Batuo's world

Condom to Intercourse

By Pius Adesanmi** “You’ll get to see Condom”. She uttered that sentence in a friendly manner that made her completely oblivious to the outlines of shock that were changing the contours of my face as she spoke. I used to live in Europe – France – before I moved to North America. Having lived continuously in Canada and the United States now since 1998, I always receive a fair dosage of culture shock every time I return to Paris – my second home away from Nigeria. If there is one thing Europeans and Nigerians have in common, especially the French, it is liberty of expression devoid of the irritating encumbrance that is political correctness. In Europe and Nigeria, you can still call a prisoner prisoner without wahala. In Canada and the US, he is an inmate and may sue you if you call him a prisoner; if your neighbor can’t see, he or she is not blind but visually challenged. Anybody you would call disabled in Nigeria is physically challenged here in North America. You may not use generic ‘man’ the way they use it in Europe and Naija English, you’d better say ‘person’ here in North America. Every language situation here is a mine field of political correctness that restricts and stands in the way of natural, spontaneous, free-flowing communication. North American communication is stale. My graduate students and I once left a graduate seminar room untidy after our three-hour class at Penn State University. It was an evening seminar and we normally brought snacks to class. That evening, we got carried away debating Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney and forgot to clean up the room. Next day, a terse email from the Departmental Secretary was in my inbox: “Hi Pius, it would appear that you and your students left the seminar room in a less than complimentary situation yesterday…” At this point, I stopped reading and went to her office and told her: “you know, it’s ok to say hey Pius, you guys made a heck of a mess in the seminar room! I won’t sue for pain and suffering if you put it plain old English. Less than complimentary situation? That’s political correctness gone too far”. I have very little patience with American political correctness. My work depends on the flow and effervescence of language, political correctness stands in the way of language. But don’t blame the poor secretary. In America, I could very much have claimed that she used “made a mess” for me just because I’m black. Were I white, she would have used the politically correct and respectful “less than complimentary situation”. If I put up a good show, weeping profusely on national TV with a furious Reverend Al Sharpton trying to console me at a press conference, I may even get a moronic jury to award me ten million dollars for pain and suffering! By the time I’m done with lawyers’ fees and taxes, I could still pack my load and return to Nigeria with about 1.5 million dollars. That’s America! That’s why that society has come up with an overdose of political correctness in daily communication. That’s why the naturalness of communication and the unguardedness of diction and expression always shock me whenever I return to Paris. But not even my knowledge of the absence of North American political correctese and other conversational hindrances in French and France prepared me for what the lady had just thrown at me with a very friendly smile: “You’ll get to see Condom”! “Condom ke?”, I thought. Then I looked at her properly for the first time: thirty-ish and very beautiful. There she stood, blessed with the sort of fullness and roundedness in certain geographies of the female anatomy that make Nigerian men in Europe and America secretly describe her type as a black woman’s behind trapped in a white woman’s body, away from the unwary ears of the Nigerian women in their lives. And she had thrown Condom into the conversation out of the blue!

Establish Boundaries

Establish Boundaries.

A Tribute to Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a

Video filmed and Edited by Ryan Glista with music by Henry Tanyi (Tanash).

This is a poem written and performed by Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang, a star actress in in several productions by Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a. Thomas died on March 8th, 2007 along the Douala-Yaoundé Highway as a result of a ghastly auto accident. He died along side Dr. Bate Besong, Dr. Hilarious Ambe and their driver, Mr. Awoh Franklin.

A Tribute to Dr. Bate Besong

Video filmed and Edited by Ryan Glista with music by Henry Tanyi (Tanash)

 

This is a poem written and performed by Dr. Joyce Ashuntantang in Memory of Dr. Bate Besong. Dr. Besong died on March 8th, 2007 along the Douala-Yaoundé Highway as a result of a ghastly auto accident. He died along side Thomas Kwasen Gwan'gwaa, Dr. Hilarious Ambe and their driver, Mr. Awoh Franklin.

BATE BESONG: THE FINAL INTERVIEW

  by Joyce Ashuntantang

A few days before his death in a ghastly accident, the feisty Anglophone Cameroon playwright and Poet, Bate Besong recorded this interview with ace CRTV Producer, Robert Ekukole. Little did both of them know that the interview would be BB's Last. Bate Besong, the celebrated champion of the masses, died in a ghastly car accident on March 8 2007 along side, Veteran producer, Thomas Kwasen Gwangwa'a, Ambe Hilarious and their driver, Awoh Franklin. Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV) later broadcasted this interview posthumously.

In this prophetic interview, Bate Besong states, "Everyday I leave my house...my family knows...for the past twenty years...when I leave my house I know I will not come back home. Every play I write, Any poem I write,  I write as if it is my last poem, as if it is my last book". He died less than a day after a heavily attended launch of what has become his last  book , Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus. He was on his way to Yaounde for a visa interview at the American Embassy in order to attend the 2007 ALA conference In West Virginia.

Cameroonian Men change Perceptions on Valentine’s Day.

 By Joyce Ashuntantang*

In a rare show of emotion and public display of affection for their spouses and significant others, a bunch of Cameroonian men a.k.a African men, defied the stereotypes to actually profess their love openly on February 13^th in Dallas, Texas. They did it with red roses, gifts, poems, sultry looks and kisses. Maybe it had to do with the particular women involved, just maybe!

The occasion was a Valentine’s day party dubbed “An affair of the heart” organized by the Ex Saker Students Association (EXSSA USA), Dallas chapter. This is an alumni organization of the prestigious Saker Baptist College, in Limbe, Cameroon; a Christian based boarding secondary school for girls. These girls, now grown women are a combination of fine intelligence and positive energy that revitalizes. On this day, they went all out to set the mood and the results were there for all to see. The hall was transformed into a banquet fit for royalty, and surely the EXSSA ladies were bent on treating their guests as such.