Excerpt Modified From YEFON: The Red Necklace. Email to info@sahndrafondufe.com

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SHEY BANKA LABAM

My village formed part of the two emaciated strips on the Eastern border of Yola, separated by a stretch of land south of the Benoue River, where the Nigerian borderline bulged to the East. This region used to be called Southern Cameroons, and Pa’s legacy reigned throughout these lands.

 

 

My Pa, Shey Banka Labam, was a kind-eyed, 6’4” tall, man who was also the only person in the world who got me.

 

Pa was quite the gentleman! He could afford a huge bride price of ten pounds for his list of never-ending wives. Yes, my father had four wives and eleven legitimate children, but he took very good care of all of us.

 

As a matter of fact, my siblings and I were one of the few non-Christian families that actually owned more clothing than a mere te’ around the genitals. 

 

 

Te's are the little tutu skirts everyone is wearing in this picture.

This modern one is available for sale on Etsy.

 

 

We owned loincloths all the way from the Eastern lands of Yola. Because of my father, we stood out effortlessly, and for a titled man, that only seemed deserving!

Pa was the most respected businessman in the Shisong area! 

 

He was the only rich man at the time who wasn’t Catholic, Presbyterian, or worked with the Caucasians. He was an autonomous trader who sold kola nuts with his sons in Yola, which, at the time, was administered by British colonial rule, though part of neighboring Nigeria.

 

He would in turn purchase white sugar which was only reserved for the crème de la crème of Nso society and sell it at the Shisong local market on Ntangrin, a small market day. 

My older brothers, Fonlon, Vedzekov, Nsame, and Ndze, assisted him at the market and came back home tired each time. Then it seemed they would each heap their plates with giant mounds of fufu so tall that they couldn’t see each other.

 

On the biggest market day of the eight-day Nso calendar, also known as Kaavi, Pa sold his products at the Mbve market. Pa soon expanded, and began selling sugar and matches in the neighboring villages like Foumban and Nkambe. He was the first man from our whole village to trade kola nuts all the way to the country of Yola, and for a long time the only person. 

 

Young men would flood our house trying to learn the tricks of the trade. Their mothers would send gifts of fried grasshoppers, eggs, or bvey milk, but Pa didn’t need any such bribes from these poor people to give their children some wisdom. He was generous in his lessons but still no one could come close to his expertise.

 

In addition to being a titled man, he was nicknamedwirotavin or strong man amongst his associates. The traditional title for the subfamily head was the Shey label and it wasn’t easy to come by among a hardworking people who judged a man by the work of his hands.

 

 

The other reason why Pa was respected was because in addition to his entrepreneurship, he was also able to maintain discipline among his four wives, including Sola’s mother, Ya Buri. She was Pa’s third wife and the most troublesome woman I have ever met in my entire life. Pa’s last wife, Kpulajey, was a witch and people said she had eaten all her offspring. This was because her children often died precisely three days after they were born, and people whispered distrustfully about the coincidental nature of these deaths. Some said it was Pa’s punishment for marrying an outcast dedicated to the chief priestess.

 

I didn’t think much of the accusations against her, but Ma made sure we never ate anything she cooked because Ma thought she would poison us. Kpulajey did have this mean scowl in her eyes, though. It also didn’t help that the interpretation of her name trivialized death. 

 

The name Kpulajey actually implies that all men would die so no death is different. She also had the odd custom of cooking at night when everyone was already in bed. Her food smelled so enchanting that it could make a dead man walk. I think that was why Pa fell in love with her.

 

Food is a big part of the culture. The way to a man's heart is believed to be won through his stomach.

 

Also, her taav always smelled of roasted bush meat, which she would eat alone in front of it. 

 

She did this a little bit too lavishly, as if she intentionally wanted us to beg from her. My mouth used to water all the time watching her eat, and I had to hold myself back from going to beg her until my half sister, and favorite young person in the world, Kadoh, told me that she had seen Kpulajey put a human leg into the pot. That was enough to deter me from that taav forever.

 

One good thing was that pa didn’t live with any of his wives; so one could sit with him without being distracted. Histaav was a square mud block building with a thatched roof, and special tribal characters in the front. He resided with some of his older sons, and his taav was one of the most remarkable, not only in our compound, but in Shisong, as well.

 

 

 

He often entertained important guests in his taav. All thetaav’s in our compound faced a master courtyard where we did all the cooking and storytelling. Small firewood kitchens and orchards surrounded by plantain trees and the dark cooling shade from kola nut trees, mostly owned by my family, were scattered throughout the compound.

Plantain Tree

 

Kolanut tree

 

Our compound had about thirty huts, second in size only to Fai wo Ndzendzev that had about one hundred and three huts, extending over about four acres of ground.

***

 

Unfortunately, Pa’s job caused him to be away for long periods of time, ranging anywhere from three to five moons, but whenever he came back, he would bring calabashes of red oil,mbav, and bush meat for all his wives.

 

 

 

 

 These were serious luxuries at the time. He would always bring his special daughter a special gift, and I remember waiting up all night to see what exotic gifts Pa had brought for me each time he returned from a trip. He never failed. Not once.

I can’t think of anyone else that I loved or respected more than Pa. We were very close, and he used to call me kisham ke kingha, which means green frog in Lamnso. 

 

inst this the cutest frog ever? lol.

This is the type of frog in question.

 

It was a bit of an inside joke because I used to be very insecure about my appearance when I was younger. I was short and ugly with bulging eyes like a frog.

 

 

 My eyes used to be so big that when I slept, they would open on their own and flicker so many times that people would literally think that I was awake and playing pranks on them or possessed by a dark Juju. 

 

 

 

I think my eyelids were smaller than my eyeballs, and my family didn’t help me feel any better.

 

Yefon at 7. Illustrated by Ethel R Tawe.

 

If I woke up late, they would insult me—kisham ke kingha; if my gourd broke at the river—kisham ke kingha. The other girls at the stream would point at the goliath frog and call it Yefon, and my sisters did nothing to stop them. If anything, they laughed along with the rest.

 

A Goliath Frog

 

These foot-long, three-pound anurans were large, with eyes like the full moon. Every time people called me kisham ke kingha, it was a reminder that I was ugly and had big eyes. It made me cry myself to sleep many a night, and had pushed me to the lonely path of treetop hunting. The ugly duckling syndrome is not a good one, but Pa reversed my low self-confidence.

                                       ****

 

One night, when everyone was asleep, I was outside, under the tranquil shade of the kola nut trees that lined up in front of our compound. I had refused to speak to anyone all day because I was bitter with life and fed up by the insults.

         “The witches will catch you out there,” Ma warned loudly, hoping to frighten me back into bed, but nothing worked. 

 

Yefon's mother: Ya. Illustration by Ethel R Tawe

 

 

She asked Pa to beat me up, and most fathers would have done it because it was believed that when you spared the rod, you spoiled the child.

 

 

 

As I sat there, I wondered why Ma used corporal punishment to correct even small mistakes like accidentally breaking a plate when you were doing the dishes. 

 

Whether it was a bad habit inherited from the heartless colonialists during the slave trade, or just the result of demonic possession, I couldn’t understand how people could beat up their children like animals. 

 

 

 

Didn’t our neighbor Ba Joker tie his child up like a goat, orbvey, and beat him to death? But my Pa had NEVER EVER beaten me since I was born, and that night was no exception.

                                                                   ***

 

It was a cold night, and even though the crickets were singing in a choir beneath the green shrubs, I felt afraid.

 

 

 

 

 My maternal grandmother, the reticent, almost blind, Ya Ayeni, had just told us by the fireside during story telling that if you went out at night, you would meet a man whose head kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. 

 

 

 

I asked what happened next but she just gave me a hard knock on my head and said “Loh!” which pretty much dismissed me.

 

As children, we were not supposed to ask questions, especially, if we were women. It was a sign of rebellion. Utter that three-lettered word “why” and you were declared a public enemy. 

“Watch your daughter, Tarawoni,” Ya Ayeni warned Pa several times. “A stubborn fly follows the corpse to the grave,” she cautioned, her almost blind left eye shining in the fire.

 

Kadoh told me that Ya Ayeni had been involved in an accident years ago. Her eye burst in the accident so it was replaced with the eye of a bvey. I was too afraid to verify this though. She would respond with a hard knock, and grandma’s knocks were as painful as slingshots. In these parts, curiosity DID kill the cat.

 

 

 

         “Why are you seated all alone in the dark?” Pa asked, as he joined me outside, sitting on the cold red soil. The tightness in my jaw immediately relaxed as I saw his long legs stretched out next to me. His presence always enveloped me with a feeling of security.

 

Even though the air was filled with the fragrance of kola nuts, Pa’s pine smell could not be missed. I have always associated the clean smell of pine with Pa. I shook my head, arms crossed, looking straight ahead. I was not going to answer him.

 

After smiling at my silence, he responded gently, “I will sit with you then until your mouth decides to speak.”

...

 

 He lit his pipe. A heavy smell of tobacco infiltrated the air but didn’t completely cover the freshness of the pine. I studied Pa’s face as he looked into the horizon. It wasn’t round like mine. Rather it was square with a strong jaw and bushy eyebrows. He knew I was watching him, but he neither flinched nor moved. He just sat there, as relaxed as a baby.

 

 

 

 

After an extended angry silence, my act cracked, and I looked at Pa again. 

“Everyone says I look like a frog,” I confessed and began to cry, feeling suddenly heavy as if the weight of the whole world was on my shoulders.

“Do you?” he asked casually.

“I don’t know,” I confessed, shaking miserably like an old hag.

 

 

 

Pa let me cry for a few minutes, and then he said to me gently, “Did you know that some frogs can jump up to twenty times their own body length in a single leap?”

“Really?” I asked. My frog-eyes widened so large that even Pa laughed. I grinned too, a slow smile forming on my chapped lips.

“One day,” he said, and then stopped to smoke snuff from his pipe before continuing. He had an air for the dramatic. I waited patiently.

 

 

 

“One day, you will leap so far and do something special for the Nso people,” he reassured me in a soothing voice that reverberated with wisdom. He looked at me with deep-set eyes, which reminded me of a cassava peel, and I grinned widely.

 

cassava peel.

 

Whether it was just a white lie to appease a struggling child or it was the truth, I couldn’t say, but he ofttimes bragged about this concept to his drinking buddies at the local overcrowded mbuhouse down the street where about fifty people sat in a room that should only have held ten.

 

mbu- palm wine.

 

 I frankly think most of Pa’s buddies were fond of his company because of the numerous free rounds of palm wine that a man could receive by virtue of being in Pa’s entourage at any given time. 

 

Pa loved his palm wine. He wasn’t a drunkard, or an irresponsible man, but he loved to be merry and had a strong empathy for fools and drunks—one that Ma could never understand.

 

 

 

”How can a man of your stature be drinking with those he-goats?” she criticized angrily, her once-beautiful face twisting into a heavy knot. She had been a gorgeous woman once, but it was hard to tell as her face was always bundled in a nasty frown. 

 

“The gods have been amiable to me!” he would announce cheerfully, after a gulp or two. “Drink to your fill!”

 

Cow horn; which is used for drinking.

 

The drunkards would raise their cow horns and the bar stewardess, a busty woman with love handles, filled them to the brim with sour palm wine which they would down and burp musically, a sign that the wine was resting peacefully in their overgrown bellies. 

 

The men all watched carefully as the bare-breasted woman wandered from man to man, refilling drinks; their eyes swinging obediently, like a pendulum focused on her watermelon-shaped mounds that bounced merrily as she walked.

 

 

 

I don’t know if that was why Pa went there so often upon his return, but I do know now that he was a ladies’ man. I had heard gossip from Kadoh about one or two children outside our compound that Pa was rumored to have fathered, and he was very handsome for his age.

 

Pa got me when no one else could and he always knew the right thing to say. Even when I was out of line, he could correct me without even saying a word, and whenever he was away, I would feel the impact like a woman feels the impact of her miscarried child. My life always seemed so miserable.

 

Sola always wanted to get me in trouble, and she worked in tandem with my overbearing mother, who always seemed to find one reason or another to have me beaten. I wish I could boast that I had an older sister who protected me, but Yenla was always too timid to be on my side, even if she agreed with me. She was very sickly when we were children, and always hid behind her old blanket—even when the sun overhead was hot like an oven.

Portrait of Yenla. Illustrated by Ethel R Tawe

 

Since her skin color was considered a curse, my parents had gone to all types of traditional doctors to seek help for her case. All to no avail, so she seldom spoke. So as not to hurt her feelings, they lied to her by stating that she was receiving treatment for stammering, but I knew that was only a façade, and I am sure that Yenla secretly knew it too. Even when I prompted her to play, she always seemed too tired or reluctant and that pissed me off. 

 

 

To add insult to injury, my polygamous family was just a hot mess and I really hated being part of it. The only thing that could appease me in Pa’s absence was the stories told by my almost obese sister, Kadoh.

 

 

 

 

If she was still around, I suspect she would have been a filmmaker. Unfortunately, she was one of the sacrifices that came with the dream I wanted so badly to accomplish.

 

                                                                ***

 

A suivre...

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