Doing nothing? Dynamics of waiting among ageing internally displaced Cameroonians during the anglophone crisis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Waiting is often perceived as an inactive or static period and is mostly linked to a hope for a better future among youth. This paper pays special attention to older internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Cameroon and how they use their experiences, knowledge, and capabilities to create new livelihoods as they ‘wait’ to return to their original homes. Specifically, the paper elucidates how ‘aged’ care for family members, create new jobs, do old jobs in a new manner, or ‘do nothing’ at all. Special attention is paid to the reconfiguration of family life and relationships, as well as to gender roles and shifting (in)dependencies. This paper goes beyond the notion of older people as vulnerable, inactive or frail, and highlights that work and activity at an older age generate new forms of mobility, resources and new ideas about the future. Drawing on ethnographic research among internally displaced families in Bafoussam, the Francophone capital of the West region of Cameroon, this paper illustrates that the condition of ‘waiting’ is productively and actively shaped by Anglophone IDPs who dynamically combine practices of the past with their present status, as well as notions about their still-uncertain future.