Hello Friends 👋,
Hope you all are doing well !!! I am here again with some shots of how ghost town looks like in our town (Bamenda in Cameroon).
Before we dive into the pics, I'd like to share a story about the crisis, and how it hit my family too 🙏
A crisis started in Cameroon on the year 2016 called the Ambazonian crisis. This crisis has been going on since then, and lots of lives have been lost ever since it started.
But never the less, we are happy that things are getting better. Even though some people are still been kidnapped, and some are still been killed by the Ambazonians, we try all possible ways to stay safe.
About two years back, my elder brother was caught coming back from school by the ambazonians. He was taken to their camp, and stayed there for about 1 week with no food. The ambazonians got to us and was asking for a ransom of about 1,000,000FCFA which is about $1,685 in US Dollars.
When we heard that money, we knew our brother was gone. This is because my family is a family that struggles to make earns meet, and we have never seen that type of money in our lives.
So we started calling some family members so that they can support. Some of them responded positively and some responded negatively. All my savings that I had, I had to remove all and contribute to the release of my brother too.
So withing two days, we raised about 185,000FCFA which is about $310 US Dollars. After reaching this amount, we had no where to ask for support anymore, because all the money we had was from rhe support and our savings.
So we had just one option left, which was to pray for preservation and for a miracle to happen. So we started praying everyday and hoping that the ambazonians will accept the money we had raised, and let my elder brother go.
On the seventh day of my brother being in their captive, we received a call from them saying, "we should send the money". When we heard that, we jumped in Joy and happiness.
When we sent the money, about 5 hours later, our brother walked into the house with bruises all over his skin, and so much pain too. We were really happy to see him home with us again.
We immediately brought him food, because he had not eaten for seven days in a row.
And that is how we miraculously received our brother back home 🏡
Due to the crisis, ghost town holds here every Monday. So here are some shots from last Monday
This is the photo of the a petrol station. As you can see the petrol station is completely free of people. All you can see is parked cars.
Here you can see some few people walking on the dry streets. Ghost town doesn't mean people cant go out, it simply means, offices, stores, and other businesses can't operate on this day. Even cars can't move.
Turns out the only cars that are free to move, are toy cars lol 😄
Despite all the bad things going on in our country, we still enjoy maximum nature in our area. Below are some nature shots I took in the afternoon and evening of the ghost town day...
These were captured in the afternoon.
These were captured in the evening 🌆