Eternal Vigilance the Price of Freedom

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

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[1] BERNARD FONLON, “Will we Make or Mar”, in Abbia, 5 (March 1964).