I walk into the honeycomb dome of a busy Terminal One at Lifafa Airport, glad to seek refuge from the Tiko midday, mid-December sunshine, thanks to the lattice of steel and perspex award winning eco-design, which endows the airport with cool ambient temperatures. I am in time for my flight and make my way to my gate, resisting the urge to board the autonomous trolleys. Walking keeps my mind active and I need the exercise. The airport is a hive of activity with Christmas travellers, business travellers and tourists. I arrive at a security gate and hold my wristwatch over the access panel but nothing happens. I try again, but the gate remains unopened and pulsates red as a roving official swiftly comes to my assistance.

“Good Afternoon, Sir.” she politely intones and continues, “Please be patient and I’ll get you going in a moment.” Her fingers move deftly on a keyboard as the portal re-initialises with a soft ping. “Can you try another scan please?” I extend my wrist again towards the access panel yet nothing happens. She sighs in frustration, “Come with me please, we’ll use another gate, this one is broken. My apologies.”

I follow her to another security portal and this time the scan is successful. I am authenticated, there are no endorsements on my block chain records which show I am an entrepreneur and frequent international traveller. The attendant looks up from her terminal with a smile and instinctively asks,

“Sir, are you by any chance from Nkambe?” I am taken aback, because everyone knows I do not entertain personal questions or accord interviews, but she has been helpful so smiling effusively to ease her apparent embarrassment, I reply.

“No, my daughter, you may see from information on your screen, I am from Port Harcourt.”

“I am sorry, you remind me of an uncle. I am from Nkambe. My apologies, Sir, you may go through. Have a good day and a  pleasant trip.” I chuckle and wave a hand affably.

“No cause to be, we are all Africans. A good day, to you too.”  A colleague joins her as I move through the security portal.

“Don’t you recognise him?” the colleague enquires.  “Should I?”

 “That’s Rich Williams!” she says excitedly, “One of the wealthiest persons in the state, in Africa!”   

“He reminds me of an uncle.” she says nonchalantly.

I walk through the retracted portal and out of earshot into a cool cubicle, the doors hiss close behind me. The enclosure’s ultraviolet lighting makes my whites shine, there is silence but for a slight hiss, the telltale sound of an electronic spectrometer sniffing for explosives and drugs. In a minute green lights confirm I am a safe passenger. No objects or products contravening safe travel policies are concealed on my person. The doors retract and I walk into luxurious foyer to join other exclusive passengers waiting to board. My gate is five minutes away, I feel tired and select an empty booth, my mind focused on the business that had necessitated the journey.  A previous trip was to an Annual General Meeting, where I announced my retirement as CEO and chairman of the international conglomerate, RichWill. Unlike that trip, which teemed with family, lawyers, accountants, secretaries and other hangers-on, today, I am decidedly alone, shirking the usual private jet for commercial travel. Like the previous trip however, I am on my way to unburden myself. I look forward to my release.

“Are you by any chance  from Nkambe?”

The question echoes in my mind like the gong of a Buddhist temple I visited many years ago and stirs awake the demon, my torturer who shadows me night and day.  My mind is in a storm but outwardly I am calm. In the decades gone by I have learnt to live with the seizures. I have tamed the demon to an inward manifestation. I lean back into the upholstery and close my eyes, waiting for the current spell to pass.

There are sounds of gunshots. Dead guards, two women, a dead gardener, three children their faces contorted from pain of violent death, they are all staring accusingly with wide open eyes. Soldiers are all dead around me. There is smoke and an acrid smell of burning wood, rubber, foam and burning flesh…

A light tap on my shoulder switches off the reverie. It is the attendant whose assistance got me through the security gate.

 “Sir, it’s time to board.” I look at the time and rise unsteadily to  my feet.

“Thanks.”, I venture, my throat is dry.  She directs me to a cart, “The gate is five minutes walk away. I took liberties to get a cart for you.”

“Thanks again, Ms. Binju”, using her name inscribed on her neatly pressed and starched uniform. 

“I have programmed the gate number and you will be there in no time at all. Have a pleasant  trip, Sir.”

I sit on the cart and it whirs forward with an occasional beep at a steady pace autonomously towards my gate, avoiding other passengers on similar carts or on foot. There are people from all over the world in the airport a reflection of the great melting pot the country had become. Yet decades ago, it had all seemed so bleak, as if Cameroon would tear itself apart from multiple ethnic fractures within. The troubles had started with the Anglophone crisis but after the passing of the nonagenarian President Biya, the conflict degenerated into internecine war across the cardinal points of the territory. Mediation from the United Nations and African Union resulted in a restoration of the federation of states between East and West Cameroon. Thereupon, like a sapling when overhead growth is coppiced, the economy of West Cameroon had blossomed.

At my gate my wrist authenticates me once more and I am ushered to the VIP section of the aircraft, where I lower myself slowly into a soft leather seat and smile wanly at the hostess.

“We’ll be taking off shortly,” she intimates as I strap in. “Can I offer you anything?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” I close my eyes. Announcements are being made, but I am drifting to sleep.     

“Are you by any chance from Nkambe?”

*

I see William Echoa raising a striped blue flag to refrains of “Ambazonia, Land of Freedom …”. At full mast, the flag flutters in the wind and the rabble is agog. There are chants of victory over republicans who would have no choice but to timidly withdraw eastwards across the Mungo. But republicans persist. How could they? This is a battle between David and Goliath. Surely, God is on David’s side? William is desperate to do something. He is abandoning his  law degree to focus on the protest. The expectations of a taxi-driver father and market-seller mother are turning out quite different.

I want to tell William there is another way, but I fear it is too late. He is a legend and stories about him abound. He ransacks a District Officer’s office in Mesaje. He raises the Amba flag at Kungi. He chases women from market at Binshua for breaking ‘contri’ Sunday rules. I want to tell him he is reckless, to urge caution and seek the path of evolution, to shirk the romanticism of revolution. Revolutions are costly, I want to tell him not to go down that road, for down that road, only misery lies. I want to tell him his family and his village are at risk. But, alas it is too late. On a fateful morning before the village favourite bronze red rooster announces dawn; before girls have the chance to fuss about with calabashes of water and market women stack rickety taxis with wares; before grandpa Chumbu’s habitual first pipe and cup of shaa, watching goats troop out for pasture; before Nkwi the catechist rings the church bell for morning devotions or the muezzin Umaru calls for morning prayers – dark green trucks roll into the village and black masked figures disembark.

There is panic and pandemonium as men, women and children take to their heels through the coffee farms and into the bushes. Shots ring out in the dewy dawn. There will be no smells of fermented corn from the vats at at Pa. Mbunwe’s house, nor  will there ever be music from Ali’s Hot Spot; No more sounds of the corn mill at Ma Shiri.  It’s not mist rising from the village today, it is not smells of roasted corn or peanuts, but the smells of burning thatched roofs, bamboo rafters and cured-dried skins for drums, wallets and slippers from Fai’s store. It is not just the blood of livestock that seeps into the soil this morning but also that of men, women and children.

Pao!  Pao! Pao! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Pao!  Pao!Rat-tat-tat!Pao!  Pao! Pao! Rat-tat-tat-tat!

The screams fall silent – the fires burn. The trucks leave. A stray dog wanders, sniffs the air nervously and howls in protest but wags its tail timidly as returnees trickle back to take pictures and weep. This is the price of  revolution, a contract of deadly direct debits to the soul until it is vacuous, devoid of feeling and transformed to the very thing it reviles and revolts against.

Restraint and reason are dead. Grief gives birth to vengeance and the law student, William Echoa now known as  General Coyote carries a rifle, tracking down republican agents in the region. There are a lot of them – easy pickings and General Coyote makes a name in sniping and deployment of improvised explosive devices, IEDs. It is a deadly game of tit-for-tat.

*

A shakier landing than I am used to  at Lagos’ Murtala Muhammaed Airport startles me awake and I prepare to disembark. Out of the airport terminal, the brief interlude between air-conditioned  environments is tortuous and I recall when queues of arrivals were met by an army of customs officers, armed with myriads of forms to fill. In time, not only biometric technology, facial recognition and DNA fingerprinting have been combined to make identification foolproof, politics too has changed as Africa’s unity moved from ideology into reality with the Union taking its rightful place in the world economically and politically. I sigh as I sag into the cool comfortable interior of the luxurious Àmò̩té̩kùn, tying not to think of my investment in the indigenous African EV company which as an early investor continues to yield immense returns.

“Mainland Ministries”, I say. 

 “Are you sure?”, the car replies, “My instructions demand I deliver you to your hotel.” “Over-ride.”, I instruct. “Take me to Mainland Ministries.” 

“Ok. We’ll be there in half an hour.” The autonomous vehicle begins to move.

For the umpteenth time, I wish my father could experience this. What would he make of it? I sigh at the thought of my parents. Had their death been in vain? What had all the bloodshed bought? A restoration of how things were at independence – yes, but both Cameroons were now simply components of a larger entity, the African Union.

Pain racks through my body and I initiate from my phone, release of pain relief medication. Calm descends, but, I am being eaten from the inside by cancerous cells. The doctors tell me I can extend my time if I undergo gene therapy but, what is the point delaying the inevitable? I have done my time.

Life has been painful and sinful. I thought wealth was everything and traded my soul to become the person I have become. Yet, each successful business venture, and incremental billion to my wealth has been an increment to the price I have paid. The world is enthralled with my success, my life is captured in magazines, my businesses are case studies for business schools. Politicians waste no opportunity to have me in their company. I have a magic touch and everything I back returns success.

But internally I am sad, there is a void, a black hole at my centre which can never be filled. I am a recluse, comfortable only in my isolated retreat, halfway up the Fako Mountain. After the passing of my third wife, my children are the only family I have, but they are too obsessed with my wealth to care about me. My spiritual mentor, Pastor Dolar says there is salvation for everyone, even for tortured souls like mine and there is absolution for my sins at his ministry, through which I have opened orphanages, schools and hospitals  in the name of the Lord.  I sit back and feel the opioids spreading relief all over my body and mist descends again.

*

General Coyote and the Wimbum Warriors are out on patrol and have taken captive, passengers from a bus. They are on the look out for black legs and collaborators. Those who are known have been freed, but kneeling in front of the General are suspects to undergo interrogation. They are asked to each sing the Ambazonia anthem as a first test, and those who do not know the lyrics are to be sanctioned. The soldiers are jury, judge and enforcers of punishment. Many hastily pay their fine rather than endure the whipping. The General is drawn to the plight of one man pleading stridently.

“You! Come here!”, the General barks. The man is walking on his knees towards the General.  “Ta-nap! Stand up!”  The General commands and assesses the suspect walking towards him. His clothing looks worn, but clean. His hands are strong but not chapped. His face is lean but his brow is not furrowed or weather beaten. In the General’s assessment, the man is neither a farmer nor sound like a republican in disguise but he wagers he could be a trader on whom, dues could be levied.
“Sah?”
“You be who?!”, the General asks.
“Kizito, sah”
“Wetin be your papa e name?”
“Ntoh,sah.”
“Wusai you comot?”
“Binshua, sah.”
“Wetin be your work, Kizito?”
Silence.

“Wetin be your work, Kizito? You be na black leg? You be spy? Give me your phone!” The General pats terrified Kizito down and finds a phone in his breast pocket. “We go know! I tell you say we no go lef you go till you talk true, you hear?!”

“Sorry, sah.” Kizito begins nervously, he pauses and continues with a tremor in his voice.  “The true e be say I di work for Minister Daki e compound, sah.”  The General lashes out with a punch, catching Kizito off-guard and flooring him.

“You my friend, are an enabler!” the General shouts and stamps on Kizito. “The enabler of a collaborator, is a collaborator!” the General continues, kicking and spitting at Kizito.

“You go die for here today!” the General declares as his soldiers join in the assault. Kizito is being whipped with the canes polished and peppered for just the occasion. But in the melee, the General calls out, “E correct so! Enough!” The kicking and lashings on Kizito’s foetal figure stops instantly.

As the fighters move away to continue their inquisition of other captives, General Coyote helps Kizito to his feet, giving him water to drink and cleanse his dusty, bleeding face.  The General sits him down and tells him the punishment he has just received will be meted out ten-fold on his wife and family. They can only be spared if he relates in detail, everything he knows about the minister’s house. Two hours later, the General gets what he thinks is a breakthrough as  the nervous Kizito recounts an occasion in which, as he tended to the flower beds outside the minister’s house, he had seen him counting money and locking it up in a safe.

“The money be be like how much?”  the General asks. 

“E be plenty, sah.” 

“E be see you?”

“No sah. E be dey too busy,sah”.

“So you be look inside e house,  say you wan see wetin?” 

“E be some time the minister de cam with young girls them…” he trailed off and the General bursts into fits of laughter and offers Kizito sachets of whiskey and cigarettes, which he accepts. In another hour General Coyote learns more on the security of the minister’s compound; the guards and their routines, so much so that he calls his men together for a mission.                                          

It is an evening of surprises. The Wimbum Warriors attack the unprepared guards during their dinner and in a few minutes they are in control of the guards, their weapons and the premises.  Although the pace of events was a surprise to the General, the biggest surprise of the evening was yet to come.

General Coyote feels an enormous sense of power. The guards are kneeling, heads bowed at his feet. The minister’s extended family and servants are sitting on the ground at his feet. Perceiving the situation is under control, he leaves his soldiers in charge and heads indoors with Kizito and his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Catch Fire in search of the safe.

Two broken doors and a broken wall later, the General is spellbound at what lies at his feet in the minister’s bedroom. His expectations were for hundreds of thousands francs, as witnessed by Kizito the gardener, not this find. Lieutenant Catch Fire who never made it past primary five cannot really comprehend what he is seeing. He knows it is foreign money but not much more. The General flips the bills to determine the numbers in each wad, with a rapid tally of the number of wads. He whistles involuntarily as a figure forms in his mind – three million euros, including also notes totalling fifteen million CFA.

As they load the loot into a holdall, there is a commotion outside with sounds of shots being fired. They rush out to a scene descending into chaos. The two guards have somehow broken free of their restraints, regained their weapons and two Warriors lay dead and another has been injured.  The rest of the General’s men are taking cover across the compound but their exchange of fire with the guards is trapping the civilians in the middle, they all hugging the ground and calling for help.

The other two guards have also come loose and the situation deteriorates further as  Lieutenant Catch Fire catches a round in the stomach and he is screaming in pain. Kizito tries to flee and is felled, there is blood oozing by the side of his head. General Coyote neutralises the two guards who recently came loose.  The other two guards are still actively shooting at but they are outgunned by the Wimbum Warriors who quickly approach and overrun their positions. At the end of the shooting match, six of General Coyote’s men are dead with two lightly injured and two others, uninjured, are tending to the women and children caught in the cross-fire.

But the General is now a man with a lot more on his mind because, he has just graduated from the revolution. He recalls the stories recounted of  leaders of the revolution abroad who starved Ground Zero of resources through graft. He thinks if they could, so can he – everybody for himself. He believes his destiny is far greater than the revolution and the ill-equipped, untrained and undisciplined fighters supporting it. He sees his life’s trajectory taking him beyond the bushes he has lived in for many years. The General needs no further reflection that he has been chosen for a new mission, one which he has to embark on alone. His next actions therefore, are swift and precise as he trains his rifle on his compatriots and those they are tending to.

Rat-tat-tat!  Rat-tat-tat-Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-Rat-tat-tat-Rat-tat-tat!  Rat-tat-tat!

The wide-eyed shock and disbelief in the faces of his compatriots are emblazoned on his mind and seared into both his conscious and unconscious thought.

Death is all around. But the General is numb. Numb to the pain of loss and betrayal and to the pain of injury and exsanguination. He is decanting petrol like a libation on the premises. In the long run we are all dead he thinks. Dead like his parents and grandparents at Tabenken, when soldiers invaded the village. So, die today, die tomorrow, there’s no difference. We all die in the end he concludes, and drops the match.

There is smoke with a smell of flesh, furniture and foam burning. The explosion of a gas canister accelerates the inferno consuming all which hitherto, in this area of deprivation, had conferred status and power to the absentee landlord.

Bags strapped to the back of a motorbike, William Echoa rides eastwards towards the porous border with Nigeria, eager for distance to cleanse him of the horror he leaves behind. As a fugitive from both the Amba Restoration and the Republican forces, General Coyote stays in the bushes and cultivates  the personality of a mad man, avoiding all human contact. But at night he is like a squirrel hoarding nuts. He splits his loot into several small interred packages which, over a period of weeks, are transferred across the border to Nigeria.

*

The car parks at my allotted space in car park of Mainland Ministries, a sprawling megaplex with a capacity of fifty thousand followers of Pastor Dolar, who regularly attend the church for faith healing, prophesies, deliverance and worship. Testimonies are also of interest to the congregation and there is usually no dearth of those wanting to give testimonies of how God had intervened in their lives thorough Pastor Dolar. They had been healed of ailments and chronic conditions; The barren had had babies; Cancers had been cured; Those who found themselves in intractable situations had suddenly found resolution; And business at the brink of bankruptcy had become solvent again. Invariably, music, tears of happiness and praises to the holiest in the high accompanied each recount, along with generous donations for the furtherance the church.

My donations to the church total hundreds of millions and Pastor Dolar is eager to enlist me as someone with a testimony to share. He says everyone will want to witness the moment when I give a testimony. I am early and protocol helps me out of the car and direct me to my suite where I ease myself into a sofa to the soothing and reassuring voice, through hidden speakers, of the chrismatic Pastor Dolar.

“…Today I tell you God has a higher plan for you… you have not been forgotten. No. Your miracle is just around the corner …”

Indeed today is the day of a miracle, I think. A resurrection. I have no  notes, I need none. The events of my life are clear as if it were yesterday. I have been introduced by Pastor Dolar who beckons for me to take the rostrum. I am a bit unsteady but I shake off the offers of assistance. The spotlight is on me. All eyes are on me.  I pause, feeling sympathy for those whose trust I was about to betray, but I begin.

“Dear brothers, sisters, my sons, my daughters, today the lord has delivered me from my burden. I am eighty-eight years old and dying of cancer, but the lord has lifted me from my yoke, and today I am free!”

There are cheers and chants of “Hallelujah!”.  I hold out my hand for calm and continue.

“I stand here in front of you to confess that, the man you know as Rich Williams has been living a lie. Not the lie I told Pastor Dolar about my testimony, for he thinks I am here to tell you about being miraculously cured. But no, what I am about to tell you is not only the testimony of a liar, but that of a brigand, a Judas Iscariot and a murderer!”

Pastor Dolar is looking nervous and apprehensive, but I continue.  “I am here to tell you Mr. Rich Williams  you have known is none other than Mr. William Echoa, born by the banks of river Tchwa-Tchwa in Nkambe in West Cameroon to a teenage high-school mother and a taxi …”

The lights go out and the microphones are disconnected. It could have been NEPA or perhaps Pastor Dolar had heard enough. But, it is irrelevant, social media is afoot and much has already been uploaded for the world to make sense of my revelation. Power returns and security is leading me away from the  platform. The cries of “Hallelujah!” have turned to angry fulmination, some are praying for my redemption, others are calling for my damnation. There are calls for calm amidst the raucous arguments and Pastor Dolar is giving a sermon on the repentant thief crucified with Jesus.

I am back in my suite. Lawyers are all around me. Public Relations of the church is putting out a statement. Journalists and bloggers are laying siege. Many of them are questioning my mental state. They are speculating the recent passing of my wife may have triggered a mental breakdown. A specialist on TV suggests I have some form of dissociative identity disorder.  I keep my counsel, for I know I am compos mentis, nevertheless understanding why many want to rationalise the disclosure, to make excuses for me as they are going through denial, anger and disappointment en route to eventual acceptance that I am William Echoa.

My dealings with royalty, presidents and prime ministers cannot be refuted. I have donated to political parties of all shades and I am associated with a myriad of philanthropic organisations, many of which are meeting to consider the news. I expect my family to do what they have always done in courts, fight over my wealth. None of my ex-wives or my children and grandchildren have called to find out how I am. The only one who really cared, my third wife, is gone and I am glad I spared her the anguish.  

It all feels like yesterday when Rich Williams was delivered, not by a midwife, but by a heavily compensated government official, who handed over a genuine Nigerian birth certificate and passport to a young man, with a sense of mission and an overwhelming desire to create wealth. From opening a supermarket,  in the first instance, Rich Williams rode the wings of destiny from one successful business venture to the next, over a period of six decades, to create a business empire worth billions.  But today, I refuse to live the lie any further and though others are taking their queue to judge, condemn and incarcerate me, I know I am free. I have called the police to give myself up and they are now on the scene. One walks towards me.

“Mr. Rich Williams?” he asks.  A  lawyer advises me I don’t have to say anything, but I brush him aside.
“No. Sir I’m Mr. William Echoa from Nkambe. I am responsible for crimes including burglary, kidnapping and ransom, extortion, arson, torture and murder. Arrest me.”

End

Lloney E. Monono

Categories: Literature