From The Sketch, No. 18, March 1-8, 93, P. 13
My buddy, Andy “Young” met one of our former classmates in Yaounde the other day and, in the course of their conversation, our friend wanted to know what degree Andy had. Andy said he had a Masters Degree.“Weren’t you in a doctorate programme somewhere out there in Canada or the United States?” our friend inquired.
“Yes, but I couldn’t make it, that’s all; no tragedy, I suppose?” Andy asked, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.
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“What!” exclaimed our doctor friend. “You call your failing to make a doctorate anything less than a tragedy! But Andy, tell me”, he said, holding Andy’s left arm and steering him away from a small crowd of loafers that was already forming around them, mistaking Doctor’s high voice pitch for a prelude to a fight, and eager not to miss any spectacle that could release them, even momentarily, from the dictatorship of idleness caused by unemployment, “I can’t believe that someone like you could miss a degree. You were certainly one of the most brilliant chaps we had in our university days in Yaounde. Then, what happened? I hope this thing didn’t have anything to do with it!” his hand made a vague gesture to the lower part of his body in a digital language which many would have considered indecent.
“No, not all, Doc., I never took after you, you know,” Andy said and our friend roared with laughter, appreciating Andy’s reference to his sexual prowess although all of us knew him in those days as rather chicken-hearted when it came to “woman palava”.
Andy said that as they spoke, he couldn’t help remembering our friend’s now legendary exploit one evening when he and some friends of his had gone to a small village beside a CDC camp, not far from our school, to be “initiated” by “Mamiyah”, one mountain of a fleshy-lipped, gap-toothed woman of ill-fame, as round as a wine barrel. She also had short, stocky legs and huge round arms, with buttocks that bounced up and down like two fighting cats concealed under her legendary, dark kaba.
One mischievous “frog”, a regular customer of hers, once claimed that he had once placed a plum in one of the folds of “Mamiyah’s” huge thighs and that when he took it out a few minutes later, it felt as if it had just been boiled! A gross exaggeration, no doubt, but one which goes to confirm how “Mamiyah’s” massive weight and voluminous thighs, which squeaked as she walked, peopled the dreams of many a young man eager to graduate from the shame-ridden class of virgins to that of real men! The ever kind-hearted, considerate “Mamiyah” was always there, eager and willing to do him that favour.
None of us knew her real name, so we resorted to calling her “Mamiyah”, because of her size. She quickly gained a reputation in student circles throughout the southern part of anglophone Cameroon, for her undisputed skill in deflowering novices for as little as 200 francs! Quite an amount in those days, though.
Today, “Mamiyah” has taken a graceful and well-deserved retirement from over half a century of “meritorious” services to the young ones of this nation, and is said to be still occasionally plying her trade in a fishing village somewhere beside the Cross River between Mamfe and Calabar.
Andy and I know some people, who now pass for fanatical defenders of that nonsense PB unfortunately introduced in this country called “moral rectitude”, but who, up until only a few years ago, could still be seen, under cover of darkness, stealthily tiptoeing into “Mamiyah’s” hut to salute, what one of them once called, with a poetic flourish, “the Venus of eternal love”.
However, that evening when our friend’s turn came to present himself in “Mamiyah’s” majestic presence, beads of sweat began to course down his back as he stepped into the darkly-lit room. There she was, the legendary “Mamiyah”, the one and only, reclining in bed, nude as a worm, her massive breasts heaving up and down like two live animals about to pounce on the poor fellow.
Our friend’s legs became as soft as butter and he was so astonished by what he saw that his wee-wee just seemed to shrivel up completely. His friends, waiting outside and listening through the key-hole, heard “Mamiyah” shouting at him, and wondering out loud what was happening to the young men of these days. Were they all shrivelling up like cocoyam leaves in the sun?
She apparently got fed up with the timid fellow for his friends soon saw him rushing out of the house in Adam’s clothing, his pants, shirt, trousers and shoes flying after him, and “Mamiyah” roaring like a nursing lioness. Terror gripped some of his friends who were waiting their turn and one or two of them, the chicken-hearted ones, could be seen fleeing from the scene as fast as their spindly legs would carry them.
That day in Yaounde, several years later, Andy alluded, tongue in cheek, to our doctor’s power over women, and he roared with laughter, hoping Andy had either forgotten or had never heard of his lamentable performance in “Mamiyah’s” famous bedroom nearly thirty years previously.
Who could ever forget “Mamiyah” and all the stories around her? A real legend indeed.
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