In the outset, the internet was known to be a system of connected computers around the world which allows people to share information and communicate with each other using the electronic mail

By Efeti Moka Endeley

Today, it’s a completely different story Internet activities are now characterised by online fraud (scamming), pornographic downloads and above all the search of a partner, common amongst women. A one month study carried out in Biyem- Assi Carrefour, a neighbourhood in Yaoundé-Cameroon shows that half of the women (ages between 16 to 45) browse in search of white partners in Europe and America. According to an internet service attendant, they chat with potential partners for over four hours at one sitting. Carine, a secondary school drop out aged 17 has as an obligation to chat with a white man aged 35 everyday. She further explains that he has proposed to marry her and she is in the course of making her passport to meet him in France.

Asked if she is not scared of meeting a stranger who might turn out to be a monster, Carine said “I have gone through life’s darkest moments already and that has made me strong and ready to go through whatever comes my way.” She even added that she has a friend in France who went for a similar purpose but upon arrival at the airport, she tried calling the man she thought was her fiancé, but unfortunately he refused ever knowing her talk less of expecting her in France. Stranded, she found herself in the hands of a pimp who turned her into a prostitute.

Interestingly, married women also form the circle. Madame Annette confided that her husband turned out to be a nightmare and that she refuses to be frustrated by a man reason why she is in search of a white who can better help in her desire to travel abroad. There, she is ready to do all it takes to make money. Statistics has shown that online marriages and dates have end up in chaos, leaving women with a feeling of frustration and desperation and consequently prostitution abroad. We all have as a responsibility to inform and educate women around us who get into internet marriages and consequently prostitution, sometimes out of ignorance.