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131 6 Tenth Anniversary of a Horrible Year I am scripting this piece on August 27, 1996, exactly ten years, to the day, since the untimely death of Bernard Nsokika Fonlon whose birthday on November 1 9th I always join other Fonlonians to celebrate under the conviction that, even though the man died prematurely, it was a very good thing that he was born. Fonlon died in Canada on the occasion of his reception of the distinguished honour of a doctorate degree (honoris causa) award from a prestigious Canadian University. Fonlon’s tragic death coincided with and was preceded the previous week by an unprecedented disaster in which nearly 2000 Cameroonians, over 4000 livestock and countless other animals perished in the Lake Nyos catastrophe of August 21, 1986. Nineteen eighty - six was truly a terrible year for Cameroon and as we remember (as against celebrate) the aluminium or tin anniversary of that horrible year, we cannot help shuddering as time cycles often and the number 6 are to be dreaded. As a sort of advance silver lining or sugar coating to a sad subject permit me to digress a little here and thank my good friend and accomplished Fonlon scholar, Mr. Kevin Mbayu, for drawing my attention to an uncharacteristic but inexcusable error, a veritable slip of the mind in IN THE SPIRIT OF GOBATA of Tuesday, August 13. 1996, entitled “Struggling Non- Violently: The Case of the SCNC.” In that piece, which I had written under unusual and difficult circumstances, away from my personal library, books and source materials, I did not exactly quote Fonlon upside-down, but, nevertheless, made a culpable reverse substitution of the meanings of his famous expressions: vir probandus and vir probatus because of my now rather rusty grasp of Latin, owing to time and disuse. It is an error that Fonlon could never have made and that careful Fonlon scholars like Kevin Mbayu would detect at a glance, any day, anywhere. This column has no direct didactic pretensions, but it would be inexcusable to condone the danger of popularising a factually wrong cliché. Parenthetically, I should remark that I am impressed by the 132 Road Companion to Democracy and Meritocracy number of writers who love using the very catchy Latin expression of the idea of “a healthy mind in a healthy body” (mens sana in corpore sano) but who write it as mens sano in copore sano because that is how some careless professors have it in print in their works. So, please, take note and put your records right. A well-tested and proven person is a vir probatus while s/he who is still to be so tested and proven is a vir probandus. Thanks Kevin! Incidentally and parenthetically again, the defensible reason for which I sent an excusably slightly insufficiently researched piece for publication was that I did not want the column to miss appearing barely three weeks after its debut. But, quite ironically, the column failed to appear that very week in spite of my costly efforts, because my piece, apparently, did not reach the editors of CamPost on time through no fault of mine. At Nkwen in Bamenda on Sunday 11 / 08 / 96 and at Kumbo in Nso on Monday 12 / 08 / 96, some readers of Cameroon Post and fans of Gobata nearly lynched me over the absence of IN THE SPIRIT OF GOBATA from the latest issue of the paper. Not having seen the said issue myself, I was completely baffled as to what they were ranting about. Are these the inevitable hazards and fair wages of a good columnist? If so, where are its plums and silver linings? But let me take this opportunity and repeat here a “warning” I once issued with regard to the rather short-lived COCKTAIL ... from the son of GOBATA, namely, that this column is subject to interruption, discontinuance or even disappearance without any prior notice, especially if cooperation and encouragement from the CamPost management is found at any time to be wanting. I will, of course, do my utmost best as usual and I pledge my word to that effect. But I cannot do more than my best and I will not, at any time, try to catch the wind or square the circle. Back to our anno horribilis, 1986. In spite of Radio and Television noise about this 10th anniversary of the Lake Nyos disaster, a remarkable fact is government lack of interest in the whole affair. The 1986 disaster...

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