A Basket of Flaming Ashes

A Buea Childhood

51 A Basket of Flaming Ashes A Buea Childhood For my siblings I lick the nightly mountain fires And taste the morning honey The sun fights the morning fog 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 A fatal tragedy for a star 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. ...