- German Kamerun (1884-1911)
- German Kamerun (1911-1916)
- British Cameroons & French Cameroun: 1916-1960
- British Cameroons & La Republique du Cameroun (1960-1961)
- British Southern Cameroons & La Republique du Cameroun (1960-1961)
- Reunited/Independent Cameroon today.
This peculiar geopolitical entity was
created by accident and apportioned to Germany during the 1884 Berlin Conference that carved up Africa. Thereafter, Berlin treated German Kamerun as
its treasured colony for thirty-two years until Great Britain and France
captured the land during the First World War, partitioned it into British
Cameroons and French Cameroun, and then went on to lord it over the people for
four decades. However, they too were challenged by Cameroonian civic
nationalists who campaigned for the divided territory’s reunification and self-rule.
Today, English and French are the country’s official languages, mirroring the
dominance of the two Indo-European languages in Africa.
They say the gods have a design even
in the most outrageous acts of mortals. If that is the case, then it also
applies to Cameroon. The country has defied so many odds in its history that
the people now pride themselves on the saying that “Impossible isn’t a
Cameroonian word.”
Renowned voices tend to call Cameroon “Africa
in miniature”, not only because of its fanciful shape and turbulent history, but also because of the physical and
human aspects of its geography. It is the point in Africa where the East meets
the West and where the North meets the South. It is a country that features
plains and mountains, plateaus and valleys, rivers and seas, lakes, and waterfalls and other landmarks that
mirror the rest of Africa. The south is dominated by equatorial and tropical
rainforests, the north is covered by Sahelian vegetation, and the middle
portion of the country is graced with high savannah of mixed grassland and
forest. In fact, all the different flora and fauna in Africa can be found in
this carelessly-drawn triangle called Cameroon.
The curious eye is apt to notice
varying statures, facial types and shades of complexion as it travels
throughout Cameroon—the result of the territory’s history as the crossroads of
African migrations. Anthropological linguists hold that all of Africa’s four
major language groups converge in Cameroon.
The southern portion of the country
is the base from where Bantu speakers spread to southern and eastern Africa.
The furthest spread of Afro-Asiatic peoples is in the north of this territory,
featuring groups like the Semitic-speaking Arabs, Berber-speaking Tuaregs,
Chadic-speaking Hausas and Batas, and Fula or Fulfulde-speaking Fulanis or
Peuls. Nilo-Saharan speakers dominate the north of the country in their
furthest spread to the west of the African continent. Also present in Cameroon are small ethnicities of the fourth major
subgroup called Niger-Congo-A that occupy the southwestern border regions with
Nigeria. Settled in the northwestern portion of the country that looks like the
pregnant part of mother Cameroon is the fifth and unique indigenous group that
you will find only in Cameroon. Named semi-Bantu, Graffi or southern Bantoid,
this group has characteristics of all the four major language groups or
sub-races in Africa. Legends and lore hold that semi-Bantus are originally of
Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan descent and that they assimilated all the peoples
they encountered in the course of their migration. The Bamileké people are the
dominant ethnicity in this group.
Cameroon’s human and physical wealth has
indeed been the source of its turbulent history, its pride and the ingredients
that give its people a unique flavor. The flavor has produced colorful
Cameroonian characters that the curious eye and mind is likely to enjoy by
hating or loving them, pitying or angrily denouncing them. These characters
provide insights into the human nature and the African continent that is
haunted by leaders with the evil disposition.
While other African peoples have
picked up arms and warred among themselves to have their country split up,
Cameroon is the only geo-political entity in the continent whose inhabitants
went to war to reunite its people separated by the legacy of the Anglo-French partition of the former German
colony of Kamerun. It is the only country where those who fought for its
reunification and independence are yet to assume political power, as they
continue to languish from the defeat suffered in the hands of the French
overlords and the puppets the French political establishment installed in power
in Cameroon. It is the land where you will find Africa’s biggest political
deception and sleaziest mafia. It is the country in Africa with the lowest
number of heads of state in its history, yet it is a country that is unlikely
to engage in internecine war to get rid of the suffocating system.
In the middle of the twentieth
century, a child was born in Cameroon who by the age of ten, proved he could
become anything he wanted to be. This child prodigy happened to be the son of a
soldier of the Free French Forces that fought across the African desert in the
drive that liberated France from German occupation during the Second World War.
In a previous book, we found out that
the boy looked up to his revolutionary father as his greatest source of
inspiration in life. But how he ended up as an adult who got caught on the side
of those who wrecked his world, is the riddle this story is about to unravel.
Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur (To be in love and to be wise is scarcely
granted even to a God), the priest articulated in Latin as his final words in
the solemn prayer dedicated to his dead friend.
A flicker of oblivious brooding
disturbed the expression on the stranger’s face. But he did not move any other
part of his body as he closed his eyes as if suppressing a tempest within him.
The stranger was so engrossed in his thoughts that he did not hear the murmurs
as the priest talked to the men and family members around the coffin, and he scarcely paid attention to the
rattling sound of the sisal ropes on the coffin as the men started lowering it
into the grave. He probably would have stayed fixed a little longer had the
outbreak of ululating and mourning cries not jolted him out of his silent
grief.
Gavin Nemafou Njike opened his eyes
again and breathed deeply. With his head inclined and with his arms folded, he
watched the coffin confined to mother earth in what crossed his mind as Vincent
Ndi Chi’s journey to his ancestors.
Gavin did not wait to witness the end
of the solemn ceremony that was becoming too depressing. Instead, he made his
way through the crowded burial ground to the Volkswagen Passat parked about
half a mile away, hidden behind the dense clumps of elephant grass obscuring
the view to the valley below.
Not until he was safely away in the
shadows did he remove his wig, fake moustache
and eyebrows, and then wiped his face clean of the complexion jelly. The dead man was still on his mind as he
combed his hair, peeled off his overcoat, removed his old shoes, and then put
them in the trunk of his car.
Then he shut the trunk and looked at his Rolex
watch to find that it was already 16:57 Hours. He sighed, got into the car and
fixed his eyes on the rear mirror. Satisfied with the way he looked, he kicked
the engine of the car alive and drove to the 17:00 Hours rendezvous.
The three agents he had conferred
with that morning joined him hardly a minute after he got there. They too were
at the burial to gather some information for the service. Oddly enough, they
looked too relaxed for his liking.
“Get in quickly,” Gavin ordered the
men into the sedan.
“Huh!” muttered the last agent to get
in.
Gavin frowned as he rubbed his brows
and gritted his teeth, fighting off the conflicting thoughts racing through his
mind.
Emmanuel Ebako Mukete sitting in the
back, directly behind the driver seat, leaned forward with dimmed eyes. “Is
there a problem, Chef?”
Gavin turned around and regarded his men,
shrugged and then nodded at Emmanuel.
“What’s going on?” Jean-Baptiste
Ondoa asked from the front seat.
Gavin clicked his tongue. “Let’s
brace ourselves for the tough times
awaiting field agents like us. Our service just got rid of an old lion, one
that was about to die anyway. The unfortunate thing is that by killing him, we
unintentionally sowed the seeds of his legacy.”
“What do you mean?” Jean-Baptiste asked.
“We have let loose lion cubs that are
imbued with his ideas. They are roving free, everywhere. And they are doing so
with a sense of vengeance that nobody should ignore. Boys, we have a tough
fight ahead of us against Vincent Ndi’s disciples.”
“Did you just say a fight?”
“Bien
sûr!”
“What are you talking about? We
killed the movement at its fetal stage. We nipped it in the bud. That man was
crazy. Of what good is a democracy to us? We are okay with the way things are.
I am glad he is gone for good,” Jean-Baptiste said, gesticulating with raised
eyebrows.
“You don’t get it!” Gavin muttered in
a disinterested manner.
“He is dead. Moreover, dead people
don’t talk. They don’t lead, and they don’t fight either.”
“Come on, now! You are a
professional. Try to analyze like one.”
“I just did.”
“Look! We cannot afford to let our
hearts take control of our heads in moments like this. You and I know that
Vincent Ndi was not alone.”
“What is the point?”
“That man certainly had others he
could count on. I mean men with enough energy and craziness to continue after
him. I am sure he expected a quick end to his life.”
“Who wants to die?”
“He was a pioneer plowing a dangerous
field. He knew that. Yes, my brothers; his ideas are still alive in men he
molded.”
“You could be right. Still, it
doesn’t count,” Jean-Baptiste persisted with an indifference that surprised
Gavin.
“What do you mean?” Gavin asked with
dimmed eyes.
“Chef,
he is dead. That is what matters. Besides, he was never a great man,”
Jean-Baptiste chuckled.
“Of
course, he is dead, but his dangerous ideas are not. We should have
killed the ideas first; we should have killed them instead.”
“Kill his ideas? Chef, I am having a hard time understanding what you are talking
about?”
“Ideas can be killed by simply discrediting
and humiliating them.”
“What is your point, Chef?”
“Events make great men and great names. That is a lesson from history.
That man could become a hero if his ideas prevail.”
“The fellow is history. Besides, he
didn’t accomplish anything worthwhile or remarkable,” Jean-Baptiste chuckled
again.
“History sustains the legacies of
heroes. The crowd out there thinks he is a martyr to emulate, the sort of
figure to follow.”
“It looks like you are trying to say
something here?”
“We need to start learning some facts
about his life, that’s all.”
“Why?”
Gavin leaned back. “That stiff
fellow’s legacy poses challenges we cannot afford to ignore,” he said in a
monotone.
“Why are we fencing? There is no
reason for this,” the subtle Maurice Nze Mezang interceded for the first time,
“We did our job by following the orders, that’s all.”
“Bien sûr!” intoned Jean-Baptiste.
“Everything is now in the hands of
the politicians,” Maurice interjected again, but with a sigh.
Gavin shut and opened his eyes
rapidly. “Who gave the orders?” he asked in a leveled voice.
“It was a triangular affair,” Maurice
replied, and then took a deep breath.
“So, tell me! You were involved, a
boss and who else?”
“I was with them, Chef,” Jean-Baptiste said abruptly, a
haughty smile exposing his fang-like incisors.
Gavin closed his heavy-lidded eyes in
disappointment. A clique with
ethnocentric bearing, he thought. “I guess you know what you have done?”
“We did our job, for our interest,”
Jean-Baptiste bubbled.
Quiet reigned in the car for a moment
until Maurice sighed. But he did not offer a word.
Gavin sighed too. “That was a good
and professional answer. Vincent Ndi was certainly a prized bull. But by
quietening him, did we do harm or a service to Cameroon?”
“We rendered a service, Chef!” Jean-Baptiste blurted out, paused
for a moment, and then continued, “That man’s language was too confusing. The
reforms he had in mind threatened this country with disorder and division,
instead of building on the wonderful things we have accomplished.”
Gavin looked away. “Keep this in
mind. That man's death marked the birth of an unfamiliar enigma in this area.
The enigma is his legacy. His death can do this nation a great harm or a great
good depending on how we manage it. Ah, boys, never forget that we are the
frontline soldiers whenever there is a mess to clean up.”
“Believe me, Chef! His death will do Cameroon a great good. The man was a loner,
besides his few Anglophone friends who supported him. Graffi friends,
precisely! They are cowards, for all I know. Aren’t they all from the Northwest
Province?”
“You don’t know them,” Gavin muttered
in a lackluster manner.
“I am an expert on the Northwest
Province. In fact, I have worked here for five years. None of you have a year
of service in this province in your records,” Jean-Baptiste boasted.
“What is your opinion of Chef Gavin’s sense of judgment,
especially on this issue?” Emmanuel asked suddenly.
Gavin closed his eyes again and tried
to put his thoughts together, fighting off the urge to intervene in the
targeted exchange that ensued between Emmanuel and Jean-Baptiste. Even though
he did not open his eyes again for several minutes, he and Maurice interceded
every now and again to calm the other squabbling two down, to the point where
Maurice came up with strong accusative words of wisdom that triggered a moment
of silence in the car.
However, the tense silence was
interrupted shortly after Maurice’s wisecrack by faint cries that became
distinguishable with every passing second. The men looked at one another
without uttering a word, and then turned
their heads to the direction of the approaching cries. Some men in traditional
costumes of the Northwest province, probably Vincent Ndi’s associates, were
chanting along with the mourners in their descent down the burial ground.
“The hills are angry,” Emmanuel said in a
somber voice.
“And the leopard went berserk!” Gavin
remarked in Bamileké, in the Banganté dialect.
“What does that mean?” Jean-Baptiste
asked.
“And so, ends the story of the day,”
Gavin drawled.
“You are right, Chef. It is all over,” Jean-Baptiste chuckled, his eyes on
Emmanuel.
Gavin nodded and smiled back at the
excited young man. Then he bit his lip and fixed his eyes again on the
approaching mourners. They were chanting a war song. Then he saw him—the agile
man of dark complexion, average height and a determined face. He could not
forget that face.
“What’s the problem?” Jean-Baptiste asked,
jolting Gavin out of his thoughts.
“Let’s get our asses out of here,”
Gavin rasped as he turned the key in the ignition.
15:13
Hours
January 01
Douala
A smile of amusement spread across
his face the moment he noticed a boozed-up man staggering in the street below.
It changed into a slight reflective grin as it dawned on him that the fellow
was the third person he had seen that day who had lost his sobriety to alcohol.
Still, he did not want to qualify them as real drunks—at least in the
Cameroonian sense of the word where drunkenness involved some hollering, zigzag
movements or roadside slumber.
Not until around midday did it cross Gavin’s
mind that the children were the only ones enjoying themselves on the streets
and that their parents were indoors as if they had planned it that way. It made
him wonder whether the adults were trying to make a point. And in a way, they
were making it all right, as if reiterating the fact that the global economic
crisis finally caught up with his Cameroonian compatriots, shredding the
blanket of felicity and vibrancy that always encapsulated Douala during the
years that the economy flourished. The downturn’s mortifying effect on those
whose festive spirit gave a distinctive flavor and glamour to the city was so
obvious this New Year.
Nevertheless, he was determined not
to allow the subdued atmosphere to affect his mood. After all, he prided
himself on the fact that he was a nightjar, a remarkable product of nature that
no one could cage. So, he would make the best out of the day, but only after
the cloak of darkness would have engulfed the city.
He wondered what he loved the most
about the power of darkness. Perhaps it was the alluring feeling of the night
that could dull or stimulate the senses. Or perhaps it was something else.
Whatever the case, dancing and singing in the streets and indoors were
activities he especially loved every New Year. And on top of that were beer,
wine, spirit and the women—all at amazing prices that any of Casanova’s or Don
Juan’s disciples would appreciate.
“Life, life, life,” Gavin mumbled and
took another slug of his drink, “New year, new challenges.”
His mind was already made up. He would follow
the same pattern—eat one of his favorite dishes in a good restaurant in the
Akwa business district, Hotel Le Nde or the Akwa Palace Hotel preferably. And
then he would wrap up the day in bed with a lustful Eve by his side.
His glass of drink held firmly by his
strong fingers, Gavin got up from the chair and leaned on the rail. When he
brought the glass to his lips again, his intention was to have a mouthful, but
he ended up taking a sip instead. A grunt escaped his throat as he licked his
lips and peered at the sprawled city below, making no mental effort to stop his
thoughts from drifting again. Finally, he shook his head, sighed, took a
massive gulp of the drink and closed his eyes. Still, the thoughts would not go
away—haunting memories of a past that
connected him to Vincent Ndi Chi. He knew the dead man and his lineage well, a
genealogy that only a handful of people were aware of. As a matter of fact, it
wasn’t long ago that he too made the connection that Vincent Ndi was the sad
product of their common history of separation that took place almost a hundred
years ago, in the southern portion of the Western Highlands populated by the
Bamileké people.
Tchatchoua, the ninth king of Banganté, ruled this largest Bamileké kingdom
with the astuteness of a great ruler, making his name renowned in the entire
Bamilekéland. He also won the high respect of some of his royal counterparts
from afar, even in the land of the Bamoun people, considered at the time as the
common rival of the Bamileké people. Therefore, when the new German
colonialists arrived in the Western Highlands and tried to exert their control
there, Banganté presented itself as the logical kingdom to court and win over
in their policy of conciliation over the fiercely independent peoples of the
area. The new German colonial administration rewarded King Tchatchoua in 1885
by making Banganté the capital of the new administrative district comprising
the Bamilekéland and the Bamounland.
Legends hold that Tchatchoua was an
outstanding warrior, an intelligent ruler, and a
skillful hunter; and that he had an endearing touch nurtured since his
childhood that placed him firmly in the hearts of his subjects. He was also a
remarkable husband, father, family man and friend, they said. That was why he
easily won the love and respect of his harem made up of many inherited wives
drawn from dozens of other Bamileké kingdoms.
So, the fact that Tchatchoua married many more
wives did not diminish his strength as a reliable husband. If truth be told,
his partial fondness for the first wife of his choice almost went unnoticed.
Njonang Nana, as his favorite wife was called, bore him three children that
they chose to call Nemafou, Ketcha, and
Tenga.
Nemafou, the first child of the
beloved queen, grew up into a handsome young man remarkably different from the
other princes strutting King Tchatchoua’s royal court. His nimble wits, subtle
ways, physical prowess, mastery of the art of war and peace, and his engaging
nature with people brought him early into the midst of the notables and the
authorities of the royal court.
Those with a keen eye around the
royal palace noticed that the young prince began fencing with his father even
before he started spotting facial hair. However, he never delighted in putting
his father on the defensive over traditional values and customs of the land that
he considered retrogressive. The good-intentioned prince just happened to be an
empathic soul who believed in the joy and harmony of the people.
They said Nemafou’s deep sense of
respect, good humor, and noble intentions
saved him all the time from whatever concerns his words stirred with his father
or with the members of Banganté’s council of notables, known widely as the
Kamveu.
The beloved prince even carried his
exceptionally gifted nature through boyhood and into early manhood, making him
the dream-love of lassies with romantic notions of life, even though he feigned
indifference about it. The truth is that Nemafou did not fancy taking advantage
of his father’s subjects. Unfortunately, his notion of the morality of a prince
made some people to start doubting his masculinity. The nubile beauties, in particular, could not understand
why the maverick prince and outstanding hunter downplayed their overt and
subtle advances, preferring instead to spend the early hours of his nights
indoors—chatting with his mother and
reaffirming his love to his siblings and stepmothers.
It did not need an extraordinary wit
to figure out that Nemafou was a critical self-analyzer. True he was conscious
of his passions and agonized over the fact that he had little control over his
compassionate nature that sometimes led him to commit himself in an irrational
manner. That is why when he fell in love with a girl called Ngenkep and they
started having an affair, he kept it a secret from everyone. His prudence
landed him in trouble, his sympathizers would say afterwards.
Barely three weeks into their affair and just
two days after he left Banganté on an errand to his mother’s parents in another
Bamileké kingdom called Bangou; Ngenkep’s father betrothed her to his king.
When Nemafou returned a week after and learned about the ongoing development,
he kept his sorrows to himself by telling no one about it.
Even as a child, Nemafou had this
natural inclination to cling to his game like a mongoose. He lived up to that
reputation barely nineteen days into Ngenkep’s stay in the royal palace, when
one of the notables caught him making love to the young queen.
The story of the prince who could not let go
of his lover even after she married his father the king carried an extra spice
in its narration because Banganté was the most renowned Bamileké kingdom and
prided itself for being the upholder of age-old traditional Bamileké values.
So, the scandal spread quickly around Banganté and beyond, to the neighboring
Bamileké kingdoms and even afar, putting King Tchatchoua in a position where he
could not close his eyes to the fact that his favorite son assaulted his rule
and masculinity.
Thus, the Banganté people braced
themselves for a verdict from their supreme ruler, a punishment that those versed
with the culture, customs, and traditions
of the Bamileké people could easily predict. Any man caught in an affair with
the wife of a king is subject to expulsion from the king’s kingdom. Nemafou’s
case proved to be no exception, even though he was the Banganté reign’s son and
the prince who a short while ago, was widely speculated to become his
successor.
King Tchatchoua expelled Nemafou from
his jurisdiction, thereby severing the young prince’s ties to the kingdom and
his family. He even promised expulsion to any subject of Banganté caught
dealing with the exiled prince.
People wondered afterwards why the
promising pretender to the throne had to be so reckless for the sake of a woman
he was likely to inherit after the death of the aging king.
Nemafou accepted his disgrace with
calmness and rue, moved out of Banganté in 1898 and wandered further north in
the mountainous grasslands of German Kamerun until he reached Akum. He settled
in this small kingdom in the Ngembaland and started putting his life together.
Determined to be cautious this time, he married without delay and committed
himself to building a new family.
Nemafou died eight years after he
left Banganté, leaving behind a distraught wife and a three-month-old daughter
called Klara Nana Nemafou. There are stories of how before he died, he wondered
aloud in a tearful manner whether his father would ever forgive him. The
disgraced prince is said to have requested several times while in his sickbed
that his descendant carries forth his
plea for forgiveness to the Banganté royal palace, and there are even stories
of how he prayed for his mother and siblings to lay their eyes on Klara Nana
and embrace her into the family fold. However, Nemafou died knowing that he
would not fulfill his dream of seeing his mother cuddle Klara Nana whom he had
christened in her honor.
World War I came to pass with Germany
dispossessed of its colonies. The people of Kamerun wondered why the world
failed to seek their opinion when the victorious British and French powers
partitioned the German colony. This action separated Nemafou’s child and widow
from Banganté even further. Akum and the rest of the northern portion of the
Western Highlands became a part of British Southern Cameroons. Meanwhile, the
southern half of the Western Highlands of which the greater portion of the
Bamilekéland is a part, fell under the control of the French, along with two
thirds of the conquered German Kamerun.
Blood ties among the Bamileké people
are so strong that outsiders to the Bamileké culture are puzzled by the
attachment the people give to their relations. Whether close or distant, dead
or alive, known or unknown, a relation is a relation. Tradition obliges a
person to look out for his or her blood relations, especially the ones that are
close. Therefore, it did not come as a surprise that the sibling love between
Nemafou and his younger sister Tenga never flickered out despite the years of
separation.
The people of the former German colony were
still coming to terms with the consequences of the partition of Kamerun by
Britain and France when the rebellious Tenga who had eloped to the south of
British Southern Cameroons with a Bamileké man from Bayangam, defied her
husband’s edict and went looking for her brother. Her arduous search brought
her to the point of despair until she finally found her way to Akum. There, she
met with the news of her brother’s fate and the presence of her niece Klara
Nana.
Tenga’s grief over her brother’s death was
memorable. She wailed inconsolably for days; she rolled several times on the
red earth as if oblivious to the fact that she had bones that could be broken,
if not fractured, sustaining cuts in the process that made her agonize in pains
for days.
However, the people of Akum would recall with sweetness that she organized a memorial service
for Nemafou’s soul, that she spent much on drinks and food, and that she
recounted her deceased brother’s regal past in Banganté with flourish. However, Tenga regretted failing to
see Klara’s mother who had remarried and settled in Bamenda, leaving Klara in
the custody of her grandparents. That notwithstanding, the undaunted Tenga
tried on several occasions to persuade the young girl’s grandparents to allow her to return home with Klara Nana. Her desire
to be attached to her late brother’s child reached a point where she took Klara
Nana away without the approval of the child’s grandparents, only to succumb to
her conscience at the bus station an hour after, and then take her niece back
to her grandparents’ home with tears in her eyes. Still, she was hopeful. That
was why she left Akum with a firm promise to stay in touch and help Klara Nana
know her roots.
Tenga’s children would recount that
she was somehow despondent when she returned to her family and that she died hardly a year after she found her niece.
But as fate would have it, she departed to her ancestors only after imbuing her
children with a deep sense of commitment and attachment to their unseen cousin,
despite the fact that her husband disapproved of it.
However, not until ten years after
Tenga’s death did her enthusiastic first child called David Nemafou mount
another search for his cousin. Hectic though it was, he finally found Klara
Nana in Bamenda, now married to a prosperous Akum trader. Her marriage was
blessed with seven children. Vincent Ndi Chi was the second son, the fourth
child and the adopted son of his paternal
grandfather.
Vincent Ndi’s admirers credited him
for being a boy genius during his school days in the fifties and sixties. Even
those in the circle of power in Cameroon whispered around a number of times
that Jacques Foccart, the mastermind of French post-colonial policy in Africa,
squirmed in his seat when he first learned that John Ngu Foncha, the leader of
the former British Southern Cameroons who realized Cameroon’s reunification,
made Vincent Chi his adviser. Jacques Foccart was afraid that Vincent Ndi would
convince the Anglophone leader to side with the popular Union of the
Populations of the Cameroons (UPC), the land’s number one political party for
the reunification and independence of French Cameroun and British Cameroons,
which later morphed into a partisan movement following its ban by France in
1955 and Britain in 1958, and that was still fighting the French Army and the
puppet regime of Ahmadou Ahidjo that France installed in the former French
Cameroun, the territory constituting the greater portion of the reunited Cameroon.
As a matter of fact, Jacques Foccart
had no reason at the time to be fearful of Vincent Ndi. The young man’s outlook
on life made him an advocate of constitutional liberalism and reform, hence an
opponent of war. With a doctorate in
economics at the age of thirty-three, Vincent Ndi was a unique man of his time
in the infant nation of Cameroon. He taught at the University of Yaoundé in the
late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies,
and he captured the hearts of his students and friends because of the
depth of his soul and the wideness of his intelligence. In short, he was among
the very few Cameroonian lecturers and professors with the free spirit to put
his thoughts into writing, thereby winning recognition for his three
outstanding novels and numerous political essays on Pan-Africanism, Cameroonian
civic-nationalism otherwise called Cameroonian union-nationalism, and the
democratization process in Africa. Still, that was not all about his creative mind and analytical thinker.
Vincent Ndi also wrote numerous plays and poetry that made him a hero in the
literary world.
People were convinced that Vincent
Ndi was a union-nationalist, an advocate of an advanced form of patriotism that
brought together the different peoples of the multi-ethnic, multi-racial and
multi-religious Cameroon into a force that placed the welfare of the land and
its people above everything else. In fact, he was an advocate of a New Cameroon
with a strong central government—one that would work in partnership with the
provincial and regional governments on matters pertaining to defense, foreign
policy, transportation, education, national statistics, monetary policy, and
the settlement of ethnic disputes. They said he also saw the need for a strong
central government that would assist in applying and upholding the central,
regional and provincial laws.
Gavin also learned that Vincent Ndi sank into
a period of despondent brooding after the French-backed regime squashed all
hopes of a democratic and pluralistic Cameroon by imposing a monolithic and
unitary system on the entire reunited land. Still, he hung around until 1975,
when he quit Cameroon, following several assassination attempts on his life.
However, unlike his grandfather, he was never exiled.
Vincent Ndi returned to Cameroon in
1983 and became a dedicated revolutionary in his fight for the genuine
liberation of his fatherland. He would not criticize and run away this time. He
would work with others for a change, create an opposition and ensure the
ascension to power of a patriotic and democratic government committed to the
original Cameroonian ideals. That was the vision the union-nationalist shared
with others when he returned to his fatherland and discovered that the new
oligarchic Pablo-Nero Essomba regime was just a continuation of the system put
in place by the French authorities before they handed French Cameroun its
conditional independence and before the territory's reunification with the
former British Southern Cameroons.
The government held that Vincent Ndi
began the democratic drive in Cameroon in the late nineteen eighties, that he
compiled the documents to form a political party, and that he won over some
supporters in the upper echelons of the system who covertly facilitated his
activities. Whatever the version, Vincent Ndi made a poor judgment. He dwelled
too much on the system’s weakness of acting only after much steam has been let
out. He delayed the registration and launch of the political party until the
end of the year.
Nobody expected the Pablo-Nero regime to
strike even before the lid was opened to let steam out. On December 20, Vincent
Ndi was found dead in his sitting room, the file of documents missing. The
autopsy commissioned by his family revealed something strange. A pellet the
size of a pinhead was found embedded in his right arm. This pellet was laced
with a deadly poison.
Gavin took another sip of his drink and sighed. He had met his second
cousin on three occasions only, all within the past two months. Vincent Ndi
went the extra mile to make him feel at ease in their first meeting by taking
him into his arms with genuine warmth. He spun another surprise hardly an hour
into the meeting by revealing his grief for the country, and then went further
by telling him about his plans to organize an opposition to the establishment,
even though he avoided mentioning any of the names that were also involved in
the project.
Vincent Ndi intrigued him during their third
and last encounter by appearing withdrawn. He nonetheless welcomed him into his
home with a smile, poured him a drink, and then moved from the opposite seat
and sat by his side on the sofa, doing so with a peculiar look on his face that
he found both engaging and disquieting.
“Tell me everything about your job,
your real job,” Vincent Ndi had told him pointedly in a low but strangely
commanding voice while looking him straight in the eye.
He remembered stuttering when he
began, but he went on to tell Vincent Ndi about himself, his job, his reason
for joining the secret service and his mission to Bamenda. Strangely enough, he
blurted out the weaknesses of the oppressive machinery with relish, to the point where he was even taken
aback by the relief he felt.
Vincent Ndi appeared to have understood
everything because he flung his arms open in a gesture of unconditional
acceptance, embraced him, and then patted him soothingly on his back.
“Destiny put us in opposite camps, but we have two things in
common.”
“What are you talking about?” he
remembered asking in a quizzical manner.
“Come on Nemafou! I don’t have to
tell you that we have the blood of King Tchatchoua and Queen Njonang Nana in
our veins. Should I add that we are both patriots and genuine
union-nationalists with strong ambitions for this country, perhaps as products
of history? That is why we should be together. So, you fight from within, and I
will fight from the outside. You understand what I mean, don’t you?”
He did not respond right away, since
he doubted the whole idea of taking a stand against the system when the
divisive history of the land had proven time and again that it was difficult,
if not foolhardy, to take upon oneself the colossal task of galvanizing the
traumatized and brainwashed people of Cameroon to confront the system. He knew
it was even more difficult familiarizing Cameroonians with a national ideology
that embodied the collective Cameroonian dream which addresses the hopes,
dreams and fears of the country’s different ethnic groups and religions, as
well as its yet to be harmonized Anglophone and Francophone populations.
“Aren’t you asking too much from me?”
he had asked Vincent Ndi.
Gavin’s real intention at the time
was to stir a debate with his second cousin. However, he realized his mistake
right away because Vincent Ndi’s eyes changed suddenly from a gentle gaze into
an angry hue as if he just got possessed by an unfathomable spirit. Even so, he
remembered seeing something else in those eyes. He saw a growing mist
developing into tears.
“Who do you think you are?” Vincent
Ndi had roared.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think you are different from
me, or from all the others who have been damned for eternity until each and
every one of us come to terms with our pasts and exorcise all the ghosts haunting this land? We are doomed, Gavin.”
“What do you mean?”
“We are doomed, Nemafou. We are cast
for eternal damnation until we confront all the Cameroonian demons personified
by this rotten establishment set up by France and administered by its puppets.
I was around in Switzerland at the time,” Vincent Ndi had told him with a deep
nod and with tears in his eyes.
“What are you talking about?” he
remembered asking because he knew the question sounded stupid right after he
posed it.
“I witnessed his agonizing pain
before he died. The French Secret Service wanted him to die in Conakry where he
was supposed to arrive two days after the meeting with William Bechtel, the
person responsible for his poisoning.”
“Uncle Felix?” he had agonized.
“Yes! I am talking about Dr. Felix-Roland Moumié, the second UPC
leader!”
“Why?”
“It is simple. His enemies wanted to
put the blame of his death on the Guinean president. The plan was to hold Sékou
Touré responsible. However, God was on our side because his poisoner put an
overdose of the thallium in his drink and he felt sick shortly after drinking
it. I went to his hospital room in Geneva every day for one week. Yes, Gavin! I
was there when your Uncle Felix died. He was the best for this land,” Vincent
Ndi had muttered in an emotion-choked voice that made Gavin’s lips to quiver.
“Uncle Felix Moumié!” he had mumbled
barely above a whisper.
“Yes, Nemafou. They killed your Uncle
Felix Moumié.”
“You were supposed to be in England,
studying.”
“I happened to be visiting with a
Swiss friend. Believe me, I witnessed his agony.”
“God!” he had gasped with closed
eyes.
“They got your brothers too,
remember? They also got your mother, father,
and sister. Oh, and your cousins, uncle,
and friends as well. Tell me! What are you doing? Closing your eyes and living
with the illusion that the leopard changed its spots?”
“No!” he had quivered, and then nodded as if acknowledging something to himself.
“Do you know what else they did two
years before killing Felix Moumié? They killed the first UPC leader. They
killed Ruben Um Nyobé. As if killing him was not enough, they dragged his
corpse across Boumnyebel to serve as a warning to those supporting the cause.
They dehumanized his body as if he were a criminal. Yes, Nemafou! They
mutilated the dead body of Cameroon’s first historic leader who championed the
cause of this land’s reunification and independence. Yes, Gavin, they dumped
the corpse in a pit so that people like you would be cowed from opposing De
Gaulle, Ahidjo and the mafia of a system that the French put in place in
Cameroon and the rest of Francophone Africa, a system that is haunting this
nation today and that is dragging all of us into abyss.”
Gavin remembered slumping into the sofa and
rubbing his brows, avoiding Vincent Ndi eyes all the while. He was not afraid.
It was just that his searching soul could not muster the strength to confront
his second cousin.
“I know,” he had responded finally in
a dejected manner.
“And where is Felix Moumié today?
Buried somewhere in Conakry and almost forgotten by people who cherish him,
people like you. Is he going to be there forever? Can this land ever move
forward without bringing home those who gave everything for its freedom? Where
is Abel Kingue? I am asking you now with tears in my eyes. Where is he today?
Is he resting quietly in his grave in Egypt? What about Ndeh Ntumazah, Mongo Beti, and all the others—hundreds of thousands
of patriotic souls still languishing in exile? Oh, I almost forgot. What
happened to Ossende Afana, the first Cameroonian with a doctorate degree in
economics? He too had dreams for this land, dreams we all shared. Tell me what
they did to him. Perhaps you want to know. They
killed him, remember? They killed him in his humane drive to see his
fatherland become truly free, independent, progressive, prosperous and liberal.
What did they do to him afterwards? They decapitated his body, right? I hope
you haven’t forgotten that they buried his headless body somewhere in the southern
forest.”
He had nodded and grunted but said nothing in reply.
“Ah, don’t tell me you have no idea
of the fate his lifeless head suffered in the hands of this mafia of a system.”
“Ahidjo ordered it put on display in
Yaoundé for all to see,” he had quivered with closed eyes, tears streaming down
his cheeks.
"Tell me, Gavin! What about Ernest
Ouandie, the last historic leader of the historic UPC party? He did a brave
thing by giving himself up to our local security forces. Do you even remember
him?”
He had nodded again but kept quiet.
“He walked into a police station and
announced his presence to the bewildered officers whose first reaction was to
run away, leaving him alone in their station for hours. There was a point to
that. Ernest Ouandie surrendered because he wanted to prove to the world that
the UPC’s fight wasn’t against the Cameroonian people. He wanted to prove that
the UPC's principal reason for waging the partisan war of liberation was to
confront French deception in the land. Tell me Gavin; what did he get in
return?”
“They killed him by firing squad in
front of his people in Bafoussam.”
“And then they buried the body in a
nondescript grave so that people like you would delude yourself that he never
existed.”
“What are you doing to me?”
“I am trying to remind you that you
are the great-grandson of the legendary King Tchatchoua of Banganté, that you
are the son of the heroic Joseph Njike and that you are the godson of the
iconic Felix Moumié. You do not belong there with the mafia system.”
Gavin remembered chuckling for a moment, as he
nodded as if acknowledging his inner voice. When he raised his head again and
looked at Vincent Ndi straight in the eye, he was surprised to find a cryptic
smile on his face. However, it was something about the softness of his own
facial expression that illuminated his second cousin’s face in an instant.
“You want me to change sides, but in
a covert manner. That’s fine. I understand. I shall become a double agent. I
shall furnish you with the necessary information and help you win by keeping
you abreast of their plans and moves against you, and the precautions you need
to take.”
Vincent Ndi had taken him into his
arms right away in a suffocating embrace that was fierce and warm, reproachful
and forgiving. The two relatives had shuddered with emotions as they placed
their hands on each other’s shoulders, muttered vows, and then went on to
discuss at a deeper level.
At the door that night, just before he stepped
out, Vincent Ndi had held him on his shoulders for a moment, patted him on the
cheek, and then said in an emotion-choked voice. “I knew you would comply. I
knew you were not with them.”
He had nodded somberly and at that moment, he thought of his brother Bernard murdered
three decades ago, wondering why his second cousin stirred memories of him.
“Tell me, Professor; did you know of my involvement with them all along?”
“Yes, my brother,” Vincent Ndi had
told him with a smile, “Of course, I did. Somebody would have written an
interesting epitaph about you already, had I not taken a firm stand against it.
You don’t need me to tell you that you have a stinking reputation, do you? It
is not your true bearing, for sure, but it is scary.”
“Huh!” he had grunted, meant as a
subtle urge for his second cousin to continue talking.
“Believe me Nemafou, over the name of
my grandfather Nemafou, who was your grandmother’s brother. To be honest with
you, your transfer to Bamenda unsettled some of our people to the point where
someone even called for your elimination. The leak was from your people, you
know.”
“Don’t you think I ought to know who
the others you are working with are? To keep me on the safe side of things, you
know!”
He remembered Vincent Ndi shaking his
head in refusal. “It is our game and you play it our way. My comrades know you.
Rest assured that they would contact you if the need arises. Believe me, my
brother! My friends will never raise a finger against you without my approval.
I told them you would cooperate. Now, do as I say for our sake.”
That was the day he accepted to
become a double agent. He had done so for personal reasons too. However, when
he began the drive to Banganté two days after the meeting, he left Bamenda with
a piece of information to prove that he had gained Vincent Ndi’s trust. It
involved a living phantom called “The Green”.
However, he was still savoring the quietness
of his ancestral land when information reached him reporting the death of
Vincent Ndi in Bamenda and ordering him back to the town for further assignments.
He had followed the orders and showed up as an old man at Vincent Chi’s burial.
He had done so with three other men. He had seen what Jean-Baptiste Ondoa and
Maurice Nze Mezang did not see. He had seen what Emmanuel Ebako saw but did not
discern. He had seen a man—an unimposing figure with a determined face that was
unusual around. There had to be a powerful link between the man and the late
Vincent Ndi.
Gavin emptied the glass of vodka with a massive gulp, put it on the
stool, and then leaned on the rails. He was settling into his thoughts again
when a car approaching their building in the street below swayed dangerously.
It was Emmanuel Ebako’s blue Toyota Corona. The car pulled to an abrupt stop
less than two yards away from the elevated veranda of the ground floor of the
apartment building.
Gripped by a sudden premonition of trouble,
Gavin held his breath as if prepping himself for something bad to happen. Then
Emmanuel scrambled out of the car, clutching his right shoulder, blood on his
left hand and the top right side of his shirt.
“Chef Gavin, help me! Grand
frère, Gavin, Grand frère, Gavin … Gavin! They are killing me! They
are coming! Help me, help… help!” Emmanuel shouted hysterically, collapsed to
the ground, and then tried to get up again in a frantic manner.
“Ebako!” Gavin shouted back, snapping
out of the paralysis that had gripped him seconds ago.
He was about to run downstairs to
Emmanuel when a fast-moving Peugeot 505 caught his attention as it screeched to
a crawl behind Emmanuel Ebako’s car. It swerved to the right, and at that
moment, Gavin caught a glimpse of a figure in a dark leather jacket, an unusual
outfit for a city like Douala with its hot and humid equatorial climate. The
man was holding a rifle through the front passenger window. Emmanuel was on his
feet again, and must have understood the
man’s intentions because he leaped for cover behind the trimmed hedges, a split
of a second before the rifleman opened fire. Then the car sped away.
Emmanuel’s sheer determination not to
let go of his last breath surprised Gavin when he arrived at the scene and
found the dying agent lying on the pavement, soaked in his own blood.
Gavin raised his head under his left
arm. “Who did this? Tell me, Ebako, and I will get the bastards,” he stuttered.
Emmanuel gasped with trembling lips,
and then spurted blood as he tried to say something, his words hardly
intelligible to the anxious Gavin.
Gavin closed and opened his eyes as
he fought off the cold wave of anger sweeping over his body in his conscious
effort to help his friend battle death.
Emmanuel painstakingly gestured with his left
middle fingers for him to edge forward. Gavin did, bringing his ears closer to
his wounded friend’s quivering lips. In a voice barely above a whisper, he
urged and encouraged Emmanuel, promised and assured him, straining his ears all
the time for the dying man’s revelation.
“Our men chased me. We saw them
before in Yaoundé. ‘The Twins’,” Emmanuel slurred and gasped for breath.
“Who are they? Tell me,” Gavin asked,
barely stopping himself from shaking Emmanuel in a frantic manner.
“They spoke a Beti dialect. They got
me, Mon Chef… Vincent Ndi. Also, beyond salvage, eh?” Emmanuel mumbled.
“Give me names, Mon Frère!”
“Owona! Be careful, Big Brother.
Those bastards…should be stopped. They are ruining this country; they are
creating hatred and confusion.”
“I shall get them, I promise.”
“Big Bro, I am dying.”
“No, you are not. I am taking you to
a good hospital, okay? Listen
to me, Petit Frère. I will make sure they patch you up
really good. Then we shall hunt them down together, and we shall celebrate
afterwards as winners always do.”
“Take care of my boy. Tell him I love
him. Tell him…” Emmanuel gasped, coughing out blood.
“Hold it! Do not move at all; do not
speak even, okay! I am getting you out of here. We shall, we shall…” Gavin
stammered as Emmanuel pulled on his shirt.
In shocked disbelief, Gavin watched
life ebb out of the body of his friend and colleague. He was still holding
Emmanuel in his arms when a tap on his back brought him back to the reality of
his surroundings.
“Do something,” said the sad-looking
old man by his side who seemed to have suddenly appeared from nowhere.
Gavin closed his eyes and fought back
the hot tears of despair threatening to trickle out. He was still trying to
come to terms with Emmanuel Ebako’s death when he heard faint shouts, cries,
murmurings, and sighs—sounds that stirred his senses as the seconds swept the
reality in front of him into his consciousness. He opened his eyes again and
looked around him to find a growing crowd. With surprisingly steady hands, he
laid the dead man’s head on the pavement, sighed, rose to his feet, clenched
his fist, and then gritted. Even as he crossed himself over the body of his
dead friend, he was oblivious to the divinity he was seeking consolation or
counsel from.
Even though there was no longer an
iota of doubt in his mind that the agent’s death was an inside job, he still
could not figure out why Yaoundé wanted him dead. However, two thoughts plague
him since Emmanuel’s burial a week ago. The first was: Did the Delegate-General of National Security Pierre Ndam Saidou have a
hand in it? And the second was: Was
Emmanuel’s elimination connected to the death of Vincent Ndi Chi?
Gavin settled into the recliner in
the sitting room, closed his eyes and fell into deep contemplation as multiple
thoughts raced through his mind, finally converging onto the memory lane that
took him back to Vincent Ndi’s burial a month ago, a journey that saw him
dismissing figures, incidents and discussions in an instant, until his memory
slowed to a crawl the moment it came to the heated exchange between Emmanuel
and Jean-Baptiste. His conscious effort not to get involved in their argument
by closing his eyes might have been intuitive at the time, but it might have
been helpful after all. Now, with his eyes closed again, he could weave a chain
as their words flashed through his mind.
I am an expert on the Northwest Province. In fact, I have worked here for
five years. None of you have a year of service in this province in your
records. Gavin recalled Jean-Baptiste’s words.
What is your opinion of Chef Gavin’s sense of judgment, especially on
this issue? He remembered Emmanuel asking.
“He is good,” Jean-Baptiste had said,
paused, and then added, “Only, he has misjudged things.”
“What do you mean?” Emmanuel had
queried again.
“He failed to see that we have
everything under control.”
“He is an Anglophone. And he is
Graffi too. I suppose you know that,”
Emmanuel had persisted.
“I disagree with you. He is not from
the Northwest Province, and neither is he from the Southwest Province. True he
is Bamileké. That makes him a Francophone. Graffi, Graffi, you said. Hmm! That
is a complicated reference. Well, maybe he is Graffi after all,” Jean-Baptiste
had intoned.
“Chef is a breed from this
area, no matter how you look at it. True he grew up in the Southwest Province,
but his parents came from Bawok, in Bali.”
“Are you kidding me? He is Bamileké.”
“Yes, he is Bamileké, J.B. I thought
you knew that Bali-Bawok is a Bamileké enclave in the Northwest Province.”
“It still doesn’t change anything.”
“All I am trying to say is that Chef Gavin isn’t different from the
prototype of a Graffi man. Besides, Chef
Gavin understands the feelings of the people of this province better we do.”
“What is your point?” Jean-Baptiste
had spurted.
“My point, my dear friend, is simple.
Chef Gavin is Graffi. It makes no difference
whether he is French-speaking or English-speaking when it comes to the issues
at stake here. Apparently, you are failing to see that Vincent Ndi’s murder is
revamping a spirit that has been dormant all these years. The spirit I am
talking about is the people’s voice.”
“Merde!”
Jean-Baptiste had hissed.
“There is no reason to say damn it.”
“Merde!”
Jean-Baptiste had hissed again.
“Whatever! J.B, I am trying to make a
simple point here. The fellow who ordered his death should know that the mess
they created with your compliance is now on our laps. And we may not be willing
to fight it out with our people.”
“You do not sound at all like a loyal
agent of the state,” Jean-Baptiste had said.
“Did I hear you well?”
“Of
course, you did.”
“Whatever! I am a patriot, J.B. Now,
I will make my point very short and simple. Vincent Ndi’s disposal isn’t going
to serve the interest of the state. Why? Because the man was an exemplary
patriot. He was a fervent union-nationalist who was trying to give birth to the
Cameroonian dream that has been aborted so many times in our history. The dream
of a New Cameroon would have revamped this country that those up there
crippled. But you killed him,” Emmanuel had said in a resigned tone.
“Merde!”
Jean-Baptiste had hissed.
“Whatever!”
“How come you are calling him a
patriot? I mean! He was a Biafran! He was an enemy in the house! Do you glorify a man whose ultimate aim was to tear
this nation apart? Can’t you see? That man was trying to revive the dead notion
of a separate state for Anglophone Cameroonians,” Jean-Baptiste had
half-screamed.
“Liar! Yes, you are lying,” Emmanuel
had shouted back.
“Did I hear you well?”
“Of
course, you did, J.B!” Emmanuel had retorted with an edge in his voice
that had surprised him and probably Maurice too, “I have known that man for
decades. He was a good man. He was the staunchest Kamerunist I ever met. He was
a true union-nationalist. What do you think you have done? Yet, you are all
blind. You didn’t see a thing there. You claim everything has been won.”
“Another Biafran right here in our
midst! A true Anglo-fool! And an enemy in the house, I must add. Ah! At the end
of the day, you are all the same. I always knew it. Anglophone Cameroonians
should never be trusted,” Jean-Baptiste had growled before directing his words
to Maurice, speaking in Beti, in their native Ewondo dialect, “You saw the side
he took against us, didn’t you? And he was even insulting our tribe, our ethnic
group, our people.”
“Please stop this crap?” Maurice had
moaned.
“He called me an Anglo-fool,
forgetting that he is a Franco-frog, a beast of no nation,” Emmanuel had
teased.
“Chef,
you heard him again. He just called us frogs,” Jean-Baptiste had directed his
complain to Gavin.
Gavin remembered sighing before
replying Jean-Baptiste. “You just called him an Anglo-fool! You even went
further and tagged him with the terrible word Biafran, when he is not of Ibo origin, when he is not even a Nigerian! You
labeled him an enemy in the house, when
he considers himself a patriot. What must I say to that?”
“Is that all you can say about this?”
Jean-Baptiste had asked in a bewildered voice.
“Come on J.B! This is childish. You
know that none of the stereotypes the different Cameroonian ethnicities have
for one another are true. They are funny, that’s all. Our people even have
stereotypes about themselves,” Maurice had said in a placating voice.
“Listen!” Gavin had interjected with
a note of exasperation in his voice, “I think you and Ebako are crazy on this
one. Can’t you see how fragile this country still is? Yet you pick on one
another identifying yourselves as an Anglophone and as a Francophone. Guys,
those concepts of identification make us victims of the legacy of the partition
of our land by Britain and France.”
“We are Cameroonians. That’s what is
important. Foreign influences should strengthen us and not push us apart,”
Maurice had chipped in with a chortle.
“J.B and Emmanuel are still haunted
by the master and slave concept—the master believing that it is divine will to
lord it over the slave, and the slave believing that the master has been a lord
for too long and must be debased. We can never find our mutually compatible
interests as a successful state when our people are still haunted by such a
divisive mindset,” Gavin had said.
“Are we getting into Friedrich
Nietzsche now?” Maurice had joked.
“Chef,
you are right, in a way. They think they are destined to be the masters
forever,” Emmanuel had said in a frenzy that surprised Gavin.
“Please, shut up!” Gavin had snapped,
fixing Emmanuel with reproachful eyes before closing them again.
“Merde!”
Maurice had growled.
Silence had reigned in the car for
close to a minute before Gavin spoke again. “Aren’t we smart enough to know
that this crap should stop? We have our duties to Cameroon and a job to do.”
“It is okay, Chef. J.B and Emmanuel are always like that,” Maurice had declared
with equanimity.
“Thanks for chipping in,” Gavin had
rasped.
“You don’t expect to rid their minds
of prejudices with a whiff like that, do you? Believe me, they need eternity to
become open-minded and embrace your mindset on the way forward for Cameroon.”
“I see! Their uncalled-for mutual
suspicions aggravate the animosity even further. Distrust is at the heart of
the malady plaguing the Cameroonian soul after so many betrayals?” Gavin had
said, opened his eyes and fixed them on Maurice.
Maurice had smiled encouragingly at
him and nodded, eliciting a reply nod that brought a sudden brightness to his
face. Gavin remembered turning his head around after that and closing his eyes
again. And he remembered thinking at the time that Maurice understood why he
was irritated. He had every reason to think that way because they shared a lot
in common, having spent much of their youth in the English-speaking part of
Cameroon.
Maurice was born ten miles east of the
petroleum city of Limbe, the former Victoria. As the son of a public
administrator who recorded more than ten transfers to different parts of the
national territory, Maurice could boast of having had his fair share of
narrow-minded Cameroonians of the Anglophile and Francophile mindsets who felt
at ease subjugating their Cameroonian national identity as if the only things
that mattered were their ethnic groups, regions and the foreign languages they
communicated in. He even remembered telling Gavin that only advanced
Cameroonians with the ability to relate to the cultures and sensibilities of
their compatriots in both the English-speaking and the French-speaking parts of
the country were capable of making worthy contributions to save Cameroon from
becoming a failed state.
It was shortly after those supportive words muttered by Maurice that they
heard the chants, cries and ululating from the mourners descending the hill
from the burial ground. That was the moment he decided to drive away. It was
then that he found his true bearing. He would have to redeem himself. Emmanuel
Mukete Ebako must have thought along those lines too.
As Gavin opened his eyes again, he
came to a conclusion that brought a sigh out of his mouth. Emmanuel’s death
came about from his soft feelings for Vincent Ndi Chi. He would make that
knowledge an asset. First, he would have a talk with Pierre Ndam Saidou.
He did not find the climb tasking at
all, and even thought he was still vigorous for a man his age. At the end of
the staircase, he turned left, and then
headed down the hallway until he bumped into two men emerging from the nearby
waiting room—men who must have been having their minds on something else just
like him.
“Hey, Gavin,” the taller of the two
greeted him in a somewhat startled voice,
and then stopped for no apparent reason. The guy recovered quickly, turned
around, and started walking away again, but with slightly hesitant steps.
“Hey!” Gavin hesitated before he
responded in English, not stopping to shake the timidly extended hand of the
shorter companion. He hated the fake courtesy laboriously fronted by those
involved with the service in this establishment, the edifice directing the
system’s oppressive machinery.
Gavin felt calm by the time he
stopped at the door of the connecting office to that of the security boss. The
two hard pairs of eyes that greeted him failed to stir his emotions. Still, he
did not like what he saw in the gaze of the guards. They too possessed that
hypocritical receptiveness he found annoying. These were people with a special
passion for inflicting pain.
“The Commander is expecting me,”
Gavin said, more to himself than to the two men. The guards nodded in reply, but they did not utter a word.
Gavin smiled mildly, pressed down the
knob of the door, pushed it open and stepped inside. He greeted the two
secretaries in the connecting office, waited for a moment for them to say
something, and then nodded when they told him to proceed. He moved his
shoulders out of an impulse before he knocked and entered.
And there he was, Pierre Ndam Saidou,
sitting behind his desk, looking a lot younger than his estimated sixty-eight
years under the sun. The spirited look in his eyes must have been there fifty
years ago, or even further down the years, when he defied his parents’ Islamic
sentiments as a fourteen-year-old maverick by adopting the Christian faith and
by accepting his expulsion from their polygamous home.
When the young Francophile settled in
Douala, a city of mixed values, his intention was to become a petty trader.
However, he soon caught the eye of Jacques Phillipe LeClerc, the enigmatic
French colonel representing General Charles De Gaulle’s Free French Forces as
the new governor of French Cameroun. He heeded LeClerc’s call, volunteered to
fight in the Free French Forces in French Cameroun and participated gallantly
in the campaigns that wrestled French Equatorial Africa from the hands of the
Nazi puppet regime of Vichy France, which was controlling the southern half of
France during the four-year German occupation of the country. He was also
involved in the campaign after the capitulation of France, which culminated in
the capture of Kufra in the Libyan Desert in 1941. However, Pierre Ndam
Saidou’s military adventures did not end there.
The young soldier trudged with LeClerc across
the Sahara Desert in the historic march that began in Lake Chad, and then went
beyond the Libyan oasis town, all the way to Tripoli, a distance of over 2,400
miles. He even claimed he was by LeClerc’s side when they entered Tripoli with
the British 8th Army, and that he saved
LeClerc’s life in the Tunisian campaign, during one of the battles against the
fine German Army commanded by the legendary General Erwin Rommel.
Ndam Saidou was apt to say that he got
rewarded for his loyalty to France by fighting under the LeClerc-led French 2nd
Armored Division whose nucleus was the veterans of his African campaign. Even
though battles fought during the campaigns to liberate Tunisia, Corsica, Italy,
France and Germany claimed the lives of most of his African companions, he
emerged from the war convinced that he was created for a mission. This belief
was especially reinforced when US General Omar Bradley honored LeClerc by
letting the French 2nd Armored Division lead the liberation of Paris in August
of 1944. He was one of the few Africans in the African-majority Free French
Forces that the military leadership allowed to be a part of the French 2nd
Armored Division that liberated the French capital.
A look of self-importance always
crossed Pierre Ndam Saidou’s face each time he talked about his experiences as
a soldier around General LeClerc at Gare Montparnasse, when General Dietrich
Von Choltitz led his German forces in Paris to surrender to the French 2nd
Armored Division under the command of the legendary French general. And then,
there were the French women who showed their gratitude to the liberators for
risking their lives to free France, to the point of even turning down their men
in favor of him. How he wished he had been born a French.
Ndam Saidou’s cherished memory of
fighting under General LeClerc paled in comparison with his recollection of
that fateful day when Captain Pierre Leblanc, a close aide of General LeClerc,
called him into his office and announced that they had selected him over a host
of other worthy foreign combatants to spend some years in France for further
studies and training.
He avoided finding out why he was
chosen over other French Camerounians and Francophone Africans. Instead, he
complied with all the directives of his French mentors, allowing himself to be
molded into a machine for oppressing his people. He became a ruthless
executioner during the late 1950s and the rough early years of the Ahidjo
regime. As a matter of fact, pundits hold that Pierre Ndam Saidou’s decisive
role in the French security and the nascent Cameroonian armed forces in the
early 1960s was behind the UPC liberation movement’s defeat by the Franco-Ahidjo
alliance.
Yet, as the temporary instrument in the hands
of providence he always claimed to be, as an actor in a history he considered
himself destined to continue shaping, he surprised everyone by resigning from
his inglorious role in the arena of the Cameroonian secret service after Ahidjo
let go of the presidency and never made a comeback. The fact that he made a
comeback and continued serving in the
regime of Pablo-Nero Essomba puzzled many Cameroonians, including Gavin.
Gavin was about to close the door
behind him when a sudden flush of memory made him stop and stare sightlessly at the opposite wall. The taller of the
two men he bumped into in the corridor a few minutes ago, was wearing a leather
jacket, a similar if not identical color to the one worn by the rifleman who
gunned Emmanuel Ebako Mukete down. Emmanuel mentioned a twin in his dying
words, indicating a pair. His stress on the Beti origin of the men sounded
lucid at the time. Gavin could feel a rising sensation in his bosom as his mind
raced to a conclusion. The men were undoubtedly from the central forest region,
and their French carried a Beti accent with it.
“Gavin, are you all right?” Ndam
Saidou’s question registered faintly in Gavin’s mind.
Finally jolted by his approaching footsteps,
Gavin turned around to find that the Delegate-General was less than four yards away with a puzzled expression on his face.
“I am sorry, Mon Commandant. I
got trapped by elusive thoughts, that’s all,” Gavin stammered, smiled
reassuringly at Ndam Saidou, and then closed the door behind him.
“My boy, my boy, my boy!” Ndam Saidou
muttered and patted Gavin on the back, “I fully understand, I fully understand.
This service has estranged us all from our thoughts as natural people of this world as if we have become nothing more than
robots for this country. Tell me; do the thoughts have anything to do with our
business?”
“Non, Mon Commandant!”
Ndam Saidou clasped Gavin’s left hand
in both of his. “I am glad everything is fine with you. Who likes being laden
with more worries on top of what he already has?”
“I would be damned if I burden you
with more problems, especially ones that I can handle on my own,” Gavin said in
English.
Ndam Saidou grunted. “Good, Son; it
is soothing to know that I have someone who cares,” he said in the Bamoun
tongue, “Take a seat, Son,” he added, motioning Gavin to the soft leather chair
at the left corner.
“Thank you, Father,” Gavin responded
in the Banganté tongue, and then sat down.
“That’s life, Son; that’s life,” Ndam
Saidou muttered and slumped in his seat behind his office desk.
“We must make the best of whatever
bad situation we find ourselves in; we must carry our crosses and play our
roles.”
“You are right, Son; you are right
about that one,” Ndam Saidou articulated as he stretched his body.
Gavin smile, amused by Ndam Saidou’s
encircling approach—a front the security boss started using a couple of months
ago, each time he needed a favor from him. Moreover, he always did so by
engaging him in small talk in the Bamoun language when just the two of them,
conscious of the mutual intelligibility of the Banganté and Bamoun tongues.
“Son, we are in a hide-and-seek game
again. Huh, I wish I were younger. Ach! I have no intention of belittling the
obvious by telling you how good I was during my heyday. Huh! Those few years I
enjoyed out of the service as a farmer did take its toll, you know.”
“I understand!” Gavin said with a
nod.
“Thanks! Nevertheless, it is hard to
understand how I felt when I returned and found myself in the dark in so many areas that I don’t even feel
comfortable talking to you about the experience. This service has seen so many
new rules, so many alterations. Everything happened during the few years that I
was away.”
“Much dynamism is expected in our
field. I think we have been on top of the game because we always stay ahead of
the changing times.” Gavin said tersely.
Ndam Saidou’s sudden switch surprised
Gavin. “I can see for myself that you are yet to get over the death of your
friend.”
“It was a terrible case.”
“How is his family doing? I mean his
wife and kid.”
“They are handling the tragedy just
fine.”
“Any idea where they are?”
“In their village, near Kumba. They
are tough after all.”
“Oh, that boy! I haven’t made any
headway on his case. Any clue as to why he was murdered?”
Gavin hesitated for a moment,
wondering whether to mention his suspicions of the ‘Twins’ to his boss or to
let it lie low. “Non, Mon Commandant,” he replied.
“He died in your hands.”
“I wasn’t around when he stopped the
bullets that killed him. I heard him call out my name, and then there were the
gunshots. I didn’t even bother to put on my shoes and ran outside barefooted,
only to find him heaving out his last breaths. He died seconds after I arrived
at the scene.”
“It is a terrible story,” Ndam Saidou
said, shaking his head.
“It is a lot less terrible than
living the agony of it.”
“Can you think of any motive for the
killing?”
“Do you know anything about the death
of Vincent Ndi Chi?” Gavin asked, watching Ndam Saidou closely.
The security boss looked thoughtful
for a moment before he burst out laughing. “You amaze me, Son,” he said amidst
the chortle, “Do I have to tell you that you are a true Cameroonian after all?
I pose a question and your reply is a question of its own! That’s our nature, a
cryptic nature they say. Our reply to a question is a question that counters it
and at the same time provides a subtle answer. Don’t you think our cryptic
nature is a sign of wittiness, a good indicator of the resourcefulness of the
Cameroonian mind?”
Gavin laughed too. “Well!”
“Well,
what? Tell me, Son! Aren’t we resourceful? Who would have thought that Cameroon
would hold together after we reunited our English and French speaking
territories? Yet, we are forging ahead stronger than other countries. Yes, we
are even doing better than Canada or Belgium.”
Gavin did not respond. Instead, he
nodded.
“Okay, Son, I am being upfront with
you here. We assassinated the old man.”
“I suspected it,” Gavin said and
dropped his head.
“Look, Son! I knew about it only
after the act had already been done.”
“What are you talking about?” Gavin
asked, with a bewildered look on his face, even though he was feigning it, “You
are the boss. You didn’t allow something like that to happen behind your back,
did you?” he added in a slightly guarded tone.
Ndam Saidou laughed meekly for a
moment, rubbing his chin as he did so. “Well, well, well! Think of me as a boss
who allowed himself to drift into a Rip Van Winkle-type of sleep, and then woke
to find that the patterns around his jurisdiction have changed. He may still be
needed, but he has lost some control. He isn’t fully with the times anymore.
The only difference is that my political hibernation turned out to be
refreshing in the insight into my nature that it unveiled. I think I am
instinctively a farmer. I can distinguish weeds from the different grains.”
“But… but,” Gavin said and stifled a
chuckle, “You are funny. You almost made me laugh. I thought you are supposed
to be informed about operations around here.”
“Not at all levels, and not all the time.
Believe me, a trifle like that doesn’t bother me at all.”
“I got it.”
“I will redress that later. You know,
I didn’t regain full control of international operations after I returned.
Simply put, not all operations with international bearings have my blessings
anymore.”
“Why?”
“Son, the French basically run the
show in our intelligence service today, a development that started in my
absence and looks likely to persist for a while. In a modest way, I am the
third in command.”
Gavin nodded to show that he
understood. “I was curious, that’s all. That man is safer dead anyway. One of
my junior officers suffered from a slip of the tongue and blurted out the
nature of the operation to us. I think the French had someone for the
operation, while Jean-Baptiste Ondoa and Maurice Nze Mezang pointed Vincent Ndi
out.”
Ndam Saidou nodded also. “Jan Kolarov
did the job.”
Gavin’s eyelids flickered for just a
fraction of a second—too short and just too subtle to betray his thoughts. “I
was at the burial as you ordered. I was there with Ondoa, Ebako Mukete, and Nze
Mezang. They looked odd in the crowd. Their Bantu features stood out markedly.
Besides, they weren’t looking mournful at all as they should have been.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have this funny feeling that
Vincent Ndi’s men killed Ebako in revenge. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are
having other plans against our people. We should start taking them seriously.”
“I thought so too and made a special request
to the president, asking him to authorize the transfer of Ondoa and Nze Mezang
out of Bamenda, but he said no,” Ndam Saidou said with contempt in his voice.
So even Ndam Saidou was being kept in the
dark about certain operations because he was not an ethnic Beti, Gavin
thought in silence. The upper echelon of the Beti-dominated government was
discriminatory and feared Ndam Saidou’s non-Bantu origin.
“I was thinking,” Gavin said
somberly, “Perhaps out of my soft spot for Ebako. Vincent Ndi’s men massacred
him. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I want to do something
punitive that would check their activities. I can speak the tongue of Mankon
and I also understand a few other Ngemba dialects around Bamenda.”
“What are you talking about?” Ndam
Saidou interjected.
“My point is that I can penetrate the
web of those rascals and put a stop to their activities. I can hit them hard
and knock them out. Give me the backing, the cover and consider their movement
dead! I shall update you on their every move.”
“What do you mean?” Ndam Saidou asked
in rising elation, his eyes almost popping out of his head.
“I mean exactly what I said.”
“Do you mean to say, do you mean…?”
Ndam Saidou sounded and looked hopeful, his anxiety unhidden beneath his thick
mass of facial flesh.
“I want to penetrate their security,
their den of plots,” Gavin said with hardness in his voice that surprised the
security boss.
“Son, I am glad you are committed to
this fight. Actually, you are making things too easy for me. Tell me, Son,
before we proceed with the arrangements. Are you sure you can do this?” Ndam
Saidou asked with a cautious note in his voice.
“I am determined, Mon Commandant.”
Ndam Saidou flashed Gavin one of his rare
smiles that did not give warmth to his thoughtful face, but that usually
preceded his icebreakers. “Did you just make my day? Son, I admit you took me
aback with your zeal. I don’t doubt it, believe me. Honestly, I wasn’t
expecting it at all. That does not change the fact that you did save me some
breath, you know! I was about to ask you to play the same role.”
“Thank you!”
“Son, you have made a significant
decision, which I appreciate a lot. Believe me.”
“Significant? Mon Commandant,
this decision required of me a whole state of mind and conviction,” Gavin said
with a slight iciness in his voice that did not escape Ndam Saidou’s attention.
“I understand, I understand. Son,
believe me, you have my full understanding,” Ndam Saidou said in a subdued
tone, “But that does not mean I shouldn’t add a word or two of caution to make
my point even clearer. Love and hate are two emotions that become blinding
whenever we stretch them to their extremes. You should have a clear mind in
your actions, no matter the circumstances you find yourself in.”
“I suppose so, Mon Commandant.
Please know that it is my nature not to fail.”
Ndam Saidou leaned back in his seat and
regarded Gavin curiously. He had always held the young agent in high esteem,
but this sudden self-commitment puzzled him. He had not anticipated it at all.
“Let me say this: you have just made
a brave decision, something that must not be taken lightly.”
“Oui, Mon Commandant, but it
is a decision that was carefully thought over.”
Ndam Saidou nodded, rose, straightened his
jacket, and then rubbed his eyes. “The dead are the wisest,” he said casually,
and then nodded with a thoughtful look on his face, “They are even wiser than
the Great Sultan. Do you know why my people hold onto those words, a saying
that is almost sacred in their lives?”
“I will be glad if you tell me.”
“That’s because the dead can lure
even the most rational and toughest men into grievous commitments. The dead
tend to influence the living to hate or to love too much. Those two emotions
should never be allowed to exceed rational bounds.”
“I understand, Mon Commandant.”
“I hope Ebako didn’t get you that
far.”
“I know my limits, Boss.”
“Good, good, good,” Ndam Saidou said,
mused for a moment, and then added, “Our history, our people! Hmm! I suppose
you know that we are brothers. By brothers, I mean our Bamoun and Bamileké
peoples. I beg your pardon! No! We are cousins by origin. You see, when the
Bamileké and Bamoun peoples fled the Adamawa region from the hordes of Fulani
warriors in their Islamic jihad to Islamize our ancestors, our peoples took to
their heels at different intervals in history. Yes, Son, they made it to the
south in successive droves. You see; we the Bamoun people came into the area
when the Bamileké people were already in possession of the southern half of the
Western Highlands region. So, the Bamoun people had to fight their Bamileké
cousins before winning the southeastern half—what is today the kingdom of
Bamoun. Our people must have learned one or two tricks from the Fulani
warriors, you know. Anyway, the Bamoun rulers managed to lord it over the vast
region even though the conquerors were outnumbered by the local Bamileké
population that stayed behind. Guess what? They succeeded in bringing
homogeneity to their new kingdom; they created an entity that is markedly
distinct in the process in what is today the Bamounland.”
“An interesting piece of history few
of our people know about,” Gavin commented.
“Damn interesting!” Ndam Saidou affirmed,
“I am confessing to you that I consider myself Bamoun, even though I have some
Bamileké blood running through my veins and arteries.”
“Our languages are mutually
intelligible,” Gavin offered.
“Sure, Son! But one of our great
Sultans thought otherwise. No, we had kings back then. My apologies. The Bamoun
people started calling their kings sultan only after the Germans left this
land.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Now you know. This King of blessed
memory did not take our common history into account and stretched incredulity
to the utmost. And because of that, he paid a heavy price in life. First, this
king’s mother was Bamileké. However, when his son by a Fulani or Peul wife got
killed in a border skirmish with the Banganté people, he succumbed to the
spirit of vengeance and decided to beat the drums of war. Urged and supported
by his new Moslem Fulani friends, he embarked on a broader campaign to bring
the rest of the Bamileké people under his rule. Subjugation wasn’t what he had
in mind. He thought he was making a radical move to end the years of
Bamileké-Bamoun animosity and border wars of attrition. He was partly Bamileké
after all. The king conquered most of the Bamilekéland, except the area of your
group of Bamileké people—what is predominantly Nde division today, which is the
area where the Ndanda and Medumba dialects are spoken. His favorite son, whose
mother was indeed of known Bamileké descent, led the cream of the Bamoun army.
This son was his best general in the campaign. However, the princely general
suffered defeat and got killed near Banganté.”
“That happened in Bangoulap. I heard
it was an ambush,” Gavin interjected.
“You are right. The prince suffered
defeat and lost his life in the Battle of Bangoulap. The king became so
distraught that he sued for peace with the Banganté-led forces, demanding that
the two share control of the rest of the Bamilekéland.”
“Share control of the Bamilekéland? I
don’t think that ever happened,” Gavin said, looking fully interested.
“Of
course, it never happened. The Banganté king demanded instead that the
Bamoun people relinquish control over the areas of the Bamilekéland they were
occupying. Yes, Son, that was his precondition. It was a strategic move to
conclude general peace with all the other Bamileké kingdoms involved in the
conflict. So, you can judge for yourself that our great king engaged in war out
of blinding hatred and accepted peace from a greater hatred because he couldn’t
sustain hate from losses. Guess what? Our Bamoun and Bamileké peoples are at
peace with one another today. Nobody lords it over the other. We can see that
by the high degree of intermarriages,” Ndam recounted, his eyes wide in their
sockets with excitement.
“One piece of story to ponder over,” Gavin commented with quizzical eyes.
“Never forget it,” Ndam Saidou said
in a casual manner, “You might have heard this one too. Most modern day Bamoun
people are either Muslims or Christians. They reflect the soul of their
legendary king or Sultan, the man known in the history books as Sultan Ibrahim
Njoya. He cemented his alliance with the Fulani people by converting to Islam,
the very religion his forefathers rejected by fleeing the Islamic warriors of
the advancing Fulani army more than a century before him. He embraced Islam for
the sake of peace with the Fulani people who were on his northern borders.
However, he converted to Christianity when his kingdom became a part of German
Kamerun, in appreciation of the support the German Colonial Army gave him
during his military campaign against the Nso people to recover the skull of his
father. You see; his father the late king was killed in battle and decapitated
by Nso warriors who went on to hold onto his skull as a trophy. The curious thing is that he turned around and embraced
Islam again following the defeat of the Germans in the First World War. I guess
you must be wondering why he did that,” he added.
“You piqued my curiosity with that
one, Mon Commandant.”
“You see, King Njoya or Sultan Njoya,
or whatever title you choose to bestow on him, disliked being a true Christian
because it forbade him from being a polygamist. He disliked being a Muslim even
more because being a true Muslim entailed abstaining from drinking alcohol.
That was how our dear ruler came about professing to be one or the other
depending on the situation he found himself in. He would enter a church and bow
down in prayers, and then invite any pick from his harem the next hour to
reassure himself of his virility. I have even heard stories of how he sometimes
attended Friday Muslim prayers with men in his court carrying kettles with
them. Guess what? The kettles sometimes contained palm wine or red wine,
depending on his mood that day.”
Gavin chuckled as he watched Ndam
Saidou laugh too. “I respect him for his wits in devising a script and for
coming up with a new spoken language.”
Ndam Saidou nodded. “That’s one of
the things that made him unique. He was never a self-righteous man,” he said,
paused for a moment, and then added, “Now, where were we?”
Gavin and Ndam Saidou went on to
thrash out further details of the mission to be accomplished in Bamenda, and then talked at length about other
aspects of their jobs. It was almost midday when the effusive Ndam Saidou shook
Gavin’s hand, and then walked him to the door.
“Thank you very much, Mon
Commandant,” Gavin offered as he reached for the knob.
Ndam Saidou nodded and patted Gavin
on the back. “Son, I am glad you know the limits of life. Come around again
tomorrow, same time, for the set-up,” he said and squinted.
**************
At 09:03 Hours the next morning, the Delegate-General of National
Security received Gavin in his spacious office with a beaming smile and a warm
handshake.
He did not waste time on preambles
and went straight to the point. Gavin was given ten days to prepare himself for
the new assignment before leaving the capital city for Bamenda. He was required
to live within the perimeter of the Bamenda Provincial Hospital, in the Mankon neighborhood.
The rationale was simple. The service suspected the area stretching from the
hospital, via the Longla neighborhood, to Sacred Heart Secondary School at
Mankon, as well as the stretch of settlements in the direction of Mbengwi, as
the area where Vincent Ndi’s comrades were most active.
Ndam Saidou assigned Gavin to a hastily
created job as an English language instructor in the French-speaking department
of the city’s sole Government Bilingual High School, otherwise known as GBHS
Mankon, Bamenda.
“Make yourself a buddy of the staff
and students. Make yourself a man of the people with the townsfolk, your neighbors
more so and the natives in particular. I know you have a reputation with
languages. Rekindle my memory once more. How many foreign languages have you
mastered?” Ndam Saidou asked.
“Five,” Gavin replied.
The security boss mused for a moment,
biting his lower lip as he arranged his thoughts. “Which languages are we
talking about here?”
“French, English, Russian, German,
and Spanish.”
“Should I add a smattering of
Portuguese?”
“Not something you can fully rely
on,” Gavin lied.
“Good, good, good,” Ndam Saidou
grunted, paused for a moment, and then continued, “Go about your business
grumbling about your talents and mastery of foreign languages that the
government doesn’t appreciate. Make the people who give you an ear to believe
that the system is victimizing you because of your ethnic origin and Anglophone
upbringing, and more so because you are against the ruling party. The people
out there would agree with you that the minor post of a teacher is beneath your
true worth. All you have to do is work your way into the confidence of that
movement. They might even seek your services. I want you to make it your
business to get to their core with the
tack of a professional, for God’s sake. Do so with some class, if I must
insist. Ultimately, we shall come in and nail them down and out, completely!”
The security boss wrapped up his
briefing by giving Gavin his private and secret office numbers, before beefing
that up with the number to the French consul general—the Franco-Vietnamese and
actual head of Cameroon’s secret service. He also gave Gavin a briefcase
containing seventeen million CFA francs for the start of the operations.
Ndam Saidou stopped Gavin at the door just as
he was about to leave, and then added,
“You are the Hawk. That’s your code name.”
“Why?” Gavin asked with a puzzled
expression on his face that made his boss laugh.
“Come on, Son,” Ndam Saidou said in a
somewhat paternalistic tone, “You and I know that ‘The Hawk’ devours the chicks
of other fowls. Its easiest prey is a young bird. You are about to devour a
young movement.”
Gavin nodded, relief flowing through
his face. He was glad Ndam Saidou failed to tie ‘The Hawk’ appellation to his
name. However, he left that morning determined to work with the old man only on
his own terms.
**************
The picturesque hue cast by the sun over the rolling hills of Yaoundé
heralded dusk in a manner that made the Cameroonian capital look like a city
encapsulated in a spell. Even if that were the case, the Peugeot 505 with four
high-spirited men inside appeared to defy the mood as it pulled to a stop in
front of Centre Cassé club, a joint located in the city center. Gavin greeted
the animated atmosphere around by muttering a wow. There was mist in the air in
that portion of the city, an inconvenience per se that was made hazier by the
fumes of burning garbage and burned hydrocarbon. Nevertheless, that was not the
least of their concerns. The four men noisily got out of the car, shut the
doors behind them, and then strode into the club with a great deal of gusto as
if revving themselves up to make it an all-out night of fun.
The cheerful friends made themselves
comfortable around a table in the bar,
and then went about saturating their throats with the cognac Gavin ordered.
When they delved into other subjects as well, Gavin stood out as an unrewarding contributor. The two
secondary school teachers from the Bilingual High School at the Essos neighborhood
of Yaoundé were fiercely argumentative. Looking more like brothers, the men
were small in stature and dark in complexion. They also had fiery eyes and
quick tongues, and they enjoyed eating
and drinking as if they were in constant need of something to boost their
energy level with. Robert Babilla and Richard Tem, as they were called, shared
a mutual tendency to pick on each other’s nerves. Robert Babilla appeared to
have a fixed gaze most of the time that gave him the expression of someone
trying to figure out a puzzling phenomenon. Standing at five foot eight, the
third companion Joseph Mendjo was five inches shorter than Gavin and worked in
the Finance Ministry. He was fair-skinned, taciturn, handsome and very effusive
like a salesman.
The friends went on in a ravenous manner to
eat suya—the thinly sliced
roasted beef that made carousal so good, especially when eaten with pepper and
other spice. They drank some Cameroonian beer with it—something Gavin found to
be of better taste.
The music, company and ambiance gave the club a lively atmosphere even though
it was hardly 22:00 Hours. Things heated up not long after they finished the suya on their table when a dancer mounted the stage and lured all eyes in her
direction. With their drinks in front of them, the four men watched the Bikutsi
dancer twist her waist and belly and move her buttocks to the rhythm of the song
“Essamba” in a perverse fashion that made their hearts throb in their chests
faster than normal. The sexual suggestiveness of her mouth and eyes, and her robust gyrations were highly unusual for the dancing styles prevalent in
the country at the time. But the dancer’s performance made Gavin, his friends
and the other men around to applaud, yelp, whistle, yawp and throw suggestive
remarks at her—proving all the same that she was a welcome source of
distraction and relief to the men.
Gavin did not mind at all that he was there
that night. The unusual entertainment the club offered was amusing in its own
way, and it was turning out to be a welcomed relief from the stress caused by
his new assignment.
“I have a job now,” Gavin announced casually to his friends.
“That’s great! Congratulations! I am
glad to hear that, even though money isn’t really your problem!” Robert Babilla
said, still riveted by the dancer. The other two friends added their
congratulations too.
“Congratulations again, buddy! What
is the nature of your job?” Richard Tem asked.
“They assigned me to teach English in
a Bilingual High School, out there in Bamenda.”
Robert Babilla looked gloomy when he
said, “My savoir Jesus Christ, please have mercy on my poor country! That? I
was expecting to hear something better! You were a linguistic whiz kid who did
not surprise anyone by turning out to be the polyglot you are today. You
deserve a lot more than the government has offered. In fact, I expected them to
make you a director, or a real boss somewhere in the ministries, or even in the
diplomatic service.”
Gavin laughed weakly, and then threw his hands in the air in a dejected manner.
“You are beginning to sound like a stranger in Cameroon. Do I have to remind
you that I am an Anglophone? Besides, my ethnicity has been made to appeal to
the hatred of so many! Have you forgotten that I am not a member of the
president’s sole political party? Put those things together, and then tell me
if I have a chance of getting something better.”
“Don’t be disheartened, Old Boy. Your
new offer is better than nothing,” Joseph Mendjo soothed.
“Of course, it is better than
nothing. At least I will refresh my memory every day.”
“You had a consolatory saying for something like that—about men and their
dreams.” Robert Babilla said.
“Uh-huh! Men have their dreams, but
only the realists and pragmatists among them don’t mind alterations in life in
so far as the setbacks fail to derail them completely from their dreams,” Gavin
said.
“That’s a beautiful one,” Richard Tem
offered.
“Besides, you and I know that
ethnocentrism, tribalism, nepotism, corruption and Anglophobia have eaten deep
into the bones and marrow of this system,” Gavin added with a shrug.
“Let’s cheer up, chums! Better times
are still to come. Our talents will be appreciated, and we shall be given our
worth in this country of despondent souls,” Robert Babilla said in an animated
tone, and then raised his glass in the air for a toast.
“Put your drink down and let’s move
on with it,” Gavin responded with a chuckle, “I think I know what our elusive
friend means. The better times he is talking about will come while we are in
our graves.”
“I don’t think so,” the subtle Joseph
Mendjo intoned.
Nobody offered a response to Mendjo’s
words because a girl with swaying buttocks,
clad in a miniskirt, strode past their table. Gavin had seen her around before.
She was a beautiful lass in her mid-twenties, and an easy lay at that, though
the strictly-for-cash type.
“Mama Mia! Did she spoil my
day?” Gavin mused.
“What are you talking about?” Richard
Tem roused.
Gavin whistled under his breath. He
was being dramatic, and playing the ridiculous buffoon was a role he was
actually finding enjoyable. He smiled, turned to Richard Tem and held his left
shoulder. “What do you say about those legs,” he asked, indicating the owner of
the aggressive buttocks.
“Are you talking about that wolowose?”
Richard Tem asked.
“What does wolowose mean?”
Gavin shot back.
“I meant it for the girl you just
whistled about. She is a whore or better
put in our Cameroonian lingo, she is a wolowose. Man! Don’t tell me you
don’t know the meaning of that word!”
“Heard it before, but I don’t know
its exact meaning. Hmm! Thought the word connoted a hot chick.”
“Get it right, this time. She is a wolowose,
a whore.”
“When you first said it, I thought
you meant she is a woodwose, you know, judging from her hairstyle and stuff. I
prefer women with natural beauty.”
“Get out of here,” Robert Babilla
interjected.
Joseph Mendjo shook his head in an
amused manner. “Ah, so my friend here looks at the legs only. I wouldn’t be
surprised at all if we find out one day that Gavin made it home with natural
sisters of Orangutans.”
“Pals! Our mutual friend did that
already. I bumped into one of his girls at a party and had nightmares
afterwards. Her face was not prettier than King Kong’s,” Robert Babilla gibed.
“Her friend was the one I wanted,”
Gavin protested, and then chortled, "Hmm, hmm, hmm! I forgot to mention
something else. You see, I was drunk at the time and you guys know what the
booze can do to a man’s sense of appreciation of beauty! I know of a case where
a guy mistook his girlfriend’s grandmother for her after doing damage to two
bottles of vodka. Now, back to that girl. She too made herself too friendly
with the booze that day and took the words meant for her friend for herself.”
“That’s beside the point. You cannot
change the fact that whenever you compromise your sobriety, you look down most
of the time. That must be the reason why you see the legs only! I suppose the
girl had beautiful legs!” Robert Babilla teased,
and then chuckled.
“Eh, pals! Do I have to remind you
that the legs carry the beauty in a woman?” Gavin said with raised hands.
“Keep your head down and rest assured
that you will end up missing the best in women—above the waists, that is. Take
the beautiful faces, as an example. As an admirer of the legs, you fail to
understand the meaning of a woman having Mona Lisa’s subtleness or the
Madonna’s disarming beauty,” Robert Babilla elaborated.
“And of course, Marilyn Monroe’s
torso,” offered Richard Tem.
“I didn’t even mention Meryl Streep’s
elegant shoulders!” Robert Babilla said and chuckled.
Gavin grunted. “I’m not trying to
refute your claims. The point I am trying to make here is that the legs carry
all of those features you appreciate so much. Take the case of our Queen Zinga.
She had this thing of making men gape and drool whenever she strolled in the
expansive compound of her palace. Her legs did the job. They made her walk with
an uncommon dignity not found in the affected gaits and manners of Europe’s
monarchs. Five Englishmen had a brawl over whose turn it was to peep through a
hole as she paced about in her courtroom.”
“Are we on the same page here? Aren’t
you talking about the Angolan reign who immolated her lovers?” Joseph Mendjo
drawled with a chortle.
“You are right. There are all sorts
of claims about her. Like, she wittily stood up to the Portuguese governor in
Angola by ordering her servant to get down on all fours on the floor, and then
went on to sit on his back. You see, João Correia de Sousa, as the Portuguese
governor was called, offered her a mat to sit down on during negotiations.”
“A mat? Why?” asked Richard Tem with
an incredulous expression on his face.
“Uh-huh! The governor wanted to make
a point that she was subordinate to the Portuguese, even though her people were
not fully under Portuguese rule at the time. God, that was demeaning. She, a
princess, representing her brother the king during the negotiations with the
Portuguese, and then being subjected to a horrendous treatment like that!”
Robert Babilla moaned, stomping his feet as he whirled around.
“Stop getting too excited and sit
down. Why are you working so hard not to accept the fact that she was a beauty
with muscles?” Gavin interjected.
“Huh! I disagree. She could not have
been anything better than a slut with a royal title. She certainly had a very
high libido too, something she wasn’t shy about,” Joseph Mendjo intoned.
“She did what most people in
authority do. Uh-huh! She used her position to have fun,” Gavin said, feigning
a smirk.
“You mean getting laid?”
Gavin shook his head. “What else
could I be talking about, Richard?”
“Just think about it. Have any of you
guys read the story of the harem of men she kept after she made it to the
throne, and how she would make the men fight one another to gain a night in bed
with her, and then put her pleasurer to death the next day for whatever reason?
I have difficulties figuring out why she did that. She was like that insect
that feeds on its mate’s head right after mating,” Joseph Mendjo added.
“The praying-mantis,” Gavin
interjected and chortled.
“I won’t get into the piece written
by her enemies at the time. Now, back to Gavin. Whatever excuse you give is not
good enough for my regal ears,” Richard Tem snorted in a funny manner, “Nothing
can change the fact that your craving for the legs leaves you with the
baboon-looking faces,” he added
Gavin shrugged, feigning
indifference. “Having my eyes below the waist help me in life. I become a lot
more careful and rarely kick stones and other objects around me. That’s why my
shoes last longer!” he joked and chortled so much that it spurred the others to
laugh too.
“You are a crazy slave for women!”
Joseph Mendjo chided, shaking his head in a playful manner.
“But that girl is cute. Did you see
her face?” Richard Tem asked, gesturing to Robert Babilla.
“What are you talking about, pal?
That’s the only part of her that caught my attention!” Robert Babilla said,
“Pals, I am an admirer of faces!” he added in a comical tone.
“Now, I can see why the front of my
buddy’s shoes is always pointing to the sky. Too many shoe accidents while
concentrating on the female faces within his range of vision!” Gavin teased,
appreciating the laughter his words provoked.
“What about Joseph?” Robert Babilla
asked.
“I admire the physical beauty and the
mind of a woman. She must have some class,
though,” Joseph Mendjo said.
“And Richard?” Gavin asked.
“Richard claims he is a socialist in
his relationship with women. He comes up all the time with this defense that he
does not discriminate! The guy clears all women—from his junior fifteen-year-old
female students to mothers in their menopause!” Robert Babilla responded.
“I admit it. That girl is beautiful,”
Gavin said suddenly with a seriousness that surprised his friends.
“Chill, pal! What is it you want? Do
you plan to marry her?” Robert Babilla queried.
“I was thinking. She is like a
fertile but unproductive soil in need of one or two elements to make it
blossom,” Gavin slurred and whistled lightly, shaking his head as he did so.
“Like?” Joseph Mendjo drawled,
regarding Gavin with quizzical eyes.
Gavin sat back in his seat. “Like
water and something like, you know, or other things like seeds.”
“And what have you got to say about your
beauty?” Robert Babilla asked with an ironic smile.
“She is capable of making a lady of
herself if given a good home and some style. Did you see the way she carried
herself? There is intelligence in her ways.”
The friends went on to argue about
the nature of women and had some more drinks to sustain their festive spirits.
They were still chatting enthusiastically when Gavin moved his chair further
away from the table, and then sat up abruptly. The girl was approaching their
direction. His elusive beckon caught her attention.
“You called me?” she mumbled in a
timid manner, putting her forefinger on her chest, just in the cavity between
her breasts. They heaved out provocatively.
Gavin nodded,
and then made a gesture for her to lower her head. She did. “What are you doing
now?” he asked in French.
“Nothing. I have just finished my
drink,” she replied barely above a whisper.
“Can we go to another spot?”
“Yes, of course! Only, you will have
to pay for my move out of here. Also, try
to be good with money. That’s all it takes for me to give you a good time.”
“If that’s the case, then what are we
doing here? Let’s go!”
“First, I have to go to the toilet
and ease myself. I want to pee!” she cooed with a smile, moving her shoulders
in feigned timidity.
“I can wait,” Gavin hissed.
Gavin watched her shaking buttocks as
she strode away. He did not wait for long before he rose too and headed in the
direction of the male section of the lavatory as if caught with an overfull
bladder.
“Where to pal?” Robert Babilla asked.
“To the restroom, to get rid of the
beer,” Gavin replied as he walked away from the table.
He caught up with her just as she
came out of the lavatory. He took out two ten-thousand-CFA-Franc notes from his
breast pocket and thrust them into her hands. Then he held her right arm and
gently shoved her back into the lavatory. There was a funny glint in her eyes
as if she was enjoying it. Gavin bolted the door behind them, and then made the
girl bend forward, her hands resting on the cistern. He pushed her skirt up,
revealing bare brown buttocks. She was not wearing panties.
It must have lasted for about five
minutes when he pulled his pants up, breathing heavily. A brief and exciting
relief, he thought, before it dawned on him that he did not even think of
using a condom.
“To hell with AIDS!” he said angrily
in English.
“What’s wrong?” the girl asked in
French, a smirk on her face.
“Get lost!” Gavin snapped in French.
The girl turned around, pulled her
skirt down, and then walked out without saying another word. Gavin waited
awhile before leaving the lavatory—heavy-heartedly, he regretted. How he allowed
his excitement to go out of control to the point where he picked up an easy lay
and did a quickie job on her without using a condom, was something he would
have to look into. Alcohol, unfortunately, was behind his hasty action.
The thought of that aspect of the peoples of
the Northwest Province was on Gavin’s mind that morning as he paid a visit to
Ivan Fru Achu’s home. Ivan Fru’s nephew appeared at the door after the second
buzz, asked Gavin a couple of questions, and then told him to wait outside
while he announced his presence.
The young man returned a couple of
minutes after with furrowed brow. He did not offer a word at all, but then
beckoned Gavin over and led him inside, before telling him to make himself
comfortable in the sitting room while Ivan and his wife finished their
breakfast.
An expression of shocked disbelief
appeared on Ivan Fru’s face the moment the stranger appeared at the door. He
should not have been surprised at all.
“God help us! We have the devil
himself right here with us!” Ivan Fru said in the Akum dialect.
“Who is he?” Angela Bih, Ivan Fru’s
wife, asked, staring wide-eyed at her husband.
“You heard me. The devil himself,”
Ivan Fru repeated, and then wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.
Ivan Fru was versed with Gavin’s reputation.
He had seen him on two occasions only, yet he had picked up substantial
information on the enigma from the secret file Vincent Ndi’s widow gave him a
week ago. The file helped him arrive at a simple conclusion: Gavin was as
unreliable as a hungry lion. The records labeled him as an agent with a
tenacious reputation. A paragraph there, probably an excerpt from the
government’s records, even described him as a psychopath with a compulsion to
go beyond the limits of reasonable action.
Irrespective of the above, there was another
side of the Gavin riddle that also puzzled Ivan Fru. Vincent Ndi indicated in
one of his notes that Gavin’s beloved father was a remarkable UPC partisan
during the failed liberation war against French control in the land and against
the Ahidjo regime that France put in place afterwards to govern Cameroon. Ivan
Fru could not understand why the son of an acclaimed Cameroonian revolutionary
and union-nationalist was compromising his future by working with a corrupt,
unpatriotic and Francophile Pablo-Nero regime. He initially thought the motive
was the money the system lavished on those doing its dirty work, but Vincent
Ndi put that worry to rest in their second to the last meeting.
“Never forget that we are family and
that we share the blood of an honorable legend. Gavin Njike is my cousin,
albeit of the second generation. History has never seen the honor of our line
betrayed by one of its own. Apparently, he is in the government. But I know he
is not with them. That’s why I am convinced he would be of great service to
us,” Vincent Ndi had told him.
Ivan Fru did not believe at the time
that there could be another side of the agent to rely on. But then, Vincent Ndi
called them over to his home one wintry night and broke the promising news. The agent they dreaded so much
had just offered to cooperate and become a mole. Ivan Fru and his other
associates left Vincent Ndi’s fenced compound that night in high spirits. One
more highly placed agent in the system’s oppressive machinery would be working
with them.
But joys and expectations were short-lived
when three days after, Vincent Ndi’ wife found him dead in the sitting room.
The family had insisted on a personal and reliable autopsy that came up with
strange results. The cause of death was a pellet the size of a pinhead that was
laced with a deadly poison. Ivan Fru’s conclusion was simple: only an
outstanding professional and someone close to the dead man could have carried
out the assassination. And Gavin was the only agent at the time that fitted the
picture of such an assassin. Besides, he was nowhere to be seen at the time it
all happened. He had vanished into thin air. Now, here he was, resurfacing when
matters were really brewing.
Gavin stood up as Ivan Fru approached him from
the dining room. “Good morning, Ni! I am sorry for barging in the way I
did!” he greeted and nodded.
Ivan Fru gestured him to a seat, before moving
over and sitting on the left side of the sofa, keeping an eye on Gavin all the
time. Then he coughed lightly and raised his hands in the air in a gesture of
goodwill.
“I suppose you are familiar with our
customs and traditions. Hmm! So, you understand where I am coming from when I
tell you that you are welcome, provided you are here in good faith.”
“I am, Ni.”
“I suppose your name is Gavin Nemafou
Njike.”
Gavin was flustered even as he smiled and
nodded at Ivan Fru. The man radiated a strange feeling in him. Besides, he was
convinced he knew a lot about his person. That could mean one thing only—Ivan
Fru worked closely with Vincent Ndi Chi before they knocked him out of the
picture. If that were the case, then he would have to fly straight. Besides, he
had called him Njike—his real last name, instead of Wakam—his last name as the
official records hold.
Gavin nodded. “You said it right. My
name is Gavin Nemafou Njike.”
“What brings you here?”
“Please, is it possible to have a
drink, something dry?” Gavin asked, making an effort to put his host at ease.
“What brings you here?” Ivan Fru
repeated, ignoring the request and warm smile.
“My name doesn’t sound strange to
your ears. That means your late friend mentioned me to you.”
“Late friend? Which? The rigors of my
life left me with many good friends whose lives were cut short by the wicked
forces of this world.”
“I meant the late Professor Vincent
Ndi Chi.”
Ivan Fru sat back and regarded Gavin
with quizzical eyes. At length, he sighed and grunted. “He did, but you have
been missing for over two months.”
“I will explain myself later. But
first, I would appreciate something to drink.”
Ivan Fru regarded Gavin for a moment
with searching eyes. Satisfied that he did not look armed, he left the sitting
room and returned minutes after with two mugs and a pot of coffee. He poured
one for Gavin and the other for himself.
“Accept my modest hospitality,” Ivan
Fru offered.
“Thank you,” Gavin said as he took a
sip from his cup, “I sincerely hope you are not inconvenienced by my request
for coffee.”
“No, no, no! I also have a special
craving for a drink in the early hours of
the day.”
“Thanks again.”
“You are welcome! Now, you haven’t
been around for a while.”
“That’s true,” Gavin said and held
his hands together, “You might not know this, but I saw you at the professor’s
burial.”
“You weren’t there,” Ivan Fru retorted
with a puzzled look on his face.
“Yes, I was there to see him laid to
rest. As a matter of fact, I was heavily disguised.”
“I swear I never saw you. Three of
your men were there, but not you.”
“I was an old man, and I was standing
under an avocado tree.”
“I can’t believe it! I saw him all
right. It was you?”
“Perhaps you should believe me now.
What about the three men you saw?”
“Are you talking about the two Beti
men and the other? I was informed that someone killed the Bafaw agent in
Douala—a hit-and-run gunman, the papers wrote.”
“A hit-and-run, you say.”
“Yes!”
Gavin nodded and took a sip of his
coffee. “So, I had three agents with me out there at the burial in Akum.”
“You must be good with disguises.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Gavin
said, took a deep breath, and then sat up in his seat, “I always fool my way
around with those disguises. Now, I will get down to the point. First, I want
you to know that I fully understand your reasons for considering me the likely
suspect in your friend’s death. I also want you to know that I was nowhere
around when it happened. I had no idea at the time that plans had already been
hatched to end his life.”
“Where were you at the time of his
death?”
“Banganté." Gavin said and
nodded, "The professor was a good man. I appreciate men with his ideas and
conviction. I couldn’t be a party to his death.”
Ivan Fru’s wan smile reflected the
thoughts on his mind. The agent’s professed sympathy was akin to a lion
brooding over a massacred zoo deer. “What brings you here?”
“I came over to extend a hand of
cooperation.”
“Say that again.”
Gavin sighed and tapped his thumbs
together. “This is the fourth time I am laying my eyes on you. The first was
near your late friend’s home; and after that, at his burial. I saw you again at
your business center yesterday and tailed you home. I was right in my earlier
assumption that you knew something about my case. You are the right person to
come to.”
Ivan Fru was quiet for a moment,
never taking his eyes off Gavin’s face. “Tell me,” he said, “Tell me the name
of the person who killed my friend?”
“Not the security or our
intelligence. It was not an order from Ndam Saidou to his boys. The big man in
the presidential palace in Etoudi, Yaoundé wanted him dead and the French
secret service executed the order. They used their own hand, a Bulgarian whose
mother is French. He goes around today under the name of Jean-Marie Kolarov.
The guy defected to France five years ago. That is why the mode of killing was
different. Poisoning through a pellet is an exclusive Bulgarian method of
killing.”
Ivan Fru brooded for a moment, shook
his head, and then said in a somber voice, “His death was a setback.”
“I understand,” Gavin offered.
“We were like brothers. Our fathers
were very close friends and did a good job of passing their love for one
another onto their children. They were against the Anglo-French partition of
German Kamerun after the defeat of the Kaiser’s army in this land. They equally
did not appreciate the way those two Western powers administered French
Cameroun and British Cameroons. I was born barely ten days before my late
friend. Yes! Vincent Chi’s father christened me. I don’t have a single name
from my family. So, on the day he was born, my father had every reason to be
jubilant. He was actually looking forward to having a namesake. You see, he
didn’t count on the fact that Vincent Chi’s paternal grandfather was around at
the time and that the old man had plans of his own. The grandfather insisted
that the baby be named Vincent Chi. My
father did not mind. Ndi was the middle name my late friend got from my
father.”
“I see,” Gavin offered.
“Now, you can understand why we grew
up sharing dreams. Vincent Ndi believed we should live for something above
ourselves—like a mission for our fatherland. I don’t want to let him down on
that.”
“The move against him was a covert
operation.”
“That’s amazing!” Ivan Fru laughed,
“I suppose the Bamoun buffoon was unaware of it. He knows there is a circle
around the president that enjoys sidelining him, even though he bears the
responsibilities for the dirty jobs the Pablo-Nero government does. I still
don’t understand why he returned from retirement to a service that didn’t miss
him much. He evidently has some loose screws in his head!”
“It is a clique steeped in tribalism.
In fact, the two Beti men you saw that day pointed your friend out. I was
completely in the dark about the whole operation. Ndam Saidou wasn’t spared
embarrassment either. The funny thing is that they call us into the game only
when it gets tricky and out of the grasp of their French masters!”
“But you have been missing for two
months. What reason can you give to justify your sudden absence from the
scene?”
“I had to take some time off. I
needed that. I also had to get over the added massacre of the young agent. We
were close.”
“You threw me off on that one. Why
was your friend killed? Tell me also. Who did it?”
Gavin would have been baffled by the question
had he not known about ‘The Twins’. “Ndam Saidou is convinced Vincent Ndi’s
comrades killed him in revenge,” he articulated, “That’s what the French and
the Pablo-Nero clique want our side to think.”
“Be candid about it. Why was your
friend made a scapegoat?”
Gavin nodded,
and then shrugged. “He too fell in love with the ideas espoused by Vincent Ndi but committed the mistake of failing to
keep his feelings to himself. It must have been too much for him when he saw
the corpse consigned to mother earth. So, he blew his lids off and babbled his
sympathy for the professor and reproach for the government. Unfortunately, he
did so to the hearing of his ethnocentric partners, men whose devotion to those
in power can’t be questioned. They informed the leader of their clique and
Ebako got the worst of their discomfort.”
“Was there something special between
your late friend and mine?”
“As a matter of fact, Vincent Ndi
stood as godfather to his younger brother. Your friend was also his late
father’s friend. They shared their friendship since their school days at Saint
Joseph Secondary School in Sasse, Buea.”
“I see,” Ivan Fru said, looking
thoughtful for a moment. “I was informed you now teach in GBHS Mankon.”
“That’s an undercover job.”
“Why?”
Ivan Fru sat quietly on the sofa and listened to Gavin’s story.
Gavin told him how the security boss called him up to his office the previous
day and inquired about Ebako’s unresolved case; he told him how he learned
about Jan Kolarov’s involvement and the circumstances that led to his new
assignment.
Gavin grimaced, and then continued, "Ndam
Saidou doesn’t want to be left in the dark anymore. He needs materials he can
use to defend himself if he ends up on the losing side tomorrow. He isn’t as
smart as he used to be. Actually, I don’t care if he ends up in the dungeons. I
know he counts on me, based on our mutual Graffi ties. The old fox expects me to stay blindly committed to
his plans. The only thing I can say for now is that he deserves hell for a
niche. Hell, hell, hell! They killed the UPC, the only genuine, progressive and
all-embracing political party this country has ever seen. They deluded so many
patriots and excluded self-sacrificing Cameroonians from making this nation a
cherished land in Africa,” Gavin growled,
and then sighed.
“You let out some steam there.”
“I am sorry I became emotional.”
Ivan Fru nodded.
Gavin nodded too and gulped empty his
mug of coffee. Now, he went on to tell Ivan Fru how he honored Ndam Saidou’s
request to see him the next day, how he got his new post and the house in that
part of Mankon in Bamenda. He looked composed when he talked of Ndam Saidou’s
expectations to see him nudge himself into Vincent Ndi’s movement and get
information that the service could use against them.
“I was even heavily financed.
Seventeen million CFA Francs is precisely the amount I got from them. Here are
some of my contacts to those who are running the show,” Gavin said, and offered
Ivan Fru three sheets of paper with a series of addresses and phone numbers on
them.
Ivan Fru held them for a moment, and then handed the papers back to
Gavin without committing any of the information to memory. “What is your
intention?” he asked.
“I want to work with you. I have
already committed myself. I’m sure my late cousin mentioned my intentions to
you.”
“He did.”
“I guess that’s the only way I can
make up for the past. I was derailed.”
“Derailed? How can you explain that?”
“I got badly derailed!” Gavin said,
and nodded, “In my quest for vengeance, I betrayed the people whose deaths I
was out to avenge. I betrayed the cause whose goals my father stood for. I lost
my bearings as a patriot and as a union-nationalist. I think I have a chance of
finding myself again. And this is the only way.”
“You are already committing yourself
to something deeper. I wonder how you plan to honor that.”
“It’s simple. I shall become a mole
in the service. I shall become your link to the conspiracy against your
movement. There is something else I want you to know about. I wouldn’t become
active until later, in order not to raise suspicions. I will inform them about
your activities and strengths, but in a
misguided way. I will also keep you informed of their plans. I will help you
build your security.”
Ivan Fru surprised Gavin with a mild chuckle.
“What makes you think I need that crap? Do you expect me to believe you?”
Gavin shrugged with a laugh. “I would
have respected you less had you failed to question my commitment. Perhaps I
should assure you of the seriousness of my intentions or commitment by starting
first with those two Beti men.”
“Are you trying to let me into your
operations?”
“I want to give you the opportunity
to betray me if you think it is to the benefit of your cause. But there is
something else I want you to know about.”
“What?”
“It is simple. This is the moment for
you to take the initiative. My role will be to force the government to come out
in the open.”
“How?”
“You will see.”
“Would you mind if I ask you why you
are doing this?”
“You already did. Your only chance of
defeating this mafia set-up of a system is by engaging them in the open. That’s
something the Pablo-Nero regime and his French masters are afraid of. You don’t
have much of a leeway in a hide-and-seek game because it leaves your ranks open
to blackmail.”
Ivan Fru leaned back in the sofa and
regarded Gavin with quizzical eyes. He clasped his hands together for no
apparent reason, and then sighed.
“Vincent Ndi Chi’s killers took away the documents we were planning to submit
to the administration to make our party legal,” he said somberly.
“Do you mean the real documents? Damn
it,” Gavin blurted out.
Ivan Fru flashed a reassuring smile. “But they
didn’t do us any real harm. Those were not the original documents.”
Gavin heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m
glad to hear that. Now, I see no reason why we can’t proceed.”
Ivan Fru nodded. “What else?”
Gavin coughed and regarded the man in
front of him straight in the eye. “Your friend talked of a triangle. But I
don’t know the other angle.”
Ivan Fru shrugged. “No movement can
afford not to replace an angle after suffering a loss like ours. Besides, you
have to prove yourself first before you get to know the angles.”
“Who is the real boss?”
Ivan Fru’s questioning eyes betrayed
his wariness. “There are three sides in a right-angled triangle. Some people
view the two angles supporting the hypotenuse as the most important. To others,
the right angle is the driving force. I think there is no difference in
importance between the three.”
Gavin nodded to show that he
understood and would not probe any further. “I shall honor my words.”
“It is a dangerous game you are
playing.”
“I figured out all the angles before
committing myself. I think I can make it.”
“I hope so.
“It is about time I leave,” Gavin
said and rose to his feet, “When can we meet again?”
Let’s make it the same time next week. It
should be where you started tailing me.”
“Your business center, that is?”
“Exactly!”
Gavin nodded. “I have a recorder in my pocket, in the back of my jacket. You can
keep the cassette with its recorded conversation as a sign of good faith.”
“I know,” Ivan said with a smile, and
then made a beckoning sign with his hands. Three men walked into the room
seconds after.
“For me?” Gavin asked.
Ivan Fru nodded. “Go ahead,” he ordered.
It took about a minute for the men to
find the forty-eight-square-centimeter recorder strapped to Gavin’s body. The
tallest guard gave it to Ivan Fru.
“Give it back to him,” Ivan Fru said,
never taking his eyes off Gavin’s.
Gavin took it from the guy’s outstretched
hands and nodded. “Thanks,” he said.
“Give us a moment,” Ivan Fru grunted, and then indicated that the three men
could leave.
Gavin waited until the three men were
gone before he flicked the ejector open and brought out a tiny cassette. “I was
about to give this to you as a sign of my commitment. It recorded everything we
discussed. So, you can set me up if I betray you. Future events will implicate
me even further if you decide to bring this up against me.”
Ivan Fru shook his head no. “There is no need
for that. All I need to know is how and why you found yourself with that
bunch?”
Ivan Fru noticed the flicker of
emotion in Gavin’s eyes, and then the sudden recuperation.
“Not now,” Gavin said, “A man made a
move at the wrong time in his life, that’s all. All he wants is a chance to
make up for the mistake.”
Ivan Fru smiled in encouragement. It
did not soften the hardness of his eyes, nor did it give warmth to his
determined face. “I am glad to hear that.”
The sun was fully out when Ivan Fru
saw Gavin to the door, flashed him a genuine smile, and then shook his hand. He
ruminated for a while as he watched Gavin drive away, before he strode back
into the sitting room, collapsed into the sofa, and then chuckled.
“God Almighty! Lucifer too got
converted!” he exclaimed.
A brooding Gavin hummed John Lennon’s
immortal song “Imagine”, inserting new words and altering the intonation. Like
the rest of the music world, he too was enthralled by the song before the
violent death of its writer. “Imagine” never failed to stir emotions in his
bosom whenever he listened to it, especially the last stanza.
Gavin leaned back on
the sofa and closed his eyes, musing at the fact that the legendary singer
still had an effect on him almost a decade after his death.
Why is the world failing to heed Lennon’s peaceful messages? He wondered. He wished people could
rally behind some of the messages carried by the legend’s songs. Unlike Bob
Marley that the Third World and the underprivileged classes elevated to the
status of a martyr after his death, John Lennon and his Utopia visions were
having a hard time winning new audiences.
Gavin rose, walked into the kitchen and poured himself a mug
full of beer. He took a massive gulp, returned to the sitting room and rewound
the cassette. He was in a calculating and pensive mood now as he listened to
his favorite song blaring from the speakers,
so that when it stopped moments after, he was unaware of it. The last time he
played the song was in 1985, the year he joined the service and his nightmares
began—nightmares whose origin lay in the past
he was still having a hard time dispelling. He shut his eyes as his thoughts
started wandering over to his lineage, to that part of his family history that
somehow pushed him to become involved with the wrong side so early in his adult
life
When the beautiful Tenga, the
daughter of the legendary King Tchatchoua of Banganté, first heard that her
father was looking forward to marrying her off to the Bamoun Sultan as a
confidence-building measure between their two peoples, she was not happy about
it. The Bamoun king was old, she claimed. And
her wish was to become the wife of a cherished man whose name she had mentioned
just once to her brother Nemafou. She never discussed her heart’s desire with
her brother again because her father the king expelled Nemafou from Banganté a
week after her confession.
Gavin learned from his
uncle who raised him that Queen Nana Njonang contributed much in alleviating
the status of women in Banganté, and that
she was also a great and loving mother to her children. Unfortunately, her joy
and pride of motherhood was denigrated
when Nemafou, her favorite child, offended his father’s royal pride. The
queen’s beloved first son slept with the king’s new wife and got expelled from
Banganté as the punishment for his transgression. The tragedy left Njonang Nana
broken-hearted and in a state of lethargy that lasted a year. The cheerful
attitude of her only daughter Tenga, it was said, helped enormously in her recovery.
If Queen Nana Njonang
ever thought she was affected the most by Nemafou’s expulsion from Banganté,
then she was badly mistaken. She never witnessed Tenga’s tears, which she shed
when nobody was around. The queen equally failed to see that Tenga had less
appetite for food as she tried to come to terms with the absence of her favorite
brother and the only soul she felt comfortable confiding her fears, hopes,
dreams and heart’s desires to.
Now, King Tchatchoua’s insatiable desire for more wives went up
as if he was trying to prove a point to his subjects, and with that, a growing
remoteness and despotism that fueled the once disarming Tenga’s memories of
Nemafou’s subtle, compelling and loving ways. Embittered by the expulsion of
her brother, she grew up despising King Tchatchoua’s authority. Now, bitterness
coming from a young woman also known for her sharp wits and guarded values is
not good at all.
Nighttime exchanges by
the fireside across the length and breadth of the Bamilekéland in the late nineteenth
century often involved gossips about the royal palaces of the kings. German
Kamerun was just beginning to witness the constant and increasing immigration
of the young from their traditional villages, realms and kingdoms to the less
constraining and more promising parts of the colony.
This phenomenon had already become worrisome by the turn of the nineteenth
century, leaving some traditional Bamileké rulers with more subjects outside
their kingdoms than within.
If other Bamileké kings showed their alarm at the loss of
able hands in their kingdoms, King Tchatchoua on the contrary, feigned
indifference to that threat to Banganté’s future. After all, his palace was
unaffected at the time, and most of those leaving were the restive young and
dissidents who questioned his rule and the people’s way of life that had stood
the test of times.
However, when Tenga’s
eloped with Tientcheu Njomo, she jolted her father the king out of his smug
complacency. The reign of Banganté viewed the elopement as an unprecedented
abomination that could not be ignored.
However, the stunned
King Tchatchoua was initially silent about it, not because he did not know what
to do, but because he did not want to be harsh on a daughter whose spirit he
was so fond of. He had observed with amazement the recent development of her
daughter into a sensation in Banganté and the surrounding Bamileké kingdoms, as
she became every virile Banganté man’s dream lover, just like Nemafou was to
the women. However, when the handsome and rugged Johannes Schmidt Von Haussmann
succumbed to her attractiveness by slipping into a lustful reverie, and then
begging him afterwards for her hand in marriage, King Tchatchoua had to tell
the German that he had already promised his daughter to the king of the Bamoun
people.
King Tchatchoua had
his own reasons for circumventing his friend of five years, a man who had even
made Banganté his new home. He considered Johannes Schmidt a playboy of some
sort, whose charms and generous nature had enamored dozens of adventurous
Banganté women. His German friend had even confided with the king’s
half-illiterate nephew that Tenga was his black Aphrodite with the qualities of
Athena. To the king, comparing Tenga to an alien female god was an abomination
beyond his regal comprehension. He thought a man with such a mind had to be
someone with no respect for boundaries.
All the same, the
king’s reluctance to act harshly against his favorite daughter only encouraged
other youngsters in Banganté and the royal palace to become more overt in their
free-spiritedness. When more than half his adult children left for the Coast
hardly a decade after Tenga’s elopement, King Tchatchoua felt like an abandoned
father. To a man, especially a king, children meant wealth, power, and respect.
His rule mellowed afterwards, prompting a change in his subjects' tone in the
way they discussed his actions every day.
“Our king’s early rule was the most glamorous and successful
in our history. But it has waned to an unimaginable low. Perhaps history will
judge Nganteu, our first King, as the most glamorous of all the panther kings
that have stalked this land,” Ngako, the mind-speaking and most respectable palace
historian and warrior started muttering around. Even Ngako’s doubts were
respected.
Tenga settled with her husband in Victoria and boldly severed
her ties to Banganté. By the time she clocked five years in the coastal town,
she was already counting two children—David Nemafou and André Ketcha—as her
blessings in life and her joy of motherhood. Still, she reminisced about her favorite
brother, a recollection that made her think
of her father in unfavorable terms. A month before she realized she was
pregnant with Julius Wakam, the third child, she received words from her mother
imploring on her good heart to visit home to pay her respects to the
disappeared king and departed soul of her father. People said afterwards that she
wept in a pitiful manner for her father, asked for his posthumous forgiveness
and declared to all that she wished her father were still alive to hear from
her own lips that she did not hold anything against him.
Tenga’s visit to Banganté stirred old memories of Nemafou
that she promised to put to rest upon her return to Victoria. However, another
great rip-off occurred two years after, with the defeat of German colonial
forces in Kamerun during the Great War. In the general confusion that the
Anglo-French partition of the land caused, Tenga, like Nemafou, also found
herself under the rule of the British, while the greater portion of the
Bamilekéland became a part of French Cameroun.
Tenga lived up to her determination to find her brother two
years after the birth of Maria Meunjeu, her fourth child and the only girl of
the family, who got so much attention and love from her brothers and father
that she had to catch herself from becoming jealous of her. However, when she
embarked on the arduous journey to the north of British Southern Cameroons, her
husband was not happy about it. All the same, the lively Tenga finally made it
to Akum looking exhausted but expectant in spirit. There, she was welcomed by news that caused her much grief. This was the
report that Nemafou had been dead for half a decade. Still, Tenga felt consoled
by the discovery of Nemafou’s six-year-old daughter Klara Nana.
The story goes further
that Tenga looked waned in spirit when she returned to her family in Victoria,
and that she died eleven months after, but not before imbuing her children with
a sense of commitment to their Anglophone cousin. Her offspring did not fail
her in that regard.
Tenga's enthusiastic
first child called David Nemafou honored his mother’s memory on the tenth anniversary
of her death with a pledge to find his cousin. The promise took him almost a
month to fulfill and brought him to Bamenda, a town located about ten miles
north of Akum. There, David Nemafou and Klara Nana shed tears of joy at their
first meeting. Enthralled by her radiantly beautiful cousin whose resemblance
to his late mother was so strong, David Nemafou offered to take Klara Nana’s
second son under his wings. The meeting must have left a strong impression on
Klara Nana because Vincent Ndi, who was
not even born at the time, told Gavin that their uncle David Nemafou recounted
the family history repeatedly to the point where their mother boasted to them
several times afterwards that she knew every phase of it.
David Nemafou spent more than a month in Bamenda before he
returned home. He arrived in Victoria to find that the peace, harmony,
brilliance and cheerfulness that had reigned at their home was shattered while
he was away. Their father Tientcheu Njomo exploited his absence following a
quarrel with their stepmother, and without consulting anyone about it, he
kicked her out of his home, accusing her of witchcraft and infertility, and
then brought in one of Victoria’s popular harlots as his new wife. The advice
and pleas from his four children could not make him recant his decision. This
breakdown in communication in the family was the principal cause of the
misunderstanding and rift that eventually developed between the father and his
four children.
Janvier Tchouteu is the author of Triple Agent, Double Cross
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