Eternal Vigilance the Price of Freedom

SANKIE MAIMO: DARLING MEMORIES

 “The poets - by which I mean all artists - are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t, statesmen don’t, priests don’t, union leaders don’t. It is the poets.”  James Baldwin.

Rarely can there have been someone who was called to greatness as father of the literature of his homeland (the British Cameroons) and yet has shockingly  been unsung by his people, as Sankie Maimo who passed on exactly five years ago?  The early 1960s Southern Cameroons’ intellectual enormity, which placed human dignity and literary grace at the core of the artistic life of our native land, only took birth from Sankie’s enormous poetic genius. That is, his ground-breaking I am Vindicated (1959) - first published in Nigeria, the pioneering and catalytic nature of which can scarcely be overemphasized - opened the floodgates of modern British Cameroon’s literature. Before we got the bulging literary voices of the Jedida Asheris,  the Bernard Fonlons, the Sanda Ebas, the Ngonwikuos, the Bole Butakes, the Bate Besongs, the Victor Epie Ngomes, the Kenjo Jumbams, the Anne Tanyi-Tangs, and the Linus Asongs, the name Sankie in the 1950s was already celebrated in Nigeria among literary savants. For this, we can ascertain that his position as one of the Continental sages of the epoch, to be graded alongside Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Leopold Seda Senghor, Chiek Anta Diop, Denis Brutus, and Nadine Gordimer, is (among enlightened West Africans)  a fact.

After the I am Vindicated (1959) debut, Sankie Maimo flamed across the literary firmament with the Adventuring with Jaja (1962), Sov-Mbang the Soothsayer (1968), The Mask (1970), Succession in Sarkov (1981), Sankie's Literary Bravura: A Reply to a Critic (1984), Sasse Symphony (1989) and Retributive Justice (1992). 

Today 4 September 2018,  the fifth Anniversary of his passing, comes an occasion for yet another consideration of his rich legacy and the current Southern Cameroons’ condition. Sankie died in 2013 (exactly five years ago), and the Anglophone Cameroon literary world is still in mourning. This is the man that got me started down the road to self-confidence and personal freedom. Because of his characteristic aplomb, we leant to unchain the overblown pious unnecessaries in us. Sankie belongs to a generation of colorful literary men who defined the 1970s, the 1980s and our literary generation in the 1990s in ways in which we – and CameroUn – have never really recovered.

Perhaps, when count is taken of the nature of the tenacious crusade carried on by him in the literary fray, how he dared and deed with his magnanimous pen, how he religiously fought the battle against stroke, how he kept on faithfully onto his untiring upfront pedestal, how he upheld his life’s principle of ‘the good life’ right to the end, when all this is taken into consideration, it will be recognized that to possess his soul in composure and not to mind, he must needs have been not merely exceptionally thick-skinned, or even rhinoceros-hided, but very much that he gave a bravura performance to aboriginal  poetic mores that his people must be willing to tell his electrifying story to the world.

I keenly feel his life should not be left to strangers, least of all literary clowns. Those who had the fortune to meet him in close quarters, share ideas with him, share a drink with him and discuss intimate matters, would do him the justice of informing the world who this African baobab was.  This thought has fired me to make a contribution.

Sankie was a fellow who loved the good life.

He prized the friendly and welcoming camaraderie of happy-go-lucky chaps possibly accompanied by liquor, ladies and cuisine. To each folk his preferred instinct, was his frame of mind; to some fine wine, to some delicious food,  to others appealing damsels, to some great company, to some cocktail and booze. He believed that the universe rotated around bonne vie and paid homage to elegance. So the life of Sankie could have its shades in a row. A joke? Surely. A fiasco? No way!

When we engage with Donald Trump on the sh*thole subject and camp areas sh*tholing the four corners of the great continent called Africa, do we realize the fertile and flourishing flowers of art and talent we brush aside in the Sankies of our beloved continent? Perhaps, the Nso are a very resilient people. The talk about sh*thole countries would not be vexing business to an ordinary Nso. He would simply jog your memory on the proverbial wisdom of their ancestors that when a colanut fruit falls on sh*t, he who esteems cola nuts would break through it, collect the nuts, and go his way. Despite Africa’s backwardness in technological development, no wretched man exposes his dejected backyard to the punches of rich bigots who are after all responsible for the perpetration of his misery. And therefore it is dangerous that I join the chorus with racists whose eternal prayer is the sh*tholing of Africa, so that blinded with shit, we can forget the golden kola nut rapped inside the messy shitty mound.

Pa Sankie’s compound is a stone throw from the Bishop’s Hill House of Kumbo. Fate brought me there for ministry. I took that opportunity to pay Sankie visits in a fortnightly basis. His open enthusiasm each time I called around humbled me. Each two weeks I arrived, the beginnings of our rendezvous always carried the enthusiasm of two uplifting companions who had been separated for a long time. Sankie single-handedly edited my pioneer work - a challenging book on my spiritual ministry among the Wimbum and a book that is yet to be published. Our discussions bore various themes and carried wide-ranging landscapes. And when I began ministering in Nkambe, my visits were still frequent. I was then preparing for studies for Germany - a thing that later, took the Italian direction. Worth elaborating here is my experience with Sankie Mamio and the German language. “ I am embarking on a personal study of German”, I told him. I had then photocopied a grammar textbook from the Bambui Major seminary. He quipped that he needed his own copy. “An 82 year old man, requesting for a German grammar textbook, what for?” I imagined but didn’t voice my thoughts out to embarrass him. But I couldn’t contain the thoughts within. So I gathered courage and inquired. He told me he had loved the German language even in his teens, but no opportunity came. Therefore he considered this the great occasion. I went on and got a copy. Granting it him as a generous gift, he refused to get it for free, paid the photocopy threatening me I shouldn’t come any more if I would not take the money. Here I break in to say that all this experience is thirteen months before Sankie’s death! We went through the first two chapters together, and we ended that day, with homework from that language text to do. I went back home to Nkambe that day. After  days something brought me back to Kimbo. I remembered to visit Pa. His first question was if I had done my German grammar exercise. I had not even taken my book along, but Sankie sat me down, boiled our regular relished honey drink and we were sipping and feasting. He then opened his own copy and word-for-word we revised the homework he had done about the first two chapters of the grammar book, before we began our normal stories about the world and its people. Sankie was a student all his day.

His simple, silent and reassuring household became a sanctuary for me. In one of those stopovers, I shared some pressure from spiteful folks I was going through. And when my great friend heard me and saw the anguish in my heart, he struggled (with the pain of stroke) to his library, picked a book , and brought it to me with words carrying the weight of his characteristic forthrightness, ‘take, go read it and learn Father”. Why a book, and more, why a play with such a scary title: The Devils! ? If I say I was flabbergasted it would be an understatement.  The heading of the book generated a curiosity in me to thumb it from page to page. Our discussions always tasted like peppers that flared hot in rice and stews. And the hot rice and stew of conversation was always delicious since the bowl of fresh water of Sankie's clever and consoling counsels were around to add flavor to the jolly chatter, pacifying  the mouth again for more hot rice.  Our next meeting (which came after a fortnight) was a discussion on the findings I made in the play The Devils, and it came out to be a most relieving, a most refreshing and a most insightful discussion.

Some are under the illusion – an impression given in certain quarters today  - that Sankie was a sworn enemy of the celebrated Bernard Fonlon. And Sankie’s fiery chatter about Fonlon could damagingly exacerbate fuel to the inflamed mind of an undiscerning onlooker. When you plunge deeper  into his heart, when you interrogate him with germane journalistic qualities, you discover a man whose admiration for Fonlon is entire and whose acknowledgment of the intellectual and moral prowess of the eminent contemporary, Fonlon, is complete. What Sankie opposed was a problem with which we are all too at home with today. This involves the idolizing of persons and the preposterous idea of thinking that the Fonlon way is the only way. Sankie fondly  expressed (at least to me) the paradigmatic power Bernard Fonlon’s sense of integrity possessed in their days. Yet Sankie did not like comparisons. Human beings are not made up of the same unique stuff. You can't assimilate the individuality of a person into the container of another. And therefore, in moments of literary debate Sankie bowed to none but the truth. He feared no one, not even the colossal Fonlon. He is the only one in litearary criticism who openly challenged the unchalleangable Fonlon in a world-class well-articulated article. He believed that God (if to him God really existed) was the supreme and unchallengeable and all men and women were mere strivers after perfection of whatever kind. And therefore the adulation of persons for whatever intellectual or spiritual appeal was intolerable. What was important was to know yourself, pick your own irreplaceable talent, do your thing, finish the task you have in this world, and disappear.

The psychic difference therefore, between Sankie and Fonlon, large as they are, quite dwindle away when we consider that all of them beheld a vision of life that valorized the power of the mind over slushiness.

There are important lessons to learn from this great son of Nso. In the final analysis, Christians have far less to fear from Sankie than sanctimonious masquerades. The anonymous Christianity of Sankie is a challenge no more to the Sankies of today as to the African religious ministers – to see how to theologically accommodate in their spiritual landscape such nameless believers and still allow them to be what they, out of strong convictions, want to be. Room must be allowed them in the spacious  Church of the welcoming Christ for,  “there are many rooms in my Father's house.” (John 14, 2). Curious thing - that the last time I met him, he requested for a rosary! And told me in his characteristic humor (but underlying seriousness) “Father,  I would be honored one day to pass my confessions to you”. With the suddenness of my leaving for overseas I didn’t achieve all of what my beloved friend prayed to gain particularly from my own hands. Sankie Maimo, my friend, I write to say I have prayed for you.

The death of Sankie is a tragedy. That much is affirmed by those who go core-deep into the human condition. But those of us who were fortunate to have his friendship experience the loss of Sankie Maimo with a special sense of calamity, for we could not think of his death merely on limited human terms. We have no choice but to believe that Sankie, with all of his amazing gifts, will have to face the very God he sometimes dismissed with his nice jokes. ‘Who knows the thoughts of men? A deathbed change of heart!’, some casual onlooker to Sankie’s life may say. As for that ‘deathbed change of heart’ stuff, my encounter with Sankie convinces me that such questions are nonsensical considering the frank and openhearted Sankie I personally came upon. Sankie was a sincere, straightforward and genuine man -  in fact, the personificaiton of frankness and fearlessness. Son to one of the most reputed Christians in Kumbo town he lived an anonymous Christianity because of deep-felt personal principles. And we must allow people to be free to choose how to live their lives. When I look at his life and the fruits thereof, I prefer that unrecognizability to the clanging hollow gong of a holier-than-thou. The striking conclusions of Christ’s story of the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector is my testimony! Do not misunderstand me – Christianity demands of its followers unrelenting enthusiasm and dedication. But as for the Final Verdict of Omnipotent God on each one’s life, only Pope Francis’ legendary epigram, ‘who am I to judge’, carries portentous power to any mortal answer.

I have not engaged my wits on Sankie to canonize him saint or to demonize him sinner. Sankie had no time for such debates. He enjoyed to be just a human being out there.  Yet, Sankie passed through Sasse College  and the enduring principles of life he carried from that power house of knowledge informed his poetical outpourings in no small way.  But then again, what stood Sankie out from other persons was a combination of a deeply ingrained sense of history and the capacity to treat words with reverence and to see writing as a semi-religious experience. He was a no-nonsense man in the literary fray. Literature – whether poesy, prose or literary criticism – was Sankie’s thing. His luminous eloquence in literary satire and criticism for example, is unrivalled in Africa. He took his pen when unfairly stung by a neophyte critic and with the flash of its flow slew his enemy with sheer utter brilliance in his Sankie’s Literary Bravura: A Reply to a Critic. This is a man who cut out the vocation of his life in the written word, held to it with sacerdotal zeal  and lived it to the end. Come to think of it, one year before he passed away, he just published his last work(even with a stroke). I am intimately aware of this because he gave me the privilege to make a comment on the blurb of that definitive short story masterpiece. At 82 he was not ashamed to study, not tired to author a work!

The finest Christian is the Christian poet. Poets - profane poets alike - are the most spiritual beings in the world. Patently, spirituality is quintessentially poetry. Whether or not Sankie will be monumentalized in our lives is down to whether or not our community becomes more enthused in relishing the titillating otherworldly stimulus of poetry, and that's why I honor him today.

Poets never die. Sankie’s enduring legacy is a blessing to our  times. With a legendary dedication to poetic talent, he attained the end for which life is worth living. And my word to those who mourn his passing is “noli timere”. Because his immortal literature will never die, we are right to conclude that the imposing poetic gushes of his literary art have lit a scintillating torchlight on his pathway to the Heavens.

 Fr. Gerald Jumbam