Wednesday 28 December 2016

Preparing an Exam under Gunshots: My Experience with Inter-tribal War

That day was February 13, 2007; a day my memory has deliberately decided never to divorce with.  It was just two days after we had celebrated Cameroon’s National Youth Day on 11 February in total joy and tranquillity. One day after the Youth Day celebration, some women from our village went to their farms around Ibal-Ansang, Ansang, Adongtang and Ambikui’i. They were suddenly attacked by some armed young men from our neighbouring village, Oku, which has been laying claims over portions of one of most fertile forests in that area since 1892. The reckless young men chased our women, collected their farming tools such as hoes and machetes and set their farm huts (known in Mbesa as mentoa ma gveinse) ablaze. There were a few skirmishes here and there that day, but our women felt somehow unsafe without our men so they decided to return home and keep the latter informed. The young men from the other village also went home and rallied their men and women. Men and women from both villages met at the fighting field early on February 13, and began by exchanging insults which forced tempers in both camps to mount until a man in our opponents’ camp pulled the trigger of the gun whose shot roared across our village that day.
For the next three weeks or so, thunderous gunshots kept yelling across the skies of our village. Locally-made and imported guns alike continued to mess our airs with galaxies of smoke, as we locked horns with our neighbours in fierce, bloody battles. Our adversaries soon discovered that their gunshots were always lousy because they persistently missed their human targets. They then resorted to bringing down our corn farms with well-filed machetes, setting countless houses—both grass-thatched and zinc-roofed houses—ablaze, looting our animals and other valuables such as aluminium roofing sheets, sofas, carved wooden chairs, sewing machines, among others.
In the midst of all this chaos, schools were still operational in our village. My classmates and I were in Form Five that year (fifth grade in secondary school), preparing to write the Cameroon General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE O Level). Our classes were disrupted every now and then as some villagers fleeing the escalating intertribal war to neighbouring villages like Akeh and Ajung sometimes ran through our school campus at Government Secondary School (GSS) Mbesa.  I still remember one father, Babe Simon Feyufe alias Takekuf who narrowly escaped bullets from the enemies’ camp, fled out of his Ntimati compound, ran through Asuh and Adom, and found himself right inside our school campus, and could never explain when and how he ran up the Fetatinyim hills below the school campus at Ibal. Mr Chia Philip Yemeh, one of my teachers then, and I helped remove a bullet from the skin of his head! The war kept on heightening as days went by, with many women and children escaping with some of their most valuable belongings to neighbouring villages and safer quarters of Mbesa like Njinagwa. However, in spite of the huge numbers of our people fleeing the conflict, my friends and I in school did not seem to be much affected. One day, while people were escaping other parts of the village through our school football pitch to hide in Njinagwa and Akeh, I peeped through one of the windows of our class and saw Ba’a Manga’a, walking slowly across the field with his third leg, his walking stick. That is when I cried out to my classmates that the war had reached its peak because old Ba’a Manga’a was believed to be a very strong man in terms of traditional medicine who could not run away from whatever form of threat. We had been told as toddlers that when war broke out for the first time between our two tribes in 1982 he did not run. He only hid himself along the banks of one small stream near his compound; then some men from the enemy camp searched, found and inflicted numerous wounds with machetes all over his body. When our people discovered him beside that stream, it was days after the incidence and his wounds were already rotting. So nobody believed he could live again, but he surprised everybody as he healed himself and survived the almost-incurable wounds. So I could not see him fleeing danger and I dare stay!
Three of my classmates, Cornelius Ngum Ngong aka Jagua, Liberty Songang Nshom aka Song and Conrad Guo Nsom, and I decided immediately to escape to Fundong, the headquarters of our division and personally narrate our ordeal to the Senior Divisional Officer (SDO) and the Divisional Delegate for Secondary Education in Boyo Division. All other students and teachers in our school took to their heels, prematurely ending classes.  We passed through my family compound at Njinagwa where we took along some women and kids to hide at Laikom (the Kom Fon’s Palace) on our way down to Fundong. As we took the Laikom direction, others fled to Akeh and Ajung. It took us more than six hours of trekking—climbing and descending hills and walking across the Ijim Mountain Forest and Plain with children fastened on our backs and heavy loads on our heads—to reach Laikom.
When we arrived at Laikom, we met many other Mbesa refugees already lodged at the Guest House of the Palace, mainly old women, nursing mothers and children. There was no mediatisation of our refugee status and conditions, probably because we were victims of an intertribal war, which for some is not a major conflict. But, don’t we know that conflict is conflict? Another reason for the absence of mediatisation is that as soon as the war broke out I called the CRTV severally and in vain. I would call and inform them that there was an on-going and escalating war between our two villages. And they would not send any journalist on the field and would equally not inform the public. Perhaps the CRTV did not want to react because our village does not have big people in government and again because our adversaries initially thought they would give us a crushing defeat in the war. But once they noticed that things were getting sourer and sourer on their side, our adversaries quickly informed the CRTV and it reacted promptly. Before doing so, they had attempted to kill our brothers and sisters who were in Government High School (GHS) Ilak-Oku, since we did not yet have a high in our village by then. Thank God that the Divisional Officer for Oku Subdivision and his gendarmerie company commander came to their rescue and before the end of that year GSS Mbesa was raised by the government to Government High School (GHS) Mbesa!
Given my status as a Mbesa prince, we entered Laikom from a special backdoor where only princes and princesses are allowed to pass when they want to meet the Fon (traditional ruler) of Kom. We narrated everything to the Fon who had begun receiving other Mbesa refugees since morning. And when we brought in all the refugees to him, he became emotionally upset at the sight of trembling old women, nursing mothers and children who have walked all the way through the extensive and dangerous Ijim Mountain Forest. The Fon quickly walked down memory lane, recalling similar situations involving land grabbing from Oku in Mbesa in 1982 and 1988. As the Paramount Fon for Boyo Division, the Fon, His Royal Highness Foyn Vincent Yuh II, cursed the Oku and vowed before us that never again in life should a Boyo (Kom) man have something to do with an Oku man. That Oku has given Mbesa enough of their trouble and it was time to publicly declare them enemies of Boyo Division. He ordered for two cocks to be slaughtered and cooked with some corn fufu for us. He served some of us drinks, especially palm wine and we stayed in his company and continued to lament the deplorable state of affairs back in Mbesa. Arrangements were made for some of the Fon’s many wives to accommodate those refugees who would not have space in the already-full Palace Gest House. My classmates and I spent one night there.
The next day, we took off very early in the morning for Fundong to meet the SDO and the Delegate. We trekked for about two hours and when we reached Fundong, we were told the SDO had gone up to meet with the SDO for Bui Division (where Oku belongs) at Mbesa via Belo the previous day while the Delegate was out of town. What a disappointment for us! We felt cheated by fate! Nevertheless, we understood that the presence of the two SDOs in the village meant things will soon return to normal. Back at Laikom, we further learned that some people had arrived from Mbesa just after we left to announce that the two SDOs have come to Mbesa with some gendarmes and things were somehow calming down. So we took some of the refugees with us and a few belongings and returned to Mbesa to gauge the situation before sending word to others to return too. The following day, nearly every refugee was back in the village, but the heavy presence if gendarmes did not only create an atmosphere of unease but was also unable to keep things totally under control.
Despite the presence of the gendarmes from Boyo and Bui, the conflict persisted and the North West Regional Governor deployed two trucks of gendarmes to Mbesa, and not in Oku, because the Oku come and fight over our land right inside our village. The gendarmes however were overtaken by the bloody nature of the intertribal war and the dexterity with which our people handled guns and were crushing our enemies. Some of our women were even more active in the war than men; a woman would run after and catch an enemy or pull away a wounded or killed one. Some of them were shot at, but only a few bullets would penetrate parts of their bodies. Then they would stop, squeeze out the bullets and continue fighting to the grand surprise of the armed forces who on their part were falling down to avoid stray and targeted bullets from the Oku.  But fortunately for us, no Mbesa person was killed; only a few people sustained heavy injuries. This frightened the gendarmes and surprised the villagers more and more!  
The year 2007 marked the fifth year of my part time photography job which was helping me meet some of my school needs. One day, the Divisional Officer (DO) for Belo Subdivision Patrick Pelopo wanted to visit the battle fields around Ibal-a-Nsang and invited me to come along with him as a photographer. While taking photographs of his tour of the battlefields, we picked some bullets from the enemy camp and the DO identified them as military bullets. He noted that in his book and promised to send his report to hierarchy so that the Oku should explain to the government where they were getting military bullets from. The story however just ended like that and we were not surprised because we know that there are numerous sons and daughters of Oku occupying top military and penitentiary positions in Cameroon, including at the time a regional governor and a minister of state! Given the chronic corruption and tribalism that has eaten deep into the fabrics of national life in Cameroon, it could not surprise anybody that our adversaries were exercising the law of might is right. Some of their people we shot and identified in the war were uniformed people currently in service. This, particularly the strong presence and influence of our enemies in government, also explains why since 1982, our government has not been able to render us justice in the land dispute in question.
Sometime in April there was an exponential increase in the number of daily gunshots in the village. This made it impossible for us to concentrate and study for upcoming our GCE exam in June that year, 2007. This really disturbed and traumatised some us. Some of my friends and I who were residing at Itinikum for daily evening prep classes at the St Agnes Catholic Parish Mission premises gathered in Jagua’s room to ponder our fate and decide what to do in order to continue preparing for the fast-approaching GCE exam. It was a very sad moment of our lives as students, in an examination class for that matter! It was a veritable mourning mood for us! So we decided to immortalise it in a photograph.
With my mates in mourning mood, Credit: Nsah                                   Nsah and Nshom studying at Njinagwa, Credit: Nsah
  Thereafter, I suggested and Jagua and Song agreed that we escape to the calm plains of the Ijim Mountain Forest and find shelter among the cattle Fulani (Bororo) there where we could study well for the exam. Once the three of us agreed on the suggestion, we set off for Ardo Musa’s compound at Ijim on the road to Fundong, passing through my native quarter of Njinagwa. We were on the move again, just like many other people in the village. Given that Ardo Musa had been my father’s friend and later on my own friend, he warmly received us, offered us a spare room in one of his numerous houses where were staying and studying. He also offered us two brand new blankets and instructed his three wives to serve us food whenever we needed to eat. We spent about one week there. Sometimes we studied in our room and sometimes we went out and laid to study on the soft, green, carpet-like, cattle-pasture grass around his compound. From time to time, we would come to the hills above Mbesa and listened to the roaring gunshots from the battlefields. Sometimes, we would come down to Njinagwa to find out if our people were all safe and whether or not the war was getting over.
The armed conflict soon subsided thanks to the continuous deployment of armed gendarme officers.  We left Ijim, came down to the village and resumed our classes just like any other pupil or student and teacher. Makeshift classrooms were rapidly built for the primary school pupils of the Catholic Mission Primary School (CS) at Ntimati because the enemies had burnt down the church and other buildings that were hosting their school until that time. At Government Primary School Fetongle, a new Cameroon national flag was bought because the same enemies had torn the one they met hoisted in the school campus when both teachers and pupils had fled for their dear lives the day the enemies used petrol and matches to set more than 300 Mbesa houses ablaze! Our enemies were lawless troublemakers who did not respect any restricted areas at wartime! Theirs was more or less of guerrilla warfare, with much focus on the looting and destruction of property given that they could not shot any of us to death because that piece of land rightfully belongs to us. Does the Bible not say that, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free?”
By the time we were writing the GCE examination that year, a majority of the armed gendarmes were no longer in the village since the war had considerably subsided. But two gendarme officers were instructed to secure all students writing the GCE in the lone accommodation centre of the village at GSS Mbesa. The presence of these uniformed officers, though to our advantage, also kept some students in a state of uneasiness. Some people naturally fear the gun and people in uniform! On the day we finished writing the exam, in my capacity as our school senior prefect, I was assigned to carry the sealed carton containing the written scripts to our school principal’s private residence, at Fetongle, from where his Toyota land rover would transport the scripts to the GCE Board regional office in Bamenda town. When I carried the carton, I was accompanies by the GCE Board-send Superintendent, our school Principal and some discipline masters and the two gendarme officers. I also decided to immortalize this occasion in photographs.

Two gendarmes and others at GSS Mbesa, Credit: Nsah                          Nsah carrying GCE scripts in middle, Credit: Nsah

I wrote eleven papers in the GCE Ordinary Level that year. When I was registering for the eleven papers in September 2006 I was sure of obtaining eleven ‘A’ grades in the exam. However, once war broke out on February 12, 2007, my hopes started oscillating.  I however remained optimistic and hardworking despite the chaos caused by the war. In spite of our numerous displacements and interruptions of lessons, when the GCE results were proclaimed in August that year, I still did well in the exam; I passed in all my eleven papers, scoring a total of 25/33 points. I hope no one will ask me where the other eight points went to. The obvious answer is in the war. Then how would one expect me to forget such experiences?

Nsah, Ngong and other friends celebrating tGCE success in a palm wine parlour in Santa, Credit: Nsah                                                                   
By February 2016, exactly nine years after the third phase of this war erupted, things had not yet completely returned to normal. After 2007, the Mbesa people took the issue to the Bamenda High Court and till date there has never been a hearing, only adjournments after adjournments! And there have been occasional, light confrontations between the two villages. This got heightened in February 2016 to the extent that about three hundred Mbesa women decided to stage a trekking but peaceful protest from Mbesa to the Regional Governor’s Office in Bamenda. These women, accompanied by our village Fon His Royal Highness Foyn Gilbert Njong III, trekked a distance of close to 100 kilometres in two days, without any sleep, from Mbesa through Belo to Big Banbanki (Kijem-Keku) en route to Bamenda town to meet the Governor. The Fon of Big Babanki, noticed the marching women and out of pity and concern for their security—as they were heading towards uninhabited parts  of his village at night en route to Bamenda via Bambui, pleaded with them to spend a night in his palace. The women hesitated but finally agreed and he ordered enough food to be cooked by his many wives and servants and served to the Mbesa women. He also informed the Governor of the situation and the latter finally came over to Babanki, met and discussed with the women. He listened to their cries for an end to be put to the persistent attacks they have been receiving from their Oku brothers and sisters since 1982 so that peace may reign. The Governor listened to them and promised to visit the disputed area in Mbesa within two weeks. He ordered the SDOs for Boyo and Bui, Dos for Belo and Oku and Paramount Fons for Boyo and Bui to organise peace consultation visits with the Fons of Oku and Mbesa in view of finding lasting solutions to this age old conflict between two brotherly villages. The visits were organised accordingly. Although close to two months afterward, he finally came to Mbesa accompanied by the SDOs and Paramount Fons of Boyo and Bui as well as the DOs of Belo and Oku for an on-the-spot evaluation of the problem. But unfortunately, no agreement was reached in the presence of the Governor whose intention was to demarcate the boundary between these two communities once and for all. The Oku continued to lay claim to Mbesa land, violating all boundary pillars that have been erected between us since 1988. The Governor could not proceed amidst such behaviour. So he left with the two conflicting maps that the two communities had presented to him, promising to come back in the nearest future once he has studied the maps in order to indicate the right boundary. Since then, visits have been intensified between our two Fons, with each of the two Fons now having set foot in the palace of the other after more than 30 years of no visits! We only hope and pray that lasting peace will reign between us in the days ahead!
While we hope that this conflict comes to an eternal end, I would like to conclude here with some of the numerous lessons I have learned from it so far, especially since 2007. War is not good and we should all fight to end war, including terrorism. War affects all aspects our lives: it causes deaths, destroys property, injures people and causes unwanted displacements; it contributes to poor performance in education, among other effects. There are many internal refugees due to intertribal wars in Cameroon and elsewhere whose voices are often neglected as global attention is focused on crises like those of Syria, the Central African Republic and terrorist activities like those of Boko Haram and ISIS (see my publication in Stories for Humanities: FrontieresWalls, 2016). Women and children suffer a lot from armed conflicts and women have a great potential to ending conflicts. The Trekking protest staged by Mbesa women has sparked off many positive actions which are most likely going to bring an end to the Mbesa-Oku land dispute. My personal experience with war has increased my love for humanity as can be seen in my writings and commitment to world humanitarian activities. I have written on why continuous production of arms brings about war, on the Syrian war, on the Mbesa-Oku war, on illegal immigration, to name but these. I am a digital advocate of the World Humanitarian Submit and an online volunteer at World Pulse where I have joined global female leaders in solving global problems such as ending war and hunger. I am also a Focal Point at the World Youth Foundation and a Fellow of the Young African Leaders Initiatives (YALI) Regional Leadership Center (RLC) West Africa Dakar 2016, currently working to legalise my NGO which aims at empowering vulnerable people, promoting innovative education and combating clandestine immigration in Africa. Above all, I want to preach peace wherever I go in the world!
© 05 August 2016, Nsah Mala (Kenneth Toah Nsah)