Telenovelas:

 Bamenda’s Blessing or Curse?

By Rogers Numh

It is 7pm and children can hardly be seen on Bamenda’s streets. Most parents no longer have to wait cane in hand to punish children who break the 6pm to 6am curfew. Is this a sign of a tremendous moral change in the present generation? The answer lies in the parlour and rooms of most homesteads.

At this time of the day, a majority of Bamenda dwellers, young and old, female and male _ are glued to their TV screens. It is when TV channels air telenovelas, and they abound. Also known as series or soap operas, telenovelas are long films that are shown in episodes of about 25minutes as the case may be. In most cases, one episode is shown every week day till the story ends.

Remote control in hand, families switch from channel to channel to enjoy series like “Isidingo”, “The Wild’’, “The Secret’’, ”The Clone’’, “Morena’’ and “Tinsel.’’ Some households own more than one TV set so members could follow favourite series that are aired at the same time on different channels. Before now there were very mind blowing ones like “Mari Mar avec Sergio”, “Catalina”, “Terra Nostra”, “the Promise” and others.

The popularity of telenovelas is huge especially because of its love themes. Many people speak in their favour.

‘’Series bring family together more than any other thing’’, says 12_year old Princess. ‘’Because of them, we meet every evening to share a heartily laugh no matter what happened during the day’’, the adolescent adds with a broad grim.

Enoch, a father of five who is also a politician, finds more reason to like soap operas. ‘’These films educate our children in ways that we could hardly do. They prepare the kids more emotionally for the challenges of adulthood’’, he reasons.

19 year old Richard believes that telenovelas help him even in academics. “I now speak better English which I learnt from watching series’’, he told me in a studied accent.

It is not both thumbs up for telenovela in Bamenda. Its detractors equally speak against it with a passion.

‘’Those films are vulgar and sinful’’, complains Innocencia, who prides herself with managing a Christian home. ‘’They are full of sex, alcohol and violence which are bad things to expose our children to. In their young minds, they will think that is all about life, which will make them vain and lazy’’, she told me with eyes that seemed to look in to the future.

Enoch quoted before, reasons that they could be dangerously addictive. ‘’When children follow up these stories religiously, it eats up the time they should have invested for more productive activity and leaves them performing poorly at school.

Even church leaders have complained about the negative influence of TV series on their folk. Some of them have been noted for skipping Christian meetings or leaving halfway through them in order to watch a series on prime time. They see it as idolatry when series are considered more important than God.

 More than a bubble, the phenomenon of soap operas seems to have planted its roots in Bamenda. Viewers consider it important when rating TV channels. Besides, these produced in Latin America and South Africa, there have been a few local productions to match popular demand. The question now is, how do we make the most of this new form of story telling.