Douala

The largest city in Cameroon, and Harry is there for exactly one day: the day the election result is announced and the protests turn deadly. Six people had already been killed before he started filming.

He describes it as a ghost town. Businesses and restaurants closed for the day, streets empty, and a tension he can feel without being able to read.

The afternoon before

The first eleven minutes of the video are the opposite of everything that follows, and Harry keeps saying so.

A group of men drinking outside call the two of them over and refuse to let them pass without sitting down. What follows: beers bought for them, straight whiskey with Coke, and kaka — a spicy cow meat that Harry compares to bacon and eats after establishing, at length, that the name does not mean what he feared.

One of them introduces himself as Paradise. The conversation turns into an elaborate running joke in which Harry is adopted as a brother-in-law, is granted permission to marry into the family, and is quoted a bride price of two million cows. Harry’s serious observation underneath it is about the difference in custom: in Africa, he says, people offer you a wife or a family connection unprompted, where in England he’d rather do the chasing.

The thing that matters more, in hindsight: they warn him off a specific road, and are visibly worried about his safety. They tell him the country is small and dangerous today and not to go with anyone who calls him over.

Around the city

• The hotel he compares to a horror film.
• Homeless people and a red-light area nearby, and a general sketchiness he names on camera.
• Children following them asking for money.
• Trump-branded US visa posters — register now, get a free visa, be careful with your photo quality. Harry saw the same posters across Liberia and thinks they’re a scam both times.

New Bell

The district where the protest gathers, and where the day goes wrong. Harry is told by a man on the street that New Bell is where it will be crazy, and goes.

He meets a subscriber who is also covering the protests and has a Cameroonian friend with him — necessary, Harry says, because the two of them stick out.

• The market is the worst-smelling place he has ever been, and he has been in a lot of slums. Dead rats everywhere.
• The camera stops being welcome. Up to this point people were fine with it; here they aren’t, and his reading is that they think he is a journalist.
• Then the crowd turns. Around ten men jump Harry, cut his bag, and go through his pockets. They take his sunglasses; he holds on to the bag and gets away.
• He is then “citizen’s arrested” by men with no identification, who take his belongings to stop him leaving. English-speaking Cameroonians intervene and get him out; the police then drive him back to his hotel.

What happened to Kieran

Separated in the same crush, and his account the next day is the fuller one:

• Seven people were mugging Harry; a man came at Kieran with a knife.
• He kicked the man down and ran, with three people chasing and others being shouted at to block him. Somebody threw a live chicken at him.
• He ran about half a mile and then deliberately stood near the police station, reasoning that men with knives wouldn’t follow.
• He was arrested there and accused of espionage — ten years in prison or a $17,000 fine.
• Eleven hours in custody. Water, no food.
• Harry got him out by reaching the governor of Douala, which he was able to do because he had working mobile data throughout and could track Kieran’s location and speak to him inside.

Whose fault it was

Both of them answer this on camera, unprompted, and it is the most important thing on the page.

Harry: tensions were very high, he blames nobody for what happened, he takes responsibility himself, and he should not have been walking around on election day.

Kieran, more precisely: they went to the most dangerous part of Douala thirty minutes before a rigged election result, they were asking for trouble, and they got it. And then, immediately: the people of Cameroon have been really nice, it has been a very friendly country, and the two of them get to leave while Cameroonians don’t.

Harry’s tips

• Don’t be on the street on election day. His own conclusion, stated plainly.
• Take a local with you if you’re going anywhere contentious — being visibly foreign is the whole problem.
• Have working data before you need it. It is how Kieran was found and how he got out.
• Accept the drink from the strangers who call you over, and take their warning about which road not to walk down seriously.

Source

• Attacked and Arrested in Cameroon’s Deadly Protests 🇨🇲 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CO4s3cNvcA