Cameroon Cleanup Lets Flood-Hit Residents Sleep With ‘Both Eyes Closed’

Cameroon Cleanup Lets Flood-Hit Residents Sleep With ‘Both Eyes Closed’
Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights.
|Updated:

Yaounde, Sept. 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation)—When frequent flooding became too much for the residents of Nkolbikok, a neighborhood in Cameroon’s capital, they decided to take matters into their own hands—with gloves and wheelbarrows.

Some of the 6,000 inhabitants now carry out daily trash pickups and monthly cleanups of the swampy area’s once trash-choked wetlands and blocked drains, a measure they decided on themselves after failing to get outside help to solve the problem.