The head

After a lot of contemplations on how to start this story of mine, that, most of all, I want to share with you; I still didn’t have a head for it. What is a head? Or what has a head got to do with a story? Some of you may have asked. And if you have asked such a question, then, I will conclude that, you are not a Southern Cameroonian. Ah, Southern Cameroon doesn’t exist, for the wise men and women at Turtle bay New York, which is the seat of the monster called the United Nations Organisation (UN), albeit with the complicities of Southern Cameroonian leaders and the British, decided to deny us an independent homeland. Now, I don’t want to write about politics, for when you start it never ends. But just know that, Southern Cameroons doesn’t exist. She died on the 1^st of October 1961. But since she was very important to our fathers and now to some us, I will tell you about it at some point.

In our Southern Cameroonian English, well, in our English-speaking Cameroonian English region, since Southern Cameroons in now part of greater Cameroons, whenever one wants to tell a story, the story must be complete. That is, it must have a head, body and the feet. In your Standard English or that which was brought and taught to our parents, who in turn pass it down to us, a story is ruled complete only if it has the introduction, the body and the conclusion. But since we are independent, I don’t always want to speak English or write it according to the British instructions; I received from my father then at school. But are we really independent? When in 1961, we or British Cameroon’s was to gain her independence by either reunifying with French Cameroon or integrating with Nigeria? Well, it is beyond me, I promised not to come to this political stuff at this stage of this story.

Why was I mentioning about the absence of a head to my story that I want to share with you? It is simply because in my country, Cameroon, when you want to tell a story, it must have all the three important parts of a human being. That is the head, the body and the feet. But we are not rigid, with story tellers in English-speaking Cameroon. That is, your story must not always start from the head to the foot. It can start as you want or have only one part. But you must know that, a human being that is not complete must have either committed a crime or his parents did not respect the traditions, hence God decided to strike them and their offspring. This simply means that, in case a story teller has a story that is incomplete and still wants by all courses to share it, the people will accept, but the story teller will have to pay. He/she, yes, women, always have nice stories to tell, especially when they are happy or if she is in love.

I was talking about payment for an incomplete story. The payment is at least 10 litres of palm wine. Our Palm wine is like your Red wine gotten from grapes planted in your vineyards. But ours in Cameroon is gotten from palm trees that grow in the wild in bushes. Palm wine is white and sugary, when young or newly harvested or newly tapped by a man called a Palm wine taper. But Palm wine turns sour or bitter as it gets older. Some people like it when it is bitter because it has fermented and the level of alcohol has grown or developed. Well palm wine is just like human beings. When we are young, we are always sweet and happy, but as we grow older, we become wicked and always find faults in everything we see.

The litre of palm wine is not a punishment but a reward to all those who laboured to listen to your incomplete story. However, if your story is complete. That is, it had the head, the body and the feet, you become an instant hero. He/she will get drunk of all the palm wine he/she will be given by the audience. If the story teller is a man, he will have many parents proposing their daughters for marriage and some married women making advances. And if the story teller is a woman, she will have many boys and men trooping to her like bees on the hive.