REPORTING ON A PROTOTYPE, GYRO AIRCRAFT

REPORTING ON A PROTOTYPE, GYRO AIRCRAFT

The route to industrialization is long, arduous, and trudging it requires patience and stony determination (V.N.)

Not long ago, I thought that I was one of those pen pushers flooding the Internet of Shuundzev internet charting forum, consequently anything that I doodled was done so leisurely. That was a grievous fault to write without rigorous self-censuring for it could come back to haunt us one day. I am not insinuating that we should die with volumes of books in our inner-selves for fear of being chastised by our critics when they are written. Others as Charles Darwin and Charlotte Bronte thought that their heads could be chopped off after their publications yet published and were not destroyed.  Their works became best-sellers and the former lived to a rightful age.  No one has ever been perfect but God. However, it was not long before I got comments from someone in Walsh, UK commending my write-up. Other anonymous readers asked if they could quote what I have written on cultural deprivation and many more.  I was emboldened to continue too based on what one of my mentors, an Oxford don had told me that sometimes fame came when we had long departed from this dusty Earth. In reference to what I am about to dwell upon, we oftentimes not benefit from our inventions or discoveries but are subsequently modified and improved upon by others when we had long gone or no longer interested in them for various reasons. The motor vehicles many of us drive now as part and parcel of our lives are an amalgam of inventions and discoveries by men that span for centuries.  More and more inventions or modifications to improve their performance are still in the pipe line.

Of all places, my writings are usually geared towards an African audience and that is still myopic. There are no borders in writing or strict censorship with the advent of the Internet, cyber space. Then the irony is that some African scholars have stated that if you want to hide anything from Africans you got to put it in a book format. A popular Nigerian essayist Thomas Osuiji, I stoically follow though in some remote corner of the USA, once stated this out of frustration with his lack of African readership.  He carried on for the sake of writing to the extent that he would slander his dead pal for having died without a wife for at his advanced age he still insisted on marrying a youngling who would produce for him Spartan offspring.  He never had one.

That was not the end. I was encouraged by late Simon Tar, (ST) a forumite who contributed immensely in debates on Shuundzev site. Another encouragement came from another Shuundzevite, an honorable Ngonsonian-American plenipotentiary of the King of Nso domiciling in the USA. He stated that he did not read articles posted on this site but did so when it was mine and a handful of others space does not permit me to enumerate here. On that note, I garnered nerve to comment on what had been going on interminably until the incendiary of the Regina Pacis’s Secondary School dormitory, Nkar on the scatting or scathing critiques or sardonic appraisals of what some Nsonites have invented, let us safely call it modified or imitated, an helicopter. 

What I saw from sundry comments was that they were using a sledge hammer to crush a home-born-and-bred innocent flea. I recall Christ saying that a prophet is never accepted in his native town and I know where the Nsonites or Nso’ or Banszos or Ngonsonians are coming from. Let me digress from the hackneyed place name Nso.  

By simply browsing, they are going to try to crush my budding pen with an anvil manufactured in Germany with a computer designed on a drawing board in the USA and manufactured in China.  Where are the raw materials from?  The raw materials are imported from Africa, with the words they have copied from King James’ Bible and the Alphabet that the Romans invented spurred by the Greek, and the Greek got the idea from the Egyptians.  Then who were the Egyptians? They will listen open-mouthed that there was a Fai (Fay) Nso’ waxing strongly in the land of the Pharaohs before the builders of the pyramids and that the Phoenix’s sphinx was defaced to deny the Nso their place in Egyptian historiography. By pyramids, I do not mean the natural plugs, pyramids of Djottin as one approaches it from Bum or Din, but those built by human hands in the present perpetually complaining Egypt.  

By pushing our pens as our way of indicating that we were/ are present on the forum and by parroting where we are not experts or even neophytes in those fields for accolade many yearn for on Facebook, we contribute nothing. Instead we waste our time and those of others. Perhaps we better program our computer to dish out aphorism every day and wag our tails as some of us have been doing and asking if at all there was something wrong in plagiarizing and presenting to our instructors for credits? After all, no one complains until hitherto. Perhaps they should dwell on Ngonsonian wise sayings and they will be saving them from alien cultural deluge and erosion.  Justly, they should levy their criticisms on the corrupt bullying regime that has sat on them for 52 years to toe their lines. We mean the one that send bumptious bands of gulags after them the moment they show their heads above their sea of corruption.

Ideally, industrial and even artistic copying and modifying of products, call it intellectual property, if acknowledged by the copyists should be encouraged by a good regime and people and not hushed to be belayed, let me call it bully-bellied. 

 

Who are the original builders of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) most of you drive daily? The American who got it from the Europeans and modified? Can you halt the Japanese and others from manufacturing Toyota, Kia, Mazda, Nissan, 4x4 SUVs etc. because they are not strictly speaking their inventions?

 What I saw and read of the poor budding artists that engendered this parley was public bullying that has killed many a soft hearted people, particularly at elementary schools where innate minds are being moulded to stand adroitly on their feet. Remember that those imitators you frown at could be geniuses your criticism is helping to suppress for no tangible reasons. What do you gain? Where is your alternative invention or clone? The wise saying in Lamnso is that “when you do not go to plough your neighbour’s farm you go to plough yours,” (Wo ten kwa wir adu wo).

This debate stemmed from modifying or imitating a gyro plane with local materials (not fixed wings plane) by some fellows two hundred meters to the south of Tobin Grand Roundabout en route to the Njavnyuy Motor Park. I personally examined this unique innovation with admiration and wondered if they could not have bought a toy type from the Future Shop or Radio Shark and immolate it. I ventured nearer and posed a question to the builders and none of them answered. I presumed they were afraid as they did not know if I were a friend or foe.  I did not know what they were building that for but wished them good luck and departed.

Plate 1: The route to industrialization is long, arduous, and trudging it requires patience and stony determination:  A close-up gyro plane under construction at Tobin, Kumbo.

At the height of this debate, I recalled my good old days at CCAST Bambili, the then Eton of Southern Cameroons, call it West Cameroon State, West Africa when I told some chemistry and physics science students that I was to build a fixed wing plane using a recycled motor engine. What?  One of them became agitated and told me was that it could quench in midair? My reply was that gliders that had no engines did fly and they were not dangerous provided one had got aviation flying license. Men have been gliding with gliders without engines and landing safely. Gliding is done daily from cliffs in Europe. We cannot go far as some visitors from Europe have glided from Up-Station at Bamenda and landed at the Commercial Avenue downtown. I see this being done in the future from Mount Yav or above Kongir hamlet and gliders landing at the Squares or Shissong (Mission Station). What was necessary was doing it properly following the physical or aviation rules.  

What I was thinking of was not an invention but copying what others have been doing and still doing in their garages in developed countries including Brazil and India. Most inventions start in the back yards, garages or kitchens tables of individuals. Some of us think that the USA industries mushroomed to where they are today overnight. Before the 1950s in the States if you wanted to have a seaworthy catamaran or even a wheelbarrow for your garden, you had to build them in your backyard or garage yourself. They were not mass-produced as we see cars on the assembly lines today. We have plane-lets now that are designed to run like cars and can take up to beat traffic congestion in urban areas. This is not a James Bond daring act but something in extant.  Unlike other jalopies, these can fold their wings and run on the roads and be parked in garages. A time is coming where your driving licences may be a combination of aviation and automobile licences. Most of you will fly from Victoria to Bamenda or Kumbo to We and land on your courtyard instead of toiling on potholed roads, where you give countless bribes to highway-men-in-uniforms before you progress for hours. Those potbellied-bribe-takers will have to fly after you and your passengers in the skies.

You will be hearing for the first time from me that during the days when the Cameroun Republic nationalists were fighting the French and Ahmadou Ahidjo’s troops in the bushes and jungles, the nationalists who were known as maquis or UPC terrorists were already using hovercrafts in Cameroun. What became of those machines that glided without noise over grass and left no marks for the French and Ahidjo’s men to follow to their hidings? These were hovercrafts that died the moment the so-called terrorists were defeated. The question is if they were locally built or imported. Were they some UFOs that came to help the so-called terrorists?  I am certain that what the Tobin neophytes have been toying on is not geared towards any wars as there may be apprehension of some naïve onlookers. 

As a youngling, I was ambitious and curious. Being unable to get a bicycle not to talk of bicycle motors many of you ride without mastering the Highway Code today, I went to our thicket, cut down a tree and built myself a wooden bicycle.  It literally glided along dirt roads. If my friends wanted to ride, they had to push me around for a good distance and they were compensated for their good work by riding a few steps on it. Again I showed my ingenuity whence our homestead was being built with sun-dried bricks for the first time.  We had to carry them from the molding pit to the building foundation. A strong lad of my age of eleven could only carry two comfortably. Once more I entered the forest with a machete and an adze and emerged with a wooden wheelbarrow that was able to carry six at one go. It was not long before I saw elders at home looking at me in admiration. My age mate borrowed it from me to ferry bricks to the building site. With the pressure of school, I sold my beloved scooter as you will call it today and had money to buy my stationery. From my two toys, I believed that it was possible with salvaged materials for us to build everything we wanted instead of waiting to buy them from Nigeria or France as was the case in my days.  There was no invention in my part. I copied and modified all that were already there. I would not have budged had anyone of you criticized me. That is my stony determination many have not cultivated.

While traveling around, I met another man who told me that at Bekom, he was able to make himself grass shoes he wore to school. I was puzzled and envisaged how that was possible. At least it saved him from the frost in the morning during dry season. He completed his elementary school and was employed to drive one of our Prime Ministers, Hon. Solomon Tandem Muna. I bet if there were Nso critics, this driver would have thrown away his grass shoes and walked barefooted to make them happy. I remembered bullies at STS, Kumbo laughing at one of the students for wearing second-hand winter boots to school. He literally abandoned them and walked barefooted rather than be mocked.  Bullies can do wonders. That is a different story. Walking barefooted on laterite or eroded or decomposed granite was painful. I am talking from personal experience.  

I am pretty certain that if some of our readers were at my hamlet, they would have criticized me for endeavoring to come out with something that could help reduce the weight from our brows. On this, may I say that all of you readers are supposed to invent five items in your lifetime that could help man in his mundane tasks?  How can we make our contributions with our sort of debilitating attitude?  Every one of us is supposed to invent or discover five beneficial things in this world. If that were the case, we would multiply five by some three thousands of you that read this message and the world will be a better place.

  

My story of imitation has not ended.  One day I came home to tell my parents and kin who were aged that I had studied topographic survey. One of them told me that it was a wrong choice. Why? It was because I had digressed from something that was natural in me to pursue others. Well, they had forgotten that I was versatile, ambidextrous too and could axe any kind of wood that fell before me.

Plate 2: Still from Bui (Ngonsonia), now at Jakiri (Kifir): Is this an innovation or copying from the Japanese? What can we do to help these panel beaters? Are these young men embracing that technology that will lead them to the land of glory?

Some readers are wet blankets in the house and would not hesitate to take an invented toy of a child and put in a pit latrine as a waste of time and efforts. For heaven’s sake, they are models. If they see a budding mademoiselle striving to bring up her records her endeavors are shredded into pieces.  No one could have done that to the natural incomparable nightingale, (leng in Lamnso), Lady Wiyba Din or could they do that to Richard King, our star?  To me, some criticisms are nonconstructive, unchristian, and uncivilized blind jealousies. Some individuals who happen to be with the government of the day slam these primitive inventors with patang.

I recall a rustic Ngosonian barber who left his lucrative job in Gabon to come home to Dzekwa to give a helping hand to his parents and family. They slammed him with 30,000 frs per annum. To those of you foreigners in Cameroon Republic, that is nothing.  To a man who lives on a dollar a day, that is 500 frs, CFA, (those French relics in the armpit of Africa), it is unbearable. He told me that after paying the perpetually blinking and intermittent electricity and the hut bills where he was operating, he was unable to buy four imperial gallons or a tin of corn flour to feed his family. He was wondering if the government of the day was insane or all that insensitive. 

There was another chap from Viyar, (what you used to call Nsungli) who came out with a radio. You cannot believe it. The gendarmes went after this chap and he gave up the idea of pursuing his hobby. Those gendarmes were inexperienced miscreants and should be deplored. They ever fear any electrical device as likely to be used for communication. A simple walkie-talkie in the days of Ahidjo and the early days of Paul Biya, the autocratic life president of Cameroon Republic (that had its independence on January 1^st 1960) was looked upon suspiciously by security men. They should know that in the USA, Europe and a good number of developed countries, people are at liberty to build anything in their homes. There are factories where you can buy parts of what you want and to build without inhibition like door and window welders that litter our roadsides. Children are encouraged by their parents or they buy those parts and supervise their children building them. There are companies that would buy and patent for you what you have invented. Many come on TV as millionaires because of their kitchen inventions. They will encourage you and even offer you hefty sums of money to come out with more.  Others buy parts of computers, assemble and program them to perform the tasks they want.

The Chinese are alleged to want to set up a truck assembly plant at Bamenda but the government of the day with its deliberate impoverishment of those who do not vote for it put wedges on their way.  Why are they on their way when their donuts (pufpufs) are sweeter and better than those produced by the Ewondos and Dualans? Are the very Chinese not building for you first class hospitals in your capital cities? Are they not breaking mountains as they build the Ekok-Bamenda highway? Is the West Cameroon highway one a thousandth of what the Chinese are building?  Are they not building dams to produce your hydroelectricity? With this attitude, some of these inventors as Facebook, McPhee, Microsoft, TOMTOM, portable GPS, and many more cannot come out of our society. Why? We are defeated before we even venture out to fight our enemy!

We underestimate what we can do and are buried by our supposed-to-be inferiority. We are not inferior.  As with determination, there is nothing that can be manufactured in the West that you cannot manufacture in Ngonsonia! Go to the budding India and see what poor people with a modicum of knowhow are fabricating in their backyards. Why go far? Go to Onitsha or Ghana and see how liberty is pushed poorer people to be inventive and resourceful. Are we going to sit on the bandwagon and watch others gallivant in the forefront?  If so, for how long?

Even with the grasses of the Grassfields, uncountable things could be produced out of them that are yet to be produced. You will not believe what Rhodesians, now Zimbabweans manufactured from their meager resources when Ian Smith, declared the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) in 1964. The country was sealed off and nothing could go in or come out but they survived.  How? They tried everything to be self-sufficient and did stand against the economic strangling might of the rest of the world. They tried coal liquefaction to produce gasoline to run their cars. If a vehicle was twenty years old, they rebuilt it with locally made materials and it was brand-new.  They used corn stalks and other grasses to make their newsprints. Tell me what they could not manufacture. They built their rolling stocks, train carriages, you name it.  Their clothing industry blossomed and today in spite of the stubbornness of Robert Mugabe to keep on with socialism, their materials are superior to anything you will have in the Cameroon CICAM.  They learned to produce methane from corn which you have in abundance in Ngonsonia (Nso).  In fact, many industries sprung up and some were against opening up for the competition with the rest of the world as before the UDI.  As one of you rightly put it, neophytes should be encouraged as the man building a plane behind his parents’ backyard in Uganda. You know what agent provocateurs or kulaks that have infiltrated Shuundzev fear,… that they could be used for war purposes and that is an uncalled-for alarum. 

You will remember that if someone had killed the ideas of the Wrights brothers in the USA, we might not have been benefitting from the supersonic air plane flights we are having today. If the churches had not stop witch-hunting inventors or scientists we might still have been thinking as some of our readers. Today we could fill in the Encyclopaedia Britannica or Wikipedia or Larouse with inventions that are helping us. Some were copied by us from animals, insects, and nature.  It is for this reason that if you have anything lurking in your head you should write it or let it spring out. You may not be put off by hollow-pen-pushing critiques that are out to destroy and not to construct. They remind me of the days of Stalin in the USSR where any slightest digression from the norm was considered security risks and the thinkers were taken for torture to confession and then incarcerated in the Gulag Archipelago or Lubyanka.  

Scathing criticism is debilitating and not progressive. It is like black magic and witch doctors that still kill progress in Nsoland, my Ngonsonia. Owing to the way we are seeing and interpreting things some of us remain door mats and foot carpets for others. You will remember that an African who invents or modify a gyro plane as our friends at Tobin will succeed as they are doing it for African milieus. It is design by Africans for Africans and that is why it is likely to succeed. Why do many ideas and inventions developed in the West and East not succeed in Africa that is in the centre? It is because they are square pegs being forced into round holes that are Africans.  Those of you purporting to be sages should think properly if not your gullibility will continue to drag Africa behind the industrial bandwagon it is already doing in the world. 

Let us not dwell only on the cottage industry, music by the lady of the soil and tin plated helicopter that have generated so much euphoria, much ado about nothing. Lately, some Yoruba scholars are skinning the renounced writer Professor Chinua Achebe, (my mentor who is autographing his book for me in the frontispiece of my blob) alive for his bibliographical book: There was a Country.  Achebe stated that Chief Abafeme Awolowo who died some twenty-five years ago was responsible for the massacre of Biafrans in the 1967-1972 Nigerian internecine civil wars. Instead of the readers looking at 99% of facts that Achebe had written, and his contribution in African literature, they are concentrating on the 1% of what they consider the badness of the book in their attempt to exonerate Awolowo. Good to know that Achebe is a seasoned man and will not give in. How many of you studying engineering plan to support the man building a tin helicopter? How many will support the building of a technical university in your hometown of Kumbo that was the first in the region to have a Western type of school and hospital (1912)? I am thinking here of the German Dehonian Fathers who were here in 1912-1915. Kumbo has probably the best climate, temperate in the Cameroon that is conducive for studies and mosquito free.

Do you know too that there are some of you who openly criticise Professor Bernard Fonlon who brought in pipe borne water to Kumbo town, thanks to PM Pierre Eliot Trudeau of Canada that he only sent his relatives overseas?  Have we ever seen a play without fault? If we have to wait to do it in such a way that there was no fault in it, we will never ever get down starting it. Is this not a paraphrase of Fonlon your fellow country erudite?

Furthermore, General Yacubu Gowon of Nigeria is supposed to state that when there was massive starvation in Biafra he asked Lt. Ademeawu Ojukwu to allow him bring in food and medicine but he refused. Achebe is kind for Herald Wilson the UK PM in the 1960s and even the Soviet who sided with the Federal government to subjugate the Bafrans, should be held accountable too as they were in the position to halt that war but they did not. It should be pointed out that the French Doctors without Frontiers who were out to help Biafra could ferry in medical supplies from Gabon to Biafra. Their Doctors without Borders could have done more but the Federal Government of Nigeria did not give them sanction. I recall too that when the Germans were dying in droves, the Russians asked them to if they could bring in food. They turned down such a ruse. Who is bamboozling who here?  Famine had been used in many parts of Africa as a war weapon and many still remember the famine in Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Miriam, the cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone are still vivid in some of our memories. Do we doubt it that Yacubu Gawon and his entourage took advantage of this weapon?

Now, Shuundzevites look at the modicum of goodness in the invention or copied helicopter and bury your unsubstantiated critiques. Where are your inventions dear country men and women? If all of you are working hard on copying the Americans, Chinese and Japanese, you will not even have time to doodle not to talk of public bullying of your fellow gyro plane builder and the singing mademoiselle.

Dr. Viban. Viban Ngo.