Robbery in Bilongue and nearby Soboum is closely linked to the dirty environment.

The neighbourhoods of Bilongue and Soboum in Douala are calm. Life goes on normally. However, this serenity is broken by two things noticeable as one gets out of Soboum to Bilongue across the small bridge.

The gutter above tells a great deal about the neighbourhoods. If the odour fails to attract any passers-by to the dirt-filled gutters beneath the bridge, then the surrounding bush will. The latter recalls the 2011 wave of assaults by armed robbers and drug-addicted hoodlums said to have been ‘hired’ from the infamous underworld stronghold of Makea.

Stretching far beyond the neighbourhoods, the gutter was six metres deep at construction in 1980. In the last decade, it has been a constant threat to lives and property, having been filled to the brim with refuse. Aided by trees, plantain and banana suckers as well as thick herbs, it has been taken over by drug addicts and robbers as a hideout from where people are attacked at night. “We want public lighting here,” says Ewi Gilbert, who has lived in the place for 20 years.

Along the banks of the permanently wet and bushy gutter are mostly wooden houses and a few good ones. Odour from leftover meals from nearby pigsties, organic waste from homes, plastic containers, and scrap iron, pollute as far as a kilometre into Soboum and Bilongue. Some residents claim that the industrial zone is to blame for the poor disposal of waste which trickles through other gutters into the area, where it is blocked and forms a scum.

They complain of frequent cases of malaria, diarrhoea, skin itches coupled with the nuisance of flies, mosquitoes and rodents which become serious during flooding. Some say water often rises above window level after heavy rains. The consequences are economic loss. The average inhabitant is often unable to cope with hospital bills. “I get drugs from roadside vendors, and only as much as I can afford,” says Marie Flore. Deaths of little children, sleepless nights, fighting, flooding and loss of property not only impoverish the inhabitants but burden them.

With the collaboration of some civil society organisations, municipal authorities, quarter heads, the hygiene and sanitation company, the authorities plan to clear the ditch of grass and refuse, assured Njoya Zakariaou, Douala III Divisional Officer. Meanwhile, the community’s vigilante group has helped in the arrest of 50 suspects since the 2011 attacks.