When the government shuts down the internet

Three months without internet in the Anglophone part of Cameroon

Simply leaving your mobile phone in your pocket when meeting friends, deliberately putting it aside to read a book. Digital detox is in. But what if it doesn't arise from personal initiative, but is forced by the government? What would probably be barely imaginable for many of us was reality in Cameroon in early 2017 for three months – at least in the Anglophone part. 

"At first I didn't believe that the internet could be gone," recalls Damaris Breithaupt. The then twenty-year-old lived from 2016 to 2017 in Bamenda for a development policy volunteer service, the capital of the North West region, one of the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon. 

The West African country is divided into two parts: the Francophone part has the largest share in terms of area and population. With around five million English speakers, the Anglophone part extends across the two regions of "North West" and "South West" in the north of the country, on the border with Nigeria. Until 1919, Cameroon was a German colony; after the First World War, the territories passed to England and France – thus laying the foundation for today's conflicts. Because: the now Francophone part was ruled according to French models, in the Anglophone part the English implemented their ideas after the population living there decided in a referendum to belong to Cameroon and not to Nigeria. Independence was not an option, although that was what many from the Anglophone region had wished for. At the international level, there was fear of a fragmentation into many small states, and this solution was therefore rejected. Thus Cameroon still consists today of two parts of the country, of which the English-speaking regions feel marginalised and discriminated against by the French government. 

Damaris was just out and about with friends in Bamenda. "Suddenly someone said: the internet is gone. At first I thought, okay, then we'll just wait three hours and it'll be back," she recalls. But it doesn't come back after three hours, not after a day, not even after a week. Only after three months of internet blockade is internet access available again. There is no official explanation from the government, neither when the internet is shut down nor when it returns. 

An awareness of a possible blockade by the government exists among the population before it actually orders the internet providers to shut it down. But it hadn't happened until then. In December 2016, protests in the Anglophone regions intensify, teaching staff strike, as do lawyers. They feel, among other things, misunderstood by the Francophone government, disadvantaged by the language and the French-oriented legal system. From Anglophone groups, so-called "Ghost Towns" are organised from January onwards. Ghost Town means an entire city on strike. The population is instructed to stay at home, no school, no market sales, just empty streets – like in a ghost town. In response, the government shuts down the internet on 17 January 2017. But even without the internet, it continues to be possible to call Ghost Towns. They are mostly on Mondays, from morning until seven in the evening, Damaris recalls. "Through the grapevine," as she calls it, "there was a lot of talk". So even without WhatsApp, she finds out when Ghost Town is, on which days she has to go to work and on which days to stay at home. Still, you could "never really know what was going on," she reports. "I found it quite stressful to know so little about the whole world, to have the certainty that if something happened, I would find out about it late."

From her Cameroonian surroundings, Damaris registers a "considerable acceptance" of events. "They were used to decisions being made about them from above. That was just how it was." This attitude is also contributed to by the fact that in Cameroon, the internet in general does not have quite as prominent a significance as, for example, in Germany, Damaris compares. "Generally more SMS are written, some only buy internet for one or two days a week, and many work, for example, at the market or elsewhere, where internet access is not necessary" and accordingly the cutting off of internet access is less painful. 

Damaris attributes the fact that she too grew into a life without internet quite quickly mainly to the support from her surroundings. "Because of that, I actually felt safe the whole time."

 "It was also quite nice not to be on my mobile phone in bed in the evening," she says. How else did her everyday life change without the internet? "I slept a lot," she sums up and laughs. "We talked to each other more. You quickly pick up your mobile phone to check the time or write an SMS. And then you put it away again. You're more in the here and now and not elsewhere in your head."

Still: contact – particularly with Germany – is difficult. Fellow volunteers of Damaris consider moving to the Francophone part. And a year later, when Damaris is already living back in internet-connected Germany, but her Cameroonian friend is in internet-blocked Cameroon again, she feels the restriction again. But: "Fortunately, the internet blockades last year were never that long and never completely gone." 

Her conclusion after three months without internet: "You can get by without it," but "with the internet it's quite nice." 

Alicia Wittschen