Cemeteries in Douala can no longer accommodate the dead

In the economic capital of Cameroon, a city of over two million inhabitants, families struggle to find a space to bury their dead.

Deido Cemetery, for instance, is now just a few meters away from motorcycles and cars.

"The dead do not talk.They rest," humored a gravedigger who was busy repairing a tomb. Assisted by three friends, the young man, mixing cement with water in a small black bucket, carefully spread the mixture onto a tile on a three-stairs tomb.

“The family are celebrating the death anniversary of their patriarch. They want everything to be clean,” he explained.

The gravedigger and his friends are forced to walk on graves in order to move freely.

“We have no fear of the dead,” said one of them who was also a mason, fetching a tool in his old backpack.

In reality, he and his colleagues do not have a choice because all the cemetery spaces have been occupied by tombs built near each other.