fertilización granular al suelo

When I think about Essomba’s and Ashu’s football careers, it is obvious that they have travelled a lot over the years. Essomba first played in his native town in the

North West Province, signed for Kumbo Strikers, then moved to the capital to play for Tonnerre de Yaoundé and finally landed in the town of Buea in the South West Province. Ashu too went from his native town in the North West Province to clubs all over the country, including Olympique Mvolyé near Ya- oundé, Unisport de Bafang and, of course, Buea Boys in the southern Anglo- phone zone. Sometimes they were the sons of the soil, sometimes they were the strangers in the team.

The point is that an average football team consists of players from all over Cameroon. Especially Olympique de Buea seems to be full of Francophones who were all born in faraway and completely different places.

In the ‘old days’, when Clignet & Stark wrote their article (in 1974), they con- cluded that players in the teams from West Cameroon were less likely to be born locally than players in the teams from East Cameroon. In fact, it was mostly the old and traditional teams from Douala and Yaoundé where players tended to be primarily recruited within the local area: ‘Whereas 75 per cent of the players affiliated to the most prestigious and traditional teams of Yaoundé and Douala share the same ethnic origin, the corresponding percentages drop significantly among the more recent and less well-known teams ... For the Union of Douala, the Aigle of N’Kongsamba, and the Diamant of Yaoundé, the corresponding figures are 60, 50, and 33 per cent’ (Ibid.: 415).

These days the ethnic composition of the leadership of most Cameroonian clubs may still coincide with the ethnic composition of the local population but it seems that this is increasingly no longer the case regarding the players in the team. In other words, the club president and the supporters of the team may be sons of the soil but the players are more likely to be strangers from other tribal areas. Indeed, as Vidacs (2000: 107) argues, ‘... teams and especially coaches, who do much of the recruiting, are often willing to find the best players regard- less of ethnic origin’.

There is a positive side to this story. Football, to a certain extent, supersedes ethnicity because Essomba, Ashu and all the other players meet and interact with people from all over the country. It leads to ‘a crossing of boundaries on the level of the everyday practice of the sport’ (Vidacs 2000: 107). Within Olympique de Buea, for example, Essomba interacts with Bassa, Beti, Bakwerians, Bamileke, and so on. In short, football ‘... creates linkages among people who would not otherwise be linked. In the course of a sporting career, football players come into contact with a great many people from all walks of life’ (Vidacs 2000: 107). Both Ashu and Essomba have played in the Francophone part of the country, learned to speak French, and have met numerous different people along the way.

There is, however, also a negative side to this story. First, most of the club executives still select players because of their tribal affiliation. For instance,

when the club president at Olympique de Buea left Bandjoun to settle in Buea, he took many Bamileke players with him. Also, the team manager and the vice- president brought some players from their own North West Province along. Equally, the former coach of Olympique de Buea personally selected many of his own players. ‘When a coach moves to another club,’ a player with Buea Boys told me, ‘he always takes some players along. When these players hear that they are in the team, they just pack their bags, go straight to the office and sign their contract, because the coach has already said: “This is my player!”’ This is pure tribalism. Some of the players in the team are not selected because of their football skills but because of their ethnic backgrounds.

Second, players may be moving from one club to another and meeting people with different tribal affiliations, but this does not mean that they will always be friends with one another. We have seen the problems between the Anglophones and Francophones within both Olympique de Buea and Buea Boys. I have not heard anything about possible tensions between players from different ethnic groups within the team of Olympique de Buea though.

Within Buea Boys, however, there are not only problems between the two language groups but also between the Bamenda and the Bassa players. There seem to be quite a lot of players from both areas in the team. Ashu told me that the assistant coach used to be the head coach at Tiko United where there hap- pened to be a lot of Bassa players. When the coach left that team and went to Buea, he took many of these players with him.

The Bassa players in Buea Boys feature in the only story in which I noticed that different ethnic groups within the team could clash with one another. Buea Boys went to the national interpools in 2002. The team played three matches and managed to win two of them and draw one. They had only one match to play. Winning this match would mean that Buea Boys had made it to the semi-finals of the interpools. But their opponents happened to be PWD Bamenda. Ashu and the team manager of Buea Boys told me this story:

The match against PWD Bamenda was a crucial one for both teams. Two times before we could not qualify for the first division, but now we really had the chance to make it. The problems occurred when our head coach had to leave for a few days. Buea Boys has an Executive Board with about five big men. It was mostly the members of the Board who caused us to be defeated in the interpools in 2002. Just before the match against PWD, the Bassa players went to the members of the Board to complain about the Anglophones, speci- fically the players from Bamenda. According to the Bassa players, the Bamenda players had sold the match. They supposedly took money from PWD Bamenda to let them win the match. The members of the Board did not consult the head coach and decided to leave all the Anglophones out that day. Normally there were nine Anglophones in the team, but now there were mostly Bassa players on the field. We lost the match two goals to nil. PWD Bamenda went to the first-division league at our expense.

However, although the coup was forced by the Bassa players and was directed against the Bamendas, it was also a clash between Francophones and Anglo- phones. In fact, Ashu and the team manager used the words Bassa/Francophones and Bamenda/Anglophones interchangeably throughout the story. The story also tells us that there is a relationship between tribalism and corruption. In fact, a similar incident occurred in 1979 when PWD Bamenda lost in the final of the Cup of Cameroon to Dynamo de Douala. While the latter is a Bassa team, ‘... rumors ran high about a Bassa player in PWD Bamenda having sold the match’ (Nkwi & Vidacs 1997: 127). We will hear more about corruption in the next chapter.

It is after nine o’clock. ‘I have to go,’ Essomba says. ‘It’s getting late.’ I’m quite surprised to hear that he wants to go home already, especially since there is no training session in the morning. Later on, I find out that his real motivation involved a girl. I myself jump into bed not long after we have said goodbye because I have decided to train with Buea Boys in the morning.

5

Thursday

There is a knock on my door. Another knock. And again. I open the door of my room, still only half dressed and very sleepy. Essomba and a few other players are standing on my porch. ‘What is this?’ Essomba asks me. ‘The sun is already up. And you should be too!’

Essomba steps into my room. He looks around, as though inspecting the place, and then he turns his attention to me. ‘This place is too dirty! Look at your bed, your closet, your stove! There are ants all over the floor, even on your desk. How can you live in a place like this?’ I have come to think of the ants as part of the interior decoration, but Essomba seems to be of a different opinion. ‘I know you have a girlfriend. Why doesn’t she tidy up the place?’ I am feeling a little uncom- fortable. ‘I don’t think she will do anything about my room,’ I reply. ‘Why not?’ Essomba asks me. ‘Because she has to go to the university in the morning.’

I hear laughter outside. The players on my porch are shaking their heads. Es- somba is unstoppable now. ‘So? Why doesn’t she clean the house before she leaves? She is not behaving like a normal Cameroonian girl! And you, you should say something about it. Or else I will!’ ‘No, no,’ I say. ‘It’s okay. I don’t want her to do it. I will clean the place myself.’ Essomba is getting upset now. ‘Are you crazy? No! I will ask the landlady here if she can send her daughters to come and clean your house!’

Essomba says that I still have a lot of things to learn about Cameroon. In time, he and other players will give me lessons in how to handle girls, particularly regarding household matters. For now, Essomba and his team mates came to tell me that there will be a special training session today. ‘You should come and pick me up around two-thirty.’

Ashu looks tired. I have just met up with him in Molyko Stadium where Buea Boys is about to start a training session. It is around eight o’clock in the morning. ‘I did not sleep well,’ he says. ‘I just heard that my fiancée is very sick. She is in hospital in my hometown. She normally stays at my parents’ place.’

Unfortunately, the financial difficulties in Buea Boys have not been solved. The players are far from happy with the meagre FCFA 5,000 they got the other day. Ashu went to see the head coach last night. ‘I told the coach that the players need money,’ he explains. ‘They are worried. They have to feed themselves. A few players have a wife in another town and some of them even have children. I want to go to my hometown to visit my fiancée. When I go, I have to take money for her and for my family. In Africa, it’s tradition to send money to relatives. It’s also tradition to bring food and other stuff to your parents’ house. But at the moment I do not even have money for transport.’

Soon I will find out that Ashu has several other problems as well.