Encounter with an Incredible Individual

It has been a good week back in Yaoundé but we’ve had a good amount of work, which has prevented us from going on adventures after school. We have started to really delve into the subject of development by talking to different NGOs to understand some of the things they have been accomplishing. Our first meeting was life changing. We met with a guy named Ofir Drori whose story impacted us all. He came to Africa for the first time when he was 18 years old and decided that he wanted to see it on foot. So he went to a reserve and started to chase antelope and giraffes until he was so lost and far out of the reserve that he had to set up his tent in the bush. The Masai found him and he lived with them for a couple of days, which changed his whole life path. He decided to not attend University and to instead explore Africa on foot, avoiding even dirt roads, for 2 years. He became a photojournalist and travelled all over Africa from Sudan documenting Darfur, to Nigeria documenting human rights violations. Eventually he found himself in Cameroon needing a break from such a close proximity to violence and decided to write an article about the bush meat trade, a field that is completely unregulated by the government. He found that NGOs were doing nothing to actually help the animals, just educating children and school and doing periphery stuff. He came across a baby chimp that was being sold by some poachers and instead of buying it and supporting this trade, he went to the authorities. But they told him that they would only go confiscate the chimp if he paid them (corruption infiltrates everything here.) Instead, he went to the poachers himself and bluffed by telling them he was the director of an NGO that was coming with the authorities to arrest them and prosecute them for buying and selling endangered animals. He said that they could avoid prosecution if they agreed to be informants; they bought it and eagerly agreed. He saved the monkey and lived with it until there was a reserve that agreed to take it. After that day he worked nonstop to create the NGO that he had invented to trick the poachers, and they have now been operating for 7 years and have 450 convictions – there was previously 0. They operate on a strict moral premise, they give extremely low salaries, they hire people based on their personality traits and not their qualifications, and they only accept donations from people that are truly on board with their mission. He affected us all so much with his story and his values. He taught us about how all the NGOs here are corrupt, even Transparency International has inflated budgets to pay for bribes and under the table money that is needed to get stuff done. He has set the standard and takes a more difficult path by refusing to engage in these acts. He brings into question how we value education and knowledge without having real experiences. It was incredible to listen to him and I think it will affect all the decisions I make surrounding NGOs and even life here.

Otherwise our week has been pretty tame, some nice afternoons hanging out with the group and celebrating a 21^st birthday, eager to get through next week and spend a weekend at the beach!! 

My Beautiful City