• Project delivered in record three months instead of five
• Modern staff toilets, flag stand, extra stone wall and landscaping offered as gifts outside the contract
• UNDP and the Governor's office commend the company, urge culture of maintenance
• Contractor vows to keep giving back to the North West
Twenty-seven refurbished classrooms, 810 new benches, whiteboards, ramps and walkways: this is what students of Government Bilingual High School (GBHS) Bamenda will meet when they resume this September, following the official handover of the rehabilitated Campus C by Dreamland Connect to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Presidential Plan for the Reconstruction and Development of the North West and South West Regions (PPRD).
The works, funded by the Islamic Development Bank through the State of Cameroon and implemented by UNDP, were contracted for five months. The structure was completed in about two and a half months, to the surprise of officials.
UNDP North West Regional Coordinator, Mme. Mary Nyuyinui, was careful to situate the choice of the school within the wider architecture of the reconstruction plan.
"It is not UNDP that chooses the project that has to be rehabilitated. The projects are given to us by the state of Cameroon," she explained, recalling that a thorough assessment of damaged structures in the North West and South West regions had been done, a database produced for easily implementation.
"GBHS Bamenda was one of these projects, and it just came at a time at which it had to be rehabilitated."
She listed the scope: 27 classrooms rehabilitated, walkways and ramps built to make the campus more inclusive, and equipment including 810 benches, whiteboards, teachers' chairs and tables, and cupboards for didactic materials.
"We are today very happy about this piece of work that has been beautifully done by Edison Fru Ndi, the contractor of Dreamland Connect," she said, adding that the works follow the programme's guiding slogan of building back better.
Her expectation now shifts to those inheriting the buildings. "We all know that our challenge in Cameroon is maintaining structures that are being given to us as a gift. We have the tendency of thinking that it is the donor that will come and maintain the structure." Beyond upkeep, she said, the hope is that the students "will see in them opportunities for them to become better citizens… to learn better, to strive, and to build the Cameroon that we are all looking up to." She said
Representing the Governor of the North West, Djunang Marceliout, Head of the Economic, Social and Cultural Affairs Division (ESCAD), thanked President Paul Biya for instituting the PPRD and commended every actor in the chain- the PPRD and UNDP regional coordinators, and the contractor.
"It was a project to be executed in five months. For the first time in the history of the North West Region that we know, this project was completed in less than three months," he said, noting that Dreamland Connect had kept a promise made during the site installation in May.
He said students returning in September would find "a campus that has been built back and rebuilt better," and urged PPRD to extend the same treatment to other structures so that, with Cameroon's 2035 emergence horizon, "the North West region will be up to standard, and we will be able to face the test of time."
For the Regional Delegate of Secondary Education for the North West, Baijong Ezekiel Ndifon, the rehabilitated campus carries a message beyond concrete and paint.
"This structure is a structure of assurance to the education community in the region," he said. "When you find a reconstruction like this one taking place, it is assuring the students that the state is still planning for them."
He turned the ceremony into a platform for a back-to-school appeal, insisting that no child should be left behind on the first day of classes. "Whether you are an Okada rider, a taxi driver, a farmer, a businessman, or a professional of whatever category, we need you helping the children of the North West region to go back to school. That is how the North West is, and that is how the North West has always been. So it is a strange force to think against education."
To Edison Fru Ndi, CEO of Dreamland Connect and North West Regional Delegate of the Chamber of Commerce, the job was his company's first with the UNDP and that he approached it as a matter of reputation.
"We mobilised our team in such a way that, instead of taking five months to realise the project, we took exactly two and a half months… It sounds easy, but it was quite a challenging project," he said
"We thought we should write our name in the annals of UNDP and execute this project beyond expectation."
Several additions were made at his own cost: modern staff toilets to replace facilities he judged unbefitting for teachers, a modern flag stand, an extra 20 metres added to the 200 metres of concrete stone wall in the contract, plus flowers and decorative markings that were never in the job description.
"The principal said he wanted a Dreamland, and I thought I should give him a Dreamland," he said.
He framed the whole exercise as a debt repaid to the region that made him. "This is our region, and the region belongs to us… If I'm whatever I am today, it is thanks to this region, and each time I have the opportunity to give back, I give it holistically and with all my heart."
Edison Fru Ndi concluded that saying that; "I want to thank UNDP for using local solutions to local problems, and the local solution here is the Dreamland construction company."
The Principal, Ngwa David like the PTA President, have vowed to maintain the beauty of Campus C and like Oliver Twist, called on the United Nations Development Programme to assist in the rehabilitation of other structures in the school especially the home economics laboratory.
The new academic year in Cameroon will commence on September 7 and Dreamland Connect delivering at this time, is just good enough for students and teachers to start classes without hitches.
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