GEF's Outlook

Somen scores, Nkoulou on the bench again: How Le Guen's men fared this weekend

As the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon gather in Yaounde ahead of their double-header against Gabon on the 5th and 9th of September, Somen A Tchoyi was the only one in the 22 Europe based players to score for his club this weekend.

He thundered in a header to score the second goal for Red Bulls Salzburg that beat KSV Superfund 3-0 in the Austrian superleague. The Bulls are now topping the league in Austria.

Samuel Eto'o played his most elaborate game in an Inter shirt (although he did not score) when the Italian champions destroyed their city rivals Milan 4-0. He gave width, depth and fluidity to Inter's game. He obtained a penalty when Gatusso fouled him in the 18 yard box which, Milito scored.

Eto'o, Meyong, Makoun Score in European Football Leagues this Weekend

By George Esunge Fominyen

Samuel Eto'o Fils scored on Sunday from the penalty spot in his Italian Serie "A" debut for Inter Milan which drew 1-1 with FC Bari.

"I am satisfied with his [Eto'o's] performance today but, of course, I expect him to improve each week," Inter's manager, José Mourinho, told pressmen after the game.

The Cameroonian striker told pressmen that his team still needs to work harder and stay focused to attain their objectives for the season.

Eto'o, who told French TV channel TF1 that his biggest wish for the moment was to see Cameroon qualify for the 2010 World Cup, was not the only member of Paul Le Guen's 22 man list for the World Cup qualifiers against Gabon to have scored for his team. Here is a round-up of Lions in action this weekend.  

What African Women think inside - A review of poetry on Batuo’s World

Blog reviewed by George Esunge Fominyen

Is it easy to be an African woman? Always having other people deciding what you do, have, like or say; and how you should feel and act. Except if you are a woman like Joyce Ashutantang; a Cameroonian literary academic, actress, playwright, scriptwriter and poet.

In a series of poems posted on her blog –Batuo’s World – she masterfully brings out women's  innermost feelings about love and life that some of society’s “protectors” in her country and continent of origin would want gagged and buried inside.

One of those issues is whether to allow women choose to keep or terminate pregnancy within given conditions. In “Sarah Palin: A Poem for Women” Ashutantang writes: “She can kill a moose, I can’t / She touts a gun, I hate guns / She derides abortions; I stand by them; my body is mine…”

Recently in Cameroon, persons who speak for women (and who seem to know better than women about choices they should make) got thousands of men and women to march on the streets against the parliament’s decision to ratify the Protocol to theAfrican Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa which simply provides that right to choose.

Cameroon Duo Gives Spurs Victory Over Liverpool in Le Guen's Presence

Cameroon's Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Sébastien Bassong Sunday scored the two goals that helped Tottenham Hotspur beat Liverpool FC 2-1 in the last game of the opening day of play in the English premier league.

Both men scored in the presence of the Indomitable Lions manager, Paul Le Guen, who was at White Hart Lane as a pundit for the French television channel Canal+.

Generally a very controlled person, Le Guen's pride could be felt in his voice as he responded to the screams by the french commentator who reminded his viewers at every occasion that the two players were Cameroon internationals and Le Guen's  is their manager.

Cameroon Pair Gives Spurs Victory Over Liverpool

Cameroon's Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Sebastian Bassong Sunday scored the two goals that helped Tottenham Hotspur beat Liverpool FC 2-1 in the last game of the opening day of play in the English premier league.

Assou-Ekotto shot spurs into the lead with a devastating left foot strike at the 43rd minute of the game. It was his first goal for his club since he moved from France.

The Sawa Chiefs, Christianity and African Traditional Religions

In the first week of August 2009, the traditional rulers of Cameroon's Sawa ethnic and linguistic group organised a march through the streets of Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, angered by a government decision allocating a piece of land - located at Besseke in the city's Plateau Joss area - as State property,local media reported. The Sawa want to build the headquarters of the Ngondo, their 300 year-old cult, on this site.

What caught my attention in this protest was the form it took. There was the march, a petition to the President of the Republic and (more interestingly) a church service at the Native Baptsist Church, which was followed by a ritual which included the burial of a goat (or sheep) on the site. It was the stark depiction of the African caught between living his/her old ways and being the reverent Christian in a modern world.

Is such open reliance on both the God of the missionaries and that of their ancestors a sign of Africans ready to openly live their multiple beliefs?  

GEF speaks to Palapala Magazine (1st anniversary edition)

Interview by Kangsen Feka (originally published on Palapala Magazine)

George Esunge Fominyen is West and Central Africa correspondent for Humanitarian affairs for [Reuters] AlertNet and West and Central Africa coordinator of the Emergency Information Service of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. He formerly headed the multimedia editorial unit of Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA).

At PIWA, his task was to strengthen the role of the institution in the training of journalists and other media personnel in media production, dissemination and exchange on selected priority issues in West Africa and across the continent.