Letter From Buea

Your last letter was obnoxious. Try as hard as I do, I simply can’t understand your incorrigible penchant for referring to everything we say, as subversive or secessionist. I suggested that you should read a compelling book that cogently analyses the Southern Cameroonian plight and you retort that you don’t read subversive stuff. Come on, how can you determine that any writing is subversive when you’ve not read it?

I should have started by telling you that I am penning this letter using candlelight. Why? AES has, again, done what they are adept at – switching off lights. It has become a daily pastime. In fact, it is news when lights are turned on. You need to hear the sky-rending shrieks from Molyko to Mukunda.
And to imagine that we ululated when we heard that the Jingos had bought over our National SONEL. We argued that, with the coming of the Conquerors of Saddam, the shrewish SONEL would be tamed. How could it be otherwise, we contended, when technicians from the renowned Harvard Institute of Technology would, henceforth, man all electrical installations?
We seem to have been naïve. The Americanos have grappled with the problem in vain. Could it be that tropical electricity is different from that found in the Western Hemisphere? Whenever I ruminate on this electricity issue, I have no alternative but to submit that Niat was a magician. At first, AES drummed in our ears till they went deaf that the electricity shedding was because the water level was low. Now, we’re at the height of the rainy season and there is still no water. As they themselves put it: Go and tell that to the Marines!
It’s a shame, isn’t it, that a man of Niat’s calibre should be allowed to rot in some backwood Council, while the nation reels in darkness. My proposal? Let the proverbial Presidential head nod and bring the man back. After all, he will neither be the first – nor the last – to be summoned from retirement to serve the Motherland.
By the way, Uncle Sam’s Envoy is on record for saying that the SCNC shall never win their struggle. How did he come to such an intriguing conclusion? An angel must have visited him. Or, maybe, he is dropping his diplomatic tunic and donning a Prophet’s toga. Can you imagine what would have happened to the Americas if, say, the President had told George Washington and his comrades that they were never going to win their War of Independence?
Ngwa, during the paroxysm of the multiparty 90s, Jack de Paris also told the world that what African negres needed was kwakoko on their table and not such exotic notions like democracy. He forgot, dear Jack, that it took hordes of ravenously hungry French hoodlums to storm the Bastille and liberate themselves from the shackles of the oppressive aristocratie. Since then, the French no longer just eat copiously - some say gluttonously - but must wash down each meal with exquisite wine. Yet, they maintain that we, tree-inhabiting niggers, must not be given a chance to savour the benefits of freedom, liberty and equality. All I can say, brother, is that this is nothing more and nothing less than reeking paternalism. Worse, it is inadmissible supercilious arrogance.
So, truly, Pa Womah is no more? All along, I’ve been hoping that it would be a rumour and that the legendary “prisoner without a crime” would resurface and announce that he will be with us for at least 21 years (to outbid his illustrious rumoured dead predecessor). Alas, he’s gone for good. His remains, I’m reliably informed, will be lowered into the entrails of the Babanki humus on July 31.
Already, Ngwa, there is bickering whether Pa should be given a “State” burial by Southern Cameroons. Although I believe that he more than deserves it, such wrangling is peripheral. Mukong, I know, would have viscerally objected. So what we should do to immortalise him is to create, as someone has already suggested, a Foundation for him. The Albert Mukong Foundation.
I’m unshakably convinced that, after the collapse of the Mungo, Mukong, a highly religious man, must have deciphered the Divine hand in granting his fondest dream: the separation of La République and Southern Cameroons. He must have sung his nunc dimittis. Nunc dimittis, numbskull, is the song Simeon sang when, Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, turned up at the Temple. Like Simeon of old, Mukong must have chanted; “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation [of the Southern Cameroons].”
Whenever I think of Pa Mukong’s passing, Madiba Mandela’s poignant words in tribute to Walter Sisulu surge back: “His absence has carved a void. A part of me is gone.”
A tearful tribute for Albert Womah Mukong, then: To Albert, the Patriot! To Womah, the Civil Rights Crusader!! To Mukong, the Political Maverick!!!
Catch you in Babanki Tungo on Saturday, July 31.
Cheers.
Mbella

Comments

[Wanaku]

Great stuff!
It is strange that a section of the population in this sub-region, that has had the privilege of taking courses in 'Philosophie' at high school level - sometimes even pre-high school level, will stubbornly refuse to engage in productive dialogue. It puts to question the entire purpose/goal of the type of education that some of the so-called leaders in this region have had in the 'abnormal' schools that hatch them. Can one compare this recalcitrant attitude to that of Islamic fundamentalists, who after receiving a good dose of fundamentalist theories have their minds focused only on suicidal missions? Sure.
Is there a remote possibility that our neigbors across the Mungo will someday regard us with genuine honesty, as would normal 'indigenous' Africans unimbued with the philosophical dregs of renouveau and eau de France? No one can truly tell.
One after the other, people are spending most of the time of their lives trying to resolve apparently simple problems but man-made obstacles keep being erected - even as we speak.
Makes on wonder what really is going on in the minds of those willing to perpertuate the status quo. Have they really drank some of the fundamentalist portion and are stubbornly ready to either kick the bucket or have others join the bucket-kicking party?

The heroes will be known by their works. The zeroes will not be known at all.

To Sir Mukong ... Rest.

Wanaku