Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

A Very Long Layover - Nightmare at the Douala International Airport

By Alexis Grant (Originally posted on Inksling in Africa)

Douala airport officials are known for demanding bribes from foreigners trying to leave the country.

But two South African men I met in the airport while waiting for my flight told me a story that trumps all the rest.

The men joined me in a small air-conditioned lounge attached to the airport’s lone restaurant, where I was killing time before my 2 a.m. flight to South Africa. We were the only three people there, and we chatted while I ate a plate of spaghetti, one of the few items on the menu. We quickly realized that all three of us were going to South Africa, albeit on different flights.

Le Jour Series on Cameroon Literature in English

In the past couple of weeks, the French language daily Le Jour has been running a series on Anglophone Cameroon Literature. The series has consisted of a profile of 10 prominent writers from West of the Mungo.

Conceived by writer Patrice Nganang, the series was written by Dibussi Tande and Joyce Ashutantang. Special thanks go to Jean-Philippe Nguemeta of Le Jour who convinced the newspaper's editorial board of the value of such a series.

Find below the links to the 10 profiles.

US-Based Nigerian Blogger Arrested in Abuja

The press freedom watchdog, Reporters without Borders, is reporting the arrest of Us-based blogger Jonathan Elendu by the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS). Elendu was arrested on October 17 at the Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. Although the SSS spokesman Kenechuks Onyegogu has been quoted as saying that Elendu was simply “invited” by the SSS to explain certain matters involving “national security, he is apparently being held incommunicado with no access to lawyers.

According to Reporters without Borders,

US Presidential Elections: A Prerequisite for the White House

A guest commentary by Eric Makuna Tande

"More than ever, the president of the ‘free world’ must have the intellectual girth and depth to devour and synthesize vast amounts of information in real time and make decisions that can profoundly affect the US and the world."

There is a very revealing moment in the long running Sen. McCain biography on CNN. With a smile on his face, Sen. McCain recounts the events of one of his earlier plane crashes while in the navy. He goes on to say that he realized only during the crash that he had not read the critical information on ejection during a crash. McCain had somehow made the determination that the chapter or chapters on emergency ejection were optional reading.

This decision is worthy of note.

Mystery and Intrigue in a Tropical Paradise - Revisiting the Speedboat Attack on Limbe

Dibussi Tande

With its wide beaches laden with purpleblack volcanic sands, its magnificient botanic gardens, its historic seafront, its proximity to Mount Fako, the tallest mountain in West Africa ,and to Debundscha the second wettest place on the planet, etc., Limbe is a tourist’s paradise.

The Down Beach area, which now serves as the town’s banking district, was once the nucleus of the “historic” Victoria – that strip of land, some twelve miles long along the Atlantic coast and five miles into the interior – settled in 1858 by Alfred Saker and freed Jamaican slaves from Sierra Leone and the neighboring island of Fernando Po.

A Review of Three Cameroonian Blogs and Bloggers

In my continuing series on Cameroonian blogs, I will take a quick look at three English language blogs that are steadily carving a place for themselves on the African blogosphere.

The first of these blogs is  GEF’s Outlook maintained by former CRTV journalist, George Esunge Fominyen who currently heads the Multi-Media Editorial Unit of the PANOS Institute West Africa (PIWA) in Dakar, Senegal.