Bimbia soon to be raised to UNESCO heritage site

 Bimbia, the Slave Trade Village within the Limbe III Municipality is on its path to becoming a UNESCO Heritage site which will raise the place to the status of a global tourist site.

The announcement was made by Narcisse Mouelle Kombi, Cameroon Minister of Arts and Culture, at the opening of an international symposium on« Bimbia,place of slavery, humanity’s memory » which held at the Yaounde National Museum from the 20th to the 22nd of June.

Narcisse Mouelle Kombi: Cameroon's Minister of Arts and Culture

Speaking at the conference in the presence of four members of government and Gilles Thibault, France’s ambassador to Cameroon, Mouelle Kombi admitted that «Bimbia is a file with high stakes and a transcendent cause”.

For his part, Gilles Thibault, France’s ambassador in Cameroon boasted that his country was the only country that had instituted a day in remembrance of the Slave Trade and its dehumanising effects. He said the works of many Cameroonian writers on the subject justified the holding of the conference.

Meanwhile, Jacques Martial, president of Memorial ACTe, Guadeloupe-France, said no society could be validly founded on the principle of oblivion.

Also speaking, Patricia Afade Beauchamp, initiator of the projet TOSTEM- Mémoires libérées , said it was necessary to valorise slavery sites like Bimbia, while at the same time respecting this ugly past.

A sketch titled « Révolte des esclaves » was then staged and it evoked tears from Madame Youssouf Hadija Alim, Minister of Basic Education.

After the holding of workshops on the theme for two days, participants undertook visits to Limbe, Buea and the palaces of some chiefs in the West Region.

Speaking to the press at the opening of the symposium, HRH Chief Epupa S. Ekum,of Bimbia, said his village was already a tourist site which only needed development. He said within the Ministry of Arts and Culture and the Ministry of Tourism everything possible was being done to harness the place to promote tourism. “The Ministry of Arts and Culture has already built a reception house and they are putting up other structures inside the slave trade village. The Government should support the Ministry of Arts and Culture and the Ministry of Tourism, so that it can become a world tourism center. We are supposed to give them land to develop the place. I already gave them land for the building of the structures.”

Adapted from The Horizon Newspaper

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