Letter from Buea to Yaoundé

Dear Ngwa,

First things, first; security in this land of “njanga and mololo” practically begins and ends with Saul. Just like he once pompously declared that as long as Yaounde breathes, the rest of the country lives, it follows that as long as his personal security is assured, everyone else could go to hell.

A problem may only arise, if, by shooting the cannon fodder, the enemy gets close to him, or better still, his safety is compromised.

I can see that you are at a loss here. Let me clarify. Thousands of security operatives spend sleepless nights so he can sleep the sweet sleep of the child. He is cut off from the rest of us, lesser mortals, by a wall that compares only with the legendary Berlin Wall. But remember that when the time came, the Berlin Wall crumbled like that of the biblical Jericho.

And there was such liberty in Eastern Europe that had been elusive for decades. The streets are cleared of all human vermin each time he is on his way to visit us or when he is returning to his minders in mother Europe.

Work stops, but for the rented jesters that must line the streets to hail him for the cameras. The nation shuts down completely when he is visiting part of it from Ngola. And his posters threaten to outdo those of Joseph Desire Sese-Seku-Kuku-Gbendu-Wazabanga Mobutu when this tin god was in charge in his heavenly Zairean kingdom.

Political bottom women make the quick buck when he is out, inaugurating one kindergarten or the other...from contracts!

But the glaring fact is that when the day of reckoning comes, his milk will drop from the tree top of power like an overripe orange. He was made to see how even the most fortified can crumble like a rag doll when the time comes during the handshaking ritual at Etoudi the other day.

The gods used the scribe to show him how it is that the mighty fall. After benefitting from a presidential handshake, the old fellow simply tripped, buckled under and crashed like a sack of potatoes. It was a scene to behold. You see now!

I’m talking of this ritual of marathon handshakes, from which privileged photographers make fast bucks. But hey! I started off with this security issue, now? Ok, have you noticed how many security operatives carry out their assigned duties? They are more interested in who has run afoul of the law.They are quick to collect bribe than look out for who the real criminal is.

So, as long as a bus driver hands over the FCFA 500 bribe, he is waved on; even if he were transporting a busload of Boko Haram zealots, or did I hear you say lunatics?

Let’s get back to the handshakes. They are so many and varied that one begins to wonder what would befall the lion man were any of the “beneficiaries” of the handshakes were Ebola inflicted. Would that not be the very devastating chink in the armour of he, who is almost “sterilised” against his own people?

Ngwa, you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw the callousness with which the Scribe’s fall was portrayed and celebrated on the social media.

Where is our sense of sympathy, for fellow humans in distress? Where is our hand of fellowship even for those who insist for us to turn the non-existent third cheek? Are we that sadistic?

We failed to lend one of the youngest old bottom women of the regime a shoulder to cry on, when kismet used him to remind the typical political Methuselah of what awaits them under the age old tree of power.

Why am I even meandering like the great Nile? Without praying for it; God forbid, one day soon, Saul might just buckle under, during one of those handshaking rituals. And you can imagine us being unable to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

I agree with you on the imminent splash at the front that enjoys more democracy than it actually bargained for, at least when it started off with the powerful Mandela-like salutes. All because of filthy lucre, or the elusive “kusa” as you put it in your mail. But tell me, Ngwa, why does money so easily gets even the so-called educated, pretty and respected to kiss dirt with such ease?

Why can’t we, just persevere, and give our today, for our children’s tomorrow? Must we always bow and sometimes even crumble before jingling coins and rustling notes? Where shall this imminent splash take the democratic train, which thousands have paid the ultimate price, putting on course? Surely to the shores of the lake of moral doom...

But if I may ask; is the Scribe, who is about to exile from the party, going to take to popular scribbling like the one before her? The answer is blowing in the wind. Last, but not least; where is our banner without stain?

Greet your body for me! Yours truly, Mbella