War in times of Corona (part 1)
Whenever we think of kantharis in times of crisis, we mainly remember catastrophies such as Fani, a destructive cyclone in Odissa, the 2018 and 2019 floods in Kerala, the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, and we think of wars, especially the rather unnotified civil war in Cameroon, an armed conflict between people of the French speaking and the English speaking parts. Our seven kantharis from Cameroon belong to the Anglophone minority. All of them and their families experienced displacement, violence and killings.
And today?
Through phone calls and chats we try to get a picture of the present crisis and how it affects their lives. We are surprised about the rather positive reactions, such as: “things calmed down.” “We are safe!” and “We found a common new enemy!”
One of them had sent a video message which is posted on our facebook page www.facebook.com/kantharis
Teh Francis, a 2016 kanthari graduate, is the founder of Enkindle Cameroon. He was one of the first who brought micro credits to his country, but later became rather skeptical of micro credits as a tool to empower women. A few years ago, he has introduced “Table banking”, a method with which women use own money to be given to one of the women in their group as a loan. These are small amounts but they kickstart so the women get their own small income generating activity up and running. The women help and also check upon each other. In this way they don’t depend on external money lenders who’s contracts often result in getting trapped in debt.
When Teh was at kanthari, he developed a business curriculum for women who can neither read nor write. Due to the civil war, however, all these initiatives came to a temporary standstill.
“Yes, a lot of evil things are still happening here, however, we feel more safe now. The brutal civil war seemed to have calmed down in the last few months. Currently, there is a mutual new enemy, the Corona Virus.”
Teh Francis is eager to start his projects again, business- and computer-training for women, and, while all around the world schools are closed, he thinks about using the current window of peace to open schools soon, especially for 300 children of his district who lost having access to education for more than 3 years.
More about Teh’s work can be found at http://www.ekcameroon.org/
Learning is also an important topic for Marlyse, who like Teh Francis comes from the English speaking part of Cameroon. She had graduated from kanthari in 2018 and founded Wokomé, a summer-learning academy for children who, because of overcrowded classrooms and irrelevant teaching lost their motivation to study. Through alternative activities like exposure trips and scientific experiments, she wants to motivate the children to learn by doing and to learn independently. In the current situation where many of us are in self-isolation, we experience that independent learning is a key skill to have!
When I talked to Marlyse on the phone, she was just about to go into self-isolation. “But this time, not due to fear of bullets, but because of wanting to secure others and herself. “
More info about Marlyse’s work can be found at http://www.wokome.org