Letter from Buea to Yaoundé

Dear Ngwa,

I can bet you my bottom dollar. I’m not intransigent. Consequently, apologising over and over each time I slip wouldn’t make me less dignified than our bloated compatriots who claim that right resides with them and wrong with those who are humble enough to say “I’m sorry” when they go astray.

All of this is an attempt to express my inability to reply your last mail. Please, blame it on the usual circumstances beyond one’s control. As would be expected, so much water; including the very unsanitary waters have passed under the bridge since we last communicated. But I’ll just give you the gist of what is still topical.

Do not say that I told you that the heavy boozer in the Beach office got more than tipsy on his own booze the other day. What happened in the heat of the binge business is both too private and prurient to be included in this letter.

All the same, let me hint you that after the emergency couch consummation, the smart wench sneaked off, FCFA 20 million richer than when she had turned up for the snappy “spoiling of the skin”. Call it a quickie needy if you like, but the fact stays that our man was reminded, hours later and from a safe distance, to look for and read James Hadley Chase’s “Easy Come, Easy Go”.

I you care open your loud mouth and start talking of how the “kusa” was begotten from the land where you just stretch your long administrative arm and grab, without tears and without breaking a sweat. In a sense, more of the “kusa” could still come from where the “rescued” one was pinched from.

Lord Lundy is still working on going out there to govern the Gbea version of New South Wales. But that would depend on two crucial factors. First, he must stop referring to decent people as a frustrated and hungry lot.

After all, none of these frustrated of his grass-hopper imagination is known to have stretched a cup in his direction, requesting to drink from his living fountain of whisky. Nor are they known to have pumped spirits as opposed to petrol into their systems rather than into the rickety cars at gas stations that the frustrated of his imagination drive.

Let us wait until the CONAC clouds clear, for both parties to know the colour of the sky. By the way, I was very irked by this apparent provocation from your end. How on earth could these chaps raise their dirty fingers and start accusing others of fattening the insensitive terrorists disturbing the peace and wreaking havoc in one part of the Fatherland?

I don’t know about you, Ngwa, but I see not only treason here but also an attempt to paint a people already suffering from the activities of mindless gangsters in bad colours and have them excised from the good books, (political inheritance books) if you get my point.

In all honesty, I would have expected these hypocritical motion of support inventors and propagators to pick up the placards and take to the streets, with one and only one message inscribed therein... "BRING BACK OUR WIFE!” Not the provocatively sadistic suggestion at this time of sorrow, harassment and fear that some of the very afflicted are courting epilepsy, as it were.

This is very un-African, you know! If I had a strong, categorical say on this, I would commandeer the motion of support exponents, send them up North and get them to fight the armed insurgency with the only weapon at their disposal; motions of support. By the way, is it not often said that when the only tool some people have is a hammer they tend to see every problem as a nail? This is no way to “find palaver”!

Ngwa, when are you going to let me have, eat and why not, pay for my own share of the “Man of the Year” cake? No tell me say honey di sweet na only for you own mup...

Kindly greet your body for me!