---
type: Country
title: Cameroon
description: Harry's one day in Cameroon is election day — a 92-year-old president returned after 43 years in power, live ammunition instead of tear gas, and the most hospitable strangers of the trip an hour before the worst of it.
tags: [cameroon, douala, elections, protests, safety, corruption, hospitality]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Cameroon

Harry is in [Douala](/places/douala.md) for one day, and it is the day the
election result lands. He and [Kieran](/people/kieran.md) are mugged and Kieran
is arrested; the whole of Harry's Cameroon material is that day and the morning
after.

The verdict both of them give afterwards is the same, and it is the reason this
page is not a warning: **Cameroonians were extremely friendly, the country was
friendly, and what happened was their own doing.**

## Observations

### From [Attacked and Arrested in Cameroon's Deadly Protests 🇨🇲](/videos/4CO4s3cNvcA.md)

- **The politics.** Paul Biya had been in power **43 years** and was **92 years
  old**; during the day Harry is filming, he is returned for another seven-year
  term. The grievances people name are corruption, unemployment and the absence
  of opportunity.
- **What an African protest is, in Harry's framing**: not tear gas and water
  cannon but **live ammunition**. Six people had already been killed when he
  started filming.
- **The anger is regional.** People from the north are the angriest. Since the
  bike-taxi riders are largely northerners, they were **banned from working that
  day** in case they caused trouble.
- **People are paid to come and cause trouble**, he is told on the street.
- **It's a French-speaking country** and Harry speaks none; the day runs on
  whoever speaks English.
- **Businesses shut completely** for election day. He describes the city as a
  ghost town.
- **The police are corrupt**, in Kieran's account after eleven hours in custody:
  they wanted money, and some were good and some were not.
- **Espionage is a live charge for a foreigner with a camera.** Kieran was
  accused of it and told it carried **ten years in prison or a $17,000 fine.**
- **Hospitality that has nothing to do with any of the above.** Strangers call
  them over to drink, buy the beers, warn them off a specific road, and treat
  them as family within minutes.
- **Being offered a wife is a normal social move**, which Harry finds genuinely
  interesting rather than uncomfortable — friendship and family arrangements
  extended to a stranger in a way he says would not happen in England. He is
  jokingly quoted a bride price of two million cows.
- **The US visa posters are back.** The same Trump-branded "register now for a
  free visa" posters he saw across Liberia are up here, complete with warnings
  about photo quality. His read both times: it's a scam.

## Places

- [Douala](/places/douala.md)