The Obasinjom Warrior

Fru Doh

Description

On March 8, 2007, one of Cameroon�s foremost scholars died in a ghastly traffic accident barely hours after launching his most forthright and acerbic collection of poems: Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus. Dr. Bate Besong was a social activist, a critic, troubadour, and playwright; an avant-garde, steeped in the tradition of the absurd, who fought against the corrupt system of governance that transmuted Cameroonians into a comatose and apathetic citizenry neutered by fear engendered by the workings of an existing Gestapo. For the first time, Emmanuel Fru Doh has gone beyond an analysis of Besong�s plays into giving an in-depth appraisal of his poems which have, for a long time, held back critics because of their opacity. Doh examines each of Besong�s plays and collections of poems in separate sections and succeeds in setting Besong�s work in perspective�mindful of their concerns and

Sujets

• Literary Criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9789956792986
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE OBASINJOM WARRIOR he Life and Works of Bate Besong

Emmanuel Fru Doh

THE OBASINJOM WARRIOR The Life and Works of Bate Besong

Emmanuel Fru Doh

Langaa Research & Publishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookcollective.com ISBN: 9956-792-01-2 ©Emmanuel Fru Doh 2014

DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.

Dedication To my grandsons Baylin, Aiden, and Kaleb Praise and Glory to God Almighty

Table of Contents Preface……………………………………………………vii Introduction…………………………………………….. ix Part I: Bate Besong: The Man…………………………. 1 1. Childhood and School Year……………………………. 3 2. Bate Besong: His Career………………………………....7 3. Distinguishing Himself………………………………….16 4. Bate Besong and His Family…………………………….21 Part II: Bate Besong: His Works………………………. 24 5. Poetry…………………………………………………..25 Polyphemus Detainee and Other Skulls………………………… 26 The Grain of Bobe Ngom Jua…………………………………39 Obasinjom Warrior With Poems After Detention…………..……50 Disgrace:Autobiographical Narcissus & Emanya-nkpe CollectedPoems…………………………………………….....68 Just Above Cameroon………………………………………....110 6. Drama………………………………………………….114 The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie.................................116 Beast of No Nation...........................................................................124 Requiem for the Last Kaiser...............................................................140 The Banquet......................................................................................153 Change Waka and His Man Sawa Boy............................................166 Once Upon Great Lepers...................................................................176 Conclusion……………………………………………….186 Notes……………………………………………………..193 Works cited………………………………………………200 Index……………………………………………………...207 v

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Preface Bate Besong (also fondly referred to as BB) was among the second generation of Anglophone-Cameroon writers whose works deal with crucial issues facing the nation as a whole, but more so their part of the twin-nation in particular as Anglophone-Cameroonians take a second look at their union with the French-speaking part of the nation, La République du Cameroun. Besong, however, is in a class of his own not only because of his avant-gardist approach but also because of the artistic value of his works and the venom with which he goes after his targets. In spite of the fact that this is a study on Bate Besong, I have treated each work as an independent text. My reason is simple: a reader interested in just one of Besong’s texts, for example, can go directly to that section without having to go through the whole book into order to weed out what he or she needs. There is the need to observe here that some of Besong’s works, especially his poems, are repeated in different collections especially those volumes presenting selected poems. An example is the volumeJust Above Cameroonis a volume of selected poems, which most of which have appeared before in other collections. In this case, I have includedJust Above Cameroonin this study as one of the volumes Besong published, but I have appraised only the lone poem in the volume, “Druidical Rites” (34) that has not appeared anywhere else before. The bottom line is that I have treated poems in their original volumes and left them out whenever they are repeated in another volume which is a collection of Besong’s poems. In such newer volumes, I have carried out a study of the newer poems only. This applies to his plays also. I have not treated his volumeThree Playsas a trilogy since some of the plays—Beasts of No NationandThe Banquet—had appeared earlier on as independent works before being presented in this volume as a trilogy; accordingly, they have been treated independently. From this volume, therefore, I have treated onlyOnce Upon Great Lepers, the only new play in the trilogy. Again, because it was not always possible, there is the need to point out that whenever cited, the vii

structure of dialogues, that is how they appear on paper, is kept as closely as possible to the original in the given play. I have benefited in my preparation of this text from my personal experience of Bate Besong’s life, especially the foundational years of our working lives, and from the views of others who got to know him well in later years when distance and other obligations kept us apart. Accordingly, beyond members of those early years with whom we hung out during those days of the literary rebirth in Cameroon like Francis Wache, Ba’bila Mutia, Nol Alembong, Bole Butake, Tangye Suh Nfor and a host of others, some of whom are now deceased, I am indebted to the likes of Nwalimu George Ngwane, Douglas Archingale, and Dibussi Tande to name a few, whose writings—publications or blogging—honed some of my opinions of Bate Besong. To Dr. Augustine Enow Bessong, I remain grateful for your patience and the help you offered that yielded forth answers to occasionally perplexing cultural issues. To my friend Susan Sandoval I am thankful for your reactions to sections of the work. Special thanks are due my family as a whole, but especially my wife, Ita Doh, and our daughter Fiona-Emma Doh, the other two in an almost empty nest, for their overall support and understanding.

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Introduction It was the morning of March 8, 2007, when the dawn of a new day was eclipsed by horrendous news: Dr. Bate Besong, one of Cameroon’s foremost and equally controversial literary icons had perished in a ghastly accident during the early hours of the day, just a few hours after the launching of his last collection of poems, Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus & Emanya-nkpe Collected Poems. This was a tragedy so surreal that life in Cameroon, Anglophone Cameroon in particular, came almost to a standstill as word spiraled from person to person, from house to house, from country to country; even our professors from the University of Ibadan with whom I was still in touch called to refresh their memories of the one involved. This was before pictures of Besong in past days were disseminated. Besong, in the company of close associates, was en route to Cameroon’s capital city, Yaounde, for a visa to the United States. They were all invaluable members, ideological and categorical representatives of the Anglophone community: Dr. Hilarious Ngwa Ambe, Besong’s former student and subsequently colleague at the University of Buea, Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa’a a Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) director and producer, and Samson Tabe Awoh, a cab driver and true member of the proletariat. They all perished. As a result of such tragedy, one could not help but scan the past in an effort to see how far Besong had come, and if it be the case, where things went wrong or otherwise. Had there been nobody else, George Ngwane’s seemingly premature declaration (for so it felt at the time) might have come across differently, but this was not the case; there were a good number of Anglophone heroes already. There was E. M. L. Endeley, P. M. Kale, Bobe Ngom Jua, and Albert Womah Mukong, to name a few, especially Mukong who had virtually given up his life fighting for the Anglophone cause and as a result spent the best part of his years languishing in Ahidjo’s political prisons all over Cameroon. As Ngwane himself points out: “Bate Besong’s literary journey therefore begins from the South West Province, charting a course from where S. A. George, P. M. Kale and Motomby Woleta ix