For a constructive dialogue between Germany and Cameroon

Dschang, UDs / SIC-27/07/18. With the vernissage on Thursday, July 26, 2018 at the Dschang Museum of Civilization, the cooperation project between the University of Dschang and the University of Düsseldorf on the (post) colonial memorial topography is at its culmination . Initially planned for 15:00, it was finally around 16:00 that began the ceremony with the arrival of the authorities of the city namely the sub-prefect of the district of Dschang, the Rector of the University of Dschang represented by the Secretary General of the said institution and a dozen traditional Chefs from La Menoua. Despite the rain that has become appropriate all day, it is with an impressive room that the activities began with, first, the welcome of the person in charge, Ms. Mekamwe Christelle Alisson. The latter recalled the preponderant role of the museum in reconstructing the history of a people. Prof. Albert Gouaffo, initiator of the project, took the floor afterwards. With him, the public was educated on the circumstances of the birth of this project as well as on its merits and objectives. Anxious to satisfy a majority French-speaking audience, it is in the language of Molière that the Düsseldorf researchers, prof. Stefanie Michels and Prof. Martin Doll will express themselves in turn; the first to express satisfaction with the progress and results of the project and to express the wish to see the German colonial past as a pretext for a rather constructive dialogue between Cameroon and Germany; the second to nourish the hope that the exhibition could open other fields of perception of German colonization in Cameroon. It will be the turn of the Rector of the University of Dschang, through the Secretary General, to speak. He will expertly recall the context and the protagonists of the German installation in Cameroon (1884-1916) before welcoming the initiative of this project which focuses on the grassfields at the heart of which is the UDs.

This speech ball ended with a cinematographic screening and a guided tour of an exhibition of ancient technologies, works of art and even food that tell their own story of the German presence in Cameroon. It is with well-watered feasts that will end the ceremony around 19h. If one sticks to Wikipedia, “the feasts are, in Paleochristianity, a religious meal, the purpose of which is to maintain” love “in the local Christian community. […] in the dominant Christian tradition, the term “agape” is attested in the sense of an occasional meal of fraternal communion accompanied by prayers and taking place in the evening “. What better than these feasts to close an evening during which the spirits have shared in the direction of a constructive dialogue between Cameroon and Germany. / RD