I was very excited when I was given the opportunity to study in South Africa in 2017. Cameroon’s political crisis had reached boiling point. On October 1 of that year, the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front had declared its independence from Cameroon’s French-dominated central government. Foolhardy boys were being encouraged by online “leaders” of the Anglophone secessionist movement to take on the Cameroon government. Meanwhile the mercenaries also known as the Cameroon armed forces were killing these boys from Ambazonia (also known as Amba boys) like flies. Still, the news of my scholarship came with apprehension, knowing what I had heard of South Africa: Periodically, locals had gone on pogroms against Africans from elsewhere on the continent, there as immigrants, refugees, students or temporary migrants. Hundreds had been killed, often in a gruesome manner and thousands left homeless.

Several people asked if I would be safe and I responded with false bravado, “Would you ask me that if I was going to the US given how often mass shootings happen?” Still I recall breaking down one evening, a month before my departure. I had read an academic article by my then-prospective supervisor about horrific sexual harassment statistics among South African students. I wrote to a close Cameroonian friend and told her I felt like having sex before I left, so the first time would at least be pleasurable. God forbid, I traveled to South Africa and that first time was a rape.

I was having this conversation in the dark, due to the power outage in my part of Buea that evening. I struggled to find a taxi heading into town to meet another friend, someone I was meeting in person for the first time. As I crossed Mile 16, I came across men wearing heavy armor, their presence frightening. But despite the violence and instability at home, South Africa seemed scarier because of its rape statistics; scarier than America’s mass shooting; and even more so than La Republique Du Cameroun’s hired men with guns who made getting a taxi difficult, and robbed me of the very sense of security they were meant to ensure. I remember my new friend telling me not to be so worried about South Africa. Later that night, I prayed, “Lord, I will not experience what my mother has not experienced.” It was a silly prayer because I’ve never asked my mother if she’s been raped or sexually molested. And she’s never asked me either.

I stayed in South Africa for nine months uninterrupted before I visited Cameroon again. During my time away, the crisis back home grew even worse. I often joked with friends that the fear I had of South Africa was now directed towards home, as we increasingly heard of both soldiers and Amba boys raping young women, of homes being burned with its occupants inside, of kidnappings, and of mutilations. By the time I returned in December 2018, I wrote out a will; dramatic, I know. I prepared my mind and friends in case I was kidnapped: “This is what you should do for me and who to contact.” I bought a stun gun and pepper spray for myself and several female friends.

Back home in Cameroon, I adjusted to the insecurity. We have all adjusted to it. We have learned when and where to speak. Not to speak freely in public transport for fear of informants, nor to visit certain neighborhoods for fear of kidnapping. This was very similar to the way I protected myself in South Africa, by never being off campus late by myself. Never going downtown alone. The way I had my seamstress adjust my clothes prior to traveling to South Africa so they wouldn’t show cleavage, so too I adjusted my schedule in Cameroon and my identity to suit whoever I was dealing with; whether it was a Francophone soldier or an Ambazonia fanatic.

So, after one year, after experiencing a similar insecurity at home and abroad, when people write and ask if I am okay, I sometimes wonder how to respond. But these days, the simple answer is, “Yes, I’m safe. I’m not at risk of xenophobia given my profession, socio-economic privilege and location on campus …” Yet the more honest answer is: “No one’s safety is sure anywhere. Today just wasn’t my day by God’s grace.”