Meet the Field Team: “The Belle Chasers”
"Belle Chasers" is the name of my field team behind my project "Birthing Between Tongues and Tensions: Intergenerational Stress Transmission Amongst Displaced Anglophone Women in Francophone Douala". In Cameroonian Pidgin English, belle/belly (or belle woman) is an affectionate term commonly used to refer to a pregnant woman. It was frequently used at the antenatal clinic in our collaborating hospital and became a fitting name for our team as we followed participants through pregnancy and into the postpartum period.
We refer to ourselves as “chasers” with a bit of humor. Collectively, we worked tirelessly to execute the follow-up required for the longitudinal study design. This included tracking roughly 100 women from mid-pregnancy through birth. Thus, our work required more than careful data collection; it depended on the relationships and trust we built with our participants, our hospital collaborators, and one another, which made continued long-term engagement possible.
Together, the Belle Chasers brought this study to life by engaging participants, navigating the complex realities of longitudinal fieldwork, and carrying the study from recruitment through follow-up.
Praise Amaka, MPH
Research Assistant | Recruitment and Adminstrative Specialist
Therese Minffih, MSc
Research Assistant | Phase One Data Collection Specialist
Jessica Ngon
Research Assistant | Follow Up and Retention Specialist
Praise was born and raised in the English-speaking Southwest Region of Cameroon before the NOSO crisis pushed her to move to Douala as a teenager. Prior to joining the Belle Chasers, Praise completed her BA in nursing in 2025 and finished her Master's in Public Health in 2026 while working with us.
Praise joined the project in May 2026 and played a critical role in participant recruitment and administrative support. She is passionate about nutrition and maternal-infant health.
Therese was born and raised in Bamenda, in Cameroon's English-speaking Northwest Region. She has an MSc in Logistics and Transport Management and joined the team with four years of experience managing operations and supporting research projects in Cameroonian labs.
Therese was one of the first team members to start on the project in February 2025 and has supported both ethnographic and quantitative data collection.
Jessica joined our team in July 2026. She was born in Nigeria but raised in Cameroon, is fluent in French and English, and has lived in both Francophone and Anglophone regions of the country. She began working with us at seven months postpartum and fittingly took over as our Follow-Up and Retention Specialist.
In her role, she diligently tracked participants nearing their due dates and organized our final follow-up data collection with women who had given birth.
The Belle Chasers (left to right): Jessica Ngon, Ca'la Connors (PI), Therese Minffih, Praise Amaka