Matazem Border Crossings and Monday Ghost Towns Compared
Colbert Gwain Nji Ignatius is Bamenda-based journalist working for one of Cameroon's leading weeklies, Eden newspaper. He just returned from Douala after a business trip. He complains they arrived the Matazem border at 4a.m and only succeeded in filing past the two security cordons after a four hours delay. Hyperblically, that's almost the amount of time Africans trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States, take. Matazem Border Crossing Since the outbreak of the conflict in the two English Speaking Regions, Defense Ministry Officials erected stiff security belts on both sides of the Matazem crossing. Vehicles arriving from East Cameroon are obliged to wait until 6.30a.m before security officials who are usually not in a hurry, begin screening from one passenger to the other and from one bus to another. Come to think of the fact that of the six accredited travel agencies plying the Bamenda-Yaounde, Bamenda-Douala, and Bamenda-Buea/Limbe roads, each of them lo