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Yaoundé, the Capital:
Set in verdan
t hills some 750 metres above the sea, Yaoundé was a clear choice over Douala for the “honour” of colonial capital. Many people used to think of Yaoundé as a fairly sleepy city, at least in comparison to Douala, but now with close to 900.000 inhabitants (mostly Evondo) and modern
buildings dotting the landscape including a new airport, sports arena and Hilton Hotel, Yaoundé is beginning to shake off that reputation. The African sections of the city are as colourful and full of activity as any you´ll find in Central africa. Unfortunately, a rapidly increasing crime rate has tarnished the city´s reputation in recent years to the point where many travellers are only too happy to leave.
Douala:
Called the “armpit of Africa” by some, Douala has an image problem. Many short-term visitors will tell you all they can remember is seeing some ordinary architecture and feeling like a wet sponge. Lacking the class of Abidjan, the beauty of Dakar and the soul of Kinshasa, Douala is nevertheless admired for its vitality. With over a million inhabitants, Douala is second in size only to Kinshasa in Central africa, yet much of the activity is conveniently centred in one area - Akwa.
Douala was where I lived during my traineeship, and 
Douala was where I discovered what it means to stay in a developing country. One the one hand there are the areas where many white people and the black upper class live . There you find solid, sometimes even luxurious houses hidden behind walls and well guarded. The streets are well kept, and there are shops in which you can get everything you might need. Twice I bought a huge amount of cheese, bread and red wine there and shared it with my guest family to remedy my culture shock. Cameroun is one of the biggest importers of champagne of West Africa. When my boss, M. Tchokogue, invited me to a disco, he kept ordering bottles of champagne. I felt ashamed drinking it (it is as expensive there as it is in Europe), because I knew how the majority of the people lived and that they could never in
their life afford even a bottle of wine.
Then there are huge areas of people living in corrugated-iron shelters. These huts don´t even have a floor, there are just the walls and a ceiling. There is for example Serge, who was working near the Fidex office. He sold second hand clothes on the street. Each morning he arrived with his clothes in plastic bags, placed them in his corner and started waiting for clients. Sometimes weeks could pass without selling only one piece. And he was only 16 years old. Once I accepted to accompany him to his home where he lived with his aunt and uncle. There were only two rooms, one of whom I was allowed to see. They had no furniture, only two simple chairs. Probably they use the second room to sleep in. There was just a concrete wall and a ceiling, no floor. Serge was at the same time very proud that a white person entered his house (probably the only time in his life), and ashamed that I could see how poor he was.
Not only cars, even a telephone is a luxury many people cannot afford. Infrastructure and transportation are a mess (see the following article from Economist.com). The streets are full of holes and there are piles of rubbish everywhere. Often the garbage collectors are on strike. There are no public buses, so you have to
take one of the so-called taxi ramassage. There is no social security, no insurances, no banks that can be trusted (there function is taken over by the family. If you manage to earn some money, you will automatically be sent the children of some of your poorer family members to bring them up, and you will be regularly asked for loans). The tax system is complicated, unfair (the minimum tax is calculated based on turnover) and dominated by bribery. Nepotism rules (in the office I worked for there were only Bamiléké employed, mostly being a parent of the boss or stemming from the same town in the west of the country), but has to be judged in the context of the missing social security as a means for helping your family and friends. It also is a typical trait of particularist countries, placing more value on helping friends and relatives than on applying the same, objective and universal rules on everybody (for example in personnel selection and promotion)