Claude Njiké-Bergeret

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Claude Njiké-Bergeret (* June 1943 in Douala, Cameroon) is a development aid volunteer originate from french Protestant missionaries.

[edit] Live and work

Njiké-Bergeret, born as Bergeret, was born in Cameroon. Her parents were missionaries form France working in Cameroon, where she raised up. In the age of three years her parents settled in Banganté. In this place they build up the public shool Mfetom, where Njiké-Bergeret attended her first shool years. She learned to live with the locals and build up friendships to some of theme. Accompanied by localss she learned to speak the local language of the chefferie Banganté. The Banganté is a people belonging to the Bamileke. The fon is the formal head of around 60,000 adherents. In 1956 their parents decided to move back to France, where Claude raised up making her high shool degree some years later. She studied geography and get married to a frenchman. To this man she give birth to two children (Serge 1966, Laurent 1968). In her time at the University of Aix-en-Provence she get involved in the students protest in 1968. After her marriage failed in 1972 she decided to go back to Cameroon. In 1974 she signed a contract with the same missionary society her father worked for to go back as a teacher to Cameroon. Their she followed her parents in leading the public shool of Mfetom. In this time she get very close involved in the local society live. In 1978 she provocated a scandal as she get married with the local fon Njiké Pokam François, as though he lived along with nearly 30 women in polygamy. She lived with him and get two more children (sophia 978, Rudolf 1980). After the dead of Njiké Pokam François she administer a small piece of land and lived a rural live.

She had become a local famousness under the name reine blanche (white Queen). To her own saying the marriage of a studyied, protestantic, white woman with a local fon was a unique activity that get popular in whole Cameroon.

Claude Njiké-Bergeret is an intermediator beetween the European and the African values. She reformed the education in Mfetom by involving more local history in her lessons and getting a clearer reference to the belonging of the locals. She sticked up for a better image of Africa in France, since the 1970th. In 1997 she succeeded in getting publicity by publishing her first autobiography writings. In 2000 there was a second book published by her. Her books deliver rare insights of the rites and culture from the Banganté. The books are translated into German, but not yet to English.