Nkambe:The Ugly Vs the Beautiful

By Labah Nformi

A Synopsis of the Short Stories
Kola nuts have been talking and settling land disputes, uniting the people for so many years until a war veteran, Japri came back from the Great War from the white man’s land, started seizing land and raffia bushes that do not belong to him, and rejects the judgment passed by the “talking kola nuts”. This ushers in an endless tug of war between the farmers and the cattle rearers. The mainstream Chua Chua is getting dry, and drinking water is scarce. Dogo, an ex-prisoner cum environmentalist, comes with a radical, insane slogan, “No Chua Chua, No Nkambe; No Nile, No Egypt,” clashes with Wanda and his traditional hunters. The administration is battling to solve these problems when Lake Nyos in a neighboring tribe explodes with devastating consequences on humans, cattle, and the environment.
The administration, modernists, and traditionalists are at crossroads. Scary faces appear at night; rumors of a ghost emerging in vengeance on the people because of a New Market constructed on its shrines. Unprecedented drought is looming in the harsh harmattan. Pagans instill fear amongst the Christians who have heard that Christmas will be postponed from an undisclosed source rumored to be a chief gossiper (Mami Kongossa), the rumormonger the women have vowed to arrest and send to jail. Her vile mouth is behind all conflicts in the village. She says young girls (ngwangu barah) want ready-made husbands and young boys are lazy (Big 7), want white-collar jobs. A silent war is waged (the ugly vs. the beautiful). One of the young men (Akambou) hits a jackpot in a game of chance but squanders all and goes insane. On the hills nearby an American veterinarian is given the highest traditional title by Nfuh, a war lodge, a general (nformi) for revamping cattle rearing. A few weeks later, good news is heard that the first president of the country is visiting Nkambe, the divisional headquarters. More than two hundred villages are set to give him a memorable reception with pomp, joy, and dance with great hopes for a bright future but little changes after the visit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984582324

Labah Nformi

Labah Nformi Ngome is former principal and proprietor of New Vision Academy, New Bell, Douala, Cameroon. He started his writing career at the University of Yaounde 1 with the publication of poems from his collection of poetry in the Wimbum Students’ Union (WISU) magazine. He read English language/literature, minor in performing arts. He performed on stage and television with the University of Yaounde Theater, notably in the plays The Gods Are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi in which he played the role of Baba Fankunle (the blind soothsayer) and in The Survivor by Bole Butake in the role of the Old One. While teaching English language and literature, he also wrote sketches and poems that his students performed on local television stations in Douala. He has a collection of unpublished plays “No Chua Chua, No Nkambe,” “Naked for Money,” and ”The Soweto Sisters” a collection of short stories “Lunga and His People”, and a collection of poems “Many Bloody Rivers to Cross”. He is also a freelance writer and contributes articles on current issues to local newspapers in Cameroon. He also does movie reviews and edits movie scripts. He edited Too Deep by Paul Samba. Presently he lives in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, with his wife and four kids, two boys and two girls.

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Copyright © 2020 by Labah Nformi.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 08/17/2021

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1     Lake Nyos Miracle Boy

Chapter 2     A Head of a Cow for Breakfast

Chapter 3     The Ugly vs. the Beautiful

Chapter 4     President Ahidjo in Nkambe

Chapter 5     The First Millionaire in Nkambe

Chapter 6     The Talking Kola Nuts

Chapter 7     The Ghost Market

Chapter 8     Nwarong Scores 100 %

Chapter 9     The Angry Thunder

Chapter 10   The Endless Tug of War

Chapter 11   The Postponed Christmas

Chapter 12   Uncle Ben’s Restaurant

Chapter 13   The Illiterate Interpreter

Chapter 14   The Village General

Chapter 15   The Trial of Mami Kongossa

Chapter 16   No Chua Chua: No Nkambe

Chapter 17   The Seven-Day Atara Dance

CHAPTER 1

Lake Nyos Miracle Boy

If I don’t tell my story, who will? I miraculously survived the Lake Nyos disaster that devoured more than 1,800 lives on August 21, 1986. Till this blessed moment I have been trying to have a word more than miraculous to describe what saved me on that fateful night. I have not seen it. I go down on my knees today begging all of you reading my story to tell me if you find one, please let me know.

I was sleeping between my father and my mother when the disaster struck that night. My father and mother were swallowed in the lake of death, but I was projected from the bubbling, furious toxic inferno, not without blemishes. It was in the General Hospital Nkambe that I found myself in a crowded ward on a tiny dunlop mattress shivering and tweeting like little rats that we often catch in our traps at the banks of the lake on a freezing morning. I was not the only one with foams in my mouth, runny nose and watery red eyes, itchy ears, and damp legs and cramped hands. In fact, no one informed me but for the little murmurs, whispers, gestures, and facial expressions I deciphered that all was not well. I was later informed that they were a few of us, the lucky survivors that were evacuated to the hospital by the military that came to our rescue, that many were airlifted to a camp in Buabua, the hospital in Wum, and other nearby health units.

It took me months to accept the stark reality about death. I came to my own kiddish conclusion that death remains a thief. Why did it choose to come in the night? Death remains a coward. Why did you sneak to snatch even ailing toothless old men and women who could not crush a cob of maize or a slice of beef even if it was cooked the whole night? What they savored much was (effie) fufu corn and vegetable our staple dish, okro soup in the dry season when there are no fresh vegetables and watery pap as breakfast and raffia, palm wine, and (nkan,sha) corn beer every evening. But they were happy to see us, their grandchildren, crush meat with bones and suck the marrow with fufu corn. In the evening we crush cobs of maize with raw or boiled groundnuts at the fireside as they narrated entertaining folktales and heroic legends of our people to lull us to sleep with great hope of a bright future, not suspecting that you were lurking under our bamboo beds to ruin such a fraternal harmonious life. Death, if you are not a coward, why didn’t you wait to face the truckloads of military men and women who flooded our village from the air and by land fully armed with sophisticated weapons to wrestle with you face-to-face? From almost all the four corners of the world, they came with superheroes of all colors, shapes, sizes, and temperament in vengeance to knock all your teeth out in the first round and blow your brains off in the second and the breath out of you in the third. But you escaped to the bottom of the lake like a mermaid to sneak out when they are all gone to cause mayhem among our vulnerable survivors.

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Our parents entertained us with folktales every evening.

My parents and many others were waiting. That was why they left cows, sheep, goats, and fowls to entertain all mourners when they come to celebrate their departure from this life of uncertainty. I know my parents and many others in my village who exhibited their readiness. They often talked of their departed relatives with so much reverence, love, and compassion and hardly call them by name or say anything ill about them as if they were listening to them on the other side of the lake. They had already chosen their next of kin as our tradition demands and had given strict instruction on how to announce their departure by firing dane guns, a cock in hand, and a castrated he goat to receive the first masquerades to cross with them on the other side of the world before the celebrations begin.

Death, some say you like surprises, but if you think you surprised my people, you are lying. My people surprised you by accepting to go as a family without complaining; without remorse for they all know that where they are today they won’t be lonely. Our parents, peasant farmers, held hands of the wealthy cattle rearers, the Aku and Mbororo, to go away without looking back like the chameleon in the fable that defeated the dog in a race to play the drum of death while the overconfident dog loitered sluggishly eating crumbs and came too late to play the drum of eternal life. They all buried their farmer- grazer disputes to go one day. Death, tell me who amongst them complained like the dog or asked for a prolongation in this expedition or gave flimsy excuses?

Death, you are stupid, for my people don’t mourn the dead. We celebrate our dead with traditional dances, songs and fanfare for the gap between our dead and the living is not as far as the East from the West but as close as nimbus clouds to rain.

Death, remember it was a market day, and influential traders from Kom, Wum, Misaje, Fonfuka, and Subum have harvested so much money at Konene cattle market and as usual have come for relaxation and enjoyment in our ever quiet and hospitable city of Nyos. But you chose to tarnish that image with indelible floods of blood. My cousins Nji and Chia from Zhoa who came to sell palm oil were not spared. You didn’t spare our city dwellers from the coastal cities and plantations. When we greet them in our mother tongue they say. moi parler français We love our brothers and sisters from the cities and love their Mbouda and Mbanga French. Death you became so jealous to come and snatch them from us as pickpockets do in big markets in the cities. Death, you should have been selective; even pickpockets are very picky. They don’t go for the poor, the blind, the deaf like you. Death, it may be you need an army to wage a war. But not everyone is conscripted to join the army. My grandfather went to the First Great War not only because he was strong, brave and courageous but because he knew what he was fighting for: liberty, dignity, respect, freedom, freedom from oppression and suppression to make the world a better place. Death, what was your goal or mission in our village and who sent you.? Tell him you went, you saw and you missed your target.

Death, didn’t you know that my mother, a staunch Catholic Christian was very choosy in her words, deeds and action? If she were alive today she won’t have allowed me to use the harsh, raw and rude words I have used to describe you. You know an angry orphan cannot censure the words that come out from his or her mouth when talking to someone who has decimated once a quiet and peace loving city that has never dreamt of waging a war against her neighbors. My parents have never on any occasion crushed an ant on their way.

Death, you should have learned to be wise to choose wisely. You know my mother was very choosy with what to offer in church every Sunday. She was Abel not Cain. She was choosy in the types of eggs to welcome Rev. Father John Wizeman; the priest who laid the foundation stone of our church that many neighboring villages envy .Wherever the photos of our church are seen many say in disbelief This magnificent tower cannot be in Nyos with flies relaxing on their wide open mouths.

Death, didn’t the spies you sent to our village tell you churches here no longer accept any type of coins in the offering basket? I am sure they whispered to you that our Muslim brothers who always invite us to their feasts of the Ram don’t slaughter any type of ram for a sacrifice. Didn’t they tell you that not everyone is initiated in our traditional societies and not everyone is allowed to touch the blood and feathers of a sacrificial cock? Not everyone eats sacrificial roosters. Not all the initiated eat the gizzard. Death you are not ripe enough to be initiated.

Death one more question. Why did you choose to bury our death like the ancient Egyptians? The Pharaohs were interred with all chosen slaves or servants and all their gold, diamond, silver, and jewelry. The only difference here is that the Egyptians left the fowls, goats, and cattle behind to feed the mourners, but to my people you came and snatched all within a twinkle of an eye. The Ganako, the shepherds and their masters, men and women, the rich and the poor, children and their parents, in fact every living thing was swallowed all at once. If you were like the whale that swallowed Prophet Jonah who refused to do the will of God, you would have vomitted my people after three days at the shore of the neighboring lake Wum not far from the administrative headquarters or any other lake of your choice at your convenience.

Death, you have no mouth and teeth; you would have devoured all like a hungry lion. Death, you are toothless. Lions and wolves invade our troops on our hills because they are hungry. They devour all the prey that come their way. Lions don’t kill more than they can eat. A python doesn’t swallow more than what the stomach can hold and cannot nip anything as long the booty in their bowels has not digested and the bowels liberated. But you, Death, though toothless, you are simply greedy, a sadist. You would have taken the old and left the young. You are blind, deaf, and dumb. You would have heard the neighing, mooing, bleating, quacking to leave behind the animals for us to celebrate the death of our loved ones as our tradition demands. You grabbed all and left nothing. Not even a chicken to offer as a sacrifice to the gods of the land. Even tweeting, chirping, migrating insects and birds from the Kimbi Game Reserve were not spared. Even the praying mantis in their usual praying posture were not given a minute to say Amen.

Death, you are not only blind, deaf, and dumb but wicked and machiavellian. It may be I was the one who was blind, deaf, and dumb because many years after I am still to figure out what exactly happened. That you even crushed the vultures, the lazy scavengers that hover over our ever attractive enchanting hills to feed on carcasses. You took them away when there were thousands of dead cows, goats, and sheep littering the road from Subum, Cha, to Khan along the stretch of our Ring Road linking Nkambe and Wum and the rest of the world.The Ring Road our parents lied to us that it will be tarred soon, unfortunately they left without seeing it tarred .Death you would have waited for it to be tarred so that the few miraculous survivors like me would have had access to a hospital. Our parents used to say, A tree does fall in a forest alone Death you were not alone. You decimated some lives and the lack of good roads benefited in some way to do more havoc. I heard Land Rovers, (Gongoroons), trucks got stuck in mud for days and even weeks. Our parents used to say: A thief cannot succeed to steal in a dark house without the support of someone in the house They told us that when we will grow up before we will know what this proverb means. But today all I know is that Death has been a thief and remains a thief.

Death, what still baffles me most is that tourists and researchers from Europe and American who have toured the world and have dived headlong into bigger and deeper lakes that can swallow our own little lake unknown in their countries. They were not exempted from your cruel and inordinate behavior. You would have spared our visitors and tourists who for centuries have been coming to snap pictures of the rolling hills, the rocky mountains with stunted trees, our pyramidal traditional sun bricks buildings with grass roof top that contrast sharply with the round huts of the Bororos and Aku scattered haphazardly on vast grazing land, each family with its own semi-circle hamlets. You didn’t even spare the researchers who defied the crocodiles and were diving into the bottom of the lake that none amongst our people would dare go. Even the ever jovial tourists who behaved as if the birds and animals at the Kimbi Game Reserve and the Fungom Forest Reserve were borrowed from their grandparents before we were independent. I remember the pictures on top of trees and on cliffs. I like the ones we snapped with some of them swimming half naked in the lake with us catching tilapia and catfish for sports and hunting on the hills and in the forests taking photos with gorillas and chimpanzees that they considered endangered species. These animals danced and clapped on treetops when bunches of ripe bananas were thrown at them. In the end they dashed us some sweets and biscuits, and we also dashed them some kola nuts and bitter kola they cherished so much, but they ate twisting their faces and spitting it out just as we do each time we also take their nivaquine. We preferred staying with our fever than taking their bitter tablets.

Oh Death! Even our pastors and the reverend fathers were not spared just a week after Big Day Maria, our celebration of the Assumption of Mary the Mother of Jesus who went to heaven body and soul. I remember my mother had her rosary on her wooden bed dangling over her bottle of holy water. I still remember my friends and schoolmates in white robes who were just recently baptized and had their first holy communion who were not spared that night. But when I think of them today, I refused to shed tears again for my mother lectured to us that those who are baptized in the Lord will all have an everlasting life in heaven for Holy Maria has interceded for them Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee,...pray for us sinners now and the hour of our dead Amen The prayer the lucky baptized children prayed that day came rigging in my brain and my heart started throbbing. I saw them in a vision in white robes in the company of angels ascending to heaven .But the picture of my father’s raffia bag, the only thing he inherited from my grandfather, came to my mind. It was hung over our door post with a buffalo horn, some coweries, a snail shell, and barks of trees inside and a small calabash with some brownish powder that he usually gave me and other children who had sleepless nights. He used to burn traditional incense for me to sit over it and cover myself with a blanket and inhale the scent anytime anyone dies in the village. Death, tell me what type of incense my father would have burnt in the house that day that almost the whole village perished? I shed tears not for the dead but for my elder brothers and sisters who went to the cities without any formal education and training for close to a decade and have not come back home. They may come one day to see the mass graves. Those who recruited my sisters and step sisters promised them a better life but from babysitters they started serving in bars and nightclubs and my father heard they are raising babies without fathers in the coastal cities. As for my brothers they say they are sans emploi, chomeurs ashamed to come back home. My mother has sung the song Where is the prodigal son? Call him to come without delay for the rest of her life in vain.

That night I had a dream that I was sweeping our house and compound as I do every morning before going to school. I gathered the trash, splitters of bamboo, twigs, and feathers instead of dumping them in our garden, I dumped it in the heath in the center of the kitchen. I cleaned the hens’ nesting boxes that have double after the chicken flaw. We had more chicks and eggs than ever before. I dumped three unhatched eggs in the ignited fire. My parents rushed to stop me, but the kitchen became too smoky, I was choking, I smelt something like rotten eggs and I heard Ta-ta-ta ta ta- kaka kaka ! boum! boum! Boum!.

Death, dreams no more frighten me. Nightmares mean nothing to me now. If I didn’t groan, cry, or get suffocated in my dreams that day, it will not be now. But last night, yes, just last night I had another dream. My parents gave me a pen and a book and took me to a new school in a strange land. No one spoke my mother tongue. No one was my color, but I was welcomed by all. The teacher narrated my story, our tragedy, our ordeal, and my odyssey. Many were hearing of the disaster for the first time. Many were hearing of my village Nyos that I thought was the center of the world for the first time. Some have never seen a lake before, so they crowded around me while my parents waved through the louvers and whispered Goodbye. When I turned to introduce my new classmates to them, they had already gone.

I woke up and couldn’t decipher the meaning. But I remembered my father telling me one day around the lake that there are many things that I will know later.. I saw his image in the clear waters of the lake staring at me in the face with our shadows spread across the lake from the setting sun that was burying itself behind the hills down to Bissoula. I still heard his voice ringing in my ears and the insects chirping and the frogs croaking. I believe the day I will be permitted to visit the lake I will still see his image and get his voice for the insects are still chirping and the frogs are still croaking. I said when I will complete my school I will be ready for many things. Maybe I was the only one who was not ready. That may be the reason why they left me behind. That may be why Death didn’t see me. Why did I leave my spacious bamboo bed and a new mat bought for me that market day to go and squeeze myself in between my father and mother? Death, you didn’t believe that in between a husband and wife who should have been relaxing without a nagging and pestering child in between them like tourists who visit our village do in their tents was a grown-up like me to live to expose your vulnerability, your cowardice, your foolhardiness.

Death, shame to you! You thought you will torture me as an orphan. But I am very blessed now. I have more parents, brothers, and sisters in Nkambe than I had in Nyos. The day of the national mourning for the victims of the disaster was celebrated in Nkambe more than anywhere else in the country. I saw men I was later told were from Israel who had their own disasters and calamities more than my people, and I chuckled. I said to myself, Death, you are also everywhere. I also met Americans who came to give assistance and bury our dead, and I learnt of their countless fire disasters, hurricanes, and floods that have claimed more lives than that of my village. I said to myself, Death, you are confused and do not know what to do. I also saw some whites who I was later told were Europeans who came to bury our dead, and I was proud that my parents’ burial was more than any one in my country. I was glad to hear some were from Germany, a distant country my grandfather often told us he went to fight in the Second Great War against a dictator he called Heartless, and I wonder if Death is not a dictator, to be bombed with an atomic bomb to end his nocturnal game of hit-and-kill. I know that only a dictator can wreak havoc in our once-peaceful, tranquil village unknown to the world.

I wept for the first time when I saw pictures of some of the victims of the disaster in Cameroon Tribune, the lone state newspaper that was brought to Nkambe once every week. I wept, and my friends and many saviors joined me in weeping, and many wept louder and longer than me. My foster mother, Auntie Maria Mbong, had to snatch the first newspaper she had ever bought in her life and gave it to our next-door neighbors. They spent hours turning pages over pages, scanning image after image, reading line after line for those who could not read. Old men and women listened religiously as if it was a catholic mass said in Latin in my village, making the sign of the cross as if the truth and everything about the Lake Nyos disaster and the mystery of death are all in that paper.

It was that day that I heard palm oil can be used as an antidote to toxic gas, that all those who licked red palm oil survived and that those who rubbed manyanga, palm kernel oil on the burns and their rashes healed faster than those who didn’t; that those who lapped castor oil were relieved from respiratory tract problems. I have learnt in school about carbon dioxide. I know that we send out (CO2) carbon dioxide and take in oxygen but didn’t know that a lake can reject carbon dioxide from its bowels so heavily loaded to do what many are still asking questions about today. It was after reading the newspaper that my adopted mother started talking of carbon monoxide that I was hearing for the first time. The newspaper triggered more scary faces and a million myths and legends about Lake Nyos. I thought of my brothers and sisters in the cities. If they are still alive they will see my photo and come to look for me. But the stories of prostitution, banditry, drugs, murders and the galloping insecurity I heard about the cities made me to be afraid of the jobless and homeless like my brothers .I thought my village was better before the disaster. Everyone had a hut over his or her head and some farm work to do and something to stop the belly from grumbling and everyone had a mat to sleep on .We had great time and great fun living a happy communal life.

Many may still be scared about the future but I am not scared. If the lake that we went to swim, catch fish, and spend our whole life revolted against us, vomited death, misery and untold suffering what can we trust? And who can we trust? But I was comforted that I found a new family in Nkambe, or I can say a new family found me in the most desperate situation anyone has ever found himself in. My new family knows me more than I know them. They know my parents and my ancestors and their migration narratives from the Adamawa highlands, from Tikari through the hills and plains of Boyo, Oku, and Nooni four or three centuries ago to escape raids and wars to choose the fertile grazing and vast farming land around the lake Nyos little did they know what awaited them.

Life is full of coincidences. My adopted parents decided to call it joyful coincidences. My adopted mother is called Maria Mbong, and her husband is Jakob Kimbi, just exactly as my father and mother were called, but the only difference is that these ones are younger and can both read and write. My father and mother were Catholic Christians, and these ones too. My adopted mother, just like my mother, can never go to church without her headscarf and never pray without her rosary in her hand. The bald head of my adopted father like that of my father can only be seen when he is in church. My parents were peasant farmers and had a few cows taken care of by a Fulani friend. These ones are also farmers and also have some cows herded by a cattle Fulani friend. They also keep a few goats and sheep just as my parents did. So most of the chores I did with my parents I still do here. Another similarity is that I have good friends to play football in school and at home, and our meals are not different. Fufu corn and vegetable (baa njepsu) is the staple dish here just as in my village. We fondly call it effie. The youths in Nkambe and its vicinity are also leaving their villages for the cities like in my village to look for greener pastures and many don’t come back like my brothers and sisters. When any misfortune occurs to them in the cities they blame it on witchcraft. My adopted parents like my parents say witchcraft is an easy and baseless excuse from lazy and irresponsible youths who are not ready to work hard and take care of themselves and their aging parents. Many like my brothers and sisters do not attend their village meetings that can make their villages too better. My adopted mother, like my mother, also likes singing Where is the prodigal son? Call him to come without delay Hoping that his brothers nickname Money Hard `` and’’ Kome No Go" who went to the city before she was married will one day come back.

Another surprising thing is that I had a bully in my village called Tom and another one here with the same name who uses the same insults on me because I am smarter in class and was elected the class monitor and better at football than him. He calls me a poor wizard who killed his father and mother to inherit their property to be rich. When my foster mother learnt of the insults on me, she could not bear them. She wept more than me but wiped her tears and came out of her room pretending as if nothing was wrong, assuring me that I should just ignore such bullies. You are growing big, not small. But these words brought tears to my eyes, because this is the same advice my mother often gave me almost every day I rushed back to her complaining of the mean behavior of some of my friends and age mates. You’re growing big, not small. In the voice of my mother but with the young and pretty face of my adopted mother.

One of the major differences I have observed is that the children of Nkambe know nothing or very little about lakes. Some of my classmates once took me to their chief’s fish pond and naively peered far behind shrubs and pointed with shivering fingers and said that they have heard that, that may be the next lake to explode. The children are afraid even when they cross swampy and marshy places like Magha and Chua Chua. To them these are big rivers. Some of them have never seen a natural forest except the Kopfu too far away from them with kiddish rumors that there is an underground lake below the Kopfu forest.

One of my mischievous class mates Jambo told us many unbelievable stories about caves and undeground lakes changed the topic.He proudly hit his chest and told us he is going to the big city in the coast to meet his elder brother who was dismissed from Nanga school but in less than three years graduated from Université de Bank Bell where they have good paying jobs in banks immediately. We envied him and the rapid progress of his brother and we were also thinking of our brothers who could emulate his example of their tribesman to have a nice and easy job of converting old banknotes to new ones. But when we went home my adopted father revealed to us that Université de Bank Bell is where those who go there as ramasseur n’est pas voleur, pickpockets if not careful end up as professional bandits (419) scammers and imposters. He said he is planning to go to the city to search for my elder brothers and sisters for he heard that some of them graduated from that same Université.

My classmates started saving money so that one day when they complete primary school they may persuade their parents to go swimming and fishing with me in River Kimbi, Jongah, and Boum but not the lake because we learnt that it was not yet safe. We may also go hunting in a big natural forest where they can catch rat moles that are very rare on the overgrazed and barren hills of Nkambe. I have also planned with them to take tins and gallons for cow milk is not sold in my village but they didn’t believe me. I