Being and/or Becoming Cameroonian...
The main reason I like Facebook is that it keeps on reminding us of the people we used to be, and thought we’d become. In the ever changing world where time is the only constant, Facebook memories come to remind us of the thoughts we used to have and how we have either improved in or digressed from our reasoning. Some time last year or the year before last(I really can’t remember), I wrote on Facebook that we need to master the art of being who we want to be. Read literally, it might have made little or no sense — as I truly couldn’t understand the intent from my original post. But coming back to it some time this year, and after deep reflection, it occurred to me that it meant that if we want to be something/somebody, we need to start working towards attaining that thing/goal. Simply put, practice makes perfect. But in a mediocre Cameroon, how can one be or become Cameroonian? Is it not something acquired by status quo from birth? What is even the connotation of being/becoming Cameroonian? With the questions asked, one can only wonder if being/becoming Cameroonian is/should be a topic of its own.
Last Thursday on a date with this girl, I asked her what her 5 year plan was and I listened to her babble on and on about what she’d love to do, about who she’d love to become and about the things she’d love to change. What caught my notice was the fact that she said and I quote “If Cameroon is supposed to change, we need to change it by ourselves. And that’s why some of us aren’t overseas right now” So, is being Cameroonian really about saving Cameroon from her own demons(herself) or saving oneself from his/her demon(Cameroon)? A Facebook friend once said that the Cameroonian dream was to leave Cameroon — and if that’s the dream for most(if not all) of us, what then do we mean when we talk of being/becoming Cameroonian?
In the first verse of the English version of the national anthem of Cameroon, we sing “Dear fatherland that was, no tongue can tell…” Does it mean that being Cameroonian entails us to be as great as those before us or even greater? Even so, how great or brave were they really? Is being/becoming Cameroonian taking up arms for country and like the soldier in Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et decorum est”, dying forfatherland? Or does being Cameroonian mean that as young adults and pseudo educators, we need to “… instill in them the love of gentle ways?” What gentler ways that we ourselves lack? What exactly does it mean to be/become Cameroonian?
Cameroon, Africa in miniature: home to over 250 ethnic groups and languages is a boiling pot of biodiversity and the more the talk about being/becoming Cameroonian, the more I wonder what it really means. Will it entail speaking the over 250 languages and eating the many delicacies that exist? Or does it mean dressing like a pygmy today and tomorrow, a hausa fulani? What does being Cameroonian mean in a country of many peoples and cultures and where the only official languages are not even ours to have but to borrow? Will being/becoming Cameroonian mean speaking or adopting the Camfranglais or Mboko lang?
On the occasion of the Labour Day, it is easy to be/become Cameroonian because the job requires little effort. A day when the jobless celebrate more than the employed and eventually drink to stupor. Every holiday in Cameroon is a call for celebration as people are happy they get to escape their boring(but paying) jobs. But do they really need these holidays to leave their work? They create the least opportunity to leave their job sites and party or just lazy around. If this is what they meant when they talked of being/becoming Cameroonian, then it’s easy. It’s easy to be/become Cameroonian if I can easily buy my way into the most prestigious institutions in the country. Or what about blaming the government for every little thing — even our inactions. Matricule finders have discovered the most obnoxious way of being/becoming Cameroonian. Being/becoming Cameroonian can also be the indulgence in all the ills the Cameroonian society is involved in — drugs, theft, depravity, laziness, nepotism, just to name a few. If we are in the process of becoming, then the things we have seen and learnt so far must have already inculcated in us the values/vices needed to truly be/become Cameroonians. We must've learnt all of these vices we so much portray on our journey of becoming and so, when something goes wrong, we jovially chorus "impossible n'est pas camerounais" and not in the spirit of positivity, but in the same arrogant tone that depicts the irretrievable nature of our belief and moral systems.
But in a positive light, and looking at it from a patriotic standpoint, being Cameroonian should be about the desire to stand for national values and defend the national colours/territory wherever and whenever necessary. Setting aside bandwagon emotions and cabal participation, being/becoming Cameroonian is beating one’s chest and like the diplomat in Sir Cecil Sprong rice's poem, saying “I vow to the my country” And in protecting the country from every form of evil(including self), I can truly attest to being/becoming Cameroonian. Once I discover that the general good is greater than my personal achievements, I shall finally become Cameroonian because being Cameroonian isn’t only by birth, but also by heart. And when next I am asked what being/becoming Cameroonian means, I'll be glad to say that it means being the last man standing when every other Cameroonian seems to have gone astray or given up.
Happy Labour Day
It is a long destination-less journey. But we revel more in the pleasures of the journey than in the expectations in the destination...
