The Residue of the Western Missionary in the Southern Cameroons: The Christian Village: A Sad Tale of Strife and Dissension

Chapter Two: Shisong Christian Village

101 Chapter Two Shisong Christian Village Introduction “Eastward from Kumbo wends a road; it crosses the river, Row-Kumbo, runs up the ridge of Tiy-Menkan, skirting Tahyav peak that looms on the left. The visitor after trekking on this road, for forty minutes or so, over bank and bourn; comes to the foot of a parallel spur that juts South-Westwards like a giant buttress from the mountain side. The ridge is bounded west and east by two rills that flow to join Buiy Stream that roars down the jagged gorge to the foot of Mount Tahyav. It is on this aggressive headland called Shisong that the first Catholic Mission station ever, in the grassland area, was built.”142 In the 1920s, Shisong village became the centre of strife between Christians and those who had shunned the Whiteman’s religion to remain firmly rooted in the traditions of their fathers. What had begun like a sweet smelling pill, which everyone craving to learn the ways of Whiteman desired to swallow, soon turned out to be an insidious element like the Trojan horse with the hidden potential to rock the foundations of the tribe from within. In the colonial context, the traditional rulers, left with little or no options, welcomed the missionaries with the hope of benefiting from the prodigy of the Whiteman’s education. This enticing flirt with the Whiteman’s ways was to earn the indigenes more than they had bargained for. Like the biblical Adam and Eve after they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge in the middle of the garden, having tasted of the Whiteman’s religion, these early converts had no option but to cling tightly to it. This was the basis of the dissension between Christians and non-Christians. This dissent was championed by indigenes who had fallen away from the foundations of the tribe into the luring arms of the missionaries and who, like intoxicated zealots, vowed to fight to the very last drop of their blood. Surprisingly, despite the uproar and magnitude of this initial persecution, the storm that had been unleashed with 142Fonlon Bernard: A simple story Simply Told (1983) CEPER Yaoundé 102 extreme ferocity by the indigenes, soon receded when the Christian enclave of Shisong acquired almost the status of a state within a state. Fon Ngah Bifon of Nso The Nso Fondom became the most accommodating and approachable of all the other Fondoms in the Grass Fields. First, the Christian enclaves of Shisong were established under very different circumstances in relation to other enclaves in the Grass Fields Secondly, the Fon remained very close and supportive to the work of the missionaries especially the school, unlike in 103 other areas where tension between the Christians and the powers of the Fondom almost became a personal vendetta between the catechist and the Fon. The Nso experience was far from resembling such a scenario. Colonial records, however, provide some hints as to the cloudy background of the conflict between Fon Bifon and Paul Tangwa. After the initial turbulent years of strife and dissension between the Christians and their compatriots, festering tensions soon began giving the early Christian village of Shisong time and fertile conditions to find its roots and flower. Generally, missionaries were tolerated in the locality mainly because they were seen as an extension of the colonial enterprise. The Germans had demonstrated their military might, subduing the Nso Fondom with extreme brutality. The Fon had no alternative when missionaries knocked at his door with the request for land to settle in 1912. With the expulsion of the Germans together with missionaries, the Fon thought he had seen the last of the Whiteman. Events in Kumbo betrayed the seemingly cordial reception and acceptance of the missionaries by the traditional authorities. Once they rid their land of missionaries, the traditional rulers went a step further to obliterate all vestiges of Christianity in the locality. It is in this context that persecution of Christians became rife. Scorned and rejected by kinfolks, the early converts had no option than to exile themselves. The Christian village of Shisong, which became a sanctuary for these converts, provided the ideal nucleus for Christianity to blossom. Unlike other Christian villages, which bore within themselves the germs of their own destruction, the demise of the Shisong Christian village owed its reasons to contingency from within. The demise of many enclaves had become imperative following the incessant...