DOUALA: Here is Where Cameroonians Buy Food, You Eat in Douala, You May be Eating Poison

The pungent odor hits your schnozzle like of rotten animals. You did have the feeling you must be close to a slaughter house where animals are abandoned to rot to decomposition. But no!, it isn’t the smell of some rotten animals, it’s the smell of Douala. It is the first thing that welcomes travelers into Douala from all ends of the city.
Douala is supposed to be the economic capital of Cameroon – the equivalence of Johannesburg in South Africa or Lagos in Nigeria. Arriving any of these, the first impression is their sprawling skylines and wide road networks. It isn’t the same in Douala. The first impression on arriving Douala is the dirt and the smell.

Market is slowly but surely encroching into the road – note that this is a highway in Cameroon

But it is even worse if you are making your entry into Douala from the West entrance in Bonaberi, Douala’s Fourth district. As you approach Bonaberi Motor Park, hips of abandoned garbage are readily at hand to welcome you. The old railway line popularly known today as ‘Rail’ which surroundings have been transformed into a local market is the source of the stench.
Douala City Council has allowed the waste to remain here forever. It grows by the day because no one else dares pick it. Pedestrians walk on it, each step crushing it in the process into mud, mud heavily contaminated that has  sprawled to cover a huge span of Bonaberi. But that isn’t all. Contaminated standing water infested with deadly germs with a high propensity for diseases of epidemic proportions have become an added danger here. The abandoned trash crushed into mud blocks drainage and the result is standing water filled with disease infested insects and carcasses of decomposed animals.
The insects feed on the rotten and perishable food items that are sold on top of the mud hips and standing water on a daily bases. Traders, who spoke to The Cameroon Journal, said they are forced to keep on selling here because were they to try somewhere else, the Council would penalize them with humongous fines.
Taking care of sanitation at the Rail market in Douala, The Cameroon Journal found out, is supposed to be the responsibility of Douala IV Council. Reason, their tax collectors are the ones that traders see on a daily basis collecting tax. “We pay our tickets regularly, we pay money to the Council, we pay 1000FCFA, some others even pay 2000 to 2500FCFA according to the size of their stalls, but the Council has never bothered to look at the hygienic situation of the market.” One of the traders told our reporter.
In this market, both traders and buyers find it difficult to move from one end to the other because every corner of the market has turned into a small lake to the degree that most have come to describe the market as a pigsty.
“This does not reflect a market, we live as if we are pigs, you see water everywhere, dirt everywhere, then you have strong odor which obliges us at times to leave our shades.” Another trader told us.
Officials of the Douala Four Council were honest enough to claim responsibility for the upkeep of the market. However, they are arguing that the reason they are not cleaning the mess is because the market has been earmarked for demolition owing to ongoing construction work. But the traders argue that if demolition was certainly the reason, then the Council should have stopped collecting taxes and make efforts to relocate them. Things have deteriorated to the point where some traders are threatening to share the main road with vehicles in attempts to escape the smell, the scotch of the mud and infested standing waters inside the market.
The Cameroon Journal notes, however, that the ‘Rail’ market in Bonaberi is a mere reflection of most markets in urban Cameroon. Be it in Younde the capital city, Bamenda where the popular Fish Pond market serves at the same time as a market and as a refuse dump, the stories are the same.
Be it in Douala or Yaounde, Bamenda, Bafoussam, Kumba, etc., these markets are characterized by muddy garbage,  rebellious and deadly connection of electric cables that are waiting to cost human life. They have become dumping grounds where surrounding residents dump their waste and go scot-free.
The idea that in Douala, the city council plans to relocate the market hasn’t registered with any one – especially the traders. Several markets in the city have suffered from fire outbreaks and plans to reconstruct them have remained on paper. The Government Delegate to the Douala City Council, Fritz Ntone Ntone and some Mayors, in the meantime, are at daggers drawn on who should control the markets ever since the Prime Minister signed a release transferring the control of markets and health centers to Mayors in order to boost so-called gov’t decentralization.
An open war has even been declared between the mayor of Douala II, Denis Fampou and Ntone Ntone over who should control Douala central market. Fampou has cited Prime ministerial decree No 2015/1375 of 8 June, 2015 which stipulates in article 13 paragraph 1, that “the municipality manages markets built on its territory” and also states in article 5, paragraph 1 “powers transferred by the State for construction, equipment, maintenance and management of the market, are exercised by the communes.”
In spite of this clarity, Doula Gov’t Delegate isn’t willing to let the Mayors take control and arrest pressing needs like the Bonaberi market situation. In Cameroon, we note that gov’t officials use situations like these ones where potential contracts abound, to shop for bribe from contractors – reason why the Douala Gov’t Delegate isn’t yet ready to let the Mayors manage the markets that obviously need urgent environmental rejuvenation.
                                                                                SOURCE: The Cameroon Daily Journal