---
type: Place
title: Douala
description: Cameroon's largest city on the day a 43-year presidency was renewed — shuttered streets, strangers buying beers for a foreigner, and a market in New Bell where Harry was mugged and Kieran arrested for espionage.
tags: [douala, cameroon, protests, elections, new-bell, safety, hospitality]
coordinates: {lat: 4.0429, lng: 9.7062}
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Douala

The largest city in [Cameroon](/countries/cameroon.md), 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 🇨🇲](/videos/4CO4s3cNvcA.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CO4s3cNvcA