Thierry Ngoufan expects to find himself locked up some day in a dark room where the next chief of his people will be revealed. Once all of the candidates are inside, the new king will be arrested and forced to walk back through the Cameroon village to the palace where he and his family will reside until his death.

Then, Thierry says, "the others in the room will celebrate -because nobody wants to be king." In some places, being leader (that's what Happi means) of 3,500 people might look appealing. But in the African village of Bana, a western province of Cameroon, no one wants the isolation that comes with this particular leadership, Thierry says.

In fact, as the new king crosses the village to his new home, the residents ceremonially beat and berate him, enjoying their last opportunity to touch or tease this man. The walk marks the metaphorical passage "between the common person he was and the king he will be when he crosses the gate into the palace."

Being king of Bana is not a job Thierry thinks he would enjoy: "I feel more comfortable on the field working with people, being with people, having people around me," he says. "As a king, it's very difficult to just walk out of the palace and talk to people."

But, as the grandson of one chief and the nephew of another, he's eligible for the job. And if he is reluctant, Thierry will certainly be ready for leadership after he completes his PhD studies at UCLA.

As he begins his second year in the Department of Urban Planning, Thierry is pursuing three areas of study, all of them relevant to Africa. In the field of development, he's comparing the nations of sub-Saharan Africa with those in Southeast Asia. Both regions became the beneficiaries of international advice and financial investment in the years following their independence in the 1960s. "Today, there's no way we can compare the two regions," Thierry says. "We see how Southeast Asian countries grew, while so far, African countries are stagnating." Thierry would like to know why-and also if the recent faltering of the Southeast Asian boom offers any lessons to Africa.

Second on his agenda is trade. During the same period, "African countries were encouraged to develop an export plan," Thierry says, but all of the exports were headed off the continent to the United States and Europe. African countries "were not told to develop products for export to neighbors, building trade among themselves." Thierry plans to see how that situation can be remedied.

And finally, there's the environment, specifically how environmental protection and management can be built into trade policy. Although Thierry is not yet settled on a dissertation topic, the idea that is his current favorite has to do with the development of timber in Cameroon, which has one of the world's great tropical rainforests, and the role timber plays in his homeland's trade policy.

He is currently a member of the 1998-99 Graduate Students Association cabinet and serves as director of the Environmental Coalition.

Thierry's interest in the environment began in Togo, where he received a master's degree in environmental law at the University of Benin. Over the years it took to first acquire a bachelor's degree in law, Thierry had noticed the growing problem of trash on the streets of Lome. His master's thesis offered several proposals for dealing with the problem, some as simple as placing more trash bins where people would pass. When he returned for a visit last year, Thierry found that some proposals had been implemented-and were helping.

During his studies at the University of Benin, Thierry also volunteered to serve as interpreter for a group of students from the University of California who were traveling on an exchange program in Togo.

He became friends with three students from UCLA, and their encouragement helped bring him here in the fall of 1996. After obtaining a master's degree in African Area studies/political science in summer 1997, he turned his attention to urban planning.

Thierry spent this past summer as an intern at the U.N.'s International Trade Center in Geneva, Switzerland. There he revised and updated information fact sheets using data on Germany and the Netherlands' legislation on export packaging and waste packaging and their implications on trade between the developing world and the European community. Working for the United Nations to help developing countries is one direction Thierry's career might take. "I do not belong in the First World," he says. "I belong in the Third World."

Which, of course, includes Cameroon. In a letter supporting Thierry's successful application for a Research Mentorship Program fellowship, Thierry's faculty adviser Michael Storper says Thierry "wants to become a skilled researcher and use those research skills to further the development process in his country...[His] record and current activities suggest that UCLA's investment in him will be well rewarded."

The current political environment doesn't favor Thierry's return to Cameroon: "Once you go abroad to study, you become automatically a political opponent-you become a danger," he says.

But time changes everything, even dictatorial administrations. Clearly, Cameroon is where Thierry longs to be. "I'm not really comfortable living here," he admits. This fall, he plans to create an association of African-born students, a group that will provide its members with social support and UCLA with a valuable resource on Africa for non-native students and faculty traveling abroad.

But that's just a way of getting along until his real goal can be achieved: "I look forward to going back home," Thierry says. "My plan was always to come here and learn, then take my knowledge home and use it to help my people."

Published in Fall 1998, Graduate Quarterly