Yaounde: Abandoned two-month-old baby found in maize farm.

The baby was reportedly abandoned late Sunday night by his yet-to-be identified mother. According to sources, a neighbour whose name The Guardian Post got as Nkomo Merlin, made the discovery. 

She is said to have overheard the distress cry of the baby and decided to trace the direction of the sound.

“It was since yesterday about 11pm that this baby has been crying but we thought it was a neighbour’s child. All through the night, he was crying,” she recounted. 

She added that: “I just said to myself that maybe the mother is an irresponsible woman or first-time mother who doesn’t know how to calm the baby”.

As she woke up in the wee hours of the morning to commence her daily chores, she explained that her curiosity grew as the baby’s cry went even louder and decided to find where the cry was coming. 

“I heard a pear fruit falling outside, so I decided to go pick it up. It was in the process of searching that the baby’s cry even louder and so I decided to trace the baby only to discover the baby had been abandoned,” Nkomo told The Guardian Post. 

Another witness testified that: “At about 11pm, we heard a baby cry but since we are in a very big compound, we felt that it was one of the babies in the compound. The cry was persistent through out the night but on and off until about 6am when I was preparing to go for sports and I heard a neighbour screaming”. 

Witnesses said at the time of the discovery, the baby was literally bare bodied with just his diaper on. In their search for possible traces of the mother, the neighbours found a cloth box of the baby dropped at the entrance to the maize farm.

“He had no socks on nor pant excerpt for the diaper on... Inside the bag we found a few dresses, baby body creams and his hospital booklet,” she recounted. 

Alerted by the population, officers of the Yaounde No7 Police Station in Efoulan descended to the scene of the discovery. While investigations to uncover the incriminating mother have been opened by the police, the baby is said to have been handed over to the social service for proper care. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3463 of Tuesday June 03, 2025