By Franklin Sone Bayen
Two designated groomsmen at a 1996 wedding were absent on the final roll call. The one later said he felt like the woodpecker. I, the other, also felt like the woodpecker a couple of months ago.
This is the story. Rather, these are the stories.
My mentor in many things, Barrister Tanjong Ashuntantang, fondly called TT, was taking wife. For one or two of many reasons, I was designated to be one of his groomsmen. I was a family friend and his personal friend, and also, that wife was my cousin.
But I opted to man the video camera. Thanks to some audio-visual lessons from Journalism and Mass Communication in the University of Buea and prior informal exposure to the video camera, I felt the calling to do the filming at the wedding when an Ashuntantang in-law in the US, not attending the wedding, rather sent over his videoing apparatus. Hence did I shed my black suit for a less formal outfit suited for the challenges of my filming task.
The next morning, Sunday, when actors, witnesses (and absentees) were comparing notes about the whats and what nots of the bash of a bach eve and wedding, one story drew particular attention. At least, it caught my attention.
The great absentee was another young friend of Ashuntantang’s, who, like me, had not finally featured among his groomsmen. Arriving Buea in the wee hours of that Sunday, Felix Nkongho Agbor “Balla” was standing or sitting around the dining table in the living room of Ashuntantang’s Street 8, Great Soppo, Buea residence then, narrating how he had travelled and travelled and travelled from Nigeria, swearing to attend that wedding or none ever after, but only managed to arrive late enough to have missed it.
The young graduate of Law from the University of Yaounde, who was attending Law School in Nigeria was eating his head for missing the one wedding bash of a lifetime he had planned to smash. Being Ashuntantang’s Great Soppo, Buea junior and also his “small” in Sasse College, you can guess what personal bond animated his disappointment with himself. As he later narrated about this time last year when he hosted a fire-side chat at his Federal Quarters, Buea residence, he “left TT’s house to go to Law School in Nigeria.” So, he wondered that mid-90s day how he of all could have been absent from Ashuntantang’s wedding.
He said he felt like the Woodpecker who had chopped wood into all shapes and sizes and – you bet – had boasted that with its art so perfected, it only looked up to the death of its sick mother to chop wood for her befitting burial. But alas, when the woodpecker’s mother died, it had developed an abscess on its beak and could not chop wood at all.
Now, you know that was not the last time Agbor Balla felt like the Woodpecker. Rather prophetically, he could not bury his father in January. But that is besides the point here.
Why Silent?
In mid-March this year, I travelled to my village along the Kumba-Mamfe road for my niece’s traditional marriage. I was still on the way when President Biya appointed members of the National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism (NCPBM). If its creation was not unanimously embraced by many fuming Anglophones, some of them, however, looked up to the appointment of its members. They waited with anxiety to see how justified they were in their apprehensions.
I had been present – or omnipresent? – on Facebook. I had had a word on about every subject in the debates that both oiled and boiled the “Cameroon Anglophone Intifada” on social media. I had made proposals that – accepted or rejected by whosoever – arguably triggered some of the major decisions by some of the main actors in our struggle. My open-heart stance sometimes (often) in anti-current to the populist sing-song of a certain proxy leadership and its madding crowd followership, had brought such anti-climax and frustration to their “winning” party that they decided to take it low on me. But I’m think-skinned. I’m made of steel. It is hard to break my will when I know I’m right.
In my regular Facebook blog on our struggle titled ENLIGHTENMENT: REALITY OF S. CAM STRUGGLE, I had said the NCPBM was not the ultimate Foumban II Talks that, I said, must be preceded by AAC III for Anglophone preps. I had raised eyebrows over the surprising vocal enthusiasm of a Consortium member, George Ngwane at the very creation of the commission at the same time he had been dead silent over the arrest of his Consortium comrades. I had equally wondered why Ngwane was seemingly immune to or unperturbed in the tribulations of his fellow Consortium members, most of who were either arrested or on the run being wanted. Yet, I had advised that we go to the table (NCPBM) and table our conditions for talks to proceed, because, as I argued, in conflict resolution, some conditions must be fulfilled before talks open while others may only be tabled during talks.
Like Agbor Balla’s Woodpecker, I was totally incapacitated to comment, hot, on some of my “pet” subjects. I have deliberately been silent on many since then, though. I was behind the “Iron Curtain” of the internet shutdown when the big NBMC story broke. Being in the village meant I was deep inside the rain forest where both mobile phone and internet connectivity are about at their worst even prior to the shutdown and function at their best elsewhere. Even after I returned into “civilization”, other stories like Akere Muna ‘s brush with state security, the ambiguity of Ngwane’s NCPBM membership, court cases against church leaders, etc, passed me by. I neither commented them here on Facebook hot nor cold nor nine days in the pot.
They did not all pass me by, though; after missing out on NCPBM and a couple of others, I decided to pass most of them. My village/internet shutdown retreat also gave me fresh eyes to watch our Facebook rants from a withdrawn position. I noticed that the social media “insurgency” had largely subsided. After waging a lone-ranger battle on Facebook against a “leadership” and a followership that enjoyed the fun of the stone-throwing but lacked the vision, foresight, judgment and focus to measure long-term outcomes, I felt personal satisfaction of mission accomplished to have somewhat quelled the mob action that distracted attention from the crux of our noble struggle.
It is crazy (isn’t it?) to have uninformed opinion sounding louder than informed opinion. There is nothing as bad as informed opinion swaying to uninformed opinion in order to sound politically correct or populist or to submit to the spiral of silence to avoid being verbally lynched like they did to me. Freedom of speech and expression are everyone’s human right, but we must keep our mouths shot until we know what we are talking about. And, it is a duty for those who are better informed and better educated to help those who know less to understand. It has long-term nobility, if it denies you short-term popularity. Conversely, it is shameful, intellectually dishonest and morally sacrilegious to line up knowledge and enlightenment behind ignorance, however enthusiastic and an agenda that, albeit miming our war song with style to the pleasure of many, seeks to advance a personal agenda over our collective good. There is a demarcation line, I insist!
I’m sure of myself. I’m blessed with discernment, if not to say I can analyze complex actions quickly. I am foresighted too. Also, I am selfless enough to stake cheap good name to uphold enlightenment which, expectedly some are wont to scorn (those with a hidden agenda) because it beams light where they wish darkness would prevail so they can blindfold the vulnerably excited in order to implement their obscure plans.
Without being suicidal, I do so knowing the likely repercussions which unfortunately, are often applauded by knowledgeable and ignorant people – some paradoxically both “knowledgeable” and “ignorant”.
But before the Woodpecker’s fate befell me, I had on my lone-ranger battle warned that some who claimed they were doing the people’s will were seemingly seeking personal gain and aggrandizement and/or seeking to advance the personal agenda of those who enlisted them for service. I had pointed out that the attitude of some of those speaking on behalf of detained Consortium leaders, betrayed either naivety or a calculated ploy to implicate them further to perpetrate their stay behind bars so the proxy spokespersons could continue to enjoy power. And how sad that some of them used their baby cries to make loud “revolutionary” noises and demonized Ayah Paul as a Yaounde collaborator. Putting self or the interest of a few above our general good, they falsely labeled those outside their “party” as collaborators of the Yaounde government. What shall they say now?
I had taken a public oath, my right hand on my heart, my left hand on the blood of our martyrs pledging to expose and stand against those I suspected would seek personal gain from our collective plight. I had advised that by the school boycott and the intimidation that came with it, we were placing our children on the battlefront (sacrificing them) while we ourselves cowardly hide in the trenches and take the glory. I had advised that suspending the strike while it was at its peak would upgrade it to a permanent blackmail weapon to dangle at Yaounde any other time, than letting it fizzle out with time and strain and frustration on the population.
When a big voice recently said on behalf of and obviously on the prompting of Barrister Agbor Balla and Dr Neba Fontem that certain individuals were making capital from the detention of Consortium leaders, it was not Sone Bayen speaking. It came nearly four months after I had forewarned. I am around to say more as more REALITIES of our struggle unfold.
May I be spared the Woodpecker’s abscess.