10/02/2018
It was only 1 year and 4.5 months ago that I left Cameroon. There are days now that I remember being there like it was a dream that did not actually happen. I say this because a lot of my time there was so amazing and something some people could only dream of. Within the last few months, things have happened in Cameroon that I can now only read about through social media and texts from loved ones over there. Those things remind me that I was there. I loved on people who are now my family. Despite the distance and the time between communications, we still love and talk to each other like we just saw each other yesterday.
If you didn't know, there is a terrible civil unrest happening in Cameroon. This has been going on for nearly two years now and it has become increasingly terrible leading up to today which we are 6 days away from the country's presidential election. Having lived there for 8 years and also previously experienced an outbreak of violence in Cameroon back when I first visited in 2008, I have concluded that much of the unrest is residual from colonization. In someway, it's not so far from the marginalization and injustices African Americans have experienced in the history of the USA. Also kind of similar to what happened to Rwanda in 1994. The exception is that what's happening in Cameroon could get worse before getting better in response to the outcome of next Sunday's presidential election there.
Spiritually speaking, Cameroon's spiritual unrest is also spiritual warfare. In the same way as Rwanda's unrest was. I was in Cameroon when this thing started. I also visited Rwanda 10 years after the "war" of 1994 to produce a documentary with Saltshaker Productions on how women survived and thrived after becoming victims of sexual abuse, widows and the majority gender when many of their men were either imprisoned, killed and exiled during the war. In both countries I felt like the spiritual enemy knew their destinies as great countries with great people and that enemy is/was doing everything to keep them from reaching that potential. I am trusting God for Cameroon to live out it's own prophetically written words from it's National Anthem as the "Land of Promise, Land of Glory". I am trusting God for a rebirth of the nation and it's people. I am trusting God for the people who are pushing this unrest to wake up and come out of the spiritual blindness and stupor that is causing them to hate, kill, and destroy their own land, people and family mainly over language, political tenants and culture that is not innately and inherently their own. I am trusting God to bring real unity and reconciliation by assembling a core group of leadership to come together to find their common ground...taking the time to realize that they are like a body with appendages that function differently but work together.
I hope and pray for the best outcome, God's outcome for the upcoming election. I don't want to argue sides or take sides. i don't want to argue politics or rights. Too many people have died, too many people have lost homes, family, friends, security, financial opportunities, educational opportunities, physical, emotional and mental well-being over this nearly 2 year old civil war. I pray God leads the leadership and the people back to the beginning to restructure this country in a way that is profitable to every Cameroonian and in a way that positively projects it as a leader and player in the global arena.
