Cousin Ndzengue was most often absent from family photos. She had been sent to a girls’ nun boarding school about 60 kilometers from Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon where the rest of my maternal family lived. Since she was six years older than me, some of my cousins and I hardly considered that she was part of the family. We never saw her. For us children, she was the good apple that the family wanted to protect from the scourge of despair and social determinism that had been plaguing us for years.
In fact, we envied her because she had been spared what we had to experience on a daily basis, like not having two meals a day. But this envy would not last. None of us wanted to be in her place the rest of the time because, by sending her away from our shantytown of Fanta Citron, the adults had pinned the hopes of the family on her. On her young shoulders rested great expectations and so many responsibilities. Auntie Nnomo, her mother, never stopped reminding her of this, no doubt to prevent her from straying from the straight and narrow.
From her life with the sisters, cousin Ndzengue had learned to avoid conflicts, to plan and to project, which was the opposite of the rest of family, which lived from day to day like most people in the shantytown. We lived in the moment, in the present. Death was part of our daily life but dreams had no place there. This was what separated us from cousin Ndzengue. She was looking to the future with hope.
“She wants to go to university,” cousin Ayi told us one day after our football game, having overheard a conversation between cousin Ndzengue and our mothers. “She said she wanted to become a doctor.”
Cousin Ndzengue was a student in junior high. If she ever went to college, she would be the first person in our family to do so.
“Are you sure?” asked cousin Assala, who was cousin Ndzengue’s older brother. Cousin Ayi had a reputation for often exaggerating things.
“But yes, I heard correctly. She wants to become a doctor. Go ask her if you want,” retorted cousin Ayi, annoyed that his word was doubted.
The news was colossal. It forced us to look beyond our neighborhood, to tell ourselves that maybe we too could dream of going to the university. Once this moment of daydreaming had passed, we began to wonder how cousin Ndzengue was going to pay the university tuition fees, which were around 50,000 CFA francs per year, a fortune to us. There was no scholarship system.
In the weeks that followed, we had confirmation of cousin Ndzengue’s university plans. But how to pay, that was the question that was nagging the adults. It was a long shot. A village cousin was a judge and could, according to the adults, help. The problem was that my maternal family and this cousin’s family were on very bad terms because of a land dispute that went back several years.
“I’m going to go see her,” cousin Ndzengue announced to the adults one summer day before her senior year began. “You never know. Maybe she’s tired of this conflict.”
They were speechless and tried to discourage her, but faced with the determination of cousin Ndzengue they gave up trying to reason with her. After hearing the adults, including her own mother, repeat all summer that the judge would not lift a finger to help them pay for her tuition fees, cousin Ndzengue felt she had to at least try. It was her message in a bottle that she threw into the sea. Who knows, maybe the judge would pick it up.
A message in a bottle is what Samuel Robinson, 35, one of two barbers in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, a rural, predominantly Black community of nearly 11,000, threw into the sea.
I met him five days before Donald Trump’s inauguration Day. It was a sunny and warm day. I was looking forward to talking to Robinson because I imagined that his barbershop, which only opens three days a week (Thursday, Friday and Saturday), is a safe space for many bros in this small town where there is no economic activity other than farming. It was probably in his barbershop where many came to kill their boredom and share their daily lives.
I didn’t have an appointment, but Robinson told me he would take me once he had finished with the client sitting on his chair. His barbershop, Tru Cutz, was divided in two: you entered first into a long room which served as a waiting room. A large TV screen was mounted on the wall but it did not seem to work. A door opened onto a second room, the holy of holies. Two stations were available, but Robinson only used one. His designer sneakers sat on a corner.
When it was my turn, we barely had time to make small talk because he seemed eager to tell me all about the parish and its inhabitants. He shook his head, a gesture he used throughout my haircut to make sure I understood him very well.
“Black men here, we don’t have as many issues with the police as you see in other towns,” this father of three, seventeen, eight and four year olds, told me fifteen minutes into our conversation.
He then explained that he didn’t fear, for example, getting “killed” by the police. He also did not worry about being pulled over for no reason or about being unjustly incarcerated.
“I can say that in St. Helena Parish, it’s hard to go to jail, compared to other places. You actually have to commit a crime to go to jail here. I like it here,” he assured me. “You actually have to commit a crime to go to jail.”
This was unlike New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the two biggest cities in Louisiana, where he was pulled over and taken to jail by the police because, as he said, of his race and the fact that he was driving a luxury car. There was a red Cadillac sedan parked in front of the barbershop.
St. Helena Parish elected a new sheriff, a Democrat, in 2023. His predecessor was Black. Almost everyone knows each other, which helps ease police-community relations.
“I know some of the cops,” Robinson said. “I actually grew up with one of them.”
The sheriff’s office is a 5-minute walk from his barbershop.
For a long time, St. Helena Parish was something of a resistance to the MAGA movement in a deeply red state. Trump lost by more than 14% to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by more than 10% to Joe Biden in 2020. Those numbers were consistent with a sustained trend: the parish had been voting for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. But on November 5, the resistance melted away. Trump lost by just 44 votes, or 0.8%, to Kamala Harris. One reason for the MAGA surge, Robinson said, is that a significant number of Black men in the parish voted for Trump, or simply did not vote.
Does this mean that his customers are hoping that Trump will be good for them? I asked him, while pointing out the 47th President’s racist statements throughout his career.
He smiled, shook his head, as if to say that I didn’t understand who Trump was.
“Trump ain’t give a f*** about nobody that ain’t rich. He doesn’t care, Black or White,” Robinson said. “He only cares about rich and poor. He doesn’t care about race. That’s one thing I can say about him. He cares about your bank account.”
“But here, apparently people are not rich,” I pushed back.
He said nothing. The sound of the clippers above my head didn’t stop. I wondered if I might have upset him.
“A lot of these 19–20-year-olds, they have young parents, they are out of control,” he changed the subject, and seemed to want to draw my attention to a topic close to his heart. “The youngsters here, those born after 2000, they are out of control because their parents are young. I am worried about that. That’s the one thing I am worried about.”
He continued:
“When I was growing up, you hardly ever heard of somebody being killed here. Now it’s happening because of these young kids,” who are growing up in single households with just a mother and the absence of a father.”
“Given the situation you are describing and the despair of many of your clients, if you had to ask something from the future president, for the next four years, that would resonate with you and many Black people in this community, what would it be?” I asked.
“Accountability, just one thing, accountability,” he said without hesitation. “Just hold the people that you put in place accountable. Hold our law enforcement accountable for killing our children, shit like that, make sure that they’re not getting away with that shit.”
He was obviously thinking of many incidents involving police officers which ended with the deaths of unarmed African Americans. Since 2014, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and the list goes on, lost their lives in encounters with the police.
“Don’t pardon the cops who killed them. Treat them like criminals,” Robinson said.
The treatment of Black folks and more specifically of Black men by the police remained for him one of the major problems that is bleeding the community because, he said, not only does it show that Black lives don’t matter, but it also shows that injustice will never subside in this country, where everything begins and ends with race.
If Trump were to call for accountability from law enforcement, Robinson believes it would have an effect rarely seen in policing. It would, he said, herald a positive change that would benefit Blacks and other minorities. At the same time, it would shake up the minority men who would then no longer have any excuses for not trying harder. They would no longer be able to say “what’s the point of trying if the outcome would be the same and things are stacked against you?” They would abandon the state of resignation in which most of them find themselves here, as they are convinced that the dice are loaded against them because of their race.
“That’s all we want!”
A message in a bottle as the only desperate option in a desperate situation, like cousin Ndzengue decades ago, is Robinson’s last resort. Even if he doubts that Trump will pick up his bottle, Robinson, who voted Democrat, wants to believe that he will.
Robinson has that optimism that I observed in most of the people I met during my stay of about ten days in this rural community. They say that Trump has the power to transform the country and, consequently, their daily lives. They want to give him a chance. They want to judge his future actions. They keep an open mind. They hope.
They have thrown their bottles into the sea.
It is up to President Trump to look for them.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.