The area known today as Cameroon, on the west coast of Africa, comprises northern hills, central plateau, and southern tropical rain forest. It is the prehistoric birthplace and original homeland of the Bantu ethnic group, which migrated east and south 1000 B.C. to about the 4th century A.D. Today, Swahili is the most widely spoken language of the Bantu group. The word “Cameroon” was coined by Portuguese explorer Fernando Po, who named the river Camerones because he was astounded by the large quantities of giant shrimp (cumarões, in Portuguese) that swarmed at its mouth.

Colonial Rule

From 1492 until the 1800s, Cameroon, like much of western Africa, was carved up among several European colonizers, not including the Portuguese. Southern Cameroon on the Atlantic seaboard was involved in the slave trade, while northern Cameroon was a battleground between the Fulani of Nigeria and other African empires.

 

Great Britain, France, and Germany were all competing for a piece of Cameroon. In the 1850s, the ruler of the Doualas, a coastal group, invited Great Britain to set up a protectorate. Aligning with one power was apparently better than becoming a battleground for several. But Great Britain was slow to act, and the Doualas agreed to become a German colony in 1885. The Germans built roads, schools, railways, and plantations, but they were harsh colonizers to the indigenous people, so the Doualas fought German rule. The Germans seized the most fertile lands, where indigenous people had successfully cultivated crops for hundreds of years, and the Africans began to die by the thousands.

 

After World War I, the League of Nations gave France about three-quarters of the territory and Great Britain received the other quarter, part in the south-western highlands and part in the north, an area that today is part of Nigeria. The French developed the railway, cocoa and palm-oil plantations, and the timber industry. After World War II, new political parties that pressed for independence formed in French-held territories. The French outlawed the People’s Union of Cameroon (UPC), the main organization, in 1956, and its leaders fled to British-held territory where they began a guerrilla movement.

 

An Independent State

French Cameroon gained independence in 1960, and British Cameroon in 1961, with its northern territories joining Nigeria and the southern territories becoming part of the new Cameroon. The French-based political party, the Union Camerounaise (UNC) fought the former party, the UPC, for political control. Alhaji Ahmadou Ahidjo of the UNC became the first president of Cameroon in 1960. His rule was brutally efficient in persecuting members of the opposition and killing or jailing thousands. Ahidjo, however, also invested wisely in agriculture, education, health care, and roads and did not borrow heavily from international banks. In 1982, Ahidjo resigned and the prime minister, Paul Biya, became president. Biya has held on to the presidency, but his administrations have been fraught with corruption, fraud, repression of opposition and media, and popular protests. Cameroon’s previous prosperity eroded as unemployment mounted and world prices for coffee, rubber, cotton, and oil dropped. Food supplies grew short and foreign debts grew large.

 

In 1991, the government authorized the creation of political parties. Seventy organizations applied. The first multiparty elections were held since the 1960s, but the results were disputed and international observers confirmed election fraud. Nevertheless, Biya, aided by division within the opposition parties, retained power. His repressive methods were so effective that he won the presidency in 1997 unopposed, but only 33 percent of the voters went to the polls, whereas 61 percent had voted in the previous election. Millions of voters were excluded from the polls by the government, which accused them of being foreigners.

 

Today, dependence on trade with France, devalued currency, reduction of pay for public officials, and government and police corruption have brought Cameroon to a state of crisis.

 

Seeds of Methodism

Eighteen years ago, Victor Ayuk Enow from Cameroon enrolled at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During his student years, he was befriended by Trinity United Methodist Church and its pastor, the Rev. Charles Garrod. Ayuk, as he is known, joined the church and became an active member, assisting in many parts of its program. When he completed the degree program in political science, he decided to enter the ministry. He was accepted at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. After about a year and a half in the Master of Divinity program, he returned home to take a government position.

 

Though he returned to Cameroon, Ayuk never gave up hope of completing his seminary education, becoming a United Methodist pastor, and establishing United Methodism in Cameroon. During the last 13 years, with some assistance from Garrod, Ayuk has spent much of his spare time planting churches. Though the resources have been extremely meager, he has organized a few congregations that understand themselves to be in the United Methodist tradition. They are located in the following cities, towns, and villages: Santa, Akum, Bamenda, Buea, Kumba, Mamfe, Sumbe, and Yaoundé, the capital.

 

While Ayuk continues working for the government, he serves as a lay pastor on the weekends in Buea, where he now lives. An additional lay pastor has assisted in Sumbe, and a Baptist pastor, educated in the Theological College of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, is assisting with two congregations. Ayuk has paid minimal amounts to the two other lay pastors out of his own salary. A singing group of young male university students, known as The Heartbeats, often sang for church services in YaoundÉ when Ayuk was still living in the capital city. He assisted them with their transportation costs on Sundays to and from the church location.

 

In the spring of 1999, Garrod asked Dr. S T Kimbrough, Jr., the associate general secretary for Mission Evangelism of the GBGM, to inquire about the possibility of the GBGM’s making contact with Ayuk to explore the beginning of official United Methodist work in Cameroon. Dr. Randolph Nugent, general secretary of the GBGM; S T Kimbrough, Jr.; and Cashar Evans, a GBGM director, traveled to Cameroon to meet Ayuk and several leaders of the congregations. They were met at the YaoundÉ airport by a delegation of church leaders and the chief of a village in Fatabe. They also met a former prime minister of Cameroon who had begun a United Methodist congregation on his farm.

 

The next morning, the GBGM representatives met with the church leaders, primarily from Yaoundé, to discuss The United Methodist Church. The meeting was followed by a lively question-and-answer period. The next day, they talked with the general secretary of the Federation of Churches, an ecumenical organization, who enthusiastically welcomed the possibility of United Methodist mission work in Cameroon.

 

A group of leaders from the Sumbe congregation traveled 10 hours through the night from their village in the north to meet with the delegation in Yaoundé. Once again, there was a discussion about The United Methodist Church, its worship life, and its daily practice of Christian discipleship. It was clear from both discussions that Ayuk had done an effective job as a lay pastor. With only a Bible and a United Methodist hymnal, he had shaped the beginnings of United Methodism in Cameroon.

 

In May 2001, two pastors’ schools were held in both French-and English-speaking areas of the country respectively. About 40 lay pastors from different denominations attended, asking questions and expressing much interest in The United Methodist Church.

 

The Women’s Division of the GBGM has stationed Catherine Akale, a regional missionary, in Yaoundé as the consultant for its programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

The door for establishing United Methodism in Cameroon is presently wide open. United Methodists have the opportunity to undertake a holistic mission effort distinguished by a combination of personal and social holiness in faith and practice.

 

* Christie House is the editor of New World Outlook. S T Kimbrough, Jr., is the associate general secretary for Mission Evangelism, the General Board of Global Ministries.