a force too powerful to be ignored? Though Nkem and the other Christians so far had been unable to give satisfactory answers to these questions posed by their contemporaries, the doubts remained in their compounds and in the quarters. In church the priest had no equal.
After Mass, Nkem took Fatti to Fr. Max. ‘Pray that God should protect her, Father.’
While chanting an incantation, Fr. Max sprinkled holy water on Fatti and used his chrism-greased thumb to cross her forehead. ‘Pray the rosary with her everyday and bring her to Mass as often as you can,’ he said to Nkem, ‘and get her baptised.’
‘Her father is the problem,’ Nkem retorted.
‘Fatti, do you have a rosary?
‘No, Father.’
They collected the rosary from the presbytery and got to the compound in time to catch Temkeu’s last words to his skulls: ‘… protect Fatti so that she stays here on earth. There is still much she has to achieve. Let her not come and go without a history big enough to be passed down.’
Temkeu got out of bed with a word to his skulls and went to bed with a word to his skulls. The last visit he made each night was to Mefo’s hut and the first in the morning was still to Mefo’s hut. He did not want to hear from another that Fatti had woken in the same state in which she had gone to bed. He had to verify for himself that her breath had not been snatched away during the night. Like everyone in the compound, Temkeu agreed that one good had at least been born from the crisis: For the first time in a very long time, Mefo’s and his thoughts had moved in the same direction. They had unanimously agreed that Mefo was in a better position to do the right thing should the ancestors try to take Fatti during the night. That was how Fatti, for the second time, had left her mother’s hut for Mefo’s.
Soon the three days of rest were over. Fatti returned to accompanying her mother to the farm. When she got back home in the evening, she made for Mefo’s hut where she spent the night. As she continued to live with the days and weeks, Temkeu’s attention gradually shifted to another aspect of her life. Each morning, as she walked past his hut on her way to the farm, his eyes did a tour of her anatomy.
‘Why is her chest is still flat? Where are the signs of womanhood?’ In need of answers to the questions he asked himself, he called her to his hut one evening. ‘How many branches have you cut from your age tree?’
‘Nine, Papa.’
In the continuous absence of the sight his eyes were on the lookout for, the news that she had added one year from the time he last inquired was good enough to merit celebration over palm wine and corn beer with his friends. Fatti was getting riper and the time was drawing nearer.
February sailed along gracefully with life for the Fopous being as normal as it could be. Day after day, the boys ran after knowledge or cattle, while the women bent over farms, deracinate shrubs and stumps, gathering and burning, and then tilling and waiting. By mid month each nose full carried the scent of dust stirred out of slumber by the first rains, heralds of the approaching season. March came along with the beginning of the rainy season. The Fopou women, along with others in the village, returned to their farms, this time planting and weeding.
Life for Temkeu Fopou was also as normal as it could be. A typical morning for him started with a heavy meal, which digested as he took the short walk to his pottery and carpentry workshop, where he spent most of the day. Before returning home in the evening, he often stopped in the village square to make some noise and share some palm wine or corn beer with his friends. He was making for the village square, one evening, when it suddenly started raining. He rushed into a nearby compound but not fast enough to avoid the first few drops of rain, which ran down his torso to be trapped in the folds of his loincloth. He sighed and sighed. His problem was neither his wet skin, which will dry in a few seconds, nor his wet loincloth, which will dry in a few minutes. Superstition held that anyone who was soaked by the first rain would be caught in the rain throughout that rainy season.
By August, the flurry of raindrops had become the most faithful companion wherever anyone went. September stepped in with the start of another school year. After primary education, which was all Temkeu could offer his sons, the first two had moved to Yaoundé, the capital of the French Cameroons, with promises of getting more education and returning home to sow its benefits. Five years had gone by since he had last heard from the second. Though Makam, the first, rarely made the one-day journey home, material evidence and remittances showed he carried his family in his thoughts. Achum, Temkeu’s fourth son, had decided to try his hand at trade by moving to Douala, the economic city. The twenty-seven-year-old gave Temkeu reason to walk about with raised shoulders. Apart from his frequent trips home, he was changing the face of the compound with the brick house he was building nearby. The pampering lavished on Temkeu by his daughter-in-law also added to Achum’s list of achievements.
Whenever Temkeu talked about Makam and Achum, his tongue rolled with the ease of one comfortable with a subject. When the discussion stirred towards the likes of his third son, Bacham, his tongue grew heavy with shame. A failed trip to acquire employment in banana and tea plantations in the coastal region, drunkenness and women – these were all he had to show for his twenty-nine years on earth. To increase the weight of Temkeu’s shame, his three middle sons had taken Bacham’s example a step further. Everything they did said they were just waiting for him to close his eyes so that they start competing with his wives for his property. As concerns the five youngest sons who still lived under their mothers’ roofs, Temkeu let go no opportunity to make it known that he had only one favourite. Though just eight years old, Mosa showed signs of conquering where his other brothers had failed. Unlike the other young boys, Mosa went to the farm every day, either accompanying his grandmother, mother, two stepmothers or at times his sister, Fatti. In the evening, he moved from one hut to the other doing whatever there was to do – fetching water, gathering wood, lighting the fire. His was the first name that dropped from every mouth in need.
It was the first day of the school year, and the day had dawned with a huge smile carved on Temkeu’s mouth. He walked out of his hut wearing one of his pair of jumpers, his raffia bag and the pair of leather slippers which Makam had brought for him – Makam had shown up unexpectedly the previous evening. By 7.00 a.m., Temkeu was walking out of his compound, dragging along a new Mosa clad in the Catholic school uniform – a sky blue shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. ‘I am sending you to school today,’ he said to Mosa as they walked down the road, ‘because I want you to grow up and be like Makam. Have you heard?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘You take the white man’s book seriously and you become like Makam!’
‘Yes, Papa, I have heard.’ On this bright Monday morning, Mosa had two exercise books clutched in his armpit and a sharpened pencil trapped in his fist. His friends ran out of nearby compounds and hailed him. It was easy to tell they would have loved to be the ones wearing the Catholic School (CS) Nchumuluh uniform and heading for the school premises.
Temkeu and Mosa walked on without talking for a while, except greeting and acknowledging greetings from passers-by. As they neared the school Temkeu said, ‘The white man has done a good thing by opening a school at my nose. Last year it took only a short walk to register Totso, and I am doing it again with you. I remember the days when I used to walk right to Santa to register your elder brothers in the Council School.’ He paused in reflection. ‘Yes, if not for the white man, you would have followed the school to live in Santa with relatives who sing welcome songs but sigh the moment I turn my back.’
The duo covered the thirty-minute walk from their compound through the village
