Christmas Light and|or Street Lights

Christmas Lights &|or Street Lights 

The festive lights are back, painting Bamenda in strands of gold and red. It is a beautiful season, they say. A time for beautiful people, beautiful reunions, beautiful rekindlings. And from my window, I see it—the sparkling proof draped over City Chemist roundabout, the hospital junction, blinking cheerfully against the night sky. For a moment, the whole town seems wrapped in a glittering promise.

But promises, like lights, have edges. And beyond their glow, the darkness gathers.

I walked home from the radio station last 31st of December, just before the crossover. My report was full of the joyous noise from the well-lit squares. The echo of celebration was still in my ears as I turned from the main market, leaving the island of light behind me. Then, the shadows by the roadside moved. Hands grabbed, voices growled, and in that brutal, breathless minute under a pitch-black sky, the festive season showed me its other face. They took what I had and vanished back into the void from which they came—a void that starts just where the last string of Christmas lights ends.

This is our annual contradiction. We spend weeks adorning our private gates and public roundabouts with careful artistry, while whole quarters of our city—Meta Quarters, the stretch from T-Junction to City Chemist—swallow the night in a profound and dangerous dark. We create dazzling islands in a sea of shadows. And in those shadows, more than just rubbish collects. Fear grows there. Opportunists wait there. The darkness becomes a fertile ground for all that we, in the light, claim to abhor.

So I have to wonder: What if our ambition grew to match the scale of our danger? What if, instead of focusing only on adorning this festive period, we fought to banish the dark all year? Not just with a single bulb in a private porch, but with the steady, public glow of street lights along our major arteries—starting with the very roads that connect our beautiful blinking roundabouts.

I know the dynamics are complex. I know budgets are tight and challenges are many. But how hard is it to prioritize the simple, enduring safety of our people over the temporary dazzle of a season? Can we not learn to care for our streets in July as we do in December?

The lights in front of my house will shine all night, all week. They are beautiful. But their beauty feels lonely, and selfish, when I remember that walk home. They feel like a decoration on the lid of a box that holds our deepest fears.

This year, let’s think bigger. Let’s light up the paths, not just the doorsteps. Let’s make the beautiful season safe, for everyone, everywhere.

I rest my case