We live in fear and are traumatised by the fighting in Bamenda. This once peaceful and lively city in Cameroon has become a battleground between government forces and rebels demanding an independent state for the central African nation's English-speaking minority.
More than half the city's population of about 400,000 have fled their homes in the last few months, either to safer neighbourhoods or to mainly French-speaking towns and cities unaffected by the conflict.
Protests over the increasing use of French in courts and schools in Cameroon's English-speaking heartlands, the North-West and South-West regions, morphed into violence in 2017.
A security force crackdown led to some English-speaking civilians taking up arms against the government, led by the French-speaking President Paul Biya.
‘Shot for smoking marijuana'
Now, the sound of gunfire has become familiar, even to two-year-olds, as has the sight of abandoned corpses on the streets of Bamenda, the city with the biggest English-speaking population in Cameroon.
