Letter from Yaounde to Buea

Dear Mbella,

You mentioned in a metaphor-loaded phrase that the Kweribas are about to storm their own version of the Bastille so as to liberate the prisoners of land. I wish they could also have their local “March of the Women Versailles” so that the “ancient regime” of land grabbers can kiss the dust and face the impending “guillotine”.

In that case, the Iagos of the land commission will end up as the Robespierres of the revolution. Mola, take it or leave it! What is happening is happening. It is the harbinger of the Waterloo of the hypocrisy and double standards that hitherto characterised the management of Mokwe, or better still, the people’s land.

The fulmination is up and it is something that is stronger than all the armies of the world. Permit me to corroborate Victor Hugo in averring, in no unmistaken terms, that there is nothing in this world that is stronger than an idea whose time has come. The land revolution is up and nothing can stop it.

Let me join Indira Ghandi in her aphorism-triggered statement, by sounding it clearly that the truth shall prevail even if its tellers are reduced to the minority of one person. Whenever you speak the truth, you don’t die until you are dead because that truth will triumph over prevarications one day.

You see, the Ministerial Jacky waded in just in time to arrest the rampaging greedy land-grabbing merchants in high places. Their avarice, Mola, is worse than those of the Legacy hunters in Ben Johnson’s Volpone.

They are sophistry-inspired capitalists that would tell you that land grabbing is a virtue that will lead the land of njanga to emergence in 2035. The gubernatorial narcissists are so infallible and full of ‘Koni Talk’ in such a way that even the negative things they do are dressed and sexed-up as virtues that will steer Cameroon to vision 2035.

You see Mbella, I put censure on your shoulders squarely for always blaming Saul even for natural disasters. He is the chief priest of Kwifon, no doubt. Yet, he is not omnipresent or omniscient. For heaven’s sake, leave the ailing octogenarian alone. Hurl the salvos at the ‘nchindas’ and not the king who is only reigning and has nothing to do with ruling.

Is it also the king who has made a majority of citizens believe that it is cheaper to die at home? At home, your corpse will not be cursed the way doctors do it at the ngumba hospital. Our own doctors have made the Hippocratic Oath food for the dogs. They insist on having kussa before attending to a dying patient. The journey of a patient from the ward to the mortuary will be alarmingly short if the doctor in whose hands he or she falls is a desert void of any oasis of human kindness and professional ethics.

It is even worse when you get to a certain jungle called Laquintini. It is no man’s land, where the Darwinian principle of the survival of the fittest is the ultimate mores. Here, corpses and patients practically demonstrate the principle of good neighbourliness without anyone raising a finger of protest. The general hospital in that Sawa town is some kind of good practice haven. But, just everything is pegged on Machiavellian rewards.

If you don’t have FCFA 100.000 deposit, don’t dare seek admission. Mbella, pray not to have anything to do with the intensive care unit because a single night is FCFA 250.000. We are in Cameroon and that is why that hospital walks tall above the law. Simple delivery here is bought for FCFA 150.000. They have told those who are trying to enforce the application of FCFA 6,000 delivery fee to go and jump into the municipal lake. It is a paradise that is millions of miles away from the fraternity of the ‘have-nots’.

Mola, if heads do not roll at Etoudi this time around, then, impunity will be undying. Before I continue, why will the big man’s speech be written in Molier even in Uncle Sam’s house? That is why protocol men took the speech as good material for the dustbin and the kadiye maintained sepulchral silence till the end of the summit. It was an ignominious diplomatic fiasco because they are people who even rejected the English language of England.

And so the Boston Tea Party incident that was the crescendo of the civil war of independence will play into the lexicon. It may triumph as an eponym that epitomises the rejection of British rule and language in one big sweep. Yet, English is such an immortal language that Uncle Sam’s belligerents could only change the spellings of words and wrap the pronunciation in a bizarre accent that only helps to obscure a comprehension.

I feel sorry for the speakers of Molier because they are such a diminutive minority. The extinction of that romantic dialect looms large with the predominance and omnipresence of the Shakespeare world. Mola, secure your piece of land before the grabbers grab it from your generous hands.

Yours sincerely, Ngwa