Tribute to Sonne Mbella Dipoko, a writer Extraordinaire from Tiko, Africa

Departure of Sonne Dipoko
My memory of Mr. Dipoko goes way back to 1985 when I was a PhD. student at LSE and was haring in Paris in search of raw data for my thesis. I was going to Centre George Pompidou with other Cameroonian Students of The Southern Cameroons extraction, (one is now a member of parliament in the Cameroon Republic, Hon. Joseph Banadzem) when we stumbled opon Mr. Dipoko. I was appalled at his dishevelled look, dread-logged hair and a bushy beard. He was cutting silhouettes of tourists for a few francs at a time. My first impression was what on earth had brought such a famous writer to such a low place and why he was doing what he was doing. As these vistas of thoughts were racing in my mind, another Cameroonian scholar commented that he would not yearn to be a writer if all it meant at the end was to cut silhouettes of tourists and other Parisians for stipends. My comment was that he might be doing that as a part time task just to take his memory away from his crucial chores of the day.

Not many a person were wearing dread-logs in those days as they were a novelty in the region called the Southern Cameroons he had referred to its predicaments in his comments published below by the Cameroon Post. His dishevelled appearance was repulsive to me but having known Rastafarians in London, UK, I was not as disturbed as my other students. However, I got hold of his books: Black and White in Love and his Few Nights and Days in Paris that shot him to fame form the Heinemann African Writers Series. I love his former book as it reminded me of Jaguar Nana by Cyprian Ekwensi which I considered the sexiest book ever written by an African. I also saw in that book some aspects of the House Boy written by Ferdinand Oyono, then a veteran Camerounian diplomat. My mind also raced to Dr. Franz Fanon`s book Black Skin, White Masks and the excitement some persons of colors had the moment they had affairs with whites. To many it is a divine experience and the curing of what they erroneously feel as their inherent inferiority vis a vis whites or what is called now Caucasians.

When I read this morning in the forums of his death I recalled a friend had told me that he had returned to Tiko, The Southern Cameroons, variously called the SW Region of Cameroon and was a mayor of that once prospering port city during in the days of the British Colonial Rule of The Southern Cameroons. It was literally abandoned the moment there was reunification of the Southern Cameroons State and the one year old Cameroon Republic. My first feeling was that Dipoko was to be radical as his appearance and perhaps bring along some positive changes for the good of the English-speaking regions, the NW and SW Regions, (or The Southern Cameroons). I was associating him with Bob Marley the musical artist who relentlessly fought in his way for the liberation of Africa. I might have been mistaken as I never read or heard of him there after. He might have been doing it silently as many do and hope that some day there could be changes for good.

Then today, I was shocked to read of his death. Whatever, he has immortalized himself through his publications. His contribution as a known literary giant in the then West Cameroon (The Southern Cameroons) and Africa at large cannot be underestimated. As I read the attachment by the Cameroon Post I was pondering if he ever published his works discussed or if they are still in manuscript formats. The Cameroon Republic, including The Southern Cameroons regions in Africa fall under those countries fall under those regions where Africans do not read. If you want to hide anything from them put it in the books. If you want to show it to them, take it to the watering holes, bars where alcoholic beverages are sold and everyone would know of it in a matter of seconds. What I have written here will not be read by them but mostly by Caucasians, East Indians and Chinese. If I am lying, how many have read the past articles lots of Europeans and others have read. By the time they, Africans will learn to read, it may be too late as other races will not continue to read and interpret for them. Dipolo, thanks for writing for us to read. Adieu Sir.

Dr. V. Viban Ngo.


Mbella Sonne Dipoko in His Own Words: The Luxury of Memory
Cameroon Life Magazine (May 1990)

So let them be scared of my look, of my beard, of my head of hair. They are just philistines who are afraid of originality. They wish to be caricatures of Europeans. When they are scared of a mere beard, what would these people do when war comes, when the horizon suddenly begins to sneeze smoke and spit flames? Who will save the nation? For only the courageous can defend the colors of a country.

I did two stints at the university. First, it was when I imagined I could become a lawyer. So for a couple of years I studied law and economics at Paris University. But I gave this up when I began to work on my first novel, A few nights and Days. I really could not reconcile the drudgery of law school studies with the flamboyance of compulsive creative information. And also, what news was coming out of Africa, spoke of the death of freedom, and I thought it would be spiritually stultifying to try to function as a lawyer in a totalitarian environment.

For you will agree with me that Ahmadou Ahidjo was not exactly friends with human rights. So why wish to work as a lawyer in a country where such a man was in command?

For the barrister is essentially an orator. And oratory is sweet when it is in defence of freedom and human dignity, both of which are impaired whenever freedom of expression is not allowed. That is why I gave up my law studies not wanting to become a learned mercenary.

In short, I turned my back university and on the wish to make it in the mediocre way of the sworting professional or bureaucrat-to-be.

The decision was easy. For I already had a profession – writing. So I returned to it full-time, having chosen freedom thanks to which I became for many years, what you might call a traveling lover, a dreamer searching for God between the women’s thighs – those days when I was at the height of my intimate powers. You had to see me! I was like an angel stuffing recoilless erections into just where they are most needed – into the fleshy folds of winter! But I did it with rosy summers too.

And each divine thrust was like stuffing your women with yet another trump card of desire! And, there was no AIDS stalking through the world just to scare sensible chaps off sex.

And then the Vision of my call [to found the Esimo ya Mboka faith] happened.

Such a mighty vision. Spain and Morocco led up to it – the starlit solitude and loneliness of my nights spent mostly in the open. That was after the American woman had returned to San Francisco because I wouldn’t marry her; because I wouldn’t marry a woman from the West.

And that Vision I had of the Marvelous Star really did change the whole of my life. And always I shall remember it as a kind of anointment – all that light of that Star pouring down on me.
…
But after I published my third book, Black and White in Love, I returned to university where I took a degree not in law, but in Anglo-American studies, majoring in English. Not that I ever intended to use it for obtaining a job. I had found for myself a profession – writing – and I meant to do it full-time. So the degree lies somewhere in one of my valises – a mere piece of paper less precious than a love letter, just one of the light souvenirs of those years I spent in the West.

On the Underdevelopment of Southern Cameroons
There hasn't been much development in this part of the country. For development means new industries and major public works projects. The scene is pretty much the same as it used to be some 32 years ago. In fact one can even say Tiko has regressed. For its wharf is gone, the shipping wharf which used to make Tiko such a bustling town, especially during the banana shipment days and nights. And it is a phantom aerodrome we now have. It had such brisk traffic in the past, a quick link with Nigeria and Lagos and the wider world beyond.
….
And one of the most popular records those days was Mama Rumba! Loud music on gramophone records could be heard all over Tiko Town. And only the sirens of Banana trains sounded louder, more shrill, as they were rushing to the wharf with their green cargo for loading into ships which, after they too had sounded their sirens, turned round and then, ploughing their way through the deep wide Tiko creek, set sail for Europe.

Those days long ago there was a kind of economic boom in Tiko, indeed in the whole of what used to be called Southern Cameroons. For, from being an accounts clerk I became a journalist. I traveled from South to North. So I know how comparatively prosperous used to be. Evidence of the prosperity I talk about was there, in the increasing number of bush radio sets which were being bought, their antennae strung to bamboo poles which made their aerial contraptions look like fishing rods.

They could have been just that, fishing rods, for we were fishing for news broadcasts from Lagos and overseas; and fishing too for music, especially Rumba and Cha-cha-cha from Lumumba’s Congo.

But A’Mon! Those were very exciting years in what used to be Southern Cameroons. Even the politics were exciting. For going into politics was like becoming a retailer. You were free to open your own shop. And if you felt like it and someone else had the same idea like you, you merged your shop with him… until someone came along and said that sort of thing just wasn’t good enough for the country that was trying to make unity the very foundation of its existence. The 99% man. The result, as we were to see, was one vast party, one platform for everybody; one production line of unifying slogans.

But while the old political free enterprise still obtained, did our politicians have a great time! For they were all promising us a paradise of fundamental rights.

Not that these rights were exactly lacking; for the British were running Southern Cameroons as of it were the most economically backward country and socially handicapped Shire of their own Island Kingdom. And so what political oppression there was was quite occult and not rash and rampant. The individual was quite free to indulge his ego or just his dreams in any amount of soap-box sense or nonsense.

Still our politicians insisted on promising us even more fundamental human rights as if new ones could still be invented. But all that was before the Alhadji from Garoua came along with his message of one country, one people, and one voice – his voice. And because he was an autocrat of the no-nonsense Islamic School, the noisy good intentions of our Southern Cameroons politicians sensibly fell silent for fear of what the straightjacket of El Hadj’s rule might do to them.

And Mecca said nothing. And Medina minded its business, which is cashing in on the tourist trade as the promises we had been made of fundamental human rights and of “life more abundant” slunk away like frightened dogs, tails down, snouts straight-jacketed, no longer able to bark because forced into silence by circumstances.

But to tell the truth, during all those years that I was abroad, I never joined any political organization that fought Ahmadou Ahidjo. I never in public criticized him. For, in my head, I was a soldier, a born member of the Cameroonian armed forces. And the armed forces, spiritualized, made incorruptible, patriotic, are the finest thing in any country. They are the backbone of a nation’s destiny. So how can one who is born to exercise traditional command take to criticizing the government whose auxiliary he is born to be? That is why I never became a politician in exile.

I was content with being just a poor poet, just a roaming writer, comfortable in the luxury of memory in which the most palpable pain can be massaged artistically into the sweetest messianic songs.

The other reason why I would not criticize the El Hadj’s regime was because I felt that it really is not courage when one can only shout invectives fro the safe distance of exile.

On his Writing Career
I have a number of manuscripts I have vowed to work on until they become published books, and my imagination is still full of stories I would like to write. I am sure some day not too far away I shall return to writing full-time. For example, I’d like to do a book about Tiko Town. The story has been dancing Makossa in my mind for some time now. And I’ve even found a title for it. I’ll call the novel Bobi Tanap, which is also going to be the name of the heroine, a girl who wanted only one man but whom every man who was a man wanted. A story about slum city love. In the book I shall be raising the question; what is more important, man or money? And then of course, there is my autobiography to finish and the Moboka, the holy book of my faith.

However, the planting season is now in full swing. I wouldn’t be returning to any serious writing until I have finished planting this year’s crop of Egusi and corn. I am planting these on a farm by the Mungo River where my novel Because of Women is set.

On his “Mad” Look
In the West they would call me a romantic, one of the last breed, I suppose. A romantic and not a mad man, as some people do here, in Africa, fearing the beard and scared of the head of hair. Listen, all those years I was abroad, not once did any European or American call me a mad man as some of my own people are now doing, thinking I am mad. I tell you, in Douala, sometimes it takes me as long as an hour to get a taxi. When they stop, it is to give some chap who might be waiting with me a ride. But me, no! They don’t want the beard. They don’t want my look. They are damned scared.

Don’t let anyone impose their will on you. So let them be scared of my look, of my beard, of my head of hair. They are just philistines who are afraid of originality. They wish to be caricatures of Europeans. When they are scared of a mere beard, what would these people do when war comes, when the horizon suddenly begins to sneeze smoke and spit flames? Who will save the nation? For only the courageous can defend the colors of a country? Only people like those few taxi drivers who, not minding the way I look, give me a ride in their vehicles, will be at the command of our cannons. For they are courageous people. They love all their people, even those who do not look like caricatures of Europeans.

Even the Bearded ones.