The Maternal Side of Me

by CHENEBA AKONWIE SIBEN NGALA (Cameroon)

I didn't expect to find Cameroon

Life is borrowed, that's what I thought when I heard the news. I could tell a kid I'm going to be here with him or her forever but that's not true, We are all going to die. Grief is painful and sad but that's not the journey I'm about to take you on. I lost my grand-uncle(grandfather's brother) a while back and even though that wasn't a pleasant experience it was an opportunity for me to go to my mothers' village(Ndu) for the first time in my life. It was a four-hour journey from Bamenda( which is where we stay) to Ndu. Now Ndu is a really cold place, if not the coldest in Cameroon and especially so in certain seasons. I had heard about how cold It was based on what my mother had told me but you only get to know how it is when you get there and experience it. Now death celebrations don't just take a day to be celebrated where I come from it usually takes about 3 days or even more depending on who died, and since my grand-uncle was about 108 years old (He might have been older nobody really knows since no records were properly kept 100years ago). So we had to be there for a couple of days with activities from cooking to me meeting some of my family members for the first time and participating in death celebration dances. With all of this happening, one of the most intriguing things I noticed was, there were chimneys in all the houses I entered. Mind you, this is a rural area but due to the really cold weather of Ndu, it will be odd to find a house without one. In Bamenda, it's almost unlikely to see a house with a chimney. The weather is not too hot or cold. As I said, this is a rural area so none of the chimneys I saw were even electric chimneys all of them were still very local with the burning of wood taking place and there is an outlet for the smoke that is connected to the roof of the house. Although some have their chimneys in their rooms, most are located in the sitting rooms of most houses where people come and sit to get the warmth from the fire being it day or night(mostly night). It is during such gatherings where stories are told, conversations happen, fun is made and even sometimes it becomes a dining space where the whole family just sits and eats close to the chimneys. On the main road in Ndu town, which is really busy with all kinds of activities from bus stops to local traders, it was the single road I have seen in my life where there were many cafe's. The Ndu people, in my opinion, are probably among the highest consumers of tea in the country. They drink tea every hour of the day and I guess having a tea estate around (NDU TEA ESTATE) goes further to strengthen this behaviour. As they say, people adapt to environments they have stayed in for a long time and the Ndu people are no different. Even though I felt how cold the place was, in the morning(about 5:30-6:30 am) when I woke up and went to the road for whatever reason I could see boys that work at the bus stations bare-chested, loading and offloading as though the place wasn't cold at all. This was mind-boggling to me because even though they might have become immune to how cold the weather is, they weren't immune to an illness they could contract as a result of such exposure. This was one of the fulfilling journeys of my life because not only did I get to experience how great the people are, I got to know where my mother was from, I met another part of my family and still in contact with some till this day and most important I got to experience and live a culture I only heard about. Though I took this trip because of grief and pain I came out with one Lesson "don't wait to experience, It might be too late".