The night before was unusually rainy
for the Guinean capital. The heavy rainfall could have been considered an irritation
if not a catastrophe elsewhere in the world for the flooding it caused in some
of the neighborhoods of the city. But for most of the residents of Conakry
still reeling from the intense heatwave that blighted the country for more than
two weeks, the torrential rains came as a welcome relief. It enlivened their
spirits and even brought life to the flora that had been wilting and dying from
the intense heatwave from the Sahara Desert. The rain also washed the thick
layers of dust off the streets, giving some originality to the color of the
asphalt roads.
However, for a man walking the streets of Conakry that
morning, the effects of the rain and the nature of the city were of no interest
to him. His mind was on the Cameroun cemetery.
The man crossed the November 8 Bridge as if nothing else
mattered in the world, even though he
stayed conscious of the sounds and activities around him. He raised his head
fully only once, just as he walked past the Donka hospital located in the city
center.
Any curious bystander
watching him at that moment would likely have noticed the thoughtful expression
on his face that gave him the academic demeanor of a professor grappling with a
worrying phenomenon. The onlooker might also have noticed the patches of grey
hair on the man’s head made it look like he was balding prematurely since it contrasted with his athletic gait which could
only have been expected from a physically fit person in his late thirties or
early forties. However, the stranger was a quinquagenarian with more life
experiences than most men his age.
An expression of sweet
reminiscence spread across the stranger’s face as he walked the street of the
Cameroun neighborhood and entered the cemetery. Nevertheless, this look of
appreciation at the fact that a Guinean neighborhood was named after his
country suddenly changed to one of extreme seriousness as he approached the
grave. He knew what he would find as he steeled himself and took out the
flowers from the inner pocket of his raincoat. He laid them on the empty grave
deprived of its sarcophagus and then crossed
himself several times. He mumbled a short prayer after that and then turned
around and walked away, wondering whether the world would ever find the
embalmed body of Félix-Roland Moumié that went missing after the death of
Guinea’s first president Sékou Touré.
The lone figure that
stalked the Conakry morning that day stated in his memoirs written two decades
after the assassination of Vincent Ndi, and half a century after the system
killed Ruben Um Nyobé, Félix-Roland Moumié and a host of other prominent Cameroonian
political figures that he visited the graves of all the martyred UPC leaders he
knew as he was growing up as a child. He said he did that just to pay his
respects and be at peace with himself. He also stated that he visited the
Cameroun Cemetery in Conakry on more than five occasions.
On a curious note, he stated that Vincent Ndi would have been
disappointed with the character Ivan Fru became and then went on to add that he
kept his promise to Vincent Ndi by tracing and reactivating the political genius
referred to as ‘The Green’, but whose actual code name was Le Rouge. He stated
in one of the pages that Le Rouge gave that phase of the struggle
against the Franco-Cameroonian political establishment its ideological direction and that he too got betrayed in the
end.
