I grew up in Baleveng, where the soil is red and muddy in the rainy season. I was born in 1993, the last child of a big family. My father got married to one wife and inherited two others from his father; my mother is the second. I grew up very far from town, but now I live in Yaoundé, in a brothel, at the centre of the city. The most vivid memories of my childhood have faded over the years; what I remember most are the hoops, the dogs, my father’s anger and my first years at school.
Like many children of my generation, I grew up between my mother’s kitchen and my grandfather’s yard. It was a calm place surrounded by plantain trees, short green firs, acid guava trees and many other types of trees. My father worked for Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, a company that produces and exports cash crops including tea. Father used to come home from their laboratories with rejected species of plants.
Unlike his friends, my father worked for the whites; he always tried to be different. When I was a child, he had a bicycle. He called it “mbâ skû.” In Yemba, it means “a home for school.” He used to leave the house in the afternoon and return the next morning. Whenever he crossed the ntschû bûh of the neighbouring houses, he sounded his horn and people could hear a kring kring kring sound from the iron box located in the middle of handlebar.
At the end of each year, the CDC gave rice, oil, and sometimes soap to the workers. On those good days, when my father would reach the quarter, he would not sound his horn. He would cross my grandfather’s yard and push his bike directly in his house. For one week or two, he would complain that women don’t respect marital rules. He would say that my mother is always the last to bring his food. He would remember that his wife sells peanuts and he never saw the money. He would complain about the children, who he claimed were lazy; they wouldn’t feed the pigs or tether goats in the bush. He would remember the piglet that died six months, seven or one year ago because my elder brothers and sisters were unable to feed the mother. He would criticize his friends, evoke the amount of money they owed him, he would complain about climate, the changing weather; about a plantain tree that fell after the rain.
After weeks of anger, denigration and insults, he would sit down in front of his wife’s house and send one of my brothers to buy some beer. While drinking, he would start a long monologue, call his ancestors and tell senseless stories.
“This house cannot fall into disrepair. My father, Mô Tenong Fô! A lè ke ngue shiè Tekang’ ah ko gho wu? Tekang’a le nkoo kooo nkoo koo te nguè ngnièh!”
When he was tired, he would call all his wives and give each of them some rice, oil or a lump of soap.
That was Christmas!
At the end of each year, the CDC also offered calendars with President Biya’s picture to their workers. My father hung the calendars in front of his door and would often circle some dates with a pencil. When he had nothing to do, he would show me the same pictures.
“This is Paul Biya, the President of the Republic. Have you seen this moustache?”
“Yes, Father.”
“It is the President’s moustache! This is Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, Speaker of the National Assembly. This is Peter Maphany Musongue, the Prime Minister, Head of Government, and this is my boss, he is a white man. Have you ever seen a white man in your life?”
“No, father. I have never seen a white man.”
I was 5 years old. I used to draw Tobi, a character in my brother’s textbook. I also used to write some letters of the alphabet. At home, we were three children who were not yet going to school. Father pretended that we were too young to leave the house.
While our elder brothers and sisters went to school in the morning, we slept. Some days, we played at home until afternoon, when students came back from school. On other days, when it was cold or during the rainy season, we stayed in our mother’s kitchen and roasted some sweet potatoes, maize or collected hailstones.
My mother’s kitchen was a large room. In the middle, there was a three-stoned fireplace. Beside the stones, there was my mother’s bamboo chair and the stick she used to wake my brother with. Sometimes she would use the stick to lift off something from walls darkened by smoke.
In the evening, when our brothers studied their lessons in my grand-father’s drawing-room, and which was now his successor’s property, I left my mother’s kitchen and joined the pupils. They talked about their teachers, about other students, and about people I was unfamiliar with. I liked when they read or sang the stories in their books. They were in French but I could understand some passages. I could sing some excerpts of the stories and draw the characters on the black board. I knew some answers to the questions they used to ask each other. For example, I knew that Christopher Columbus discovered America, although I didn’t know who America was and where he was hiding when Christopher Columbus discovered him. School was easy and exciting, I thought.
During the holidays, people came from the town to visit their families in the village. It was an occasion for us to meet other children, those who came from the town and spoke French. During the holidays, my grandfather’s yard became a play-ground. Those who could speak French joined the town-dwellers; those who couldn’t speak French stayed on the other side.
I was always on the other side. I knew Christopher Columbus discovered America, I could sing and write some letters of the alphabet, I could draw “le petit Tobi,” an unfortunate character who had broken his leg in my brother’s book. I could count from 0 to 12 or 15, although I could not write. I knew where the school was located; I knew that SIL was the first class you attended. I knew the teacher’s name called Mr. Vi! (His real name was Victor.) I knew that when the bell rang for the first time in the morning, it was to say that the bamboo gate of École publique de Mingnè was open. My brothers never considered the first ring. That was just to remind the villagers that it was a class day. On Monday morning, those who arrived at school just after the first ring were asked to chase the abandoned goats out of the school or to clean the Principal’s office. I knew that the second ring of the bell meant classes were about to start. In the afternoon, the bell meant that pupils could go back to their families.
I heard that in town, people started to attend school at the age of three. I was surprised. But many years later I came to realise they were going to nursery school. In Baleveng where I grew up, there was no nursery school.
Those who could speak French played with the town-dwellers but it was not a problem; it was just a matter of choosing a camp. It was about happiness: playing hide-and-seek, check-games and talking about classmates and teachers the whole day or swimming in the river, fishing crabs and silurids with old baskets, wandering around the backwaters to steal palm wine, playing ndô shi in kitchen gardens and going back at twilight when the food was ready.
At the end of the holidays, one group went to school and the other travelled to town. That year, I was in the middle. I didn’t know if my father had accepted to send me to school or not. My mother could no longer compel my father to do anything.
In September 1998, the other children with whom I used to play started going to school. I felt alone. Only mother understood my loneliness. She told me that I will go to school, but I did not believe it. I knew it was my father’s decision. I was too young to understand her determination. In the village, women rarely talked to their husbands. Fathers were gods and were never questioned. Children could not ask anything of them. Whenever we needed something, we had to go through our mothers. When it was the kind of problems mothers could solve, they never disturbed the fathers.
My father said I was too young to go to school.
“Your child is always playing in the dust! Nobody knows what he is digging. Look at his dress! Everything you can teach him is how to play on people’s garden. How do you want such a stupid child to walk in the middle of civilised people? He will disgrace me! And I don’t have money!”
I was a prisoner in the first week of September 1998. My grandfather’s compound suddenly became too big for me. We lived in a white house. Before grandfather died, he had built the house with mud bricks. There were four houses on his land: three for his wives and one for him. When she was younger, my mother was a bayam-sellam. She transformed cassava into bâton de manioc and sold it on market days. When she removed cassava from the large pot where she used to ferment for weeks, there was a residue of water in the pot. She poured the liquid on her walls and days after, the bricks became white.
Sometimes, the powerful lost the war and the weak triumphed in silence. This happened in my family some weeks after school started. Mother told me that I would go to school and I was wondering how. I knew the period during which new pupils could be enrolled was short. My father continued to go to work. My mother became angry, but he didn’t care. Father is the kind of person who almost never talks, even when he is angry. When he was not drunk, he knew the power of silence. Sometimes he pretended to be the victim.
“Women have destroyed this world. Yesterday when I left this house, I asked those children to feed the pigs. Hear how they are crying down there. Who can I blame? They would beat me. They see how their mothers talk to me! You will pay, let me tell you this. You will pay!”
My sister who lived in Yaoundé promised that she would look into the matter, but nothing had been done yet. Since the start of the school year, the whole family was waiting for her letter.
I was in my mother’s kitchen one night. My brothers and sisters were studying their lessons in father’s drawing room, under the low light of the oil-burner. Father was sitting on a bamboo chair in front of his wife’s house and listening to the radio. I heard him clearing his throat. Whenever he did that, we knew he was about to call somebody.
“Raoul!”
What was it! Any time father called people, he did so to complain about something. He seldom called me. I was too young to understand his complaints. Sometimes when he called a child, it was to tell him to call out his mother. Mother advised me to leave the kitchen. She called out a lie.
“He is sleeping!”
“Today I cannot even talk to my children! gnè gnè gnè! Tell him his father is calling! Nonsense!”
I heard my mother saying that she could not wake me up. I heard him continue calling till mother allowed me to answer. Then, I crossed the yard and joined him on the other side.
“You said you want to go to school, right?”
“Yes, Pa. I want to go to school.”
He began a useless speech to which I paid no attention. He gave me a slate. I thanked him
“You will start on Monday.”
I went back to my mother’s kitchen admiring the slate. It was a small, cold rectangular piece of wood, with letters of alphabets written in orange on one side. That was the only thing I received from him. In 1998, I was six years old and ready for a life. I was becoming a pupil of the primary school. I was excited. I heard my father clearing his throat again. A few seconds later, he called my mother. She answered, yet kept cooking the food. He yelled again, but my mother did not care anymore. She took the long stick behind her and closed her door.
The next day was a Saturday. The home was happy; but whenever my father was around, his mood always brought something tense in the atmosphere. Everybody was at home and the news of my slate quietly spread around the neighbouring families. I knew from then on, that I was a student. This was the most important thing for me.
Finally, my sister’s parcel arrived. It contained spaghetti, soap, rice, bread, a satchel and letters. It was on Sunday afternoon. My mother carried all the packets, packed in the white house and sent the letters to my father because she could not read—she had not gone to school.
When my mother entered her house, father approached and knocked at her door violently.
“What’s wrong again?” my mother asked.
“Take out everything here and I will tell you what is yours and what is not!” he answered.
“Letters are for you. I cannot read. The rest is my business. All those things come from my daughter.”
At night, I was playing in the study with my brothers who began school in September. We heard Father shouting again. He had read the letters. A year before, my sister in Yaoundé promised a satchel to one of my brothers or sisters in the house—I don’t know to whom the school bag was intended, but when father came back to explain the letters to my mother, the satchel was mine already.
He shouted all night, threatening to turn out my mother from his father’s property. Mother did not care. When she left her village in Bamboutos, it was to marry our grandfather, not the dictator his successor had become.
The satchel was ugly. I put my slate inside and wore it on my back. In the village, people went to school with simple bags, sewed with local materials and sold at CFA 100. Students wore those bags across the shoulder. That day, I went to school with my brothers and sisters. When we left the house in the morning, the atmosphere was tense, but it was not the children’s problem. That day, we arrived just after the first ring. The bell was a big rim suspended on a fir tree with an S-shaped iron.
People sang the National Anthem and students ran to classes. I was accompanied to Mr. Vi’s class. My brothers and sisters were in separated classes. My teacher was an old man. He used a long stick like my mother’s to touch the sentences on the board. As he read the syllables, he moved the stick in a repetitive song: tak–tak–tak–tak, and, following the beat and the rhythm, students sang with him, “A-li a fait u-ne bê-ti-se.”
When the sun rose, the bell rang; we had a first break and went back to class. At the second break, I went to play with my new friends. There was a stadium behind the school and a field with short grass. In the stadium, older students played football; on the green field, we noticed there were locusts and we started running in the grass to catch them. When the bell rang to signal the end of the break, we did not understand. When it rang again to announce the end of the school day, we were doing other activities. At the time we stopped playing, only goats and hens were still wandering in the campus. Everybody had gone back. The school was empty. My new friends still wore their school bags across the shoulder, but I could not find my satchel and slate.
*Photo by Kreative Kwame on Unsplash