I grew up in a small CDC camp called Kompina Camp II in the Littoral region of Cameroon where electricity and portable water weren’t things we even dreamed of. My father was a CDC rubber plantation worker, and had farming and hunting as his side hustles. The Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) is a state-owned agribusiness company and the second-largest employer in Cameroon after the government.

Life revolved around very few things: walking miles to school and back home, helping our parents with their farms and rubber work; playing football with homemade balls pieced together from rubber and scrap we could find.

In Kompina, there was no such thing as child labour. Kids started to assist with household chores at about four, then moved on to more difficult tasks right away from there on. Life was pretty much the same every day and finding happiness as a kid meant being creative. Yes, you had to create your happiness and live in it.

While things like rice and bread were a luxury, we survived on boiled cassava, porridge cassava, garri, water fufu and eru when we got lucky. Men beating women was a very normal thing and children dropping out of primary school due to teenage pregnancy was no news.

When I had my First School Leaving Certificate and Common Entrance Exams, I was unable to pursue my secondary education right away. First, there was no secondary school anywhere close; and second, my parents didn’t have the money to consider other options at the time.

At ten, I spent my days helping my father – tapping rubber trees and working the fields – because that’s what everyone did. But, as God would have it, my father and mother were able to raise some money and send me to a secondary school far out of Kompina.

Fast forward to today, I’ve been able to bag two Master’s Degrees. I have friends with similar stories from different communities. But the truth remains that we simply got lucky, at least for the most part. Because the system that I grew up with was not designed to protect children, most of the kids I grew up with ended up in the same trap like our parents and continued the cycle.

Looking back at what I had to go through to get here, I know I’m a product of miracle or grace, whichever fits better. But not everyone gets as lucky as I did. How the life of an average kid turns out should never be based primarily on luck.

I did visit Kompina a couple of years back. Things have got slightly better in terms of education as there have been some new schools in Kompina, but Camp II kids still have to either walk miles or have their parents pay commercial motorcycle riders to take them to school, which is very costly considering their income. Maybe things would’ve been a little different if the Anglophone crises had not started and affected CDC the way it did. When CDC became unable to pay its workers due to the crises, the latter found alternative ways to survive, mainly through agriculture.

Clean water and electricity, among others, still remain a major problem in Camp II. In a world where access to education has been bridged by the Internet, access to electricity and the internet should be packaged together and considered a fundamental human right. But that’s a conversation for another day, and a very important one.

Back in primary school, I was nowhere close to the most intelligent pupil in my class. To be honest, my parents were even poorer. But by some miracle, I was able to get here. How that happened is a story for another day as it only makes sense from the rear-view.

Sometimes I sit and imagine how life and lives would have played out if none of us had to walk miles to go to school, if we all had access to clean water and electricity, if we could all eat three square meals a day; if instead of accompanying our parents to their farms and the rubber at a tender age, we devoted more time to doing our homework and engaging in other activities more suitable for our cognitive development as kids…

This shouldn’t be any of my business, after all, should it? Wasn’t I able to make it out of the same Kompina Camp II? Perhaps, you’re right. Didn’t I make an exception? But I strongly believe that it should be the norm for every child to successfully get educated.

There’s an African adage that says “a child is one person’s only in the womb”. Based on where I’m coming from and everything I went through to get here, it’s safe to say I made it. And mind you, I’m still grappling with life, but not just with the basics of it. Yes, I’m proof that it’s possible, but that I’m the exception also makes me proof of a broken society that has collectively failed to protect its children.

When a kid is brought up right and given access to everything they need to become a fully functional human being with the ability to make good decisions and explore great opportunities, it’s the society and the world that benefit first.

When children don’t get access to basics such as access to education, proper healthcare and nutrition, access to clean water, electricity, etc., it looks at first like it’s the family’s problem. But with time, they grow up and leave their families behind to become a part of the society and the world. If they’re rich as a human being, the world around them benefit from this; and the same holds true if they’re empty and destructive.

As a community, and as a country, we should make it a duty to care about how children grow up with the same seriousness that we plan for shelter, food, and work in the years ahead. Whether we admit it or not, the future is not an empty place we enter alone; it is a home our children will inherit with us. So, planning for tomorrow means planning for the people who will live it.

Every child, regardless of where they’re born and raised, has a right to safety, learning, health, identity, play, and hope. Honouring these rights is not charity. Far from that, not only is it our responsibility, but also our smartest investment. It goes without saying that when we put children’s best interests first, especially the most vulnerable, we build a fairer, safer, and more prosperous society for everyone.

As a society, we all have a part to play in our various capacities. Parents and caregivers, businesses, faith and community leaders, neighbours, teachers and health workers, local authorities, and the diaspora. Families are the first line of care, but they should never be the only line as they’re only the starting point. Together, we create both the safety net and the springboard every child deserves. And whenever we come together and make this happen, we’re coming together as a society to lay the foundation of a better tomorrow for us all.

We should all be concerned about how children are learning, growing, and feeling and fund it like our future depends on it, because it does. When we plan the next five years with children at the centre, we don’t just prepare for tomorrow; we shape a tomorrow worth inheriting.

In Michael Jackson’s voice:

We are the world,

We are the children

We are the ones who make a brighter day

So lets start giving

There’s a choice we’re making

We’re saving our own lives

Its true we’ll make a better day Just you and me