THE NSO METAPHOR OF R€€MI SHIIV AND CANONIZATION
“A yii reemi shiiv bo yi beemi”
Presented in Pordenone, Italy;
during
the Nso Family Union (NFU)
at the Launching of his book
WHY BERNARD FONLON MATTERS:
The Holiness of an Embattled African
By Fr. Gerald Jumbam Nyuykongmo
It was a rare strange honor, some two years
ago, to absorb myself in the challenging yet entertaining mission of writing
the chapters of this work, Why Bernard
Fonlon Matters: the Holiness of an Embattled African. It meant plunging
into the wellsprings of the life of the phenomenal Fonlon.
This book Why
Bernard Fonlon Matters is my personal, somewhat intimate story about the
holiness of a man. It is not the admiration of Fonlon’s wonderful virtues,
still less is it the extraordinary beauty of his creative output and literary
grace that spurred me to give this message of his holiness and possible
ecclesiastic canonization. He had all these and other such gifts, but it is
above all because truth was for him the one thing in the world to live for and
to die for.
About truth he was the embodiment of the Nso
proverbial worshipping at the shrine of truth:
· Suuyru yo yi bvey kimbvey ba fan kinton
· Suuyru wuna kimbo’ti ki yo shiiy lav e mo'on.
What sometimes listeners like to hear from an
author when his book is being launched is to know the influences that prompted
the author. For me there are three reasons why I wrote Why Bernard Fonlon Matters. The first is that, from my own angle of
familiarity, I had a devouring appetite to articulate the story of the hero
of my youth, Bernard Fonlon. The second is that I had inklings of a unique
story, which only Gerald Jumbam could do it, waiting to come out. And the third
reason which I learned in the process of writing this book, is that I
considered the whole project worth the considerable trouble – I sometimes call
it a death sentence on me to write a work on Fonlon. So with such terms of
imprisonment to write this work, I did everything to stomach every trial or
insult to bring this work to completion.
What I can say at the beginning, and which I
abundantly examine in my book, is that Prof Bernard Fonlon was a distinguished
man of letters, an eminent faithful of the Christian religion, an erudite apologist
for African dignity, and an accomplished statesman. He was known most of all
for his simplicity and holiness of life, the result of which has been the
recent clamor for his beatification. Prof. Fonlon was never one to condemn,
always one to speak well about the other. His passion for truth and his
deportment as an energetic prophet of integrity flowed out of who he was as an
individual - a rooted, saintly, brilliant, faultlessly-composed, exceedingly
handsome and reliable - a man who never
expounded a word that he didn’t first do.
Bernard Fonlon insisted on moral beauty as a
human calling. He had a very nso-like, lifelong fascination with the inner
human being and what he called “the invisible world,” constantly interlinking
with what we can know and see. Any sincere writer shrinks back with disgust
from idolization as from a deadly disease, runs away from the maddening
alleluias of fans as from a mad rampaging bull. Fonlon preached this
self-effacing principle in his The
Geniune Intellectual and in Random
Leaves from my Diary. These are the things I have highlighted and put flesh
to, presenting it from my own existential personal angle.
At the initial stage it was frightening to
write on Fonlon. We literally adored the figure of this man. How could one ever
attempt or even think of writing about such an intellectual giant, such a moral
colossus. I render immense thanks to Prof Verkijika Fanso who reassured me when
the times were grim, for I was characteristically electrified by that
rare gem of scholarship in our land Prof
Verkijika Fanso who saw in my work, as he said, the Bernard Fonlon they
grew with, and knew.
“Thank you” said Dr Fanso among others words, “ thank you, for this wonderful memorial …to
Fonlon; thank you for all the chapters (installments) on this holy man from our
own land, Nso'. I do not know how and when you are able to gather so much and
to write the inspiring series, at very short intervals, about a man who
inspired many who knew him in life, in person, and whose name alone, almost
thirty years after his demise, is still an inspiration. May your prayer, our
prayer, on this 30th year of Fonlon's departure to God and eternity, help
quicken the process of proclaiming him blessed, saint, worthy of public and
universal religious honour.”
I cite this passage to indicate that when
inspiration calls, go ahead and do it because it is often God speaking to the
human heart, especially when its motives are plain and clean.
The central element of this book is the topic
of the possible canonization of Bernard Nsokika Fonlon. Before the world and the universal Church gets into the core of what it is all about, the native kinsfolk, the Christian brother and sister of the local Church must shout it on the top of the mountain, as the wisdom of the Nso sanely confirms:
A yii reemi shiv bo yi beemi.
The central thing therefore, that came to motivate me to write this book and immediately did so, was when I came across a beautiful barbarity of truth in
the words of Archbishop Paul Verdzekov in an interview he was accorded which
had as one of the items the idea of the possible canonization of Bernard
Fonlon. The article appeared in the L’Effort
Camerounais of 2005 and among other questions Archbishp Paul Verdzekov was
asked:
Who should initiate his (Fonlon’s) cause for
canonization, Your Grace?
Mgr. Paul: It is the particular Church that
baptized him (the church at Shisong parish and the Kumbo diocese), and in which he grew
up. It is not the Holy See that begins such a cause. It is that local Church
that must carry out its duty…If there is a cult for that Christian, the Church
then asks its members to pray for that canonization.”
Dear listeners , these words spurred me and I
wrote the article that made some head waves and which is the fourth chapter to
this work, and that began the pages of
this entire work and which launched the issue of Fonlon’s canonization in
shundzev at that time.
So I have only done my own part – like that
legendary tortoise in our African culture that with the little strength left with him, told the world he had struggled… Once upon a time
the Lion who had been trying for a long time to catch the tortoise finally
chanced upon him on a solitary road. ‘Ahaa’, the Lion said; ‘at long last!
Prepare to die.’ And the tortoise said: ‘Can I ask one favour before you kill
me?’ The lion saw no harm in that and agreed. ‘Give me a few moments to prepare
my mind,’ the tortoise said. Again the lion saw no harm in that and granted it.
But instead of standing still as the lion had expected, the tortoise went into
strange action on the road, scratching with hands and feet and throwing sand
furiously in all directions. ‘Why are you doing that? asked the puzzled lion.
The tortoise replied: ‘Because even after I am dead I would want anyone passing
by this spot to say, yes, a fellow and his equal struggled here.’
Dear brothers and sisters, that is all I am
doing – struggling. Perhaps to no purpose except that those who come after us
(our children) will be able to say: True, some of our fathers were defeated but
they tried, they tried in telling the world of their giants. I am not so naïve
as to think I have slaughtered the monster of apathy against my name with these
words on the fact that some people think it was a wasted job to engage in the
media on the topic of Bernard Fonlon’s canonization. Such people say the Bishop
and the diocese have not proclaimed the canonization of Fonlon as if we were so
naïve to thinking that it would come so soon. There is Saint Cardinal John
Henry Newman who died in 1891 about 130 years ago in England one of the famous
European capitals of the world and Newman would only be canonized this October
13 2019. Here is Bernard Fonlon just yesterday 1986 and people are
already running their mouths as if he is the only one in the line of sainthood.
I say here today, that the Shundzev
internet group did a commendable job in telling the whole world that there
existed a man envious and spiteful people would like to hide from the vision of
the world. And I congratulate the proprietors of that time-honored and mother
of all internet groups, Mr Martin Jumbam most particularly.
Fonlon’s impending canonization is - in his
own words.- “as rather in the nature of things” for, amidst the wonderful and
consoling events which occurred during the months the pages of my book came out
were testimonies of some brilliant men and women, some contemporaries of Fonlon
and of that esteemed and revered scholarship is the erudite Godfrey Tangwa.
Hear what Prof. Tangwa said about his kinsman, Fonlon:
“(…)I
was among those who formed the Bernard Fonlon Society (BFS) in 1987 shortly
after his death. For all in the BFS, Fonlon is already a saint, a secular
saint, on account of his extraordinary life-style, intellectual excellence,
moral courage, selflessness, humility, modesty, un-Cameroonian acts and
actions, etc. So, if the Catholic Church were to raise him to the dignity of a
canonical religious saint, that would only be confirming a popular secular
sentiment (…)”
I quote
Dr Godfrey Tangwa because these were people who knew Fonlon from very deep
intimate knowledge and people who benefited from the intellectual and moral generosity
of the eminent saint and scholar Prof Bernard Nsokika Fonlon.
One of the key elements I underline in the book
is the importance of the Laity in today’s Evangelization. This book challenges
the Church of today to dip her toe back into the world view of the Church of
the Bible where people were people and not just functions and ministries. It is
an intellectual crime to speak of Fonlon without a word on J. H. Newman who was
Bernard Fonlon’s greatest intellectual and spiritual inspiration. John Henry
Newman championed the cause for the emancipation of the laity in the Catholic
Church. Fonlon fell so deeply in love with Newman perhaps because of this reason. For
instance Newman’s bishop Mgr. Ullathorne in a fit of anger and arrogance once
asked ‘Who are the laity?’, a question which John Henry Newman gave an incisive
answer: ‘the Church would look foolish without them’. Anyone who despises or
downplays the role of the laity in Church life today is living in the clouds –
the clouds of medieval obscurantism. A Church today that only relies on
professional religious and priests is dead on arrival. The role of the laity is
therefore serious and you can see that Bernard Fonlon by example was one of the
earliest African laity who took that role so seriously suddenly after the defining
moment of current Church history the second Vatican council. The task of the
Church today is to create that conspiratio
between the laity and the clergy. It has ben one of the great burdens of my
book to foster this conspiratio, that is, the dialogue between laity and clergy by highlighting the
role of the lay Bernard Fonlon who cooperated with the then bishops of the
Bamenda Ecclesiastical province in major ecclesiastical developments of their times. The major
seminary of Bambui is the handiwork, the creation of Bernard Fonlon. Go and
read my work and you will know why. So
this book would go a long way to help the African church to engage in this
great missionary commitment of putting the laity at the very center of Church
activity.
To
Every Son and Every Daughter of Nso
Our people, speak disapprovingly of a Nso
whose complaining attitude put all the blame on the stranger. They are so candid about that that they do it through a child’s name Yiinsobatoybara. Then the other name of our host Nsokika – what do
we we really know? But I dare say that Nsoki! Nsoki because our people also say
that Kingwiy ki dze mfiir e kitum.
The stranger is also to blame and he does not know it all. We the house owners
make it up that we do not know our problems. We know our problems and we know
where the rain started beating us, yet we keep on deceiving ourselves by
looking for solutions from outsiders. This book, Why Bernard Fonlon Matters is therefore an X-ray on, in fact a
dissection of, indeed a surgical operation of the Nso man’s mentality and the
vulnerable state his tradition finds itself in the contemporary world. I had
done this using the KWA conflict which I then cautioned the main stakeholders
of the crisis - the Nsoda, the Fon of
Nso, the Mayor of Kumbo Urban Council and the General Nso public – that the
nasty disunity among these stakeholders on the Kumbo Water Authority and other
big things in Nso, was a time bomb we were sitting on and it needed courageous
leadership to awaken us to face up to these obligations before it was too late.
But who cares? I gave this advise to these stakeholders in p. 163 to p.178 of
my book in 2016 (not today) and I did so most especially, using the literary
device of allegory on the African proverbial story of the Squirrel, the Python,
the Cocoyam leave and the Hunter.
Once upon a time,
a squirrel sat on a palm tree, eating palm fruits with gusto. He was so
delighted by the meal he was having that he sang loudly and cracked the nuts
very noisily. Under the tree, a python was trying to get some rest. Unable to
sleep because of the noise the squirrel was making, the serpent called out to
his little friend, asking him to be more reasonable. “My dear friend,” said the
python to the squirrel, “could you please make less noise. Look, you have
disturbed my sleep with the noise you are making up there.” To which the
squirrel replied: “Why are you so intolerant? If you are sleeping, it is
because you have had your fill. Now that I want to put something in my little
stomach, you are already complaining.” “This is not a question of intolerance,
my dear,” the python continued. “I am only asking you to be considerate of
others. Nobody denies you the right to eat. But that does not mean you have to
disturb everybody else while eating. Besides, the noise you are making could
put us in some trouble.” “Listen to that!” shouted the squirrel as it burst out
laughing. He laughed so vigorously that he nearly fell from the palm tree. Then
he continued: “I am here above, you are there below, and you tell me that what
I am doing up here could put you in trouble down there. Come on, do not make
yourself ridiculous.” There was also a cocoa-yam plant nearby. It had only one
leaf. At this point the cocoa-yam leaf joined the discussion and said to the
squirrel: “Yes dear, the python is right. The noise you are making could be
dangerous for us all.” The squirrel, visibly irritated, shouted: “Won’t you
keep quiet there? Who called you into this? If you guys want to climb up here,
feel free to do so. There are enough fruits for us all. Otherwise, you should
let me eat my meal in peace. Whatever I do here is strictly my business and
should there be any danger, it would be only for me, not for you. Period!”
Thus, the squirrel continued to enjoy his favourite meal of palm fruits,
singing louder than ever before.
At
that very moment, a hunter who was passing by was attracted by the noise that
the squirrel was making. Looking up, he saw the little animal, lost in his
meal, oblivious of the world beyond the palm fruits. The hunter drew nearer the
palm tree, took aim and with a single explosion from his gun, the squirrel came
tumbling down to the bottom of the tree. As the hunter bent down to pick his
game, he saw the big serpent lying nearby. He drew back sharply and with the
agility of a good hunter, he quickly drew his sword and killed the python. The
sudden sight of the python was sufficiently scaring even to this daring hunter.
It made him perspire. While cleaning the perspiration from his brows, he
thought of how to carry the dead animals, since his hunting bag was two small
for the two. Then he caught sight of the large cocoayam leaf. With a smile of
relief, he cut the leaf and with it made a neat parcel of the squirrel and the
python. So it was that the noise made by the squirrel caused the death of all
three: the squirrel, the python and the cocoa-yam leaf.”
The
morale of the proverbial story above is:
ü Wir
bung kitem la wu yo’ tse’ ndzev.
ü Bong a ba’.
ü Wan
ngvev woo tin wa yen fo wo kpuun.
ü Mbor se si kver vitu yong ji si kver a ru’
All this came to summary that unity is
essential among us, unity under the banner of the Kingdom of Nso so we be not
prey to the improper attitude of the noisy opportunistic squirrel in the story
above and thus allow Bara’ Ngar to come and mesmerize our lives as the Hunter
of the story above has done, in order that we together fight the evil of Yimo,
to stop the business of “I was,” “I am” and embrace the business of “we were”
“we are” and God will do miracles in our land. That is one of the things I
handled in Why Bernard Fonlon Matters.
And I did that because one of Fonlon’s greatest works was To Every Son of Nso. You cant talk about him without looking at how
he saw his people, Shufai woo Ntoondzev.
Dear listeners the book, Why Bernard Fonlon Matters, is an antelope I have hunted. We have
only delved into the entrails of the delicious animal. So to enjoy the whole antelope — the heart, the head, the back,
the legs, the neck and the chest,— we must get to the book, the whole antelope.
Get the book and read why Bernard Fonlon is a holy man, get it read why Fonlon
did not marry, get it and read why Bernard Fonlon was misunderstood by his own
people, go pick your copy and read why Fonlon is a model Christian in politics,
read there the moral compass this great man of integrity, read there how Fonlon
is the best symbol in our country of moral conscience, an example to the youth
and the secret of real happiness in the world.
The
Present ‘Cameroon’ Predicament
How could a man who translated the national anthem of a country to English and authored the Anthem's second verse, how could a man who was the secretary at the
office of the Prime Minister John Ngu Foncha, a man who served as Chargé de
Mission at the Presidency, a man who was member of the Cameroon Federal
Parliament, a deputy in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, a man who was the
minister of Transport, minister of Post and Telecommunications, and finally
minister of Public Health, how could such a man, be so disregarded by his own
as not to be honored with a State’s burial? Only a historically unconscious
person would not know why he was treated with so much derision at the end of
his life. One of the topmost reasons I can find is that he was such an honest man that he
knew ‘Cameroon’, the Cameroon they fabricated in 1961 was already
disintegrating, and began doing stocktaking and putting the unity we came to assume with the so-called
brother into question. And that was costing him his reputation and life.
Then, for those who ask how Dr Bernard Fonlon should
have reacted to the present killings, burnings, unjust arrests and abductions
of our people, I say that they do not need a Bernard Fonlon expert or scholar
to tell them how Fonlon could have responded to the present predicament of our
people. They only need to ask themselves simple question like: How could the overwhelmingly
compassionate Bernard Fonlon feel when his people are carted away like wood in
French Cameroon trucks to dungeons, how would he feel where peoples’ homes and
property are set to ashes in the alarming rate at which we know by military
men who are supposed to protect them,
How would he feel where Paul Biya who was a small boy around them declare war against his people the Southern Cameroons and the terrible destruction
therefrom?
We
writers don’t give answers. We ask pointed questions, we name the unnamable and
we give headaches. The life of Bernard
Fonlon is a metaphor for the once hopeful union that failed and like a poor
miserable aero plane has crashed so miserably and dangerously that all, I mean
everything is in ruins. It is all gone! In fact, if I were God I would regard
as the very worst sin of the Southern Cameroons our acceptance – for whatever
reason – that French Cameroon should rule over our lives. And Bernard kicked
back against them even right back in the 1960s. Listen to him in his own words
in Will we Make or Mar:
“Unless the East Cameroon leaders in whose
hands cultural initiative lies, is prepared to share this authority with his
brother from the West of the Mungo, unless he is prepared to make a giant
effort necessary to break loose from the straightjacket of his French
education, unless he will show proof of his intellectual probity and admit
candidly that there are things in the Anglo-Saxon way of life that can do his
country good, there is little chance of survival, …. With African culture moribund,
with John Bullism weak, and in danger of being smothered, we will all be French
in two generations or three!”[1]
It is our age and times, our present manners
and manias, that Fonlon’s Will we Make or
Mar now probes, perhaps more pointedly than ever before. I wrote this book
of mine in 2016. Because I wrote my Why
Bernard Fonlon Matters before the period of strive our people are enduring
now, I assumed that Cameroon was still one and indivisible. I should have known
better. For each book has its own unique set of problems for the reader.
However, for us today, the key quality of that book Why Bernard Fonlon Matters, is its piercing standpoint on the
possibility of Fonlon canonization. For this I am indebted to the Nso who joint
hands and in the celebrated Shuundzev
we boldly made a statement - telling it on
mountains and to the world the message of Bernard Fonlon’s guaranteed example
in sanctity. And we are proud by so doing.
During the burial of Dr Bernard Fonlon, the
then bishop of Fonlon, Bishop Cornelius Fontem Esua made the following
important statement about Fonlon’s holiness of life and why he should be buried
among the clergy in the Kumbo Cathedral cemetery, He said:
He
was a saintly man, and on account of this, regardless of who he was, I have
decided to lay his mortal remains next to those of his closest friend, late
Father Aloysius Wankuy…as a sign of our gratitude for his affection and deep
attachment to the Church.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking here
about a saint, a holy man. So I am grateful to author a work on the exploits of this celebrated saint and scholar, Bernard Nsokika Fonlon.
Prayer
Dear friends, join me now in prayer
with Fonlon:
Bernard
Fonlon, you gave hope to the African people in times of hopelessness.
You did
this in your writings and in your life. You have inspired countless young
people of this same continent to look up and hope for better days. Inspire them
now - as you are already ahead of us -
to keep always with them the flag of human dignity and the pride of the black
race flying high. You taught us that “when a man … is restless with a desire
steaming within him like a railway locomotive – when he is strung up to see
that purpose through in the teeth of all adversity, - when his confidence in
God is without boundaries, - when he can look
down on big failures with that disdain with which the huge invulnerable
rocks mock the fury of the waves, that pound against them, down in Ambas Bay, -
you can’t stop him from going and getting what he wants: set him in foreign
lands, you only give more edge to his soul’s desire; throw a Hymalayan wall
across his path, he will scale it even in the heart of winter. Industry,
purpose, resolution,
confidence,” - these, virtues you taught us to take them
seriously, principles without which no man can hope to achieve anything of
value in this world. Bernard
Fonlon, teach us to be the conscience of society, teach us to at this hinge
moment of the history of the Southern Cameroons, shun delights and live
laborious days. Because it was by daring and by doing that the Roman state
grew, teach us how not to be timid, how not to be cowards. Teach us the courage
to stand for the truth against falsehood, the courage to face the oppressors of
our people with strength and determination, teach us to be no respecters of
persons but to be voice of the voiceless masses of our people back home
afflicted by colonial powers. Amen
