By Joyce Ashuntantang
I lick the nightly mountain fires
And taste the morning honey
The sun cradles the mountain’s scalp
My clock on a school day
The mountain cries of ancestors
“Amos Evambe, e mokala a ma ja”*
As Father Walter Stifter sprints to finish
A priest with a mountain mission.
Ewunkem curves on his legs
Tanga swings between posts
Njuma bumps his soccer head
My first corpse in a blue casket
Market days weave between the mad
Okereke and savvy aunty Sophie
In the flight of growth
Watching flying men and woman
These stories locked with secrets
Of a mountain -childhood.
*"Amos Evambe the white man has come". In reference to Father Walter Stifter, the British priest who beat Amos Evambe, the local Champion to win the 1976 annual Mount Cameroon race. Stifter’s historic win made him the first non- bakweri (natives of the Mountain region) and non Cameroonian to win the title. He kept the title for three consecutive years.
©Joyce Ashuntantang
This is fabulous Joyce, I lack words to decribe it. Its just Great.
Posted by: Buea Township | February 06, 2010 at 06:13 PM