The real price of chewing gum in Cameroon

A few months ago I found myself standing on a dusty street far away in a village in the North West Region (for connoisseurs, I was in Kom, Boyo Division to be precise). After an 8 hour nocturnal journey from Buea, I alighted from the 30 seater bus and stepped into a hail of wails, tears, sobs, sadness and melancholy; simply put a mournosphere. As the corpse was lowered from the top of the bus and taken away, I unleashed a huge yawn and didn’t like the feedback; I had to brush my teeth. After briefly rummaging through my backpack I discovered that I had done it again: I had forgotten my toothbrush. For my self-confidence, peace of mind and the comfort of those who might stand within my breath’s sphere of influence during the day, I knew I had to do something and quick.

The price I know

So I sought and headed for a small provision store nearby and asked for my favourite brand of chewing gum  - It is Cameroonian made but don’t see anything patriotic about my choice; we Cameroonians are very loyal to our national brands – so long as they are still within our financial reach.  In exchange for the CFAF 100 I handed the storekeeper,I was surprised when I got 8 instead of the standard 6 chewing gums I get in Buea for the same sum. I could have quietly walked but the honest boy within and inquisitive me connived and sent me into a wondering spiral that would end with a question? Was this rural lady mistaken? Far away from the money-mindedness and greed of urban life, could she be the last honest shopkeeper in Cameroon? Was she even the regular shopkeeper or was she sitting in for someone? I thought of not pressing my ‘luck’ and leaving quietly but I wanted to know the real price of my favourite brand of chewing in my own country beloved fatherland Cameroon. So I asked the lady how much the gums are sold and she replied 8 for a CFAF 100. I left and went about my chewing gum teeth – brushing endeavours. One question had been answered but another had reared its ugly head in its place: was it my memory playing tricks on me or don’t I vividly remember my secondary school economics teacher telling teenage me that the closer a product is to its place of manufacturing the lower its price and vice versa? If yes, why was my favourite brand of Made-in-Cameroon chewing gums cheaper hundreds of kilometres away from its place of manufacturing Douala and more expensive just a few kilometres away –in Buea- from its place of birth?

An ‘insider’ attempts to answer my question

After the funeral, I returned to my city of residence and quizzed an insider - my neighbourhood shopkeeper to be precise - on why the same chewing gums were cheaper further away from their place of manufacturing than closer to it. In his defence, (since he had just sold the same brand of gum at 6 for CFAF 100 to me) he said a lot of things; most of which left me unconvinced and as confused as I had returned from Kom. One of them was that this situation could be because after being manufactured, the gum was smuggled in huge quantities to Nigeria and then back into Cameroon through the North West reason for the cheap price up there. I found this argument utterly unbelievable.  Won’t transportation cost ultimately make the smuggled gum as expensive as unsmuggled gum? To his credit however, he offered an argument that struck some chord with me. To better explain himself, he used bananas as an example, saying that though they were ‘made’ Buea and its environs, they were cheaper in Douala than in Buea because as major demand hub huge quantities are taken there to meet the demand and this often results in supply surpassing demand and lower prices. This was a plausible argument I thought but it was not a plausible argument for my current chewing gum dilemma because both products had core differences which their made prices susceptible to very different factors which could not be interchangeable ex is a manufactured good while the other is a farmed product. In other words I still couldn’t explain the significant price discrepancy between the same products in the same country with a free market economy. With the appearance of this expression ‘free market economy’ in my field of thought, it finally dawned on me that I had been barking up the wrong tree – like most Cameroonians?-. I had begun my investigation with the wrong premise. The issue was not my proximity to the plant where my favourite gums were manufactured: this is a microissue and so subservient to the macro and main issue which is economic model practised in Cameroon. If  journalists and politrickians are right then my fatherland is a free market economy. Really?

Cameroon a free market economy?

Generally-speaking and going by my government’s disposal of major companies like SONEL, CDC Tea, CAMRAIL, Cameroon is a free market economy. Cameroon is (or supposed to be) a country where the price of my favourite bottom-of-log gum should be set by how much is produced, how much is consumed and in how long. But even a cursory look at the Cameroonian economoscape would provide ready-made arguments in rebuttal of our free market economy status. 

We are in a free market economy but now and again we hear government promoting a certain price list for basic commodities which businesses must comply under threat of severe penalty.

We are a free market economy but at the beginning of each month, special discount sales are organised by the various regional delegations of commerce. 

We are a free market economy but government and the AES SONEL (the American-owned company to whom legated our electricity sector to) were locked in dispute because the latter had decided to increase the unit price for electricity.

We are in a free market economy but price hikes are always blamed on fuel price hikes.

So?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not excoriating my government for trying to alleviate our misery with piecemeal measures, far from it. I am merely advocating for conscious and judicious use of foreign concepts since these concepts imply a string of things which we cannot always afford. I am rising up in words (not arms) against indiscriminate use of high sounding words which upon close introspection makes the government look and sound like a dishonest and/or confused bunch. Let’s guard against unfiltered borrowing and importation less we ensnare ourselves like we already are: if we hadn’t blindly signed up for things like human rights and co. Western countries and their acolytes won’t be calling us names, at the least not with the same ease, as they currently are because we've said ONE BIG HELL NO to homosexuality liberalisation. Just saying.