Attacked and Arrested in Cameroon’s Deadly Protests 🇨🇲

One day in Douala, Cameroon, and it is the day a 92-year-old president who has held power for 43 years is returned for another seven years. Six people have already been killed in the protests when Harry starts filming.

The video is in two halves and they don’t match. The first is the most generous hospitality in this stretch of the backfill: strangers pulling him off the street to drink with them, buying the beers, adopting him into the family as a joke, and warning him — seriously — which road not to walk down.

The second is a market crowd in New Bell. Harry is mugged by around ten men, then “citizen’s arrested” by men with no ID. Kieran is chased with a knife, has a live chicken thrown at him, runs to the police station for safety and is arrested there for espionage — a charge carrying ten years or $17,000. He is inside for eleven hours.

Both of them, afterwards, say the same thing: the country was friendly and this was their own doing.

Key moments

• [00:24] The setup: Paul Biya, 43 years in power, 92 years old, and a protest over corruption, unemployment and no opportunity that has turned deadly.
• [00:55] Douala as a ghost town. And the line the video is built around: an African protest doesn’t use tear gas and water, it uses live ammunition. Six dead already.
• [01:32] Called over by strangers drinking outside, and made to sit down.
• [02:03] Beers bought for them.
• [03:17] What they love about Cameroon, and the election as the thing spoiling it.
• [03:53] Paradise introduces himself. Straight whiskey, then whiskey and Coke.
• [05:01] The running joke: Harry adopted as a brother-in-law, granted permission to marry in, and quoted a bride price of two million cows.
• [05:39] The serious part underneath it — they warn him that the country is dangerous today, not to go with anyone who calls him over, and specifically not to walk down a particular road.
• [07:30] Their message to the world, asked and answered: love, and peace.
• [09:08] Harry’s own observation on being offered a wife: in Africa the family or friendship arrangement is offered unprompted, where in England he’d rather chase.
• [09:45] Kaka — spicy cow meat, which he compares to bacon once the name is cleared up.
• [10:58] What the encounter was actually about: they rarely see foreigners, they were worried for his safety, and they called him over to look after him.
• [11:29] Businesses and restaurants closed across the city for the day.
• [11:29] The anger is strongest among people from the north — and since the bike taxi riders are northerners, they’ve been banned from working today.
• [12:03] He’s told people are paid to come in and cause trouble.
• [12:38] Trump-branded US visa posters, the same ones he saw across Liberia. Register now, free visa, mind your photo quality. His verdict: a scam.
• [13:08] The hotel, which he compares to a horror film. Homeless people and a red-light area nearby.
• [13:40] A man on the street tells him where it will be crazy: New Bell.
• [16:08] Children following them for money. He meets a subscriber covering the protests who has a Cameroonian friend along — necessary, because the two of them stick out.
• [16:42] Into New Bell, and the crowd. People stop being happy about the camera — his reading is that they take him for a journalist.
• [17:15] The worst smell he has encountered in any slum, and dead rats everywhere.
• [17:45] People are very angry today. The situation tightens.
• [19:09] It goes. Around ten men jump him, cut his bag and go through his pockets.
• [19:41] He gets out with his phone and his bag; they have his sunglasses. Kieran is still inside.
• [20:12] Getting attacked, on camera, and trying to leave.
• [20:42] The aftermath from the hotel: Kieran’s location is the police station, tracked on Harry’s phone.
• [21:15] What didn’t make the camera — a “citizen’s arrest” by men with no ID who take their things so they can’t leave, and English-speaking Cameroonians who get them out. The police then drive him back to the hotel.
• [21:49] Paul Biya re-elected for another seven years. Harry’s word for it: autocracy.
• [22:21] He takes responsibility. Tensions were high, he blames nobody, and he should not have been out on election day.
• [22:54] Kieran, the next day: seven people mugging Harry, a man charging him with a knife, kicking him down and running, three chasing, and a live chicken thrown at him.
• [23:24] He ran half a mile and stood near the police station so the men with knives wouldn’t follow — and was arrested there for espionage. Ten years or $17,000. Eleven hours inside, water and no food. Harry got through to the governor of Douala.
• [23:56] On the police: corrupt, wanting money, some good and some bad.
• [23:56] And the thing he wants re-emphasised — Cameroonians were really nice, it’s a friendly country, and going to the most dangerous part of Douala thirty minutes before a rigged result was asking for it.
• [24:58] He had working data the whole time, which is how he tracked Kieran and spoke to him inside the station.

Extracted pages

• Place: Douala
• Country: Cameroon
• Person: Kieran
• Tips: Carry a foreign eSIM, When people don’t want to be filmed, Judge a place for yourself