Emelda Awambeng, a mentally ill woman, does not leave her house in Bamenda, Cameroon, without her mother’s permission because she knows men might take advantage of her. Mentally ill women who are not closely protected by their families often face sexual harassment.
BAMENDA, CAMEROON – Emelda Awambeng is 32 years old, but she rarely leaves her house alone after dark. Even in the daytime, she asks her mother’s permission before she goes anywhere.
“I am afraid to go out because men will be calling me to come and take money, and I don't want to take their money,” she says.
Men use money to lure mentally ill women to drink alcohol and put themselves in vulnerable situations, says Emelda’s mother, Beatrice Awambeng. They make lewd comments, and if the women come near them, they may try to sexually assault them.
Emelda Awambeng has never been formally diagnosed, but her family understands her to be developmentally disabled.
Among the vulnerable women of Cameroon, Emelda Awambeng is lucky. Her family is devoted to protecting her, and she hasn’t attempted to leave home.
Mentally ill women who are not closely protected by their families often face sexual harassment, government officials and caregivers say. Women who wander the city, whether because they are homeless or because they choose not to stay in their homes, often face the worst fates.
It’s impossible to know how many people in Cameroon are mentally ill. Very few studies have been done to identify who they are, where they live and what illnesses they have.
There are just seven psychiatrists in Cameroon, a country of over 22 million people, one of them, Dr. Jean-Pierre Olivier Kamga Olen, confirmed in an email to GPJ.
That’s less than the average rate for low-income countries, where gross national income per capita is $1,045 or less. Kenya, a low-income country with a population of over 44 million, has almost 80 psychiatrists.
Until recently, there were no psychiatry training programs in Cameroon.
Kamga Olen, like his nation’s other psychiatrists, studied abroad. In 2010, the University of Yaoundé, located in Cameroon’s capital, opened a school for psychiatric training, Kamga Olen says. The World Health Organization previously reported that the country was without such a program.
The country now has eight psychiatry residents, he says.
But hurdles remain: A 2011 World Health Organization study found that Cameroon has no federal legislation dedicated to mental health.
Cameroonian doctors and nurses are inclined to emigrate. According to the International Organization for Migration, 46 percent of Cameroonian doctors and 19 percent of nurses emigrated between 1995 and 2005.
George Kisob, an officer of Child Protection Services at the Mezam divisional delegation of the Ministry of Social Affairs, says his office keeps no statistics on mentally ill women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted.
Such cases are not reported, he says.
“The cases we have handled are the cases where the sexual assault leads to a pregnancy,” Kisob says.
This year, the office has handled two such cases, he says.
Mentally ill women are more vulnerable to sexual violence than other women because they tend to be less assertive, Kisob says. Some don't even understand that they are being molested.
The perpetrators of such crimes are most often drunk men and boys, Kisob says. He adds that no one has been charged with sexual assault in such a case.
Because of their illnesses, some women don’t know they’re pregnant until it’s time to give birth, says Sister Jane Mankaa, founder of the Good Shepherd Home orphanage in Bamenda.
“This endangers the lives of the women and their babies,” she says. “At our orphanage, we have 10 kids whose mothers are mentally ill. Some of these women are roaming the streets of Bamenda.”
Some mentally ill women get pregnant repeatedly, Mankaa says. The orphanage is now caring for two siblings whom orphanage staffers believe are mentally ill.
“When they have their babies, sometimes nobody knows what happens to the babies,” she says. “When we find such kids, we bring them to the orphanage to help raise them.”
In some cases, Mankaa says, community members take pregnant women to the hospital only when they go into labor. Once they deliver their babies, these women abandon their infants and return to the streets. When the mothers can’t be found, the children are taken to the orphanage.
There is just one rehabilitation center for the mentally ill in Bamenda, Emmaus Outreach Center. Few people with mental illnesses are ever diagnosed because the region lacks mental health professionals.
Outreach Center staff members find street people who appear to be mentally ill and bring them to the Catholic-run center, says the Rev. Gioacchino Catanzaro, the center’s administrator. Twelve people, including one woman, currently live at the center.
Women are more likely than men to return to the street, Catanzaro says, possibly because there are few women on staff to care for them. His organization plans to build a center exclusively for women with mental illnesses within five or six years.
Poverty keeps some families from caring for family members with mental illnesses, he says. In other cases, the stigma of mental illness has devastating effects.
Some families bring people with mental illnesses to the city and abandon them to avoid the burden of caring for them. In some cases, people with such illnesses run away from home.
Beatrice Awambeng says doctors never properly diagnosed her daughter.
“When Emelda was four months old, doctors told me she was retarded mentally and physically and was different from my other kids,” she says.
Emelda Awanbeng’s mental disability was evident even in early childhood.
She didn’t walk until she was 4, Beatrice Awambeng says. She was pulled from school because she wasn’t able to learn along with the other children.
“My daughter is a very nice and friendly person,” Beatrice Awambeng says. “She can do some basic things like washing dishes, sweeping and fetching water.”
But she doesn’t know how to handle difficult situations, such as when a man directs a lewd comment toward her, Beatrice Awambeng says. A sexual advance that another woman might experience as an annoyance is potentially devastating for her.
When it comes to her daughter, Beatrice Awambeng says, safety is always a concern.
