Rethinking the Orphan in Cameroon

In his popular 1989 song, "Mimba We" (Remember Us) the politically active Cameroonian musician, Lapiro de Mbanga, evolves a quite interesting understanding of an orphan. He does not specifically speak about orphans in the song but he talks about struggling people who have no parents - from those imprisoned in various prisons in Cameroon to the day laborer and the homeless. They are without parents not in the conventional sense of having lost their parents (though it may be understood in this way as well) but rather in the sense that they are people without connections in high places. First, they are a group of people who have not been highly educated and so they do not have access to the kind of jobs which people with higher education may obtain. Second, they are people without connection. They are without connection because they do not have people in high places in the country who may help them. They are, in effect, people without access to the legalized corruption which is euphemistically described today as networking. Thus, what the state, under Paul Biya, has done in Cameroon is that it has created both orphans who have lost their parents and so find it difficult to take care of themselves and those who have been made orphans because of lack of access into a corrupt state system where only the well connected benefit and those without connected live lives that land them in prison or in the streets. Lapiro spoke for all these orphans and for his troubles he was himself thrown into prison and he finally ended up fleeing the country.