Mount Pleasant

 

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For Nyasha, of course,

and to C. K. Williams,

who went, and came back as a butterfly

 

A Few Notes on Cameroon's History

Cameroon comprises 238 ethnic groups who speak as many different languages, in addition to French, English, and Camfranglais (an urban patois that combines French and English). The principal groups include the Ewondo, in the region around Yaoundé; the Bamum, around Foumban; the Bamiléké, around Dschang; the Mankon from Bamenda; the Douala along the coast; and the Fulani in the north.

In the fifth or sixth century: The Carthaginian explorer Hanno, in the description of his travels along the coast of Africa, mentions a “Chariot of the Gods”: this may be the first historical reference to Mount Cameroon.

1472: The Wouri River is named Rio dos Camarões (River of Shrimp) by the Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó. The word
camarões
will evolve into “Cameroon.”

July 12, 1884: Douala chiefs sign a treaty with German traders; two days later the German governor will declare German sovereignty over the territory of Cameroon, which they call “Kamerun.”

June 28, 1914: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the start of World War I. Battles also take place in Africa, in the colonies of the belligerents, including Cameroon.

August 8, 1914: Rudolf Manga Bell is hanged, along with Adolf Ngosso Din, his secretary, and Martin Paul Samba, each accused of treason by the German authorities. This event marks the birth of Cameroonian nationalism.

1916: Germany loses the battle for Cameroon. German Cameroon is divided in two and placed under French and English occupation. Foumban is initially occupied by the English, while Yaoundé falls to the French.

July 10, 1919: The League of Nations gives France and England a mandate to administer Cameroon as two distinct territories, thereby legitimizing the de facto occupation of the colony.

1920: Charles Atangana, paramount chief of the Ewondo, is exiled to Dschang, in western Cameroon. There he meets and becomes friends with Njoya, sultan of the Bamum.

1921: Yaoundé is chosen as the capital of French Cameroon, in the eastern part of the country; Buea, the former German capital, becomes the capital of the British Cameroons in the west.

1921: Njoya is exiled from Foumban, the capital of his sultanate, by the French authorities. He finishes writing his book, the
Saa'ngam
, better known by the title of its French translation:
Histoire et coutumes des Bamoum: Rédigées sous la direction du Sultan Njoya
(The History and Customs of the Bamum, compiled under the direction of the Sultan Njoya).

October 22, 1922: The Catholic prelate François-Xavier Vogt arrives in Cameroon. Two days later he announces his intention to reside in Yaoundé.

January 30, 1933: Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.

May 30, 1933: Njoya dies in exile in Yaoundé.

September 1, 1939: Hitler invades Poland. In response, Britain and France declare war on Germany. World War II begins.

September 1, 1943: Charles Atangana, paramount chief of the Ewondo, dies in Yaoundé.

July 13, 1955: L'Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC), a nationalist party calling for the independence and reunification of Cameroon, is banned by the French authorities.

January 1, 1960: French-speaking Cameroon gains independence.

October 1, 1961: English-speaking Cameroon gains independence. The southern part of the formerly British-controlled territory, known as Southern Cameroons, and the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon are reunited under the name of the Federal Republic of Cameroon.

 

Here is the story of Njoya, of Charles Atangana, and of Sara, her mother's daughter.

 

SARA AND BERTHA

 

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

—Oscar Wilde

 

1

Conversations One August Afternoon

She was already a boy, Sara was, when she arrived at Mount Pleasant, the royal residence in exile. That is the simple truth of it. She was only nine years old, and yet she had been offered to Njoya, the sultan, when he arrived in Yaoundé. Offered as a sign of friendship, “friendship and brotherhood.” The paramount chief of the Ewondo, Charles Atangana had convinced the monarch to leave Bamum land and take up residence in the French protectorate's capital. The least he could do was to make his guest's stay comfortable; custom required no less—ah, yes, our famous customs!

It was the dry season; according to the calendar, the year was 1931. The trees said it was August, even if the day was clothed in the colors of refusal: Sara's refusal (she was called Sara ever since a Catholic priest had miswritten her actual name, Sala) because she did not want to leave her mother. The sultan's refusal, for he did not understand how coming to the heart of the region under French control would lessen their mistrust of him, evident ever since his difference of opinion with their local representatives some ten years before in Foumban.

“Isn't that just stepping on the snake's tail?” Njoya had asked one day when his friend pushed him for an answer.

“What can I say?” Charles Atangana replied, playing distractedly with his bowler hat. “It's just a change of scenery.”

Like Njoya, he knew that if the French feared them, it wasn't for their words or their power, but for the good relationship they had enjoyed with the former German colonizers.

“Don't you know that France is a very jealous woman?” the chief added. “And with all your wives—”

“And what about you,” the sultan interrupted with a sly smile. “You have only one wife, and yet…”

What could Charles Atangana say to that? He and Njoya still bore the scars of events from before the war, traces they could not erase. “I'm like a woman, and the whites are like men,” Njoya had written in the
Saa'ngam
, his memoirs. “What can I do except obey?” He was referring to the English, who had come before, but it was the French who, by ordering his banishment, had left him without a voice; yes, without a voice. And yet that's just how Sara felt, too: without a voice. For very different reasons, of course. She had uttered her last words the night of her departure. Her mother hadn't given her a moment to rest after waking her, and Sara's whispers had been lost in the night, muffled by the bamboo frame of her bed, which bore the marks of all the times she gnawed on it in silence.

That same morning, the house had awoken to the sound of her mother's hollow voice crying out in a nightmare. The little girl's pale face was a blank that no one wanted to look at too closely. Especially not her mother, a sensible peasant who the previous night had made her peace and furtively wiped away her tears. Not this mother who had mortified her own flesh for days on end after accepting her daughter's bitter fate, for she had seen men cut the knot of women's destiny many times before. So she pulled a pagne tightly around her waist, girding herself to speak as the inescapable shadow in which her daughter would now live closed in around them. Uncle Owona, the girl's godfather, kept quiet. He had wished so hard to put this moment of pain behind him that he had nothing else to say. He knew it was his fault, and that was enough.

As for Carl, Sara's brother, he was too young, so no adult found it necessary to explain to him why he would now have to spend his days without his sister.

And what about Sara? She had been informed of her “good fortune”—yes, that's how her mother put it—her good fortune to answer the call of destiny, even though she was still a child.

“If I were you,” her mother added, “I'd be happy.”

Happy? That's the question that sounded in the mute child's head as her eyes scanned the silent room, trying to understand the flutterings of her misfortune.

“I would have danced.”

Danced?

No, Sara couldn't dance, even if her mother sketched a few steps and started to sing a familiar song, a lullaby that swaddled her warmly in her praise names.