Never, Never Forget Lake Nyos!

Excerpt from Mishaps and Other Poems  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kamerun’s August Visitor.

When a thief gets into the safety vault

It is never any one’s fault

Not even when all is evident

The mission was by Mr President

Ordered just as I did to kill 1985

And to bury 1985

With none seeing me welcome 1986

Whose ghost, in this month of my birth since

Pursues me. And the journey I remember;

Awaiting high school GCE results

Harbouring no thoughts of assaults

And on board a bus from the Tropical Rain Forest

To the Grassfield where rest

I hoped I find,

To my ears the wind

Came chanting of Nyos, Cha and Subum

Where the bomb resounded boom, boom, boom!

And to nature, turned the architect’s accusing finger

And when in the future, I wonder,

Will my ears of the truth drink

For all I know if I think

And think properly is I didn’t touch the Grassfield

When I was told God’s chosen grandsons were in the field,

God indeed has shuttled them there quicker

And faster than would run any duiker

So they could minister care

And mask the tear

For all to delight

And follow the light

The light they threw away from the truth

And none will ever know this in sooth. 

Comments

[jdsomgait]

The Nios disaster remains mystified, not just by global considerations as much as our own disdain for what should have been a 'homeland'. Uprooted, desensitized, enamored with the siren call for the things of the West, and for individual 'heroism', we sport contact lenses - unaware of neither past nor future. Between the nuclear strivings of a slipping world and earth's global warming, lies the night of Nios, when 'nature''s bubbling brew lay all earth into a canvas of things untold. But that was just before another epidemic, more spatialized, took seat in our loins and lay waste thousands, like broken reeds across the homeland. And with contact lenses or camel blinkers on, we prance along, homeless, with a world that's at home with science and nature.

[kaavi melchizedek wrote:]

Dr Ndi I would have loved to appreciate this
poem but for the fact that it is full with appreciation in it self. We keep you in our good books dear.
May those who were swept by this tragedy see them in their dreams all night. May they Rest in Perfect Peace!

THE TRUTH ONLY MEANS SOMETHING IF THE PERSON
LISTENING TO IT UNDERSTANDS IT.
mk

Melchizedek Kaavi
Melim City(LGA)
Northern Zone Bui
County Southern Cameroon