Tale of an African Woman

By Thomas Jing

The village of Yakiri has been cursed by ancestral wrath because of the treatment of Yaa, the first girl who wrestled her male goatherd peers to earn the right to be initiated into the society of manhood. Her struggle is taken up generations later by Yaya, the granddaughter of Tafan and Wirba. Orphaned like her forebear, Yaya becomes a star student in the village's primary school and promises to go far. But, ask the villagers, is it right to invest in an education for an African girl who may become the property of another village? An educated woman will abandon the farm where she is needed, wear high heels and try to order men around! In the midst of it all, one Irish missionary, living in Africa and for the most time with Africans, literally wiggles his way into hearts and minds. With his intervention, Yaya leaves the village to school in the city, but her troubles as a woman have not really begun. Yarns of cultural borrowing, indigestion and transcendence reveal the simple and complex ways in which community matters are confronted and decided. This happens in shrines where seers are consulted and cowry shells thrown, in palm wine houses, but also around the school and presbytery. The untold stories and perspectives of girls and women burst through in illuminating and uplifting ways. Quarrels, squabbles, near collisions and mutual conversions give way to innovative traditions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
• Release date: Jan 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9789956716562

Thomas Jing

Thomas Jing is a translator, a writer, a teacher, a researcher, a businessman, and a cultural promoter. He holds a PhD in Education from the University of Regina in Canada where he wrote an Afrocentric dissertation on the relevance of African folkdances in North American school setting. Jing was born in Ndop, a district not far from Bamenda in Cameroon. He attended Government Primary School Bamunka and Sacred Heart College Mankon before heading to CCAS Kumba where he obtained his Advanced Level Certificate. He enrolled in the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences at the University of Yaounde where he graduated three years later with a B. A. in History. He was hired by the Ministry of National Education as French language and History teacher and sent to Government Secondary School Nyasoso in the South West. A year later, he wrote and passed the government competitive examination in translation organized by the Presidency of the Republic and received scholarship to study at the University of Montreal in Canada. After obtaining an M.A. in Translation, he returned to Cameroon in 1989 where he worked with the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries. In 1996, he left Cameroon for South Africa where he worked with the Jesuit Refugee Services as well as some South African Human Rights Organizations. He currently lives in Regina, the administrative capital of Saskatchewan. He published his first novel Tale of an African Woman with Langaa in 2007. Testament d’un patriote execute is his second novel, but the very first one written in French.

Book preview