The Project
A Community Initiative to Preserve an Endangered Heritage
The Écomusée de Malumé is a community-led heritage project centred on the Malumé region of the Eséka district, in the Centre Region of Cameroon. It focuses on a stretch of the colonial railway — the Mittelbahn — built in the early twentieth century through one of the most demanding terrains in equatorial Africa.
Beneath the tropical canopy that has gradually reclaimed the embankments, cuttings, and metallic bridges, lie stories rarely told: of forced labour and deportation, of families torn apart, of communities reshaped by colonial domination — and of the quiet resilience of those who lived through it all.
Our mission is to document and safeguard this heritage — through oral history recording, linguistic documentation, photographic archives, and community engagement — before the last witnesses are gone. As a legally registered association, we work with the authorisation of Cameroonian cultural authorities and in close partnership with local communities and academic institutions.
Sites reconfigured by history — landscapes that conceal a painful past. © Emmanuel Ngue Um
