In March 2023, Prince Remigius Endeley along with 39 heritage and museum professionals as well as conservators from all ten regions of Cameroon convened in Douala for a three-days museum training workshop UNESCO organized by UNESCO. This workshop comes as part of UNESCO’s efforts to strengthen capacities of museum professionals as an emergency response to risks faced by cultural heritage in the midst of the recent crises and natural disaster in some regions of Cameroon.
The workshop came in a time when we faced one of the major disasters of flooding in Buea. The heavy avalanche from the Buea Mountain uprooted our Touristic Office completely and destroyed some of our valuable materials.
With the funding support from the Heritage Emergency Fund (HEF), UNESCO carried out evaluations on Heritage sites in Cameroon’s Far North and Northwest crisis-affected regions. These assessments showed the rapid deterioration and disappearance of cultural heritage. The Boko Haram Crisis in the Far North Region and the socio-political crisis in the Northwest and Southwest Regions have had drastic consequences on population movements, resulting in abandonment, looting and destruction of cultural goods in these regions. The Lifafa Museum in the Southwest Region and the Logone Birni in the Far North region were the most recent affected by natural disasters.
As these disasters persist within the context of conflicts and climate change hazards, UNESCO tailored the workshop sessions with modules aimed at empowering museum professionals to mitigate the impacts on museum collections. The modules included current approaches to sustainable documentation of museum especially through digital transformative tools and resources.
Part of the training engaged the participants in practical sessions on how to administer first aid to cultural heritage in crisis. During one of the sessions, Dr Frank Ogou, the cultural expert and Director of the School of African Heritage trained the participants in identifying, documenting and safeguarding collections in cases of flood, fire, theft, and other related risks. He engaged in expanded knowledge on museum management including preventive conservation of museum collections and security of museum collections in case of natural disaster like flooding and anthropic disaster like fire.
It was very impressive as I learned new skills on how to manipulate objects in museums, the various emergency security measures put in place in case urgency situations in the museum and how to preserve objects from deteriorating and arriving a stage of curative conservation.
