Chinese in Congo and Cameroon

There are many Chinese in Congo and Cameroon. It really surprised me at first why they would they come to Central Africa of all places.

You don’t see a lot of Europeans in Congo and Cameroon but you do see some Chinese once in a while. They run small shops in the cities. There was one street in Brazzaville that had 7 different Chinese shops with names like Li Xhi or Chen Whoa. In the cities the Chinese also do a lot of construction on huge apartment buildings and outside of the city the Chinese also have lots of interests in mining, oil, lumber, and building roads. The Chinese are the new best friends of the leaders of Congo and Cameroon because they exchange Chinese-built infrastructure for the rights to the countries minerals like oil. So these countries rely a lot on China. The Chinese build everything in Congo and Cameroon, they build all the roads, the build all the stadiums, they build all the government buildings and nice apartments.

The Chinese are so well known that everyone calls us Chinese, especially the kids. They yell really loudly at us, “He-Haw!!” Apparently they think they are saying “ni hoa.” but they just yell “He Haw” at us. It’s fun for like 5 minutes then it gets really annoying.