Ngomba Lucas has given up on his education this year. The 18-year-old has not attended school since January, when teachers walked off the job to protest the central government’s treatment of Anglophone Cameroonians in the largely French-speaking West African country. He’s missed so many classes, he couldn’t pass national exams anyway. “My parents spent a lot of money at the beginning of the school year to enroll my three little brothers and I,” said Lucas, who attended Salvation College in Buea in the southwest region. “Now they have nothing left. I told my father, ‘If you can find a little money, send my brothers to school. I will manage to sell snails in the market to raise the money I need to register in the next school year.’”
