Supper Cameronian
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Ngando Pickett warming up for the World Cup at a Cameroonian Premier League match.
This week I met up with the Cameroonian national team’s mascot, a pot-bellied, larger-than-life character named Ngando Pickett.
He’s hard to miss during a game. It might have something to do with the fact that he’s often painted from head to toe in green, red and yellow stripes, like the national flag. Or that he strips to a g-string and shakes it when Cameroon scores.
But Ngando’s back-story is equally attention grabbing. Like many young men at the time, he celebrated Cameroon’s wins at the Africa Cup of Nations in 1984 and 1988. But it wasn’t until 1998 that Ngando’s true calling came. He was sleeping outside in the Sahara Desert between Morocco and Mauritania when had a vision of himself painted in the Cameroonian colours.
“I told the Cameroonians I was travelling with that I had found my path,” he told me.
That year, Cameroon was playing in the African Cup of Nations in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s capital. Ngando packed up his bags and travelled thousands of kilometres overland from Nouakchott in Mauritania to Dakar, Senegal capital and then from Dakar to Bamako, Mali and finally to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. He asked a Cameroonian acquaintance in the country to help him find the coloured body paints of his dream.
Since that day, Ngando says he has geared-up for every single game. “It’s a passion,” he says. “It’s like I become another person when I put on the colours.”
Cameron’s success when he’s in the stands has led some people to speculate whether Ngando is some sort of sorcerer. At times, opposing teams won’t even let him into the stadium to work his “magic.” During the 2002 African Cup of Nations in Bamako, Mali, Ngando says that when he arrived at the stadium for the semifinal against the home team, there was a huge crowd blocking the entrance.
“There were at least 100 soldiers waiting for me,” Ngando told me. “They undressed me — I was naked… then they punctured my troupe’s drums and confiscated them. So we took a taxi to another neighbourhood and watched the game on TV – Cameroon still won 3-0!”
Cameroon then went on to take home the Cup.
At home, on the other hand, Ngando is a true celebrity. I followed him to a local league game and watched people swell around him. The children danced with him until the sides of their faces were smeared with body paint. Older people cheered him on in amusement, filming Ngando’s trademark dance moves on their mobile phones.
Even out of costume, Ngando is recognized everywhere. I walked through the central market with him and every step there was a new chorus of people calling out “Pickett!” or “The Mascot!” I can assure you neither Britney Spears nor Paris Hilton would get this type of attention here.
Like any public creature, Ngando is ever friendly, finishing every public greeting with a deep giggle. He became so well liked that the Cameroon’s Ministry of Sports started sponsoring Ngando and his troupe of drummers to attend the national side’s games.
But although his travel and subsistence during tournaments is provided, being a mascot isn’t actually an official state position. So when Ngando is not travelling with the Cameroonian delegation, he lives on a small sponsorship from a mobile phone network, by performing at weddings and other private occasions, and mostly by donation.
By the end of the afternoon that I spent with Ngando at the football stadium, his group of six had earned about 9000 CFA in tips – less than $20. It’s not great, but enough for a round of sodas and chilli chicken sandwiches on the streets of Douala’s Deido neighbourhood, where Ngando lives.
He does what he does for love, not money, he explains.
Ngando: a marketing dream
Ngando personifies everything that you would want in a World Cup-themed advertisement: real-life passion, patriotism, and over-the-top love for football.
That’s probably why his painted half-naked image (you can see it here if you scroll down), with the line: “How deep is your love,” plastered over the top lines the Parisian metro system – a publicity campaign for Puma.
What a great opportunity for Ngando right? The problem is that although Puma sponsors the Cameroonian team, they don’t actually sponsor Ngando. Ngando wasn’t even aware that his image was going to be used in their advertisements. The first Ngando heard about the campaign was from the Cameroonian diaspora in France. “I started getting several calls a day,” says Ngando.
On one hand, the global exposure has made Ngando really happy. Him image has united Cameroonians for years and will now unite the world. But at the same time, he felt duped. “Those images belong to me,” he explains, in an almost apologetic tone. “And it should be up to me to decide whether my image can be used for a film or advertisement.”
In Cameroon, I’ve found that people are extremely very suspicious of journalists – civilians worry that anyone armed with a camera is going to make money off of them. It took days of meetings to explain to Ngando and his troupe that I wanted to tell their story, not use their image for commercial means. When I first arrived, I was extremely frustrated – but now I understand. If you let someone take your picture, you could end up being the poster-boy for a herpes cream. (I know there isn’t the same connotation with Puma sportswear, but I guess it’s still the same principle).
I tried contacting three Puma officials in Europe and North America about the issue multiple times, but haven’t received an answer. Equally, the Cameroonian Ministry of Sports has been tight-lipped.
“It’s not my place to comment on what happened,” Mr. Ondoa, the Minister’s second technical advisor (who deals with the national side’s support groups) told me.
So plainly, I don’t really know where the fault was committed. Did Puma really put Ngando’s half-naked image on posters around Paris without consent, or did Cameroon’s Ministry of Sports OK the picture as part of the sponsorship deal for the Indomitable Lions? Finally, now that the publicity is out, what can a poor man like Ngando do to stand up for his rights against the government and a multinational corporation?
Ngando, who always seems to have the right attitude, doesn’t seem that fazed. With or without help – he says he’ll always be there to support the Lions. His life path is born from passion rather than greed.
But it still bothers me that everyone but he and his family seems to eat from his love for the game, including his managers, his neighbourhood, his government, and now even Puma.
Zangalewa
Ngando isn’t the only such story. FIFA selected Colombian singer Shakira to make the 2010 World Cup anthem. The song, which was done in collaboration with South African band Freshlyground, is called “Waka Waka” (Time for Africa).
So much was the hype that a pre-release of the “new” song was buzzed about on the Internet. That’s where a friend of the band (that was living in the U.S.) heard it. It wasn’t “new” at all. It was a reinterpretation of a “self-titled” 1986 hit (by the Cameroonian military band Zangalewa (www.groupezangalewa.com). The song is a celebration of the country’s independence and uproot of the colonials.
I’m told the Zangalewa video was one of the first to come out in Cameroon and that the song was so popular it even played at the beginning of the nightly newscast. It then went around the world and has been re-sung in many other countries facing the same issues. The band Zangalewa broke up over a decade ago — and if it hadn’t been that one of the band members living in the US, the group might have watch Shakira perform their hit for the first time at the World Cup ceremonies.
Thankfully, it was caught early before the release of the song and they’ve struck a compensation deal. They are now negotiating whether Zangalewa will be invited to see the performance of the song during the World Cup in South Africa.
I keep hearing about how much South Africans are going to have to pay in taxes for all the infrastructure put in place for the World Cup, while FIFA sits back and enjoys the pay cheque. So I’m wondering whether this World Cup is actually bringing as much business to the continent as everyone had anticipated, or if is it just another round of exploitation? Let me know what you think in the comments section.
Next time: An interview with International soccer start Roger Milla on his birthday, as well as one of the best juggling shows I’ve ever seen by Cameroonian soccer player Edmond Atango.
You can watch video of my time with Suliat, the Nigerian female soccer player (), as well as a short clip of my time in Nigeria.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter.
Posted by Anjali Nayar
posted @ 11:37 AM,
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