The war is escalating in our project area. So far this year, the Cameroon government has burned 20 villages to the ground in the Anglophone jungles where we work. Our partners in Cameroon can no longer visit and run the Girls Lead Clubs because motor bike transportation in the entire Ndian Division has been banned. Nor can we monitor the maternal mortality project, though we believe the little bit of training in modern medicine that the traditional midwives received should be very valuable in these terrible times.
Thankfully, most of our scholarship recipients were able to relocate to other towns where schools are still running. Toko girls are scattered to Tiko, Kumba, Mendemba and Mbonge, but Nakinti and her volunteers continue to monitor them and they are doing fine.
Meanwhile, Nakinti is trying to develop a new club for displaced girls in Kumba. Hundreds of teenagers from burned villages have flooded Kumba with no shelter, no food, no clothes… Some found family and friends to turn to, but many are sleeping in the bushes and the streets. This is the peak of the rainy season. One pregnant woman had to give birth in the bushes with no help except what her older children could give. She and the twins she was carrying all died. The suffering is so great! We are working with Nakinti to figure out how we can respond to give them some desperately needed hope.