1960, the country’s architects have all been educated abroad: many in France, as the country was a French Protectorate after World War I, but also in Germany, Greece, the United States and in neighboring Nigeria. Jean-Jacques Kotto, a Cameroonian architect, former President of the ONAC (Ordre National des Architectes du Cameroun, the Cameroon architects’ association, which manages architectural registration) and current President of the Union of African Architects, decided to take the leap and created ESSACA in 2009. ESSACA stands for Ecole Supérieure Spéciale d’Architecture du Cameroun – translated literally, “Superior Special School of Architecture of Cameroon” which, in French, does not sound incongruous! In practice, it is a private architecture school, offering B.Arch, M.Arch and doctoral degrees. The school started out with all of seven students. Five years later, in 2015, there are 45 students, and the school is celebrating

Douala is not the same as when I left it over twenty years ago. The city has sprawled, rather than grown upwards; what used to be almost countryside, is now covered with construction, unfortunately mostly without any design process. Architects are perceived to be expensive, so any neighborhood, sometimes self-proclaimed draftsperson, will do the job of drawing up a building and finding a way to obtain a building permit (or not). Almost every square inch of sidewalk is taken up by tiny businesses. There is so much unemployment that it is totally understandable, and I salute the young person with a technical degree in electronics selling peanuts from a wheelbarrow. He is trying to make a living on his own, rather than sit home and ask for funds. Motorcycle rider with bags of bread Motorcycles are everywhere, and beware when you cross the street. The bus agency closed years ago, and now motorcycles are many people's preferred mode of public transportation: inexpensiv

It's been a long silence. My spouse and I moved back to Cameroon - myself just recently. It's a big transition from New York, USA! We will continue to be involved in art and culture, business and education on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Next post: the first architecture school in Cameroon, ESSACA, based in the capital, Yaounde, celebrates its first architecture graduates in November 2015! Please stay tuned.

Pefura is an artist trained as an architect, of Cameroonian origin but born and raised in Paris, France, and now living in Milan, Italy... and currently exhibiting at  Skoto Gallery , in New York City, not for the first time. His previous exhibit, in 2005, was reviewed in the  New York Times  by the art critic Holland Cotter. In this show, "Pefura: nos voyages immobiles" ("our motionless trips"), his architectural background is still very much the backbone of his art, but these works are very different. There are wall-size collages, made of squares; at first glance you may think that many squares are repeated, but in reality no two squares are alike, even if some resemble each other. Another theme is small (viewed from afar) suitcase-style sculptures; one of them, however, upon closer study, is a meticulously hollowed out and reconstructed book. Then there are the paintings, more human-centric than the architectural theme of boxes seen in perspective. And f

Over the years I collected many necklaces; bought in Cameroon although not necessarily made there, especially as the beads were often of European origin and used for trade purposes by the European traders. Below are images of a variety (the penny is to show scale).