Joyce Ashuntantang

Joyce Ashuntantang Masks, aesthetics and meaning:

Framing bate besong’s disgrace: autobiographical narcissus and emanyankpe collected poems

On March 8 2007, a few hours after launching his last collection of poetry, Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus and Emanyankpe Collected Poems, Bate Besong, the firebrand Anglophone Cameroon writer died in a ghastly car accident at the age of 53. In his short lifetime, he wrote six plays, five collections of poetry and a plethora of critical newspaper and journal articles. Bate Besong’s poetry and plays have been scrutinized using various theoretical approaches including postcolonialism, Marxism, deconstruction, historicism and structuralism. As the gadfly of Anglophone Cameroon Literature, Bate Besong positioned himself as a minority writer and held that position as a creed for all Anglophone Cameroon writers. His literary credo is summed up in his keynote address on the first workshop on Anglophone Cameroon writing held from January 18-21st 1993 at the Goethe Institute, Yaoundé. This workshop organized during a period of growing Anglophone nationalism in Cameroon, was sponsored by the Anglophone Cameroon writers’ guild and the University of Bayreuth, Germany. In his address, Besong characterized Anglophone Cameroonians as “an embattled people under the cancerous embrace of “national integration” and in this vein he warned:

The Anglophone Cameroonian writer must never forget his origins. His writing must depict the conditions of his people, expressing his spontaneous feelings of betrayal, protest and anger. It must challenge, it must indict head on…our literature must convey with remarkable force the moods of the

Anglophone Cameroonian caught in the assimilation-nightmare of Sisyphean existence…The

Anglophone Cameroonian writer at home and in the diaspora must tell the outside world the story of its tragic minority.” (Besong “Literature in the season”, 18) While situating Besong’s works within the theoretical framework of minority discourse exposes the suffocating experience of the Anglophone minority in Cameroon, I posit that a crucial part of the aesthetics that frame Besong’s works is often overlooked because literary critics are not familiar with the cultural masks of Obasinjom and Emanyankpe which he utilizes to construct his creative works. Understanding the nature of Obasinjom and Emanyankpe provides a distinct lens unique to Bate Besong’s writing, especially his last publication, Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus and Emanyankpe Collected poems. This collection is divided into two sections. The first section titled “Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus” consists of sixteen autobiographical poems which are like a series of vignettes capturing the poet’s negative experiences in his homeland, especially the university campus where he taught. The second section titled “Emanyankpe: Collected poems,” is made up of a few new poems but mostly poems which had been published during the period he branded himself as Obasinjom warrior. These poems come principally from three collections, The Grain of Bobe Ngom Jua (1986), Obasinjom Warrior and Other Poems After Detention. (1991) and Just Above Cameroon: Selected Poems 1980-1994 (1998). Consequently, Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus and Emanyankpe Collected poems is the only work by Bate Besong where he projects both Obasinjom and Emanyankpe as operating aesthetic frames. To a non-initiate, Bate Besong’s masks may just be a distraction, but these masks point to meaning and frame him even more as a

protest writer fighting for his people. These masks capture his literary style and effective response to what is known as the Anglophone Cameroon problem or crisis. To understand the Anglophone Cameroon problem is to delve in a bit a history. Kamerun was a German colony from 1884-1916. After the defeat of Germany in World War I, Germany lost its hold over Kamerun and Cameroon/Cameroun was born, a trust territory administered by Britain and France with France gaining 4/5 of the territory. The British territory named Southern Cameroon (Anglophone Cameroon) was administered as part of another British colony, Nigeria. French Cameroon and Nigeria gained independence in 1960. Wedged between this two larger geographically entities Southern Cameroon was asked to decide its fate in a United Nations sanctioned plebiscite in 1961. Southern Cameroon had to choose between joining French Cameroon or Nigeria. Southern Cameroon voted to join French Cameroon. Although the new Federal government established English and French as the official languages, a “diaglossic” situation quickly became apparent with English being the language of the minority thereby having a lesser status. The marginalized position of English within the new nation state has translated to an inferior position for the English-speaking minority. The Anglophone problem captures the discontent of Anglophones who call for their region to be retained as a “distinct community” (Eyoh) with regards to the language and inherited English colonial institutions of education, law and public administration. Today there are many groups, some of them armed, clamoring for secession and others asking for federation. From 1985 to 1990, Besong felt the impact of the Anglophone problem at a personal level as the Cameroon government covertly censored his literary creativity. He was forced to abandon his critical column, “The Writer as Tiger” in the only daily newspaper in Cameroon, the government owned, Cameroon Tribune. However, as a teacher employed by the Cameroon government, he was susceptible to intimidations from the autocratic agents of President Paul Biya. Besong was threatened many times with detention and denied his full salary for years, all attempts to make

him to stop using his writing to criticize the government. He was eventually detained briefly in 1990 after the performance of his acerbic play, Beast of No Nation. Ironically, it is during this period that Besong took up the moniker, Obasinjom Warrior. His poetry collection, eponymously titled Obasinjom Warrior and Other Poems after Detention published in 1991 served as a baptism where he claimed the identity publicly. Amongst the Ejagham/Bayang ethnic groups in Southwestern region of Cameroon where Bate Besong and I hail from, Obasinjom is a speaking mask, which has the gift of prophecy, and the power to seek out and destroy witches. The mask is a carved crocodile head adorned with peacock feathers. The protruding mouth of the crocodile reveals carved teeth. The choice of crocodile is important and significant because it is an animal that can live on land and water. The feathers also show that the Obasinjom can also engage in flight. Thus, Obasinjom, translated as “God’s medicine” has the ability to permeate every realm to rout out threatening criminal forces. The Obasinjom mask has mirrors for eyes, which gives it the ability to see beyond the earthly world. The mask is intended to be frightening and this is accentuated by the mantle which is often black. As Kloss explains, “the mask demonstrates tellingly the multifarious relationship between masks and medicine in Africa.” (63) The Obasinjom performance is a collective experience for the whole village. As Ute Röschenthaler, observed, “The success of the Obasinjom cult agency and of its variations depended to a large extent on its capacity of visualizing its witchcraft detecting agency by means of an eye-catching masquerade performance.” (249) When the Obasinjom begins its performance, it is usually closely followed by a translator because he speaks the language of the gods not understood by ordinary men and women. This is one of the mask that fuels Bate Besong’s writing style and meaning in his creative works. Bate Besong is the Obasinjom warrior who seeks out the “witches” of the decrepit postcolonial nation called Cameroon, bringing them to public scrutiny. Emanyankpe (or Nyankpe) on the other hand, is a masquerade of the Ngbe Society (Ekpe in Nigeria). Ngbe is a secret society

(Leopard Society) in the Ejagham and Bayang culture open only to men. Central to this society are two masquerades, the Ebongu and Emanyankpe. While Ebongu is calm and two of them may appear together, Emanyankpe is usually alone and always appears ferocious in its full-body colorful netted costume. Emanyankpe masquerade is a law enforcer who does not hesitate to use the cane in his right hand to whip offenders of Ngbe or social deviants. (Elliott Leib and Renee Romano, 54) African masks and masquerades like Obasinjom and Emanyankpe are used in religious and social events to preserve peace and maintain order in the village community. These masks and masquerades come to live during frenzied performances possessed by the spirits that inhabit them. For Bate Besong the performance associated with his masks is creative writing, especially his poetry. Although the themes in this final collection are diversified, Bate Besong’s poetry, or plays for that matter, always revolve around the same issues; the denunciation of oppression of one group by another, economic exploitation, marginalization, corruption, social, political and economic inequality. In the first section of the collection titled “Disgrace, autobiographical Narcissus,” Bate Besong appears as Emanyankpe. His anger is evident in the poems as the speaker heaps insults on different personalities and castigates all who seem to be stifling progress in the university environment as they uphold values that oppress Anglophone Cameroonian. His words cut like the lash of a cane. In “Post-mortem Intellectual,” he writes: Blood founts of injustice can be vanquished only by the lantern of fearlessness and torrential down-pour of outspokenness. But,

You allowed yourself to become as useless

As a crow flying

Across the Cameroon sky. (6) In another poem, “Collaborator,” he gets even more caustic:

Although you are covered with silver and gold, like the

Cuckatoo in Rdpc kabba ngondo1, you are made of

Wood and are as powerless as stone taken from the

Synagogue of that tribe-crazed god

You are a dead tree without any leaves

Or fruits

You are no more than dung; you are

Repulsive, and no one wants to get near you (7) Bate Besong’s words are analogous to Emanyankpe’s cane. Besong s lashing out in frustration at the depth of human depravity and inability of those in power to relieve the masses of suffering. According to Beban Sammy Chumbow, these poems “constitute a series of tabloids in which BB lambasts, castigates and stigmatizes all and sundry for the sorry state of the university and the university system from “autocratic” leaders through “collaborators”, “post mortem intellectuals” and “comatose professors” to “dead lecturers” who “organize the ignorance of the faculty and pervert and muzzle discourse” (Foreword to Disgrace, Viii). Besong thus emphasizes that anyone, who alleviates suffering for the people is on the right side of posterity. Consequently, he uses these poems in his anger to whip those undermining the lives of “the common man”. Emanyankpe, a ferocious and distraught masquerade, does not hesitate to use the cane, which is always in its hand to whip those who are deviants. In fact, Bate Besong impersonating the Emanyankpe mask in these poems show his exasperation with his marginal status as an Anglophone in the nation state Cameroon and his willingness to endorse violence as a correcting tool to reach self-determination, if need be. In the second section of the collection, Besong reclaims his mask of Obasinjom warrior by republishing many poems from his earlier collections where like Obasinjom he unmasks the “the witches” who hold the minority Anglophone Cameroon captive by refusing to share power and resources equitably. For example, he castigates the abuse of power in the “Kaiser Lied”:

Brewed;

In deudonal crimsons, Ah! Moronic

You fed

Kangaroo gonads to the world press corps to camouflage the soporific bankruptcy of a traumatized brotherhood-insophistry, already, shrouded in the obituarist lagoon of wrong Deal! (62) This is the same mood expressed in “Ntarikon Massacre” inspired by the six who were killed by soldiers during the launching of the Social Democratic Front party in opposition to the ruling Cameroon’s People Democratic Movement. Besong laments:

The blood is still fresh

On the slabs, the morgues

Are wet.

For those whose

Tomorrows

Are now shards of broken

Glass (59) In “Their Champagne Party Will End,” Besong decries state rulers and their cronies who exploit the poor even as they embezzle state funds:

For sure Jewry stood for an exploiting race, but

Our own middle men manage to amaze them for all that…

Dead After day

When our workers died of chronic shortages of overwork and exposure it was fashionable for the repulsive old creeps; with large baskets of cash to give their champagne parties in open defiance of the victims they had exploited wretched. (88) Just as Besong throws invectives at those who despoil the nation for their personal gain, so too does he celebrate the heroes who champion the cause of the masses. This section is replete with poems honoring African heroes like Kwame Nkrumah or Nelson Mandela. He also honors Cameroon national heroes like P.M.

Kale, S.A. George, A.N. Jua, Um Nyobe and Mongo Beti. In one such poem, “The Beauty of exile” Besong explains:

Do not say you are abandoned

And deserted Friend

It is the beauty of your exile

That has shown how ugly we have become

Heroes have made their way

Along the Tchollire swamps into nameless

Catacombs, martyrs:

Their limbs become to frozen

For them to rise to their feet, to walk. (95) Nevertheless, one criticism constantly leveled against Bate Besong, is the opaque form of his art. Often one has to jump his linguistic hoops to come to grips with his thematic concerns. For example, in “After Mandela’s Earth” BB writes:

year after harlequin year and the circus also came to circus town - quislings of a Francophonie cretin; they devise the decor: opaque columns of dung, rise and rise above this doomed empire which takes counseling blunders from the cadaverous old crocodile whose monumental basilicafolly - in the Bokassa Zombie

Archipelago - cardinal devil of Yamoussoukro (73) The reader is easily lost as he tries to decipher Bate Besong’s differing codes here. One can readily assume that he is just displaying some of the features of modernist writing like fragmentation and allusiveness. However, if the reader takes into consideration that Bate Besong is an Obasinjom warrior then he is in a trance when he writes, and his writing can only be deciphered by a select few with literary prowess, just like the Obasinjom translator who has to translate Obasinjom’s prophecies to the

masses. Critics like Shadrack Ambanasom serve as translators for Bate Besong’s cosmic writing. As Ambanasom makes plain:

Conventional versification is not his (Bate Besong) inclination. Not for him the regular poetic lines rhymes or fixed stanzaic forms. Like most modern poets Bate Besong prefers free verse…at the level of diction, Besong sometimes goes for the rare word, one that looks seemingly strange and seemingly unpronounceable and unAnglo-saxon. Yet more often than not the word is an

English word. E.g. “djinns”,“thong”, “thaumaturge”

“simurge” etc. Even in the most advanced dictionaries, a few of Besong’s words cannot be located, in which case they may simply be words of his own coinage or borrowings from his local vernacular e.g. Mfam or obasinjom. Occasionally Bate

Besong boldly brings into his poetry words from such diverse languages as Arabic, German, French or Kenyang etc. in an attempt to express his idea precisely. He is a poet with elliptical poetic imagination; his poetry is often erratic in its movement. There is no rigid respect for chronology in the expression of his thought and ideas, nor an attempt to stick to a syntactic logic in the structure of his sentences. (http://www.batebesong.com/2007/10/bate-besong-is-.html) Nevertheless, if Bate Besong is sporadic in his style, he is consistent in his themes as he strives to champion the cause of freedom and justice for the common man. As Tanure Ojaide opines, “The point is that aesthetics is not only about beauty, but has come to include interest, value, meaning, literary devices, such as form and realism that help the reader to grasp the content of a literary work.” (“Theory of Minority Discourse,” 13) Thus, to enjoy this final publication from Bate Besong the reader must pay attention to the specific features from his ethnic culture which render his poetry unique. By bringing the Obasinjom Mask and the Emanyankpe masquerade to frame this collection of poetry which ended up being his last word, Besong seems to be providing Anglophone Cameroon readers with two possibilities. Like the Obasinjom mask they should remain vigilant and continue

unmasking all who do not act for the common good, but if that does not work they are allowed to consider violence like the Emanyankpe who does not hesitate to use a cane to clear its path.

_______________________________________________________________________________________ 1 RDCP stands for “Rassemblement démocratique du Peuple Camerounais,” is the ruling political party in Cameroon. “RDPC Kabba Ngondo is a traditional loose female outfit sewn with the RDPC fabric often worn by female supporters of the Cameroon government.

Works Cited Ambanasom, Shadrack. Bate Besong: Is his Poetry too Difficult for Cameroonians? African Literature Association (ALA) Bulletin. Vol. 28(3/4), Summer/Fall 2000. http://www.batebesong.com/2007/10/bate-besong-is-.html. ---. Disgrace: autobiographical Narcissus & Emanya-nkpe collected Poems. Limbe: Design House, 2007. Besong, Bate. Disgrace: autobiographical Narcissus & Emanya-nkpe Collected Poems. Design House, 2007. --- “Literature in the Season of the Diaspora: Notes to the Anglophone Cameroonian Writer” in Lyonga, Nalova, Eckhard Breitinger and Bole Butake.eds. Anglophone Cameroon writing, (Bayreuth African Studies Ser. 30. Bayreuth, 1993. pp. 15—18. Chumbow, Beban. S. “Foreword” Disgrace: autobiographical Narcissus & Emanya-nkpe collected Poems. Design House, 2007. pp. viii-xi. Eyoh, Dickson. "Conflicting Narratives of Anglophone Protest and the Politics of Identity in Cameroon". Journal of Contemporary African Studies. Vo. 16. No. 2, 1998, 249-276 Koloss, Hans-Joachim. “Obasinjom among the Ejagham.” African Arts, vol. 18, no. 2, 1985, pp. 63–103. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3336192. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020. Leib, Elliott, and Renee Romano. “Reign of the Leopard: Ngbe Ritual.” African Arts, vol. 18, no. 1, 1984, pp. 48–96. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3336097. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020. Ojaide, Tanure. “The Theory and Aesthetics of Minority Discourses in African Literature.” The Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature. Eds. Tanure Ojaide and Joyce Ashuntantang. Routledge, 2020. pp. 10-23. Röschenthaler, Ute. “Transacting Obasinjom: The Dissemination of a Cult Agency in the Cross-River Area.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 74, no. 2, 2004, pp. 241–276. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3556932. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020.

Dr Joyce Ashuntantang was born in Cameroon, Central Africa, is a poet and Associate Professor of English at the University of Hartford, Connecticut. She is the author of many scholarly and creative publications.

Manfred Chobot

Ballad of the river

I was sitting by the side of a river My feet dangled in the water When I suddenly felt that the flow of the river Suddenly changed its direction The water was no longer following the course of the river Now it clearly was flowing the opposite direction upwards A barge was having the biggest troubles With the completely new situation The captain and the cox were suddenly in panic As they did not understand what the river told them That it did not wanted to be devoured by the sea anymore for the sea kills every river Each estuary is the end therefore it had to stop right there back to the spring to the origin But the river did not take into account that its water would accumulate itself back in the source and that the clouds would roundly deny to take back its water After all around the spring was floodes The river chose on the spot to dry up

Translated by Robert Max Steenkist

War is shit

with my finger on the map i traced

my grandfather’s captivity from Poland to Samarkand you had two children dysentery and barely enough writing papers for your war diary in the books that belonged to you i read when you read them you were 34 when you shat yourself to death and the 1st war in its 3rd year i would have loved to have had you for my father

Translated by Karoline Ruhdorfer

The doll

the grandmother lies on the floor and if we didn’t know that she was dead we would mistake her for a doll a life-size one that holds her set of false teeth in her right hand and i put on the flash bulb and i snap a picture and the jacket she wore the day before she is still wearing or again i don’t know and now the photos are lying in front of me and the past curls up she lies there like a toy left behind and on the day of the transformation of grandmother to a thing the grandchild dressed in black and whoever has a yearning is invited to interpret and read into and out of according to taste the apartment will putrefy of carrion

the father-in-law prophesies and thus avoids having to see his rag-doll mother yesterday still alive the Yugoslavian caretakers report it is disgusting nowhere is one unobserved from all sides you are under surveillance i hide the stagnant feeling in the doll’s apartment

Translated by Karoline Ruhdorfer

The fee to melt a coin

the world is not round. anymore. touching brightly the shape. of your being. and a wet presence. splendorous. nothing else. but one spirit. two virgins. sharing a chair instead of a wire. starting to be resurrected. not even a leaf can be switched in between. touch you touch you touch you. no movement at all. so far and near. your voice is the fragrance to aspire. grabbing very two arms. up and down. and down and up. to your holy mountains. like a kid. asking please. show it to me. all of yours. the triangle and the circle. all of these circles. of your existence. show me the top. up to the bottom. and I will suck it. taste your voice and grab it down yonder. no breath but your exhausted memory. an eagle will wave its wings. just eyes. and nothing but nothing makes the flight. us to fly. your body spreads. widely open. up to the next planet. the moon and the sun got it. and we find each other opened. to the next door. we paid the fee to melt any coin.

Translated by the author

Manfred Chobot was born in Vienna, lives as a freelance writer. Twelve volumes of Poetry in German; twenty six volumes of Prose; two novels, two volumes of photo books, and two books for children. Books of Poetry in English, French, Spanish, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, Georgian, and Bangla. Books of Prose in Ukrainian, and Polish.

Asad Chowdhury

The Taj getting soaked in rain

The Taj is getting soaked in rain I have no umbrella with me what can I do now I look at the Taj from near the gate At least I have to tell my folks back home something The telephones are not working The hotel lobby is crowded. Dining tables are full of customers Friends from other troupes are already here And the Taj is getting soaked alone Certainly the Taj is used to this But the bad luck is mine The two poets from the Maldives ask me over and take my picture Will the picture tell everything Will the picture sing the words of my heart Exactly as they sing now.

Translated by Syed Manjoorul Islam

Some words still linger on

A few words still linger on between your lips. Having cursed and having called names to the utmost, and after salivating Sycophancy for selfish ends, there still persists the thought - something more yes, there was something more to be said. Lengthy discursive lecture over, you look upon the drowsy faces of a yawning audience,

and still feel-nothing had really been said. The written lines hold some of the words. Colours bind some together, and so does melody; and then some fall off with your kisses and your punches. And still when all is over, there between your lips some words still linger on.

Translated by Mohamed Mijarul Quayes

Asad Chowdhury was born in Bangladesh. He is a Poet, Writer, Translator and Anchor. Chowdhury was a former director at the Bangla Academy, Dhaka, and worked as an editor at the Bengali service of Deutsche Welle after his retirement. During the liberation war of Bangladesh, Chowdhury was a contributor and broadcaster of Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Award and the National Award Ekushey Padak.

Ali Al-Hazmi

Tears rolling down her salted burning lips

Near the coast, we used to build sand homes. When he left for fishing, for the last time... We raced to return the trimmings of his net To his little canoe. With little hands We waved unceasingly to the last waves That snatched his boat away, Away from the times of our childhood. Behind the window bars, our little heads squeezed; With eyes fixed on the coast road; Mother's wings spread over our little shoulders As she injected her body among ours; Immensely worried about our budding innocent souls. I was scared that her long hair may submit to the winds, If she forward on the metal rail; I drew her back towards the warmness of the timber room; Then I stared at the seashores dwelling in her eyes, And saw the sea travelling far beyond the sand homes. leant "Sure, he will return," she said, Before her tear floored upon my lips— my salted burning lips. Twenty years did not avail to demolish the sand homes In our eyes. The dried out face of my father, laid upon the waves Became a window that looks at the silver years of our age; An age abandoned in muddy traps. Still, my beloved mother conceals her regrets behind her shadow. Still, on the mornings, She makes fresh bread with her dreams; And at midnights, She reheats what remains of her wishes on the stove of her soul. Still, we trust her and eat the bread of her lie, Just to live on

A corner in a tavern

She paid no attention to me, As she sat close to my table, In the oriental corner of the tavern. She paid no attention to my chaotic solitude, Reflected on my two palms holding a cigarette, That extended its flame to my blood. Smoke flew away like white poems Wiping off the spotlight that fell down, To uncover the cloud of stately passions Before my eyes. Forcibly, she started to hide The silver of silence that spilled over pulses, Framing us, To complete the portrait of passion in her palms. She, then, reassembled a lock of her hair that spontaneously fell Over her left eye, When she was absently looking at a bouquet of roses On a table separating us, Hiding half my face.

How much I wished I would become a complete string In her eyes, To notice what painful yearning had raged on my last half. To see a wretched person inhabiting the bottom of my cup, Drowned in profound agonies.

Ali Al-Hazmi was born in Damadd, Saudi Arabia. An important poet in Arabic language. Obtained degree in Arabic Language and Literature at Umm Al-Qura University. Published a good number of books, translated and published in different languages. Received awards from country and abroad.

Paramita Mukherjee Mullick

Mosaic

There is a checkered board within. With love, passion and hate the pawns. There is a checkered board within. With sharing, caring and patience the pawn. So many different thoughts, so many different moods. So many varied virtues, so many contrasting vices. There is a checkered board within. With integrity, honesty and jealousy the pawns. There is a checkered board within. With sympathy, empathy and cynicism the pawns. So many conflicting thoughts and moods. That I get astonished at the mosaic of my mind.

The lone flower

The lone white flower on the branch of a tree. The beautiful flower did I see. The lone white flower on the branch of a tree. Did the beautiful flower see me? The lone white flower swaying on its own. Does it know it is all alone? The lone white flower spreading its beauty all around. Does it care whether it is lost or found? The lone white flower imparting its fragrance to all who are near. Does it know the near ones are dear? The white, huge flower with its petals spread out. The green stalk holding on to the flower taut. The spotless petals spreading beauty to the world. The five petals at the edges curled. The lone white flower will spread beauty and fragrance to foe and friend. Till it withers, dries and meets its end.

Dr. Paramita Mukherjee Mullick is an Indian poet, writer and translater. She has published six books. Some of her poems have been translated into 35 languages. She has been blessed with numerous awards for her poetry.