By Lyombe Eko
A literary Bombax tree has fallen in the dark, rainforest of Cameroon! Writers never really die. They just put down their pens. Mbella Sonne Dipoko lives in the lives and memories of his family, his friends, and his many fans. He contributed to the reading pleasure of millions of people all over the world. Mbella Sonne Dipoko lives in the minds of all those who read his work and became better people for having done so. I never met Mbella Sonne Dipoko in peron but when I was a struggling man, a youngster in the impoverished doldrums of life in the rainforest of Cameroon,I met him through his work. The eccentric writer made me dream; dream of transcending poverty and want and injustice. If Mbella Sonne Dipoko could rise from the constricting creeks and grinding poverty of Tiko and Mungo to become a global literary figure, I too could build something on my empty lot in life.
Mbella Sonne Dipoko gave me a yearning to survive. He taught me and my generation that it was fine to be different, even eccentric to survive. Survival was everything. He taught me that the work of the mind was a path out of the prison of misery, tears, suffering and meaningless fatalism that is the lot of the African from the rainforest, the creeks, the mangrove swamps, the Fako mountain, and the hills. A close reading of the bard of the creeks reveals that even at his gloomiest, most pessimistic moments, Mbella Sonne Dipoko thundered a message of hope and transcendence. I heard him say “What ever your lot in life, build something on it!” His voice is now silent. Shhhhh! The man is now writing away in the land of the ancestors...the land of his Father and his God. Write on Brother, write on!
Leo Eko is an Associate Professor at the School of journalism and Mass Comminication, University of Iowa.
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