The star striker of Paris Saint-Germain and the French football team, Kylian Mbappé, visited a school in Cameroon on Saturday whose association is financing the renovation before going to the village of his father Wilfrid, reported a journalist. AFP on the spot. Dressed in an apple green raincoat with matching cap, and surrounded by an imposing security device, he made his way with difficulty on a muddy track in the middle of a jubilant crowd screaming his name. Before climbing into a two-storey building to visit some of the 16 classes of the Bonendale bilingual school complex in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon.
On the third and last day of a visit to the country that his father left very young for France, the world football star came to see the progress of the renovation works of this nursery and primary school financed by his foundation Inspired By KM (IBKM). During the first two days of his visit, Thursday and Friday in the capital Yaoundé, Mbappé went to a school for deaf and hard of hearing children that his foundation also finances and then spoke with Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, in particular to child aid projects in Cameroon, according to his entourage.
This vast Central African country has been ruled with an iron fist for more than 40 years by President Paul Biya, 90, whose power ruthlessly suppresses the opposition throughout the country and separatist armed groups themselves very violence in the west populated by the English-speaking minority, according to the UN and international NGOs.
At Bonendale school, the “local child” was given a standing ovation, signing many football shirts for a multitude of children who rushed to touch him. “When we got the news that we’re going to be building new structures, we said ‘wow!’ For us, it’s something, we are moved and we are proud that our son has thought of us, of his country, of his village to do something good for African children”, marveled Frieda Kesse, director of the Bonendale francophone kindergarten. French and English are the two official languages of Cameroon. Many children from Djébalé, his father’s village, on an islet in the delta of the Wouri river which runs through Douala, take a canoe every day to reach the school in Bonendale.
Kylian Mbappé then went by boat to Djébalé, where he was welcomed by the village chief and notables for traditional ceremonies. Taken to the sacred hut, reserved for rites and blessings, he came out ten minutes later in traditional clothes and headdress worn on the occasion of happy events by the Djébalé, members of the Sawa ethnic groups, named after the “peoples of the water » of the Cameroonian coast.
