By Francis Wache
In 1990, the maiden edition of Cameroon Life carried an interview with Anglophone Cameroon’s foremost novelist, Mbella Sonne Dipoko.
It was a scintillating interview. I asked the interviewer, late Denis Ngala, if he could fix an appointment for me with the iconic Dipoko. Ngala accepted.
And, so, one day I found myself in Tiko. Ngala ushered me into Dipoko’s residence. Dipoko, swathed in a flowing white shirt and sanja (loin cloth) rose and stretched out his hand. Reverentially, I squeezed the proffered hand. Then, we sat down. And the conversation flowed. We talked about everything and nothing. Since I was awed with meeting the Big Man, I spoke sparingly. Ngala, on the other hand, was garrulous and jocular. They bantered freely.
I was struck by the monastic barrenness of the house. For one who had supposedly lived with the French for years, I found this bareness incongruous. The French, it is general knowledge, have a penchant for the chic. But here, in Dipoko’s home, there was no carpet. There was, surprise of all surprises, even no bookshelf! No books. No magazines, no newspapers. I wondered whether the author of Black and White in Love had been burgled. But, I dared not ask.
Just as we were bidding farewell, Dipoko told me he had enjoyed my article in Cameroon Life magazine. It was titled, The Cameroonian Intellectual and the Eloquence of Silence. Although he was not the first to have commended the article, yet, this praise, coming from him, I could feel my chest heaving with pride. If the maestro wordsmith, himself, had said so – openly – then I had a legitimate reason to feel the surge of pride.
On December 1, 1990, when I launched my book, Lament of a Mother, Dipoko was the Guest Speaker. The hall was jammed, probably because people had come to see the famous writer with the eccentric beard. I was, naturally, flattered that I could bring out Dipoko to my book launch. He was a sensation.
In his keynote address, titled: If Souls Are to be Liberated, Dipoko argued, forcefully, that the writer had to be a teacher, singer, seer-prophet and politician because the poet, he said, had “to fight for, and then win, in concert with other lovers of freedom, in concert with every patriot in this country, the right to total freedom of expression.”
He told us, at the end of the book launch, that he had come late because another book launch was taking place that same day at the University of Buea. After getting there, just by the sheer number of cars he saw, he knew he was in the wrong league. The place was reeking bourgeois, Dipoko said. He fled. When he finished narrating the experience, we guffawed.
After the book launch, Dipoko and I met often, especially after he had decided to become a columnist for Cameroon Life. He regularly attended our “Editorial Conferences”, random discussions laced with frothing beer and fumes of cigarette in a popular watering hole. Dipoko was radical – indeed, iconoclastic - in his approach and felt that I, as the Editor-in-Chief, was too accommodating with the regime. On this front, he constantly took sarcastic swipes at me.
When I visited Dipoko in his village, I found him living in the same kind of shack like the one in Tiko: no ornate furniture, no Western gadgets, no gorgeous paintings. Just the essential. Although he was the village Chief, there was nothing palatial about his residence. In fact, I found it Spartan.
Because of the bucolic backdrop, we agreed that, if I so desired, he could give me a plot to construct my country hideout. That, of course, will never be.
As we sat shooting the breeze, we could hear the majestic Mungo River coursing down nearby. It did not take much thinking for me to conclude that, not far from here, was the spot where Ngosso, the hero of Because of Women and his concubine must have had their amorous trysts.
The last time I visited Dipoko in his Tiko office, we chit-chatted. He showed me a bulging file of poems he intended to publish - soon. I offered that I would like to computer-input them so that he could proofread later. He agreed.
When I heard about his death, my mind immediately raced to that manuscript. I hope whoever takes over his patrimony should jealously guard that file. I also thought of the autobiography he told me he was working on. He was to title it, River Boy. It would be blockbuster, he said. Every time we met, I recall, I would nudge him about the project. Knowing what drudgery it takes to write, I never insisted. Now, the River Boy project is gone, too. Or is it not? Gone, too, from the way he told it, must be his magnus opus, Bobi Tanap (vintage Dipoko). Or are there probabilities that these works would be published posthumously? That, surely, would be a literary delight.
Unlike his Tiko residence and his Missaka home, Dipoko’s Tiko office was flooded with paparazzi. The shelves were groaning under the weight of files. Above all, there were books. None authored by him, though. Nonetheless, I visited one of the shelves and borrowed a book by my favourite writer, James Baldwin. The title? Just Above My Head.
Dipoko’s death is just above my head.
Francis Wache is the Executive Editor of The Post newspaper. He lives in Buea, Cameroon.
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