Steem greetings all the way from the motherland-Cameroon to friends of the Steem Venezuela community. It is the beginning of season 18 of the engagement challenge and I’m here to discuss about the topic "A Story with my camera | (The Untold Voices in a Crisis Zone)".

^{My images designed on Canva.}

Before I begin, permit me share with you that I and my family have been living in a conflict area since 2016 when the crisis escalated into a gorilla warfare. Cameroon is made up of 10 regions and two are English native speakers. Over the years since reunification, the Anglophones always felt marginalised. On several occasions, they organised protests against the ruling government but it all felt on deaf ears. Until 2016, that activists advocacy groups were hijacked by separatists and now demanding for a separate country known to them as “Ambazonia”.

Since the take over by separatists, they created different armed groups to fight for liberation but today the case is no more liberation but humiliation, indiscriminate killing and torture, kidnapping, burning of civilian houses not supporting their struggle, rape is rampant, many kids out of schools because separatists fighters destroyed or burn down school structures, etc.

^{This is a very busy street on normal working days and traffic here is terrible but you can see what it means to observed “ghost town”}

Since the crisis escalated, every Mondays are observed as “ghost town” where everyone is expected to seat back at home. Of recent we were forced into a 4 days lockdown (ghost town) because of the 20th of May celebrated as national Day. They claimed that their national day is 1st October.

Staying at home for four days without going out for some people, it’s fun but to others it’s violating their rights to freedom of movement and they can go insane. Today, the four days ghost towns are over and places were expected to reopen but one cannot just get up and go out feeling without doing some personal security measures before stepping out. I had to make use of my camera and zoomed into the street early in the morning to be sure that movement was on.

^{I zoomed the image from my Window to see if movement was ongoing.}

The weather was dull and showing signs of rain and to think that for over a week now my neighbourhood is like cursed as if we are in the dry season. Guys… it is rainy season and we expected rain to be down pouring every day but that is not the case as we are suffering serious climate change. A dull weather gave me enough reasons to check the weather forecast to be sure of what to wear to work.

^{The weather indicating rainy day}

The day immediately after lockdown, everyone is excited to go out. I don’t know words to describe the feeling but all I know is that all living things are happy after lockdown period is over. I opened my door after four days indoors and guest who was there to greet me first. I saw many pigeons staring at me with so much joy. Even pigeons on a ghost town day do not move around anyhow.

^{Even Pigeons were happy the ghost town was over.}

Four days of lockdown means work has accumulated and we should be ready to face it. It means no breaks and no permissions are allowed because what is needed is catchup with accumulated work undone. After such as a day, one can only seat back at home in the evening hours and take a glass of cold tropical wine and drink. This is the only thing that can save your ass and you stop thinking and sleep like a baby.

^{The perfect drink to make you sleep like a baby and stop having sleepless night because of so much to handle.}

After sleeping, get up and face the realities of a crisis zone because the drink only helps to postpone your problems at the moment you were sleeping. After that, get up and face them and keep hoping that one day God will rescue you…“When two elephants are fighting, only the grass suffer”. At this juncture, I have come to the end of my discussion and I will invite @saxopedia, @majerius and @eliany to make use of their cameras and share their stories to the challenge.