I will start my story all over. Why? Simply because, I have gone astray, but I think it was worth it, and you won’t get angry or even get lost. Look, within some nationalities in Cameroon, women are heads or command a lot of power and males or the husbands have limited roles. Their roles are confined to working hard and feed their respective families and defend their families from human and animal attacks. Hence I think that, even though we are Christians and are living in the world ruled by the style of White men, whenever there was a problem in our family; my father directed his anger not at us, but toward my or our mother. As far as we were concern, things had not changed as our ancestors had decided. We were walking on the tightrope that needed us to be excellent Christians, while also doing all we could not to renege on our ancestral traditions, especially as concerns the roles of males in the family structure. My or our father, also had another problem, he never knew our ages and whenever he took us to the hospital and whenever the nurse or the medical doctor asked him our ages, he told the nurse or the medical doctor that, if he/she could permit him, he can go home and ask our ages to our mother.
That was why, our mother made us to study by heart, the day, time, month and year that we were born, all this in an effort to spare my father of the regular disgrace. My mother considered that, it was a disgrace for a man not to know when his children were born. But my father did not take it that way, for he thought that, the knowing of ages and date/year of birth, were one of those things that, only women had the responsibility to know. My mother or our mother considered my father’s inability to know when we were born a disgrace. I like and love my father because; he is honest and very proud of my mother. My father always told me and my younger brothers and sisters or any other person, he saw or met that; my or our mother was behind his success. And it was true, for our mother was the accountant general and adviser of our father. Our mother was an extraordinary woman, a rare bird or the kind of women that Cameroon has almost lost today. My or our mother did everything with love and put us at the centre of her life.
I had always and will continue to love my or our mother because; she showed extraordinary love and affection toward us and toward our father. The strong affection and love that I have for my mother, I don’t think I can have same toward my wife. But I also think that, the love of a son toward her mother is a mathematical equation that is constant, for your mother will never in any circumstances let you down, but your wife can. There are many reasons why I love our mother besides the little I have mentioned above. But the first reason is that, the love that I have for my mother was nursed and fashioned out by my father. For how can’t I love my mother when my father or our father, spends time singing her praise? Because my or our father was full of praise toward our mother, some of his friends claimed that, our father must have been charmed mythically by our mother.
They said this because, there is a widely held notion in Cameroon and that, some people from the Nkam division and from Yabassi sub division in particular have help cultivate and nurse, which holds that, people from the Nkam were excellent mystics. It was a baseless claim and also a ruse sustained by people from the Nkam division, in order to gain influence wherever they go in Cameroon. Our mother’s only secret in the influence that she wielded over our father was that, she was honest and was also an excellent Christian. And because our father knew the secret, he confided to me that, I should pray God to give me an extraordinary woman who will be in the mould of our mother. The second thing and advice that our father put in my head was that, as a Christian, I must also married a God fearing Christian girl and the third recommendation from my father or our father was that, I must not hurry up in life.
I must observe the way any Christian girl I love dresses up and the kind of papers she read. My father also warned me not to read popular left leaning newspapers, for they are vehicles of immoralities. And all the advice I got from my or our father, made me to be different from my friends and I also think, it will also create me problems in our current world, where Christians and Christian values are not accepted. The way my father fashioned me out, made my relationship with girls frosty, for they considered me to be arrogant and insensitive.
And my male friends, especially those of my age, considered me boring and some even called me names. As I grew up, I also found out that, things were difficult with my colleagues at my work place and the only places, were I found solace and comfort were in my house, the Christian congregation or through writing, blogging, reading newspapers and the bible. Some times, my comfort came from Tennis courts and when I had my children, they became my other sources of comforts.
I considered all the difficulties that I went through as persecution and the price that, Christians had to pay in order to live in this devilish world of ours. More so, deep in my mind, I knew I was the first born and had the immense responsibility to be exemplary. I never wanted to give any opportunity to any of my younger ones to err under the guise that they copied of my wrong steps. Anyway, the rigid and conservative way that I was brought up and the code of conduct that my father gave me made me to have the kind of woman that, I have always wanted. She responded word for word to my father’s recommendations for a good wife and above all, she was at the image of my mother. This is too much already, I have presented myself to you and I am yet to tell you the story of Risdoh. In fact all what I am telling was not what I wanted to. But as you already know, and I am repeating it, this is all about the story of Risdoh. But before I bring you the story of Risdoh proper, I want to tell you a different short story again. I promise that, after this short story is over, I will narrate the life of Risdoh. As you now know, I am a Christian.
I was born a Christian and will die a Christian and my family are Christians. My grand parents were also Christians, but my great grand parents were not Christians. And I really do pity them, for I don’t how their own fate with God is. Are they in the good books of God? Where are they? Are they in hell or in heaven? But does hell or heaven do even exist? Will they be resurrected when God’s kingdom comes? I don’t really have any answers to all those or these questions. But one thing is certain, even though I don’t know my great grand parents, I love them and since God is a loving God, he must certainly have a plan for my late great grand parents. My Great grand parents were god’s worshippers, but most painful of all is that, their god was a false one. Their God I am very sure was made up out of a cocktail of several objects and completed with the inevitable works of carvings called mask.
And saddest of all was that, those things and objects that my great grand parents’ worshiped could not even help them in case they confronted problems, as they abound in the world. Most often, it is certain that, it was our own God, that is, the God of those us who Christians, who came to the aide of my late great grand parents. And worst, after our Christian God has helped my great grand parents, instead of thanking him, they will thank their gods made out of objects, courtesy ritualistic sacrifices. Because of the ungratefulness of my great grand parents, our God, that is the God of those of us who are Christians but who reside in heaven, will be very angry. And to manifest his anger, our Christian God will allow many bad things to happen to my great grand parents. But since my great grand parents could not understand the source of the entire malediction which befell on them, they never knew what to do to right their wrongs.
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