by B. Nyamnjoh
Titles by Langaa RPCIG
Francis B Nyamnjoh
Stories from Abakwa
Mind Searching
The Disillusioned African
The Convert
Souls Forgotten
Married But Available
Dibussi Tande
No Turning Back. Poems of Freedom 1990-1993
Kangsen Feka Wakai
Fragmented Melodies
Ntemfac Ofege
Namondo. Child of the Water Spirits
Hot Water for the Famous Seven
Emmanuel Fru Doh
Not Yet Damascus
The Fire Within
Thomas Jing
Tale of an African Woman
Peter Wuteh Vakunta
Grassfields Stories from Cameroon
Green Rape: Poetry for the Environment
Majunga Tok: Poems in Pidgin English
Cry My Beloved Africa
Ba'bila Mutia
Coils of Mortal Flesh
Kehbuma Langmia
Titabet and the Takumbeng
Victor Elame Musinga & Roselyne M. Jua
The Barn
The Tragedy of Mr. No Balance
Ngessimo Mathe Mutaka
Building Capacity: Using TEFL and African
languages as development-oriented literacy tools
Milton Krieger
Cameroon's Social Democratic Front: Its History
and Prospects as an Opposition Political party,
1990-2011
Sammy Oke Akombi
The Raped Amulet
The Woman Who Ate Python & Other Stories
Beware the Drives: Book of Verse
Susan Nkwentie Nde
Precipice
Francis B Nyamnjoh & Richard Fonteh
Akum
The Cameroon GCE Crisis: A Test of
Anglophone Solidarity
Joyce Ashuntantang & Dibussi Tande
Their Champagne Party Will End! Poems in
Honor of Bate Besong
Rosemary Ekosso
The House of Falling Women
Peterkins Manyong
God the Politician
John Percival
The 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite: Choice or
Betrayal
Albert Azeyeh
Reussite Scolaire, Faillite Sociale: Généalogie
mentale de la crise de l’Afrique Noire
Francophone
Aloysius Ajab Amin & Jean-Luc Dubois
Croissance et Developpement Au Cameroun:
D´une croissance équilibrée à un developpement
éequitable
Luke Enendu & Babson Ajibade
Masquerade Traditions
Carlson Anyangwe
Imperialistic Politics in Cameroun:
Resistance & the Inception of the Restoration of
the Statehood of Southern Cameroons
Bill F. Ndi
K`Cracy, Trees in the Storm and Other Poems
Kathryn Toure, Therese Mungah Shalo
Tchombe & Thierry Karsenti
ICT & Changing Mindsets in Education
Excel Tse Chinepoh & Ntemfac A.N. Ofege
The Adventures of Chimangwe
Alobwed’Epie
The Day God Blinked
Married But Available
Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Publisher:
Langaa RPCIG
(Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group)
P.O. Box 902 Mankon
Bamenda
North West Province
Cameroon
[email protected]
www.langaapublisher.com
Distributed outside N. America by African Books Collective
[email protected]
www.africanbookscollective.com
Distributed in N. America by Michigan State University Press
[email protected]
www.msupress.msu.edu
ISBN:9956-558-27-3
© Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2009
First published 2009
DISCLAIMER
All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Langaa RPCIG.
To all those who contribute knowingly and unknowingly…
Contents
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31
1
Lilly Loveless sat staring at her Gmail inbox, on a cold winter morning in Muzunguland. Unlike other days, she had come in earliest of all the postgraduate students at the Muzunguland African Studies Institute at Bruhlville, because she was expecting an urgent email. Her co-supervisor in Livingstonetown had promised her the contact details of an African colleague at the University of Mimbo where she was seeking affiliation to do fieldwork for her PhD on ‘Sex, Power and Consumerism in Africa.’ She was excited and relieved, now that her research proposal had been successfully defended and the way cleared for her to undertake her second African visit. The Ethics Committee had given her a tough time and asked grilling questions about the dangers of voyeurism posed by her proposed study, but she eventually sailed through reassuringly.
Funding had been secured from the Ministry of Cooperation, the Royal Aids Foundation and the Michel Foucault Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Power. Riding high on her accomplishments and bubbling with prospects, Lilly Loveless was set to go.
All she needed was a letter of affiliation: these famous letters without which, so she had been told, Muzungulanders find it impossible to penetrate the bureaucracies of African ministries of research. ‘No permit, no research’, that’s the maxim. Without a letter of affiliation she couldn’t even aspire to get a visa from the Embassy of Mimboland, the country tied to the grants she had received. She had tried persuading the consular officer. This might have worked, had she not, most regrettably, boasted that she was after all injecting millions of Mim dollars into the struggling Mimbo economy, so “Why all the fuss?” Her attitude seemed to have toughened the resolve of the consular officer, who came short of screaming: “Forget your bloody money, arrogant…!” Now she knew only a letter of affiliation from Dustbin’s collaborator at the University of Mimbo, bearing all the stamps and seals of approval, could deliver her visa.
She recalled reading, in Nigel Barley’s Innocent Anthropologist, of similar experiences the author had had with the embassy of another African country, not too dissimilar to Mimboland. She stood up and looked through her bookshelf for the book, opened the relevant page, which she had dogeared from her undergraduate Anthropology years and read.
How similar in their indifference to progress African countries are! And how insensitive to the need to protect even their own self-interest! To discourage potential visitors with such attitudes of callous indifference was worse than shooting oneself in the foot. Little had changed for the better, much for the worse.
Her experience of Africa was limited though, very limited. Apart from the masses of books she had read, books written mostly by Muzungulanders and by Africans whose knowledge of their continent was like a river humbled by the dry season, Lilly Loveless had had only a short two-week holiday experience of the lovely beaches o
f Sunsandland, one of the most exotic, exciting wonders of the tropics, dreams of which have kept many a Muzungulander going.
The email eventually came through. Lilly Loveless clicked and read:
Dear Lilly, the contact details of my Mimboland colleague whom I insist you meet as he has similar research interest to yours are:
Dr Wiseman Lovemore
Department of Social Work
University of Mimbo, Mimboland
Email: [email protected]
Dr Wiseman Lovemore is a fascinating and accommodating fellow whom I am sure you will like. He isn’t exactly international in terms of Google, but he is an intelligent man with solid convictions. I cannot locate his cell number, but his email address should suffice. Just email him your travel details, and if you are lucky and he checks his mail, which unfortunately he doesn’t do often, he would most certainly go to fetch you at the airport. If you miss him for whatever reason, simply make your way to the university campus upon arrival – some 40 to 50 minutes away by taxi, in Puttkamerstown. Ask the first person you meet, and you should be taken to the Department of Social Work where Lovemore is as solid as an oak and the easiest person to find.
Safe trip and enjoy your fieldwork.
Best
Dustbin
Lilly Loveless started typing immediately.
Dear Dr Wiseman Lovemore,
My name is Lilly Loveless. I am a student reading Social Geography at the Muzunguland African Studies Institute, Bruhlville. I am writing to you about the research I’d like to carry out for my PhD over the next six months in Mimboland. I am writing courtesy of Professor Dustbin Olala, who has pressed me to contact you. Given your expertise on the subject I’d like to work on, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts now and once I am on the ground. In a nutshell, I shall be investigating changing sexuality and power relations occasioned by growing obsession with material possessions and the desire to consume Muzungu products in a context of screaming poverty.
I am very interested in your work, which, I must admit, I haven’t read but which your friend, my co-supervisor Professor Dustbin, thinks very highly of. The most recent thing by an African that I have read on this theme is the paper: ‘Fishing in Troubled Waters: Disquettes and Thiofs in Dakar’. I would like to know what you think of this paper, which fascinated me, although the author writes as if African women are irredeemably consumerist and helplessly easy to manipulate by men of wealth and power. I can’t say whether or not the situation he paints is real and widespread, but I could bring a copy of the paper along for you, if your library does not subscribe to Africa, the journal in which it was published. Indeed, it would be a huge honour if we could meet up to discuss the topic as soon as I arrive…
She was full of questions. First, she urged and pleaded with him to send her an urgent letter of affiliation, duly signed by the Vice Chancellor of the university. Failure of which, the letter must be signed by the Dean. She also had questions about where to stay.
“Sorry to bombard you with all these questions,” she wrote, “but as I am sure you can understand, I would like to do as much groundwork as possible before I get out there. Finding accommodation is a critical part of this. I would really appreciate it if you could be so kind to make necessary arrangements for me in this regard as soon as possible because I am very worried about having adequate accommodation.”
She equally wanted to know if Dr Wiseman Lovemore knew of any NGOs “that have sexuality, consumerism, empowerment and gender transformation as particular goals,” that she could contact. “I would ideally like to present case studies on two or more such organizations, in order to gain a critical understanding of the relative success and influence of non-state actors with the phenomenon.”
She concluded her email with, “I cannot thank you enough. I look forward to hearing from you soon,” signed it off, and clicked ‘Send’.
Dr Wiseman Lovemore replied sooner than Lilly Loveless had feared: “I look forward to welcoming you to Mimboland, although I’m unable to think up possible accommodation for you right now.”
In truth, he didn’t even want to try. Still fresh was a recent experience with another female Muzungulander student who arrived only to accuse a colleague, who had bent over backwards to accommodate a similar request, of having acted dishonestly by conniving to stick her into an expensive mildewed “rat hole.”
So he wrote: “If I find nothing before your arrival, here are the names and prices of a few hotels for you to choose from … It rains round the clock here this time of year, so expect the rooms to be damp and mouldy …”
He was not unaware of the fact that even zero star hotels such as those he had recommended are exceedingly more expensive than living with a family or renting a place, but he simply wouldn’t allow his efforts to be rewarded with ingratitude.
“You could always find more appropriate lodging once on the ground.”
With regard to NGOs he didn’t want to discourage her by saying he lacked faith in them. Instead he said she could easily link herself to one or several on arrival, as “Mimboland is a place where NGOs are formed and deformed on a daily basis”, and “the University of Mimbo has even employed the services of a fulltime money doubler to liaise with mushrooming NGOs that wither away like blighted plants.”
Then he gave her the good news: “Find attached a letter of invitation, not affiliation, signed not by the VC, not by the Dean, but by the HOD. It is the best I can do for you. Hope it works…”
And as a special favour to his friend Professor Dustbin Olala, he offered to meet her at the Sawang International Airport, “if you send me your flight details in time, and if the Internet gods are good humoured. In any case, look out for a man with your name on a placard.”
“Safe trip and he clicked.
The next week for Lilly Loveless was one of hectic preparations for what her mom worriedly termed “Lilly’s impending African misadventure.” In a way, her mom was right to. The first and only time she ventured into Africa for two weeks of vacation, Lilly Loveless came back with a few screws rearranged. Her choice of music had changed overnight into appreciation for wild drumming. She had plaited her lovely curly hair into dozens of little braids. She had practically forgotten her boyfriend of two years. All reasons why her mother would rather she went elsewhere to do her fieldwork.
“Tribal communities are all over the third world, why your fascination with Africa?”
“Mom, you too much,” Lilly Loveless would say, whenever her mother went on and on about the need to rethink her choice.
“And I am right to,” her mom would persist. “Africa is too dangerous for a young woman on her own. See what happened between you and …”
“Africa had nothing to do with it,” Lilly Loveless would interrupt her mom. “The relationship would have ended with or without what happened in Sunsandland.”
Her mother would shut up only to resume yet again, at the next mention of Mimboland. But Lilly Loveless had made up her mind, and there was no turning back.
***
The Air Mimbo flight was hitch free. The few women on the flight with Lilly Loveless were black, elegantly dressed, heavily jewelled, and mostly wore artificial hair grafted into their own hair or as wigs. The majority of Lilly Loveless’s co-passengers however were men, mostly black Africans, with only a handful of whites whom she thought were businesspeople, development agents, international civil servants, or husbands of Mimboland ladies. There were a few Arabs as well, mostly Lebanese – was her guess – if the literature on these parts of Africa was to be believed. And there were Chinese as well, lots of them, of whom the Muzungulander media had become so jittery of late, posing as they do, as the new conquerors of the consumer world. She imagined each of them with ‘Made in China’ stamps in their briefcases, ready to conquer every city and every village in Africa.
Lilly Loveless did not regret her “courageous” decision to fly African. Her initiation into Mimbo ways started just as she had
wished. Already, she had drank three cans of Mimbo-Wanda, the country’s most popular beer with its trendy, pacesetting, football-loving, Internet-crazy, cell phone conscious, vivacious youth, thanks to the friendly stewardess, Yoyette, who was keen on making her feel at home. She attracted Yoyette’s attention while standing at the back of the plane, watching the stewardess make coffee, as she waited for another passenger to finish up in the toilet. In her smart Air Mimbo outfit, Yoyette moved around the small kitchen opening this miniature metal cabinet and closing it securely before turning to open another. Lilly Loveless could not help remarking, “You girls sure do know how to manoeuvre in small spaces.” The stewardess paused, gracefully holding a small coffee cup by its handle, turned, and looked Lilly Loveless up and down, and back up, and said slowly, “We sure do, pretty.” And they bonded instantly.
Lilly Loveless sat next to an elderly man with a fulfilled belly – politician by profession or aspiration. “You’ve got lovely blue eyes and nice curly blonde hair,” the man told her. He kept insisting she must come and study in Nyamandem the capital city instead, because, to his mind, no serious knowledge ever comes from the periphery, not to mention a rat hole like Puttkamerstown. “Nothing that matters happens in backyards,” he said repeatedly, licking his lips as if he had smeared them with honey. “Truth hails from the centre, falsehood from the margins,” he claimed, and with the fullness of his eyes, he protruded onto her face, “That you should know, being from the mother of all centres.” What made her slightly uncomfortable was the way he splashed his sneezes and coughs as if everyone around him wanted his showers of blessings.
On her other side, at the window, sat a thin light-skinned black woman in a colourful lacy top that exposed her midriff, tight-fitting jeans, and big gold loop earrings. Her straightened shoulder length hair with waves almost overwhelmed her small face but with stunning effect. Before takeoff, she worked frantically on her laptop. Then she spoke on her cell phone in a rapid stream alternating between languages and interspersed with “Bisous, bisous.” Later, over a meal, Lilly learned she had just completed a degree in reproductive health in Muzunguland where her mother was originally from, and was now returning home to Mimboland to take up a post to train in HIV/AIDS prevention. When Lilly asked her how she lived her ‘métissage’ the woman replied that these days, even if it doesn’t show in the skin we are all mixed somehow.