 |
| Portrait of Anthony
Barnicle (1932-2015) |
Introduction
The caption
is the last philosophical question Anthony Barnicle posed to his audience
before his demise on Feb. 26, 2015 at 3.30 p.m. Personally, I would have asked if one could thank God for
giving one life and for allowing one to achieve what one has achieved on earth.
Then one does not blow one’s trumpet as many of us have no clue as to the meaning
or definition of life. The next paragraph is a citation from William Shakespeare’s
Macbeth Act V, Scene 5 in which he outlines his perception of life or
supplement what many of us conceive it to be. The veracity is that all of us
are on that stage and in one way or the other; we will not be heard after our
acting. (Edwin) Anthony Barnicle, Jr. (Born on Nov. 15, 1932- Died on Feb. 26,
2015 at 3.30 p.m.) acted for us his audience and is now heard no more. The Bible
has said this for us in sundry ways before this British playwright Shakespeare
(born on 23 April 1564 and died on the same date in 1616). The point constantly
underscored is preparation for that moment that comes when we least expect.
Tony was prepared as you will soon glean.
“Tony is no more.” (italics mine)
Macbeth: “She should have died
hereafter
There would have been a time
for such a word
To-morrow, and to-morrow,
and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty space
from day to day
To the last syllable of
recorded time
And all our yesterdays have
lighted fools
The way to dusty death, out,
out, brief candle
Life’s but a walking shadow,
a poor player
That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more:
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
My last
telephone conversation was with Tony and his wife Lorraine (Arsenault) late
last year (2014). Instinct told me that we had not had a chat since he wrote
that he then required a gas bottle to help him with his breathing. I could not
imagine that energetic man whom I met at the age of twelve as my Vice Principal
at St. Augustine’s college, Kumbo, West Cameroon State. Lorraine his wife took
the receiver to him and we had a refined and relaxing chat full of excitements.
That was the last crucial chat. The next time I heard from him was when he wrote
to me asking if we could both write our autobiographies and publish them
together as a single compendium. Agog, I replied that I had long written mine in
two volumes and owing to the fact that some characters mentioned were still
acting, I could not get down publishing irrespective of the fact a publishing
house had read part one of it and was enthused.
It is not my
habit to surf the net on Sundays but yesterday after Holy Mass I turned to my
internet messages and my eyes were captivated by the last Droppings. This was Tony’s window of his life and his family
published monthly to the world and his coveted friends. He wrote what he was up
to besides his lectureship at Lincoln and William Wood Universities as adjunct
professor. This one announced his death but in the hand of his beloved wife
Lorraine. I was in denial as his penultimate Droppings of February 2015 he had captioned ‘Not to embrace but to
celebrate Death’ with a subtitle: ‘How does one celebrate death?’ It sent chilling
shocking waves into my nerves. I had to reply to it as it was familiar to me
with a new trend in the Grassfields, Southern Cameroons / Cameroon Republic
where a tradition that used to be exclusively Nigerian and Ghanaian had been
copied by Cameroonians where death was celebrated with merriment and pomp. Tony
advocated celebration of his death I tend to call modern African style instead
of mourning. Then I was wrong as Americans had been doing it. Tony congregated
all members of his extended family to celebrate his final departure to Our Father
in Heaven.
Nitty-gritty: The man as I saw him
from a distance
I had one
burning issue in my mind to write and this is what I said when I got the news.
Very few would know of their death call and be prepared for it and that is what
most Christians pray for. Tony knew his coming when he sat in is bed reading
the Holy Bible and suddenly felt that he was dying. He stopped teaching when it
had become imperative for him to use bottled gas to help him breathe unlike in
his hay days. He recently asked friends philosophically if and how he should
celebrate his death. He took the latter, celebrating life as some others do.
Tony was a versatile
and hardworking great man who positively influenced so many not only in his
native America but in the West Cameroon State and Cameroon Republic variously
known as La Republique du Cameroun, West Africa. He had a solid educational
background. He attended St Louis University and graduated in industrial
engineering. Then he joined and served in the US Air Force before becoming a
commercial pilot. He was not contented with that career and proceeded to do theology
at St. Joseph Missionary Society run by the Mill Hill Fathers in the UK. He was
ordained a Mill Hill Father and posted to West Cameroon State, West Africa
where he worked before returning to the USA (1969). He settled in
Jefferson City, Missouri, got married to Lorraine in 1972 and was blessed with
two children, Robert and Matthew. Meanwhile he taught economics, run a farm and
directed several companies including his Data Way Inc.
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| Tony, 3rd from right with some members of staff of St. Augustine's college, circa 1968 |
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| Tony strumming a guitar surrounded by his admiring students at St. Augustine's College, Kumbo in 1969. Note the Grassfields traditional garb he is wearing. |
His homilies
were ever captivating that most mesmerized multitude of students who were not
essentially Christians. Why? The doors of St. Augustine’s College, Kumbo that
was founded in 1964 by Rev. James Nielen, Mill Hill and E. Anthony Barnicle,
Mill Hill were opened to Muslims, Protestants, Baptists and you name it. It had
Africans from far and wide, Nigerians, Chadians, and South Sudanese who had
escaped wars from those countries and ended in West Cameroon as UNO protected refugees.
They all attended his holy masses on Friday afternoon as if it was ecumenical.
I first set eyes
on Tony when serving Holy Mass when I enrolled at St. Augustine’s
College, Kumbo. I still remember this very tall and focused man wearing a
white cassock. Then I was not very close to him since he was only teaching
senior students’ physics and mathematics. Whatever the case, I was meant to be
close with Tony as I am certain some of you browsing this memorandum. Also, my
father William N. Mbiybe had come to work for him as his cook after his
retirement and spoke so favorably of him as being a lavish giver. He never
hesitated in giving enough money to him to buy his food from Mbve emporium,
Kumbo. His generosity knew no bounds as it continued after his death. How? He
had instructed his family to offer his body with a cognomen ‘Ernest’ to A. T.
Still University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine in
Kirkville, Missouri for medical research.
My father
had retired from having worked for 12 English expatriates in the British
Southern Cameroons, and from Lagos and Enugu in Nigeria. Then he could not
raise cash to pay my tuition as a day student. An opportunity arose that if he
could work for the priests, a portion of his salary would go towards my college
tuition. That was how I got to be closer to Tony through my parent. If I
visited my father, I stayed in the adjoining kitchen but never got to know him
at close quarters. My father did not stay with him for long as he was soon
diagnosed with cancer of the lung erroneously attributed in Nsoland (Nso) as
caused by witchcraft. He had to leave this coveted job. He was hospitalized and
once it was discovered to be terminal, he was discharged from St. Elizabeth
General Hospital Shisong (Mission Station).
Nevertheless,
at the end of the academic year through my friendship with a kind Rev. Sister
Rosemary Jude, Holy Union, from Eire, I had a scholarship from a Catholic
school in London, England. In appreciation of that, I would remain on the college
campus during vacations to help the Rev. Sisters of the Holy Union to do some painting,
tender their poultry, and catalog books in the college library. It was then
that I would bump into Tony from time to time and we would say hello. I
recalled helping him to load a generator into his blue Volkswagen (VW) as he
was going to Kikaikelaki to project a Credit Union film Civitas Dei and Credit for
Kikaikelaki he directed that was then released in America. Never had I come
across a priest who was assiduous and talented. Those traits fascinated me the
more to make up my mind to one day study in the USA. I did not understand how
most persons from the USA were so versatile and my interpretation was that they
must have had a very good educational system and governance. I had seen several
young Peace Corps Volunteers so intelligent and taught all conceivable subjects
in Africa besides riding with ease dirt motorbikes. Being outgoing and rubbing
shoulders with locals unlike the English and French colonial agents who were
never seen by our parents but on official occasions. Selected Americans sent to
help Africans were seen wearing local sling bags as wang, and clothes, danchiki,
button-less short sleeve multicolored shirts that Tony also wore. Those new
waves of Americans were not as disdainful as the early Europeans colonialists
in the region but socialized with the locals on the least opportunity.
Exceptional Personality
Similarly,
Tony was an exceptional person, the first we ever saw from America with such
dynamism. He was extroverted, audacious, and could even drive a car in the bush
without roads. There was an incident when a burglar tried to burgle the
bungalow he shared with Mr. Shirley, a buxom English geography teacher and Rev.
James Nielen, Mill Hill. Father Barnicle got into his
Volkswagen and followed the culprit in pitch darkness until he could not go
further when his automobile was abruptly halted by a protruding eucalyptus
stump. He got out at night and was still chasing the thief with his torch in
hand and no one around. His repertoire of extraordinary thing requires a volume.
He took students to faraway country to explore the wilderness and came home
after his expedition to project avalanche of slides for the viewing pleasure of
very excited students. Most students were impressed and all longed to follow
Tony to the bush to swim in rivers and have fun too. The college that could not
even be equated to a primary school in North America then had 600 students on
roll. That number was too big for the period without adequately trained teachers
of Tony’s rank and the government of the day was not happy with the excessive
intake of students. I overheard the frustrated Fr. James Nielen remarking that he was educating Cameroonians, rightly African students by
virtue of the composition of the students and not Dutch students. After
ordinary level general certificate education from the, University of London,
graduates were employed to teach who had little training in pedagogy.
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| Rev. Fr. James Nielen, Mill Hill with Fr. Tony Barnicle founded St. Augustine's College at Kumbo in 1964. |
Tony was not
a builder per se but was bent on making the lives of students pleasurable and
memorable. He laid the foundation for the first Kumbo swimming pool but was
untimely transferred and that pool was never completed even up to the time of
writing (March 8, 2015). There were no funds and the foundations are still there on the
Ro-Kimbo rivulet. It tells you how one man’s determination could do wonders and
be like a muster seed. The authorities then did not see swimming lessons as essential
and life-saving. That was myopic bearing in mind that youths and even army cadets from the Grassfields who went to the
coastal region occasionally got drowned in waters.
African Penetration: Kom, Kumbo, St
Augustine’s College in Kumbo, Kikaikelaki
How did Tony
get to Africa? As seen he was posted from England by the Mill Missionary to St.
Bede’s College, Ashing, Kom where he barely sojourned. He was subsequently
transferred to Kumbo to start from scratch with Fr. James Nielen earlier
mentioned and Brother Fidelis Rensing, St Augustine’s College, Kumbo in 1964.
Launching with a few boys and one girl, they had no formal college building and
the then Nso District Council (NDC) [now replaced by a mayoralty], offered the
Kumbo Town Hall as their base once upon a time a Catholic Church. Sadly that
august building constructed with basalt rocks was demolished by the Council.
They had classes there for one year until land was acquired from the King of
Nsoland who was the overall landlord for the construction of the present St.
Augustine’s College (SAC) on a plateau to the north of the City of Kumbo.
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| A panoramic view of St. Augustine’s College, Kumbo, West Cameroon State was Home of Tony Barnicle for five years. |
While at St
Bede’s College Tony became acquainted with Fathers Anthony Jansen and James van
Bleisem. It was through that meeting and knowing what the priests were doing
that was to take Tony back to Njinikom for a very important meeting that was to
galvanize him into the introduction of the Credit Union in Kikaikelaki. The
Dutch Fathers had introduced Credit Union in Kom and that was the knowledge
Tony wanted that was to make Tony a credit union authority in Nsoland and all
of West Cameroon State as we will soon see. Tony drove from St. Augustine’s
College for a sleep over so to say, a journey that took him three hours in those
days through unsurfaced and rugged roads. He was briefed and returned with a copy
of a Credit Union Handbook he was to use for the training of locals at
Kikaikelaki.
.
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| King Seem Mbinglo III who offered land at Mbo Mbiim to the Roman Catholic Mission for the construction of St. Augustine’s College in Kumbo, West Cameroon State in 1964 |
Can I pay for my son’s school fees
with fire wood? (Planting the seed of the Credit Union)
In Tony’s
days of vice headmastership at the height of his powers, lectures ended at 2
.00 p.m. You would think that he had ample time to kill while students were
engaged in sports, cleaning up, cutting fire paths and doing their assignments.
No! He prepared his homilies besides playing his favorite sports basketball and
entertaining students on weekends. He and his Dutch boss Fr. James Nielen, Mill
Hill, and a PhD scholar who was the principal from Holland were assigned some neighboring villages for their missionary tasks. Tony was in charge of Kikaikelaki with
some 2000 Christian families and James Nielen took over Kitiwum the sub parish
remarked for having produced the first baptized Nso man Longinus Ngamba on July 4, 1913.
It was while
carrying out his ministry and having adult doctrine classes that one of the parents
asked a question as if a thunderbolt that was to change his professional trajectory.
The question he had framed so well for those interested is reiterated in his
work he published in 2009 entitled: You
Don’t Have To Move To Live in A Wealthy Neighbourhood, Mary’s Home Missouri.
The venue was at St. Mary’s Church in Kikaikelaki, a bucolic region of Nsoland,
West Cameroon State, now in Cameroon Republic. It was on August 24th,
1965, an adult attending doctrine called Mr. Joseph Nkey posed that pivotal
question: “Can I pay for my son’s school
fees with fire wood?”
Wood was one
scare commodity in the region. It is difficult for someone in America or Europe
to visualize this village scene without going back to perhaps the Elizabethan
era in Great Britain or to some wilderness inhabited by Indians in the USA or
Canada today. Then there were no electricity, pipe borne water and gas, which
are still not affordable by many. All heating in the area where temperatures fell
to 0-3 degrees Celsius at nights and mornings was by burning wood in smoky
all-purpose kitchens. Since Kikaikelaki and Kitiwum, the twin villages were
perched up in the Kumbo blue mountain and had ample rainfall supplies, the landscape was clad
with forests (sadly most of these have been cleared for arable agriculture and
it now covered with grass or pocket-size fields.) Those geographic conditions
were described by the German Fathers as far back as 1913 where they harvested
their timber for the construction of their first chapel at Kumbo. Tony had seen
local peoples carried woods to be sold at Mbve Market and at the commercial
district of Kumbo called the Squares. Then the average tuition for a border at
St. Augustine’s College in 1968 was 30,000 frs CFA [half a million francs CFA today].
The exchange rate then was 250 frs to $ 1.00 US. One needed so much quantity of
wood to raise that amount. If the entire family income went for that tuition of
a sibling, it meant that nothing else could be bought in the household for the
next five years or the family had to live in debts. There were no industries
and most persons were peasant farmers who used no mechanized tools for plowing
or harvesting. All had to be done using human muscles as hitherto. The main
crops were potatoes, maize, Arabica coffee, assorted leafy vegetables and sheep
and goat husbandry.
The locals
had tontines or njangi or ngwa, (Rotating
Credit Association [ROSCA]) where they could borrow money but none was known to
raise such a huge amount by local standard where a peasant only earned 25 cents
per day (1965). Though inchoate financial organisation, the ROSCA was a good
natural base for the establishment of the Credit Union Society. Some ROSCAs
were formed as local social clubs as one would have in England or North America
where members contributed stipends just for socializing and exchanging gossips.
However, Tony pondered and came with an answer from what he had learned from
his colleagues while teaching at Ashing. The answer was the formation of the
Kikailelaki Credit Union from where members could borrow money and pay very
little interest. It was member friendly, run by the members and there was no
discrimination as the case with the local banks were one needed to bribe the
bank manager to borrow or to pay very high interests. It was an innovation a
lot better than one keeping one’s money in one’s home that was sometimes
stolen, got burnt or devoured by white ants when buried in the ground as was
often the case.
That idea
was taken at heart by the locals and there the credit union was born in
Nsoland. News spread like wild fire and before Tony eventually left St. Augustine’s
College for the USA (circa 1970) the credit union branches had been established
at Kitiwum, Nkar, Shisong (Mission Station), Bamenda, Ndop, Big Babanki, Tatum,
Widikum and Mbiame. In due course, not only the entire Grassfields (NW) was covered
with credit unions in all important towns but in all villages and spreading
down south. This author kept on feeding Tony with news of it development and he
was ever grateful. What started as a merry joke is all over Cameroon now with a
budget of billions of francs CFA. Paying of tuition fees, hospital bills,
construction of homes or launching of businesses is no longer the exclusive
privilege of the wealthy but even poor members so long as they are members of a
Credit Union. Each time a person in the Cameroons receives an almost
interest-free loan he does not know that there was an American called Barnicle
who sowed the seed of Credit Union that blossomed in Kikaikelaki, Bui Division.
There are commercial banks but they only cater for the very rich and are only
in big cities. The credit unions are with the people for the people and by the
people. They are even created in some locals where there are no motor roads and
amenities you take for granted in the USA and Canada.
Strings of Surprises: Marriage,
Commercial Pilot, Accidents, Accommodation
When Tony
returned to the USA news reached Kumbo that he was married. Many Christians in
the Grassfields were surprised and in denial. I was then at the Cameroons
College of Arts Science and Technology, (CCAST) Bambili the Eton of West
Cameroon State in those days. I corresponded with Tony briefly in 1972 sending
him my latest picture and he replied by sending me a post card I still hoard. In
my missive, I was asking the possibility of me pursuing a medical career in the
USA. I had written to my biology teacher, Miss Jane Albert, a Peace Corps
Volunteer who also taught at St. Augustine’s College with whom I had had such a
discussion prior to her departure to the USA and was assured of such possibility.
She had promised to lead me. I got no reply. It was then that I thought of Tony
and dropped him a note. He replied that I enrolled with the Cooperative School
at Bamenda. That did not interest me as I thought that I would be wasted. With
my stony determination I ended up studying in the UK.
As for being
surprised with the wedding news, it would have been someone who never knew Tony
who would have been astonished. Tony had started as a pilot, and had once been
drown and declared dead upstream and came out alive and was being asked down
river by some stranger if he had seen a body of a dead boy meeting his
description. That was scary. It was him they were looking for. On another
incident his Volkswagen was almost shredded to smithereens when it skidded and
fell into a declivity as he returned from Tabeken, Nkambe. Tony miraculously emerged
unscratched. He still had more to perform and God had made him to be that way
for reasons we with our human senses will never know.
He got
married to Lorraine my religion teacher, a blond with most probably the best
smile in the world we guess he met at St Augustine’s college. That was the
beginning of another clan as they say in the Grassfields. All of them were by
his bedside to celebrate his death as he had wished. [See the picture of part
of Tony’s extended family he left behind on 26 February 2015 in the last Dropping published by Mrs Lorraine
Barnicle]. When they
got married Tony did not forget his favorite continent Africa. He returned to
work in the La Republic du Cameroun for a charity and championed the Cameroon
National Plan for Community Development. In that tropical French speaking
Cameroon Republic he was offered accommodation in a posh expatriate zone called
Bastos in its capital Yaoundé. The other wards were miasmic as they are still
at the time of writing (28 February, 2015). Surprisingly, Tony opted to go to
rent a home with the local folks in the miasmic slump down town. He was advised
to get a night guard for his security reasons. He got one and we are out for another
surprise that characterized his life.
One night he
slipped to see where his night guard was. He found his body guard prostrate, soundly
asleep thus not being alert. Tony carefully took away his shoes indoors, keyed
his door and went to bed. The following day, Tony summarily dismissed this man.
A guard who sleeps on duty tantamount to a scarecrow planted at the door or a
dummy soldier. I remember one slept in the Sudan and became a dinner for a
humongous python.
Tony worked
as assiduously as before and eventually returned to the USA and settled in
Missouri where you have the infamous police force some of whom are unable to
live amicably with their brothers, African Americans. As a European American of
Irish extraction he taught other whites that you do not have to move to live in
a wealthy neighborhood before you could live comfortably and resolved racial
problems or helped the underprivileged. He got his accommodation in the midst
of Latinos and African Americans at Mary’s Home, Missouri. He purchased a fertile farm at Old Ten Miles
Road Missouri where he grew pickled walnuts, package them and ship to various
shopping outlets. He once asked me to join him but owing to my family commitment
and constant transfer, I could not join him on this venture that I am certain I
would have loved (see www.BarnicleFarms.com for details).
As his
nature he was not contented with the farm works alone and the promotion of the
credit union among African Americans, Latinos and European Americans. He was
good at juggling a hundred and one tasks. He had been gifted in his human
interaction, interpersonal skills, perhaps from his studies of theology and
experiences in African and elsewhere. He got a job he loved so much teaching macroeconomics
at the local universities. I wrote to brief him that it was not facile and
he encouraged me to follow suit.
He was an
admirer and supporter of President Barack Obama and was even agog that the
first African Bishop of Rome after centuries was to be Archbishop Christian Wirghan
Tumi from Kikaikelaki his favorite village in West Cameroon State when Bishop Benedict XVI resigned. He was happy and intimated that the Cardinal was
planning to open a Catholic University at Duala and wanted to help privately.
That I never followed up as his gesture of good will was supposed to be in
camera.
Being a European American in Missouri
Being
European America in Missouri where the ugly face of racism used to be rife and
still raises its gloomy face as the shooting of Michael Brown last year (2014) by
a European American policeman you would think that returning from Africa he
would love to reside in an exclusively European American neighborhood. No! Well
he was so intelligent and knew that unless you were not intelligent you did not
discriminate a person because of his or her color, religion, height, sexual
inclination, education and so on. He did the opposite by embracing all. As
said, he moved in to St. Mary’s in the minorities’ neighborhood where he lived
happily till the 26th of February 2015. In a way he broke that
racial barrier and lived with and served peoples of all colors of the rainbow
to prove to the racists who were obsessed with the color of one’s skin
particularly in Missouri where some police overreaction when it concerned
African Americans was excessive, that you did not have to live away from your neighbors and claim to build good neighborliness. It will be stated here that
most of the jobs he held as Director of Economic Development in Brightwood; that
of Economic Divisions in Missouri his native town, and his championing of the
Neighborhood Assistance Act, (NAA, all concerned working with people of all
races and promoting integration. Nothing ever happened to him or any members of
his family. His multiracial ‘family’ instead increased in size. ‘Members’ never
stopped telling one another gossips wherever they were in the world and that is
how the world should be as in Tony’s paradigm.
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Fr. Tony Barnicle writing the West Cameroon Credit Union Manual in his study, circa 1967.
|
He taught
persons of all races as he had been a priest of all persons irrespective of
races in Europe, African and America. Motivated by his global experience, he
wrote a splendid book and presented talks. I had the privileged of proofreading
chapter one of his autobiographical book entitled You Don’t Have To Move To Live In a Wealthy Neighborhood he
published in 2009. He wrote many and one that is well known is What a Life, With My Wife and my Neighbors. I got involved in the said chapter as
he had covered Kikaikelaki and Kumbo Town whose denizens I knew at close
quarters fluent in their language. Occasionally I sent to Tony pictures,
clippings and linked him with experts in his economic field above all the Credit
Union Society that was his passion.
When I read
the first draft of the first work, I suggested to him to write his autobiography
as it was more autobiographical than even Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He had inadvertently been
chronicling in his monthly Droppings
that could be collated and published as those of Dr. Frank Fanon he knew. I
last spoke with Tony and Lorraine last December 2014. Tony was then using
bottled gas to help him in breathing properly. We were all delighted. After our
telephone conversation in his next missive to me Tony requisitioned if we could
both write our respective autobiographies and publish as a single compendium.
“Brilliant
idea,” I concurred. He remarked that both of us had had the experience of
crossing continents. I was happy to hear this but replied that I had not
accomplished much as he had done while in Africa and elsewhere. I had already
written mine in two volumes, had one publisher interested in it but I shied
away as I thought that there were so many revelations I did not want to divulge
until the dawn of my life. However my options were still opened. My statement
was not a steel line that could not be bent. Many political statements were not
to go well with the country that my naïve parents had inadvertently made to
occupy my original country of birth. However I accepted the offer and was
expecting him to tell me that he had got some chapters for me to proofread as
in the past.
How one could celebrate one’s death
What
happened next? I was petrified when I got his penultimate Droppings from his Lorraine that our beloved Tony died on February
26, 2015 at 3.30 p.m. I took my hands to my head and open-mouthed I ran
downstairs to announce to my household that was preparing lunch that Tony died
two days ago. My lunch was sour and I skipped it. I was expecting a phone call
but remembered that they might not have had my phone number as I always used a
phone card when making long distance calls. His last on Droppings of 12 February, 2015 he was wondering aloud how one could
celebrate one’s death. As shrewd and all-knowing as Tony was, he had sensed that
his time was near as he said that he slept and felt death coming. He philosophically
wrote asking how one was to celebrate one’s death. I took time to reply that it
was no longer a joke as in Africa when one died one’s family members kept one’s
body refrigerated in a morgue for months. They raise cash, prepare sumptuous
dishes, buy wines and beers, decorate their homesteads, rent furniture and
invite guesses to congregate and celebrate the life of the deceased. Requiem
mass is then said and the traditional witch doctors emerge and make juju over
the grave before or after and the body is interred. The party then starts with
the firing of guns and dancing to the music produced by specialists in cry-die, dirges.
Oftentimes
some celebrations cost a fortune when the dead had not even had such money to
buy drugs, afford an operation or to pay tuition for his children. In the case
of Africa, one sometimes wonders what the celebration is all about. It is all
much ado about nothing or just to tell the world that they love the dead? That
is not necessarily true. Whatever, if it is the vox populi, and if we do celebrate births, similarly we should have
the last send-off thanking the Creator, God for giving whoever has left or is
on the verge of leaving this dusty earth.
It was
somber in the past particularly among non-Christian believers. The modernized
send-off was adopted and adapted from Nigeria and Ghana in the 1990s by the
Grassfielders. Prior to that there were traditional ones that did not embrace
modernity. Tony talked of celebration of birth, baptism, confirmation, wedding,
graduation and confided too that the end should also be celebrated. We think
that Tony had what is preached in the Catholic Church as a happy death
Christians pray for. The essence is to be able to communicate when dying,
experience little or no pain and meet members of ones’ family and friends to
say that final good bye to them. They will be reminded to prepare for their
days where possible by emulating the one who has died or about to die as a
Christian.
In the
traditional set up (Nsoland or Nso or my Latinised Ngonsonia) where wills were
not written officially, to give verbal wills. As for Tony, he had lived a
fruitful and enviable life on earth. From my perspective, he did a good job of
it. The Barnicles will not be the only ones to miss him but all of us. He is
definitely now in paradise many yearn to be there. If souls still pray when they
are with God, we know that Tony will ask God to turn his merciful eyes and cast
on earth for a second, relief the suffering and give all a modicum of Tony’s
love of one’s neighbour he showed in three continents, Europe, African and
America.
The College
swimming pool upon Ro-Kimbo rivulet Tony Barnicle started to construct is yet
to be completed since 1968. Tony is on the far right wearing a sombrero.
 |
| Official portrait of Tony Barnicle, Jr. |
Afterword
All ex-students
of St. Bede’s College, Ashing; St. Augustine’s College, Kumbo; all his
congregants, young and old at Kikaikelaki, Kumbo and Nsoland, the Grassfields
where the five fingers of the Credit Union’s emblem he initiated spread and all
of the Cameroons will miss him. The US Ambassador, His Excellency Bob Payton
and spouse Polly Payton both from Tony’s home town Missouri who would visit St.
Augustine’s College in the 1968/69 to have social evening and took part and
contributed in a Credit Union forum will also miss him. They were usually
grateful being with us student in that temperate island in the tropics, surnamed by Fr. James Nielen, City of God.
Indeed a different city from the Confession
by the same author, St. Augustine, the name of the college emanated from. They will all miss Tony as all of us. Is it
not wonderful how one European American made such a remarkable change in impoverished an West Cameroon State with so little? Indeed one tree can make a forest. Telling people like a
joke that firewood could be used to pay a student’s tuition in a college, he
demonstrated how that could be done. It was not a miracle for the privileged
but one that all could be performed by all to the amazement of all and sundry.
Through that ingenuity many had been educated not only in the Cameroons but all
over the world and we cannot compute the multiplier effect we all had owing to
Tony Barnicle’s humble and insightful initiative. Indeed you don’t have to move
to live in a wealthy neighborhood to make that genuine and positive impact on
the lives of the poor. He did it in Africa and America and may God welcome and
reward him abundantly.
The author Viban, V., PhD., (L.S.E. , London) was a junior student when Tony was the Vice Principal at St. Augustine's College, Kumbo.
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