Reviewer: Azore Opio
Sammy Oke Akombi. The Woman Who Ate Python & Other Stories. Nyaa Publishers, Yaounde, 2006. 118 pages [ Price: Not Indicated]
Read this book. After a slow start and taking some trouble to situate the position of women (disciplined disposition) in the first story, The Woman Who Ate Python, Akombi gets into stride.
Lucidly and economically written, the book gives you just enough of everything so that you have some sense of context, yet never feel that the author is rambling or becoming mired in the tangential.
He treats a number of themes, none of them strange to the African, especially the Cameroonian - machoism or, if you like, male dominance, which is partly the first story's theme. But Ebenye's inquisitiveness and stubbornness demystifies the 'gastronomic restriction,' one of the rules of conducts imposed on the Bonakunda women folk to ensure their loyalty.
The belief that women should not eat python meat, reserved only for men of a certain class, deprived the women of Bonakunda of a much-cherished delicacy.Akombi goes through the theme of poverty, corruption, determination, perseverance and love.
Alcoholism, he deals with in Death of The Dead Man and Acquired Drinking Efficiency Syndrome, ADES; the incarnation of chronic drunkenness being discerned in Dead Man and Tanko, respectively. But his most favourite theme seems to be based on fickle fate - coincidences that change people's lives either for better of for worse.
Up from A Slum is an exquisite display of a twist of events. This is a story of determination, fortitude and adaptation; "…in a situation of no choice, one cannot help but cope with any situation, no matter its "uncopability." (page 56) Morlai accepts the turn of events that plunges him from paradise to hell.
It is an archetypal example of a strong conflict driving the story. Molrai doesn't relent until he succeeds despite living on the margin of society.Tears Are Not Forever is perhaps the most captivating of the stories.
It is a tragedy by all accounts not unlike Death of The Dead Man and ADES. Death of The Dead Man portrays alcoholism at its worst, frustration and the irresponsibility of some parents, and corrupt government officials who ruin the futures of these children by selling away their well deserved positions; "Well boy… registration closed today and that was at the end of the last hour. Since you hadn't shown up all this time, the vice principal who is responsible for admission, has had your name replaced by that of a more willing candidate" (page 29).
Tears Are Not Forever is clearly the work of fate. The conflict in the plot structure breathes life into the story. The reader relates to Arrah and to the conflicts she faces (conflict with her original situation - poverty, wanting to live more comfortably and own things, to personal conflict; lack of confidence in her husband's ability to pull off big money).
The patterns of tension resulting from the visible and invisible forces she overcomes create a believable reality for the reader.Akombi employs adverbs lavishly, sometimes slipping into bombastic words that require the immediate use of a dictionary.
His most powerful device, however, which he uses with flair, is the flashback - Nkwomen remembering his attempt to enter college (pages 25 - 31).In Up From a Slum (pg 39) While waiting to say the Hippocratic Oath, Molrai recalls the wealth and bliss he grew up in before descending to filth and misery.
In No Armour Against Fate, Sad Sam suffers the fickleness of fate, against which he says metaphorically that there is no armour. In a flashback, he reminisces of his exploits in London as a successful journalist, and later his tenure as Governor of Nguorno State and his time in jail, but now he is a collector of shit! (pages 77-79).
Sprinkled with some misspellings and a few repetitions, and despite the imaginary people names and names of places it is obvious that the stories are set in various places in Cameroon, ranging from the foot of Mt. Fako through Manyu into Nigeria and back to a place like Yaounde.
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