Claude Njiké-Bergeret

Claude Njiké-Bergeret , née Bergeret, (born June 5, 1943 in Douala , Cameroon ) is a development worker who came from French missionaries .

life and work

Njiké-Bergeret was born in Cameroon and grew up there. With three years she moved with her parents in the near Banganté where that a Christian girl internat initiated. Njiké-Bergeret grew up under the strict supervision of her parents in the narrow confines of the Mfetom boarding school . She attended school in Mfetom and built friendships with locals there. She learned the language of the Chefferie (Kingdom) Banganté . The Banganté are assigned to the Bamileke . Its head, the Fon , has around 60,000 followers. In 1956 Njiké-Bergeret moved with her family to France , where she graduated from high school. After dropping out of philosophy and getting married for the first time, she began studying geography at the University of Aix-en-Provence . During this time she gave birth to two children (Serge 1966, Laurent 1968). She experienced the student unrest in France at the university . Their first marriage was divorced in 1972. In 1974 Claude Njiké-Bergeret undertook to go to Cameroon for three years for the mission society for which her father had already worked. There she worked as a teacher. She later succeeded her parents, who had also returned to Cameroon and took over the management of the school in Mfetom. During this time she increasingly integrated herself into the social life of Banganté. In 1978 she married Fon Njiké Pokam François , although he was already married to over two dozen women and led a polygamous life. With him she had two more children (Sophia 1978, Rudolf 1980). After Njiké's death, she and her four children withdrew to a small piece of land, which she till today (2007) cultivated with her own hands.

She has become well known locally and is known as pure blanche ('white queen'). According to her own account, the marriage of a qualified, Protestant employee of a mission society with a local tribal chief is likely to be a one-off event. It sparked nationwide attention and caused the Protestant Church of Cameroon to explain.

Claude Njiké-Bergeret tried to mediate between European and African values. She oriented her lessons more closely to the needs of the locals by including Cameroonian history books and African literature in the teaching program. As early as the 1970s she campaigned for a changed image of Africa in France. But it was not until 1997 that she was able to reach a broader public with her demands for more understanding of the peculiarities of Africans through her first published autobiographical records. Her second book followed in 2000. Her books offer rare insights into the culture and customs of the Banganté tribe.

literature

• Ma passion africaine , 1997.
  • German by Karin Balzer: My African Passion, Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1999, ISBN 3-404-61462-3 - autobiography.
• La sagesse de mon village (Black Wisdom), 2000.
• Agis d'un seul cœr 2009.

Web links

• French-language site with further links

Individual evidence

1. ^ Njiké-Bergeret: My African Passion, 2006