Cameroon

When I was little, my mom bought me a giant Cameroonian flag because of my name, and I even had the national football jersey. Long before I ever thought about visiting every country in the world, Cameroon had already earned a special place in my imagination.

After arriving in the busy port city of Douala, I headed out by motorized canoe to the small fishing island of Jebale. It was there that I learned the village is the ancestral home of French football icon Kylian Mbappé’s family, something the locals were incredibly proud of. While there, I met a fisherman named Essombe, and despite my limited French, we somehow managed to have a surprisingly good conversation. He got a kick out of the fact that my name was Cameron and enthusiastically showed me around the island, even lending me a Cameroon jersey that I later bought from him. Later, he caught a fresh fish, and his wife prepared it for lunch. It remains one of the best fish meals I’ve ever had.

Once I returned to Douala, I finally had the chance to visit a place I’d heard a lot about: the Oyebog Tennis Academy, which is well known across Africa for developing some of the continent’s top junior tennis players. Jonathan, the founder’s brother, showed me around both their city facility and their much larger campus outside Douala, where the academy’s most talented players receive coaching, an education, and boarding. The program is offered at little to no cost to the families and is funded largely by donors overseas who want to support the growth of tennis in Africa. I also had the chance to hit with some of the juniors, and seeing that level of ambition and investment in the next generation gave me real hope that Cameroon will one day produce world-class players of its own.