The Serpent in Bonanjo

In the Douala neighborhood of Bonanjo, Baba and his friends rollerblade in the shade of a wall built by a French billionaire to block the sea. Amidst the specters of anticolonial resistance, they practice the serpent for hours.

In Douala’s Bonanjo neighbourhood, the purring of rollerblades on tarmac resonates in the silence of a space left empty due to an inconsistency. An off-screen voice tells us with a certain nonchalance, in step with what we see unfolding on screen, that Bonanjo was where the former German then French administrations had been located. As a result, the neighbourhood was subject to colonial prohibitions, particularly one forbidding Cameroonians from living there. To ensure the whites’ tranquillity, commercial motorcycle taxis were also banned.  A ban that has still not been removed from Cameroon’s criminal code, and so the space stands empty.  A void or calmness constrained but useful for the rollerblade club to practise the “serpent”: a technical figure executed by a group. Equally spaced bodies follow one another in a moving line. They disappear then reappear in the frame, tracing a path in this space brimming with history, taking advantage of its scars. In Bonanjo’s streets, named after Frenchmen who occupied and aggressed: De Gaulle, Loti, Carras…, a violent past emerges prolonged by the present-day occupation of billionaires such as Bolloré, for whom colonisation has taken a different form and who continues to divide, forbid access, create segregated spaces, take over territory. The film observes how these strata coexist to the sound of the serpent’s blades, which silences nothing. Quite the contrary, the serpent seems to listen, patiently following the past of its mischievous movement.

Clémence Arrivé Guezengar