BAFOUSSAM – We are greeted with a chilling warning on our arrival at Bafoussam prison in Cameroon. "You can’t take photographs – there are members of Boko Haram imprisoned here," explains the prison chief.
The prison – which has different sections for men, women and minors – was to be our workplace for the next three days as we provided sports coaching courses to 30 adult prisoners and as many youngsters again. The youths were a little older than we’re used to in Inter Campus, but an unusual situation calls for an unusual solution.
In the many years the Inter Campus project has been running, rarely have we seen such dutiful participation in the course from the adults and such explosive joy from the youngsters when playing and training.
Their stories – as told to us by Cameroon Sports Centre secretary Francis Kammogne and local Inter Campus activity coordinator Alphonse – are hard to hear, some of them so appalling that they are scarcely believable.
Indeed, some of those taking part in the course are serving long sentences of 20 or 30 years – and there is even one prisoner on death row. Yet what strikes us is the incredible determination they have to learn something that might help them to be better, to be of use to others. For the youths of the prison, focusing on something positive is a way of rebuilding their lives and bringing some hope and meaning back into their difficult existences.
We organise the theoretical course among the pews of the prison chapel, while the practical training sessions are held by our coaches, Alberto and Andrea, in one of the prison yards, temporarily stripped of its cooking and work equipment to make way for a makeshift football pitch.
Our time at the prison ends with a celebration. We award certificates of achievement to the course members and organise a football tournament for the youngsters, while the adults get into the swing of things with sack races, tug of wars and arm-wrestling contests. By way of prizes, the victors are given food, clothing, soap… anything that may come in handy in prison life.
It’s difficult to capture the sense of celebration and community we felt in the prison, a place where – as one prisoner explains – they feel that nobody cares about them and that they are completely cut off by the world. But that’s not the case – not any more. From now on, with the help of our friends on the ground, Inter Campus are officially active in the Bafoussam prison. And as close followers of our work will know, once we set up somewhere we never leave…
P.S. We managed to persuade the prison guard to let us take photographs - you can enjoy them below.
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