Cameroon Football Fever : a field of dreams

Beaucoup de nos jeunes rêvent de devenir le prochain Eto'o Fils (dont l'avenir au Barça est encore incertain) et d'être la prochaine star du football Camerounais. Un article sur la fièvre footballistique qui touche notre pays, intitulé Field of Dreams dans le Time Magazine relate comment ces espoirs peuvent vite tourner à la désillusion pour des centaines de jeunes qui tentent leur chance et s'en remettent à des intermédiaires peu scrupuleux dans la perspective de se faire recruter par un grand club européen.

Leaving. That word holds rare promise in this central African country. In a region with outsized corruption and limited opportunities, leaving Cameroon — and the continent — can transform lives of grinding poverty and rewrite an entire family's history. And among Yaoundé's one million or so residents, who live mostly in cramped shanties with patchy electricity and little indoor plumbing, it is football that holds more promise — and potential peril — than any other way out.
[...] in europe, hundreds of african youths have told immigrant-support groups that they have been brought to the Continent by unscrupulous agents, who seemingly had acted as freelancers with no authority from European clubs.



Tags: , ,

Commentaires

Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

There are things we don't want to happen, but have to accept. Jennifer "JJ" Jareau

Image
The Jennifer "JJ"Jareau principle In the critically acclaimed US TV Show Criminal Minds , Jennifer "JJ"Jareau a.k.a "JJ" quoted nicely her exit interview in the 2nd episode of the 6th Season.  Here's what I named it the Jennifer "JJ" Jareau principle. I'm thankful for my years spent with this family; for everything we shared, every chance we had to grow.  I'll take the best of them and lead by their example; where ever I go.  A friend told me to be honest with you, so here it goes.  This isn't what I want, but I'll take the high road.  Maybe it's because I look at everything as a lesson, or I don't want to walk around angry.  Or maybe it's because I finally understand.  There are things we don't want to happen, but have to accept; things we don't want to know, but have to learn, and people we can't live without, but have to let go. As you can see,
Lire la suite

You did a great job ! Thanks ! You're FIRED !

Image
Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Patti Sangana ! I guess I missed something or politics have too much intricacies for the simple mind of mine. The recent events in Nigeria and the resignation of the Foreign Affairs Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala , proved that there is something decayed in the way our countries are run. The former Finance Minister of Olusegun Obasanjo was largely credited for the $18 billion debt cancellation from the Club of Paris. The Harvard trained former World Bank vice president was a woman on the rise, the " Corruption Cop " praised by Time magazine. Not only did she remove the clutches of the international creditors, but she also strove to restore the image of her country blamed for its corruption by Transparency International . Last month, she was "redeployed" from Finance to Foreign Affairs . Several bloggers argued that this was a sign of bigger fate for her, others were contending that the hero was falling from grace. Appearances remain
Lire la suite

Blogging : where's the money?

Back in 2005, BusinessWeek (via Gapingvoid.com) had an article about blogs entitled " Blogs will change your business ". Back then, blogs were said to be a "prerequisite". Were they really? Maybe, maybe not, that's not the point of this post. The article continues stating " blog power simply doesn't translate yet into big bucks. For now, it's running mostly on people's passion to communicate ". That was 2 years ago, did that change a lot? Well, quite not much if you read this post from Alex Iskold on ReadWriteWeb : There's No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere . " Because of the power law, the long tail of the blogosphere is huge and so any individual blog is not easily discovered. That is, the chance that a random Internet surfer will find a blog that is part of the long tail is nearly zero. Whatever monetization means the blogger in the long tail settled on, be it Google AdSense or Amazon affiliate codes, it can only work
Lire la suite