In this, the opening passage from my book Blick Bassy – 1958, I imagine the nocturnal reveries of Ruben Um Nyobè, the revolutionary leader of pre-independence Cameroun who was gunned down by the French army in September 1958. I wanted, briefly, to try and enter the mind of this great Africa freedom fighter at the end of his life and evoke his relationship to the great equatorial rainforest where he was born. Enjoy.
As the enemy closed in, he had the strangest of dreams. In one, he was walking on water. Some people wanted to drown him. Others, who were completely naked, came to tell him that all the rifles had been taken away by the soldiers and given to the governor. He scolded them for being naked in front of the women. In another, he and his friends were following a chief from the Hausa tribe, who live in the far north of Cameroon. The chief was on a horse, and they were all singing. Then they got lost and ended up by a river. He turned around to retrace his steps. In yet another dream, he found himself striding along the edge of field whilst a hurricane raged all around him. The ground shook like an earthquake. “I will triumph in this war,” he shouted, swinging a machete through the air with his left hand. “I will deliver the land of Cameroon from the enemy.” The wind blew violently, but he stood his ground.
When he awoke, all was quiet in the forest. He would lie there, staring into the darkness, listening to the purrs and snores of his companions. If he heard the hoot of an owl, he shivered under his blanket. Bad omen. Otherwise, he felt at peace beneath the tight dome of trees, the night shielding him from the worry and distractions of his waking life. He would let his mind wander free, hovering like a hawk over thoughts and memories. Long ago, to escape the German press-gangs, his father had also hidden in the forest. His step-mother had often told him how terrified they all were that he might start crying and give them away. He was only a tiny child then, so small and so hungry. He chuckled to himself. If they could only see him now, hiding in the forest once again. This forest that had always given him everything – life, sustenance, shelter, refuge – just as it had done for his ancestors.
The forest itself didn’t scare him, not even when the trees closed in and banished the prying eye of the moon and you couldn’t see your finger in front of your face. Never. Not the snakes, nor the panthers, nor the buffalo. The forest was home – the place he thought of with longing when he was in Yaoundé or New York. He loved the feeling that it gave him of being small, of being engulfed by fertility, a feeling of life so intense, so irrepressible. When he walked into the forest, he had the impression he was entering the body of a single mighty being. He loved the shy and secretive sounds it made: the distant squawk of a bird, the snap of a branch, the croak of a toad, the clamour of cicadas in a clearing. He thought of the old religion, of the Mbog, the law that bound man to his environment. The just order. The blessings of the gods and the ancestors. He was Christian now, that was true (although his father had never wanted it). But justice, peace, harmony, all that was essential in Mbog, he wanted them now. He yearned for them.
Day would come upon him suddenly, as it always did in the forest – a pounce of light that brought back the fear, the exhaustion, the daily tidings of executions, disappearances and torture. The soldiers were close now. He could feel their presence. He would rise slowly, splash some water on his face, gather up his little black cloth bag in which he kept his notebooks and other documents, eat a little manioc and sauce, drink some milk, and get ready to face another day. Maybe he would be dead before sunset. Maybe his name would be forgotten soon. Maybe it would live forever. The future, as always, was silent.
Andy Morgan – 2019
Buy Blick Bassy ‘1958’ – The Book
Find out more about Blick Bassy and his new album 1958
Read my translation of ‘Simonobisick’s Letter’, from Blick Bassy’s superb novel Moabi Cinema
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