Away from Africa

https://www.quinzaine-cineastes.fr/en/film/mambar-pierrette Rosine Mbakam is a Cameroon-born filmmaker. She  is currently based in Belgium. Her movies are quiet but true to real life in Cameroon.  Feature length films include The Two Faces of a Bamileke Woman, Chez Jolie Coiffure, and Delphine's Prayers.

A couple of months ago, my aunt through marriage, known as "Tantie Jessie" to the nephews and nieces, passed away in Douala at the age of 80. I was thankful to have seen her a while ago in Paris at the home of one of her daughters. She was a big part of my daily life as the spouse of a Cameroonian in Douala, at the start of my career and later of motherhood, trying to fit in. She and her husband had us often over for delicious Sunday meals. She would tease me about my attempts at speaking Duala (although later, she was proud of me). I'd like to pay a personal tribute by writing about one of our adventures, which we could laugh about in hindsight! When I moved to Cameroon, the country still had its first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo. However, in 1982, the French president, François Mitterrand, convinced him to leave power and the then Prime Minister, Paul Biya, became president. We managed an architectural firm, and one morning in April 1984, we started our morning and notice...

  Since the end of World War II, Germany has been grappling with the consequences of the Holocaust. Since about ten years, the country has also started facing its colonial history, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Germany started controlling territories in Africa in the 1800s, mostly after the "Scramble for Africa" initiated by Bismarck during the 1884 Berlin Conference, when the continent was divvied up among European countries. Germany annexed territories in present-day Cameroon, Togo, Ghana, and Namibia. After World War I, they lost most of their colonies, which were taken over by France and Great Britain. The Germans were brutal in their rule and committed genocide in Namibia in 1914. Until a few years ago, German city streets often carried the names of German colonizers, such as Petersallee in Berlin, dedicated to Dr. Carl Peters, who set off to start colonizing Eastern Africa in 1884. After the Berlin West Africa Conference, he was named Chairman of the German East-Afr...

The ESSACA architecture school is featured in the Architectural Guide Sub-Saharan Africa, Cameroon chapter. Diane Chehab and Epee Ellong, authors of The African Dwelling from Traditional to Western Style Homes  coordinated the Cameroon chapter, as well as wrote several articles for the Guide. Architectural Guide Sub-Saharan Africa  was published on the ESSACA blog (in French).

Sao on the tree in Douala There were myriad consequences to colonialism in Africa, and as we know, most of the continent still hasn’t recovered. But I will leave that discussion for the experts in geopolitics and history. One of the consequences is not much discussed: the vocabulary of food products, in particular of fruits, leafy greens, and vegetables. If an item doesn’t exist in the “West,” i.e. Europe and North America, it didn’t get a name. For years, there was little travel within the African continent. It was more expensive and convoluted to go from Douala to Dakar than from Douala to Paris.  Nowadays there are many more African airlines, and even if you are on your way to Paris or London, from an African metropolis, you can make a pit stop in Addis Ababa, for example. But if you are going to another country, and would like to eat your favorite food, how do you know if you can find it in that country? For that matter, even when you travel to another town, and you are sure th...

A few years ago, I wrote about Mboko Lagriffe's " Barbebuexpo " in Douala: a novel way of organizing an art fair. In the meantime, he has not been idle. He continued painting, organizing bi-annual Barbecuexpo art fairs, designing household items, but the big "coup" has been to win the competition for a new design on Royal Air Maroc (RAM) airplanes. In 2016, Royal Air Maroc organized a competition, Wings of African Art, to decorate the exterior fuselage of its airplanes. The jury president was Mehdi Qotbi, head of the National Foundation of Museums of the Moroccan Kingdom, and included artists and critics of renown. There were three winners: Mboko Lagriffe from Cameroon, the Franco-Moroccan Sara Ouhaddou, and Saidou Dicko from Burkina Faso. Mboko Lagriffe also won the public vote.  The "Love" Royal Air Maroc plane (photo: Dayot JC) The Love plane in the air (photo: Guillaume Février) Painting: Frontières Irréelles (Unreal border...

The book  The African Dwelling - From Traditional to Western Style Homes (McFarland, 2019) is published, and available in many countries. It is the English-language version of the French-language book De la case à la villa (Riveneuve, 2014). However, it is not a replica: the book has been updated to reflect more current naming methodology, with some updated images, and includes an index. There are still about 200 images, in black and white. The foreword is by Jack Travis, FAIA. It is my hope that this book will be found in universities as well as personal libraries around the world, as a resource on the evolution of housing in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a repository for African terms that may not be easily found anymore. Below is a gallery of additional/color photographs. I'll continue posting color photographs as time goes on. Kain Tukuru home in Bonendalé, Cameroon, built 1953-1954 Entrance to a Bamiléké village, photo courtesy Amélie Essesse ...

Masks, Initiés du Bassin du Congo, at the former Musée Dapper* A few years ago, I found out that the hype about Instagram was justified. I found it to be a great platform to post photos, and it's useful for those aiming to sell a product, as I have already purchased items from several vendors seen on Instagram! And not to forget the beautiful and inspirational photos and posts from all over the world. It is also a platform for cultural exchange. As a person with more than a little interest in Africa, I soon started following  @the.kraal . The stated mission:  " Exploring the magic of Africa and the diaspora through history, culture, traditions, spirituality, and more." The feed covers many regions of Africa, especially Sub-Saharan. It features traditions, art, religious practices, but also known and lesser-known heroes of Africa.  So little is known about Africa's history. Not only that there were kingdoms and erudition in pre-colonial times, but post-co...

The German King  is set in 1914 at the start of World War I in Kamerun (now called Cameroon.) Our hero is Rudolf Manga Bell, the African King of the Duala people. However, their land is under the rule of Germany and after he and his people are pushed too far, he decides to rise up and lead a rebellion. Despite his best efforts, he is eventually captured by the Germans and sacrifices his life for his people. To this day, the people of Cameroon remember Manga Bell as a king, a martyr, and a hero. History has long overshadowed his heroism, our goal is to create a film to honor the man and his legacy.  Help us bring this incredible true story to life.

Thanks to the professional social networking platform, LinkedIn, I connected with Joël Roux, General Director of CFAO Technology Cameroon. Later, during a stay in Douala, I had the pleasure of meeting him in person. Many of us wonder about the information technology and especially web access capacity of Sub-Saharan Africa. A while back, I wrote about IBM in Africa but was still searching for more in-depth information. Mr. Roux kindly accepted my request for an interview. Of course, he, also, is bound by his organization's confidentiality clauses, but he offered some additional insight. Joël Roux in his Douala office First of all, what is CFAO and its history? Formerly known as SCOA, the company was founded in 1881 in St. Louis, Senegal. It used to be a trading company  between Africa and France. It was renamed CFAO in 1887. In the meantime the company grew to be a multinational conglomerate represented in 34 African countries, 7 French overseas territories, Vietnam and ...

These past months, I read five novels, all written in the last ten years by African women from different English-speaking countries/regions. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf Doubleday, 2013) Ghana Must Go  by Taiye Selasi (New York Penguin Press, 2013) Behold the Dreamers  by Imbolo Mbue (Penguin Random House, 2016) Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Penguin Random House, 2016) The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) They were all interesting and engrossing, and cover a large swath of issues, especially the relationship between Africa and the United States of America (more directly in three of the novels).     Americanah and Ghana Must Go both feature protagonists who live and/or have lived in the United States and in their African home country, in the United States for a long enough time to have enjoyed American success stories. Americanah describes especially well the tensions in the relationships: betw...