By Dibussi Tande
Memory Lane: 20 years ago on April 2, 1991, the Yaounde University students' uprising began. Find below a commemorative poem..
I
The Mobilization:
The fiery speeches
The protest marches
The huge rallies
The call to arms
The angry cries:
la conférence nationale
il y'aura !!
Fait quoi fait quoi
il y'aura !!
Ça gâte, ça gâte !!
Campus Mort!!!
The irreverent chants:
Mbéré, Mbéré di suffer
Paul Biya di Chop Moni
Small Paul Biya big big tif man
Wandafool!
The freedom Fighters:
Parlement, Powell, Schwatzkopt
Nidal, Senfo, Thatcher
The villains:
Délégué, Espion, Auto-défense
Manda Fils, Action Directe
The War of Tracts :
“They have stolen our lands
… and our women!”
“Anglo-Bami Go Home!”
The flashpoints:
Bassorah,
Chateau, Cradat
Carrefour Orly
Sous le manguier
Obili, Mokolo
The violence:
The Ninjas are here!
Run for your lives!
The tear gas and the tears
The blood and the bullets
"le CEPE dépasse le BAC !"
« On va voir qui est qui ! »
The detention centers:
Americanos, GMI
Legion, Semil
Quartier Général
Cinquième…
The wide-eyed denial:
Zero Mort!!!!
II
The unending Misery:
hide-and-seek
with the "bailleur"
to avoid paying rents
SNEC pipes unearthed
SONEL cables cut
- no water no electricity-
but life must go on
in slum city -
Bonamoussadi my love…
Living on the edge:
Epsi pitié...
Pain chargé
Tourne dos
Beignet haricot
"Le Jazz"
Resto… dindon
Survival of the fittest…
III
The decadence:
Women of the night
Desperately hawking their wares
Tycoons in state-owned Pajeros
searching for the elixir of youth
In the dark and dangerous alleys
of the dilapidated mini-cités…
uncaring and treading
where even angels fear…
Partying amidst the squalor:
Pepe Kalle – Bakuba show
Zaiko langa Langa – Nippon Banzai
Zanzibar - Têtes Brulées
Kassav – Zouk la sé sel medi kaman nou ni
Edith Lefel - Frankie Vincent
Zouk Love - Zouk Porno
Nkodo Sitony - Au Village!!!
Mbarga Soukous – "à cheval"
Essamba! Essamba!
Party like there’s no tomorrow!
The loss of hope:
7000 students squeezed into Amphi 700
Travaux dirigés at the poulailler
Third World Doktas
ranting from the rostrum
and hawking dog-eared polycopies
Le front
Septembriste
Cartouche
Mandat grillé
End of the road...
This is Ngoa-Ekele
The nation’s citadel of learning
The training ground for a lost generation
The graveyard of tomorrow's generation
January 30, 2008
Twenty years ago? Well, that may be so, but we are still living the filth and the big lie even today as if yesterday never was!
The Lady from the Mountain seemed to have understood the game and how to counter it.So she targetted the soul of the place and not just the externals and for a very brief while it seemed as if genuine intellectuallism was returning to Ngoa. By the time she left, after her brief stay, almost every Thomas on the knoll was converted or was in the process of being converted, and could attest to the fact that there was still a significant degree of goodness in the human heart if properly fine-tuned.
But old habits die hard, and the rot is returning with a vengeance in her aftermath, so that your poem, with its colloquial tone, commemorates the institutionalised culture of "shinning shit", to borrow from T.M. Nice weekend...
m.tennu
Posted by: m.tennu | April 02, 2011 at 01:57 PM
Still waiting for Part II of "The Digital Disconnect and Misconceptions about "Revolution 2.0"."
Cameroonians are tired of your criticisms.
Propose concrete solutions to our problems...
Every day complain, complain,complain.....
We are still waiting for the saviour who is on his way...the earlier people their eye open say u too na fake the better...
Readership dey increase income from adverts dey climb...Cameroonians back home nothing is changing...every day we dey hear thesame old criticism....
Posted by: cadmun | April 02, 2011 at 03:48 PM