A letter to Buea

Dear Mbella,

I might have been the object of a free-for-all cursing for going comatose. But, you should know that there is time for everything, including that of golden silence. There is time to be flippant and boisterous.

Eloquent silence speaks more than a thousand noisy words. It puts across messages that only the sage can understand. They have nothing to do with the noisy academic eunuchs, intellectual virgins and ideological simpletons.

I hear the Kadiye of Buea—the man who picked his academic crown from the gutter invited you to the shrine of hostilities. Shun him and behave like Wole Soyinka’s blind beggar who was blessed with extraordinary foresight.

Otherwise, you would be going to do battle with the pig in the mud in this animal’s own fief. You do not need to bother because such a miasma is the trickle-down of a triple vicious alliance ordained by darkness in Bafren.

The varsity Iago, the Kadiye and the mercenary scribblers were the signatories. The scribblers lined their pockets with fees to run down those perceived as the political foes of their paymasters. This explains why the political Maradona of the town must be castigated and run down in scandal sheets.

Yet, that boy of fine and equal parts is beyond destruction. He is a political Napoleon, who attracts people the way a magnet would attract iron fillings. May I remind you that these oafs already have an appointment with nemesis soon? The voluminous freak and the runtish midget have something in common.

They are moral lepers, who can do just anything just for less than the well known 30 pieces of silver. I did not bother to join the gossip when someone at the glittering edifice stirred a fight with the junior sister.

It’s both a ngumba and family affair at the same time. We need to know who calls the shots, where and how. Will you hear from me that the tenant of the building with a prime twinkle is just a little bird? The real drummer is Louis; and he boasts dictatorial tendencies that are worse than those of Louis XVI.

It is akin to what obtains at the upper house, which is largely an asylum for octogenarians and nonagenarians. Michael, who is just a clerk, of the house and nowhere near the biblical Archangel, known to battle principalities and powers is calling the shots.

The old Marcellus is powerless in the hands of this man who carries the stigma for crumbling like a pack of cards in front of the former Damascus Chief persecutor. You see, Mola, Cameroon is a whole enigma.

That is why the tail wags the dog at every given point in time. Otherwise, how can one have a private secretary that flouts instructions and threatens the master at will? Why should a political godfather be so greedy and self-centred that he imposed a private secretary on the Minister?

Mbella, I see the building of La Republique des Directeurs de publication in the making. I think they missed the point when they left the substance and the essence and hurled attacks at the NCC, instead of asking for a law that will give them license to insult people and abuse freedom with impunity. There were all kinds of incendiary declarations. Frogs were choking with rage and frustration that the Anglican rock is at the helm of the outfit. Remember that falsehood, cant and chicanery will not take us anywhere. Nobody will be given the freedom to publish, broadcast or even narrow-cast insults, lies and immorality.

God forbid the kind of immorality in the Laakam land where over 60 school kids were paired up to savour each other’s carnal knowledge. It was a terrible scene that portrayed the work the devil is doing. Many teenage girls lost their virginity in the carnal feast.

The late Charles Ateba Eyene will never die because he wrote the Paradox.....not the paradox of the oil –rich Ndian that does not have a road. It is the paradox of the South that was ordained to produce a majority of state officials, including ministers, General Managers, yet the development of the place is still in the doldrums.

You cannot leave the land of the rotten chimpanzee and go straight to the seaside resort town in the same Region. If one were to go straight, the journey would be a distance of 112 kilometres.

But, what obtains now is that one does a full circle round, making a distance of over 450 kilometres, passing through the Centre and the Littoral Regions before zeroing in to the tourist town.

Don’t ask me what has happened to the Mengong-Sangmelima road where contractors are changed as frequently as the ladies’ dross that Lord Lundy recently laundered in public.

Mbella, hope to read from you soon. Ngwa