Cameroon Echoes {Echos Camerounais}

Monkeys learn more from females

Monkeys pay more attention to females than to males, according to research. Scientists studying wild vervet monkeys in South Africa found that the animals were better able to learn a task when it was demonstrated by a female. The team compared animals' responses to demonstrations of a simple box-opening task, which was demonstrated either by a dominant male or female monkey. Their findings are described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Biologist Erica van de Waal, from the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, and her team, studied six neighbouring groups of wild vervet monkeys in South Africa's Loskop Dam Nature Reserve. They gave the monkeys boxes containing fruit, which had doors on each differently coloured end. During an initial demonstration, the researchers blocked one of the doors, so there was only one correct way to solve the box-opening puzzle and access the fruit reward.

Beautiful to look at? Not for this girl

Rampaini Letereuwa at her parents’ home at Ol Dubai village in Ol Donyiro. Letereuwa, 13, became pregnant after a temporary marriage to a moran she is related to, a taboo among the Samburu, and her baby risks being killed when it is born. Photo/MWANGI NDIRANGU 

By MWANGI NDIRANGU

IN SUMMARY

• Beads are fascinating for the visitor, but for the girls of Samburu they signify bondage

Visitors often marvel at the beauty of the colourful beads worn by women in the Samburu community. For Rampaini Letereuwa, however, the red beads that adorn her neck are a source of big trouble.

The 13-year-old is pregnant, and her relatives intend to kill the baby when it is born this month.

“I know my baby will be thrown away into the forest to die or be killed like many others who have been subjected to a similar fate,” said Letereuwa, through an interpreter at her parents’ home near ol Donyiro market in Isiolo district.

She has never been to school and, like some other girls her age or even younger, Letereuwa is a “child bride,” having been temporarily married off to a Samburu warrior (moran) in a traditional practice known as aishontoyie saen (beading).

Douala : Bagarre sanglante à la machette

La police a interpellé six adolescents samedi dernier à la suite des affrontements.

Il est environ 20h ce samedi 5 mars 2010. Des coups de feu retentissent au lieu dit Brazzaville à Douala. Près de 200 jeunes armés de machettes et autres objets contondants, se sont livrés une bataille rangée qu'ils ont appelée "règlement de compte d'hommes à hommes". Le corps à corps avec les jeunes de Bonaloka voisins est sanglant. Informés de la situation, un détachement armé de la police judicaire, un du Groupement mobile d'intervention (Gmi), et l'Equipe spéciale d'intervention rapide (Esir), prennent d'assauts les lieux et tentent de calmer les deux parties. Et même à la vue des forces de maintien de l'ordre, ces jeunes déchaînés ne reculent pas, apprend-on d'une source policière.

Uganda: 450,000 sign Petition opposing Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill

About 450,000 people from around the world opposing Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill have taken an online petition to the country's parliament. The petition is the latest attempt to halt the bill, which carries the death penalty for some homosexual acts. US President Barack Obama has called the proposed legislation "odious".

The European Union has also condemned the bill, as did Britain's Africa minister, Baroness Kinnock, when she visited Uganda last week. 

The petition was delivered by counsellors, who could face jail for failing to inform the authorities if somebody confided their homosexual activities to them.

 "This is a bill that requires various members of community, family members, service providers and spiritual mentors to "spy" on one another," a letter accompanying the petition reads. 

The campaign is being led by Anglican priest Canon Gideon Byamugisha and he has been joined by HIV/Aids activists and civic organisations. 
Campaign group Avaaz, which organised the online petition, hopes to get one million signatures. 

The BBC reports that the fact that the vast majority of the signatures were from outside Uganda is significant, as the MPs would be more likely to take notice of Ugandan rather than international opposition to the bill. Uganda, like many African countries, is deeply conservative and Ugandan voices opposed to the bill are few and far between. 

The dangers of witchcraft

Every year, hundreds of people in the Central African Republic are convicted of witchcraft. One man, who received a 4-year sentence, says his case highlights some of the failures of the country’s judicial system.

 Ange Mberkoulat was convicted of witchcraft after his village chief accused him of trying to kill a relative. He is officially a convict but is serving his sentence outside jail because of lack of resources in prisons

Ange says he was accused falsely. To make things worse arsonists allied to the chief burned down his house and beat up his wife. He and his family of 3 have since moved in with his sister-in-law.

Greeting Ancestors

 There is this anecdote of a traditional African ruler in the North West Region of Cameroon who began a divination rite to appease his village gods by saying “Hi, Ancestors.” He was speaking in front of a shrine where he had to perform annual sacrifices in the village. The village notables who accompanied him for the ritual wished that they had not had him say such a thing, because knocking at the tomb of their fore fathers in such words sounded sacrilegious to them. Of course, the traditional ruler in question was a young man who had acquired wealth through modern education and returned home to inherit his father’s estate. He was unfamiliar with village norms. 

Man Detained for Announcing Own Death

The schemer was arrested by the police, in collaboration with his disgruntled family. 

A 36-year old folk, Motakuri Marius, who announced his own death over a private radio station in Douala, was last Friday picked up by the police in a local night club, where he served as bouncer, at the Grand Hanger neighbourhood in Bonaberi. In connivance with a certain Manfred Okei, who posed as prison warden, Marius informed friends and relatives, three weeks ago, that he died, after a protracted illness, in an intensive prison barrack in the Littoral, and that his corpse was transported to a private mortuary in Douala

Council Buries Unidentified Corpse

The remains of an unidentified body, found on Mount Cameroon, reached the palace of the Chief of Bokwaongo on Thursday. 

John Mwambo, a resident of Bokwaongo, on going to harvest honey from the mountain came across a corpse on February 28th, 2008. He informed Chief Linonge Francis Kinge, the President of the Buea Sub Divisional Chiefs Council, the other Chiefs as well as the administration for measures to be taken in identifying and burying the corpse. To be sure, the Chiefs on their part sent back John Mwambo and another villagers for verification. 

"In My Genes"- Remarkable Documentary by star of "Shuga" Series, Lupita Nyong'o

Lupita says, “I embarked on this documentary as a way to educate myself and others like me on the condition of albinism and to shed light on the stigma, discrimination and persecution that they face because of their difference. It is alarming that this special condition that exists in every race and civilization of human beings – and indeed in most animal species – should be so hyper-visible and yet so socially invisible (In my research I could not find any traditional stories with people with albinism as characters, for example). 

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