Skip to main content

Signs of Cameroon

On a thrift store in Bamenda:
Fairly Used Goods

In the police station in Bamenda:
Don’t Don’t bribe

Bamenda businesses:
Naturophatic Medicine
Glorious Printshop
Microsoft Office

Bamenda grocery stores/supermarkets:
Vatican
Our Parents
New Life

In Nkwen Baptist Church in Bamenda:
Please honour the Lord / Switch off your phone(s)

At the Baptist resthouse in Bamenda:
No drinking of alcohol here please!

Bars/Restaurants:
Peaceful Off Licence
All for God Bar
Explosif Bar
Chop Gain

In Big Bekondo:
Bobecafs-cigs / Exploitation: Cocoa, Coffee

On a roadside kiosk in Wafa:
Sweat Provision Store

On a roadside kiosk in Ekombe:
Persi Verance

Roadside businesses between Kumba and Yaoundé:
God’s Favour Computer Centre
Diligent Bilingual Schools

A children’s aid-type society in Kumba:
Bend Down Women / Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children

Miscellaneous Kumba signs:
Divine High School—Excellence in education
Heavy fowls for sale

At the Presbyterian seminary in Kumba:
Sex can wait; my future can’t.
Abstinence: the best way to avoid AIDS.

Along the road between Yaoundé and Douala:
Chaises à louer
(If you’re wondering why a person would want to rent chairs, consider private gatherings here: if you’re having a party or holding a conference, you don’t rent a hall, you erect a shelter, but with up to 100 guests or more, you’re going to need some extra chairs!)

In the changerooms at Seme Beach Resort Hotel in Limbe:
Prohibited to urinate in changing rooms. Thanks.
(The smell in the rooms suggested many people disobeyed the signs, despite the fact they were in both official languages.)

Just outside Muyuka:
No farming by order Catholic Church

Billboards everywhere:
-- The familiar credit union logo—the family cupped in two hands.
-- Guinness ads, featuring the word “greatness” in some context, regardless of whether the sign is in French or English.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Our pensions for genocide? No!

Just Peace Advocates has found that as of 31 March 2026 (fiscal year end 2025/2026), the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board had over $54 billion invested in 120 companies complicit in Israel’s genocide, war crimes, and apartheid. This represents 6.9% of CPPIB’s total holdings in 25/26. They're trying to fund our retirements by profiteering off mass murder. I'm not okay with that. Are you? Read Just Peace Advocates’ report Send your own letter to let them know. I am writing today after having learned about CPPIB’s 2026 Annual Report. I am disgusted by what I have learned.  After the millions you spent on a cross-country consultation tour, you are ignoring every voice that cajoled and begged and pleaded that you not invest our money in genocide. We'll be happy to have smaller returns if it means our funds aren't causing children to die at the hands of a wanton, sadistic genocidal state. An analysis of CPPIB’s holdings shows more than $54 billion invested in com...

Fighting motornormativity one letter at a time

If-you-see-something-say-something strikes again.  Sick and tired of motornormativity, I'm setting event notifications straight. Don't just tell people where they can park when they attend your event. Have some hope for humanity and believe we can step out of our death machines and get around in a more human way. Especially for an event that is pitched as a picnic. This is what they sent: So this is what I wrote:  I know you already have a lot of details in this message. I know that realistically, most of your attendees will come in private vehicles. But can you please add notes for bus and bike travellers the next time you send a message like this? What constructs our view of “normal” is not only what we personally see and interact with but also how our world is talked about. When “where do I park?!” always gets top billing in event information whereas “which bus can I take?” and “is there a safe place to leave my bike?” are never even addressed, it reinforces the impre...

Bread not bombs

Yesterday, I saw a post from a Dutch antiwar organization: Geen Bommen maar bomen. “Not bombs; trees instead.” I love it.  Today, I saw a campaign from MCC: “bread, not bombs.” So I wrote adapted their letter to write to the prime minister et al.: Sure, money is important, but even more crucial is air to breathe and food to eat.  War makes money for a tiny fragment of human population, but for the vast majority, war means displacement, loss, deprivation and at worst death. Even for those far away from war, like here in Canada, every bomb that drops leaves not only a crater in some distant soil but also further deepens the desperate carbon crisis we are in, which will exact its retribution faster and faster in wildfires, droughts and floods.  That is why I am writing to you today.  Canadians did not vote for war in the 2025 election.  War does not lead to security.  How could the hunger, displacement, and worsening impacts of climate change lead to sec...