Cameroon: Swimming contest leaves student dead

By Harry Ndienla Yemti

River Mefou, one of the rivers, that run through the city of Yaounde – Cameroon’s capital, recently swallowed a form three student of the Institute Polyvalent Pedagogic de la Renovation of Simbock, a neighborhood in Yaoundé. The victim, whose only name we got as Onemebe was in the company of his class mates that unfaithful day. Their mission at the River Mefou was for a swimming contest which never took place.

According to revelations made by his mates, Onembe was the chief organizer of the swimming contest. This was because Onemebe said he wanted to challenge them. Having arrived, Onemebe handed his school bag to one of his friends and with the help of a long stick, he began making prospect ions to find out the deepest areas of the river.

It was during the course of the prospect ion exercise that the young Onemebe fell into the river under the watchful eyes of his friends. After several minutes of waiting in vain for him to resurface, his friends helpless then, immediately alerted passers-by on the disappearance of their mate. It was then that a thorough search for the student began. In the meantime, elements of the fire fighters’ brigade upon arrival dived in to the river for a thorough search. But things turned out unfruitful after about four hours search leaving no other option than to continue the next day.

In the intervening time, elders and other “autortons” of the area spent sleepless night invoking incantation for the recovery of Onemebe’s dead body. This because, it has almost become a tradition that at the beginning of every rainy season, the waters of River Mefou or the gods of this river must be appeased. When the search began early the next day, this time around in the presence of gendarmes and some priest, it took barely a few hours for Onemebe’s corpse to be
fished out from the river. And to the greatest astonishment of onlookers, the corpse was as fresh as if he had just fallen into the river a few minutes ago.