Global Letter Exchange In Yaoundé Is Growing
The RESPECT global letter exchange campaign in Yaoundé, Cameroon, is growing. Coordinated by Nestor Nyoma, a Burundian urban refugee who lives in Yaoundé, RESPECT Cameroon (former Club RESPECT Yaoundé) now has two groups of pen-pals. The first group, which begun in 2004, consists of nine teenage refugees and continues at a more constant pace than last year. Another group with five adult refugees started to exchange letters with the young adults from the Center of Assistance by Work (CAT) La Rivière in Pontivy (Brittany).
Indeed, Maxcel, Valentine, Patrice, Marie Eugenie, Clarisse, Didier, Germaine, Prosper and Nelson, aged between 13 and 18 years, supervised by Nestor Nyoma, have been exchanging letters since 2004 with the Club Solidarity of the College Bourg-Madam (France) supervised by Beatrice Marin.
As a coordinator of these exchanges, Nestor decided to let them choose their topics and draft their letters. He intervenes only when needed. The time reserved for writing the letters is the same for everyone so that they can be mailed all together in the same envelope and thus save on postage.
Nestor said of this exchange: "I think that on one side like on the other, they can make new friends, which is the main purpose of this exchange. Also the young refugees can develop an interest for reading and especially for writing."
The students from the Club Solidarity of the College Bourg-Madam slipped some postcards into one of the envelopes this year. Nestor reported that "the postcards described the area where they live in South of France. Landscape, snow, mountains… in short it was wonderful."
The only concern, for which there is no solution for the moment, is the letters' transit time. Because it takes so long, it considerably reduces the frequency of the mailing. In fact, the transit time is two weeks from Yaoundé and one month from France. Therefore, there is only one mailing approximately every two months.
Since June 2006, a new group of pen-pals was formed. It was the group of young adults from the CAT la Rivière in Pontivy who agreed to exchange letters with some refugees in Yaoundé. They had already been put in contact with South Kivu refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in March 2005. However, the exchanges were not very satisfactory and very irregular.
The adults of the CAT la Rivière, not having any pen-pals were, therefore, open to exchanging letters with other refugees in search of friendship and mutual comprehension. Nestor approached older urban refugees aged between 21 and 30 years to participate. Dody Japser, Grace, Vital Maccley d' Estaing, Domenica and Nestor himself are participating in this new exchange. The correspondence is a bit peculiar because the letters are written on common topics related to everyday life in each country. The topics vary and can include:
- Sports
- Books which one likes
- Music
- Cinema/TV
- Weather
- Fauna, savage or domestic animals
- Going out with friends
- Local/ethnic festivities
- Cooking recipes - DIY, exchange tricks to build things at home
- One's district
- One's school
- One's work
- The job of their dream
- How one would see oneself at 30 years, 40 years or 50 years
- What is for us "to succeed in life"
- Family (subject which can be painful for the refugees who sometimes lost the majority of their close relatives)
- Passions/hobbies
- Games
- Equality between girls/boys in the everyday life
- Relationships between girls/boys
- War and peace in the world
- Disease
- Loneliness
- How one is perceived by the others
- What make us happy, etc.
With each mailing, the two groups agree on a common topic. The imagination and discovering of each other are in "the heart" of this exchange. The pen-pals can exchange:
- Drawings
- Collages
- Poems
- Small objects
- Stories or tales
- Self-portraits or simple texts
The first letters were sent in June and July. They included the pen-pals personal presentation and the description of their homeland: Pontivy in France and Yaoundé, Cameroon. The envelopes contained postcards, letters and a newspaper. They haven't decided yet as to what will be the next topic.
After two years of corresponding, the assessment of the exchanges with the teenage urban refugees of Yaoundé is very positive. For the refugees, these exchanges constitute a moral support, a means to share their experiences with people of their own age, promote their culture, learn their mates' culture and mainly make friends. In short, for them it is a way to escape from their world, even if it is only for a short while, and to discover that of their friends.