WHY I FEEL AWFUL THIS MORNING By Peter Essoka

My friend posted this...at the bottom is says feel free to share and so I am sharing :) because these feelings resonate very strongly with me...too

I feel awful about what we do to ourselves. It is puzzling 

 how sometimes it feels we are our own enemies. We dig very comfortable graves for ourselves and we willfully climb the steps down to our own doom sometimes I think we are suicidal. We commit murder on ourselves. That’s what it means to be suicidal.

I feel awful about what others do to us. We claim to be very hospitable people. Our borders are relatively open and people walk through us and treat us with scorn. They rob us of our manhood and render us impotent. We watch bad things happen to us, bad things that spite us, bad things that ridicule us in the eyes of others, bad things we copy from other people. I feel so awful about it that I sometimes feel if I were in some position of power, I’ll have a different twist on diplomacy. 

When I look at my country and contemplate what seems to be done to us from outside when we are actually robbed of some of our precious natural and human resources I almost give credit to one time dictator of Ugandan, Idi Amin, who despite his insane reactions sometimes also set some records straight. We give ourselves to flattery and behave like accomplices to those brief case waving foreign helpers who come with a smile on their faces, portend to, establish themselves bringing in an Armanda of their country men, or plunder and exploit us under the guise of development. 

They twist their tongues in their mouths telling us how we are making progress while our people are perishing in poverty and disease and they are getting the better part of the deal.I feel awful to note that we seem to do nothing about it even when we are abused to our faces. One would think we have surrendered ourselves to some foul play because we too have done certain things that have handcuffed our legitimate independence. 

What happened in London at the Olympics with our athletes and their defection from camp, is yet another of those unfortunate happenings that make us look terrible in the eyes of the world. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it. It is already an awful adventure to go to some of our foreign embassies to acquire a visa, all because of our bad reputation. And when acts as that one committed in London do surface, our state becomes even more detrimental. 

I can remember how I was ridiculed at the Nairobi International Airport in Kenya. I had a service passport, and I had to attend a conference in Johannesburg South African. Since our direct air links with South Africa were no longer functioning, we had to go by Kenya Airways through Nairobi to Johannesburg. That’s of course an awesome long route I had my papers to attend the conference and the assurance that a visa would be given to me on my arrival in Johannesburg. There was yet no South African Embassy in Yaounde. On arrival at Nairobi I was detained for not having a visa even though I was a transit passenger. They were scared of me because of my Cameroonian origin. Cameroonians had duped Kenyans so badly they had an awful regard for us. And even when you had genuine reasons for being in Kenya, you were treated as a different breed.

 To get a visa for Kenya, you would either travel to Nigeria or to Gabon and that’s because of our reputation for being fake all the time. Don’t trust those Cameroonians, they are very sleak and sleazy and the word goes around.

How can it be that we have a British High Commission in Cameroon and our visas to Queen Elizabeth’s country are issued from Accra in Ghana it takes a minimum of two weeks for one to know whether or not a visa will be granted. Our senior government officials are subjected to such humiliation and not to talk of the ordinary citizen that we are. And behold we too claim to be a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. That’s abominable!

How can you believe that we have a High Commission of Canada in Cameroon and our visas have to be issued from Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire? Are we so terrible that some people who flatter us with good words and who are under Her Majesty’s dominion, can be so scornful of us?

But we seem to accept it with no qualms. Such disgrace is apparently accepted as we make declarations of good and fraternal relationships with those people. It is awfully difficult to get a genuine visa from those foreigners. It is even more difficult to get them from those countries which don’t have embassies in Cameroon. 

This is a very delicate diplomatic matter which our authorities should treat with all care and urgency.The incident of our athletes defecting from the London Games, unfortunately may add just another hard wait on our already sealed coffin.

I would not be surprised, that the German would one day send us to Namibia to get visas. 
The French may show us path to Libreville, the Italians to Eritrea, the United States to Liberia, the Spanish to Malabo, the Belgians to Kinshasa, etc. Oh how we seem to be losing face everyday and we don’t seem to do anything right to better the situation.

You know it has always puzzled me why some of these big westerners come to Africa and always by-pass Cameroon. The former French President came several times to Africa. He got closeby to Gabon but never did come to Cameroon. Mrs Clinton has been to Africa on several occasions and Cameroon has always been avoided I could name others. Have we ever questioned why we get this shabby treatment from some of our very renowned partners? 

Now the Chinese are swarming our land space. How will it also be?We really have to mend our ways in this great process of emergence otherwise we may be talking isolation because of our immoral ways. 

Yes, that’s why I feel awful this morning as I ask the question again and again what kind of people we really are?

P.S. Feel free to share