Perspectives on Written Cameroon Literature in English

21. John Nkemngong Nkengasong, The Widow’s Might, Yaoundé: Editions CLE, 2006

309 21 John Nkemngong Nkengasong, T The Widow’s Might, Yaoundé: Editions CLE, 2006 With L.T. Asong, Margret Afuh and Alobwed’Epie about to make a forceful comeback onto the Anglophone Cameroon literary scene, each with a new novel, here enters John N. Nkengasong with The Widow’s Might, his second novel in less than two years. One can imagine, with such a flurry of fictional creativity, that lovers of the Anglophone Cameroon novel should be having a field day. Indeed, from the look of things, the future of this genre in Anglophone Cameroon has never been brighter. A post-colonial text that juxtaposes the conflicting discourses of modernity versus tradition, The Widow’s Might opens with the death of the pivotal character and politician, a man with a resonant Zairois-kind of name: Hon Makata Mbutuku, husband of Akwenoh, the central consciousness of the narrative. Set in Bakomba Town and Ekaka Village within the contemporary Cameroon, most of the story takes place within the time Hon Mbutuku dies and when he is finally laid to rest. Initially told by the third person omniscient narrator, the bulk of the story is focalized, through the elaborate use of the flashback, from the consciousness of Akwenoh, the text’s female subject. As she agonizingly waits for badly needed, but eventually non-existent, funds to give her spouse a befitting burial, Akwenoh goes through the traumatizing rites of widowhood. It is during this time that the author, through his adopted narrative technique, takes us to the shadowy past of Hon Mbutuku, and the wanton behaviour of Akwenoh. Indeed, the novelist does even more; he critically but artistically passes in 310 review the hard realities of the Cameroonian socio-political and religious scene, encompassing the overwhelming pressure of indigenous values on the Western-educated, modern Cameroonian. The reader thus comes to discover that Hon Makata Mbutuku and the Popular Democratic Party in which he militated are neo-patrimonialists opposed to the imperial principles advocated by the opposition party the ‘Socialist Democratic Party… forcefully launched in Bamankon… in the early nineties’ (46). The narrative of multiparty democracy projected by the opposition is therefore read negatively by the ruling party. Mbutuku and his PDP emblematize political malpractice: election rigging, the stuffing of ballot boxes, the destruction of truth and even the elimination of political rivals like the unfortunate Barrister Same Same. Given the skeletons in his cupboard, Mbutuku’s sudden and untimely death is a classic situation of nemesis catching up with him, and a lesson to those in powerful political positions who think they can perpetually play the God over the dregs of humanity. Essentially a nymphomaniac, Akwenoh cannot be sexually satisfied by a single man like Mbutuku, so she seeks sexual gratification outside wedlock. Like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath Akwenoh has a number of paramours, and the one she is most sexually obsessed with is a certain Ebbi. It is in this promiscuous context that she comes into contact with a postimperial Catholic priest with the very suggestive name of Father Vaginus, who has made cuckolds of several husbands in his parish. Father Vaginus is a post-colonial character and a neopatrimonialist who has contaminated the imperial ‘text’. From Nkengasong’s text, therefore, Catholic theology as an imperial narrative is nowhere practised as pure ‘text’, but only an approximation. Enter Ma Eseke and Chief Ekwe, respectively elder sister and brother of the deceased, and representatives of the 311 conservative, indigenous values. They want to bury their late brother in a befitting traditional manner in their ancestral grove right in Ekaka Village. But the modern woman of the city, Akwenoh, will not yield, hence the drama over the corpse, the tussle between tradition and modernity. However, it seems to me that in this strife, through a series of coincidences all linked to Hon Mbutuku’s murky past, the argument is weighted against Akwenoh. If tradition triumphs over modernity, if Akwenoh succumbs to the conservative forces at the end, it is not necessarily out of the force of their argument but rather because of the argument of destiny. First, following the death of the powerful politician, the widow is shocked to find only a paltry FCFA 20.000 in his briefcase; secondly, the much-needed Parliamentary Group Support that would have covered all funeral expenses is not forth coming; worst of all the widow’s already dire situation is further problematised by...