Martin Jumbam

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Ten

This is the last chapter of my diary. I wrote it on the night train from Madrid to Paris. I was to hang around Paris for a few months and then it was home, sweet home; Cameroon, the land of my forefathers!  

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student's Diary: Chapter Nine

 

 

Just about all my friends have left the city. Jesus Ndongo was the first to go. Then yesterday, my good buddy Bassey also left. His parents came visiting from Nigeria and he has to meet them in London. My girl friend Lupe has found a job in Valencia and will be going there soon. She wants me to accompany her but I’m not about to go running after a Spanish girl like a dunce. I’ll soon have to bid goodbye to this city, Madrid, that has been home to me for the past twelve months. But, share with me my last few days in the Spanish capital.

 

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Eight

The summer in Madrid can be quite hot. The only redeeming factor is the mercifully cool breeze that sometimes blows down into the city from the surrounding Sierra mountains. This afternoon, Jesus Ndongo and I went to visit our friend Bassey. Like me he too lives in Moncloa, although he is much closer to the University than me. In fact, he doesn’t even have to take the bus when he goes to class as the language institute he attends is a stone’s throw away.

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Seven

“Brother Wolf” reserves pleasant surprises to those who know how to wait for the right moment. That is how I met Lupe, who was to hang around with me for several months, and we have remained good friends. She is even talking of coming up to meet me in Paris one of these days. Do I want her here? I don't know, but meet her first.

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Six

In the Sixth Chapter of my diary, I’ll like you to meet more of my friends. There are those in class with me and those I meet at social gatherings in the city, Africans, for the most part. That is the case of Bassey’s friend, Jean Marie Mobutu, who, although no relation of the then Marshal Joseph Désiré Mobutu, the notorious dictator of the then Republic of Zaire, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sometimes suffers quite some injustice because of his name.  So, what’s in a name? A lot, especially for our friend JM Mobutu.

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Five

 
Madrid (c)flickr

I probably didn't tell you that my diary contains ten chapters. We are now in Chapter Five, which I dedicate entirely to my family. In it, you will meet and shake hands with my father, my mother, my two brothers, Litila and Basha, and my sister, Yefon and her husband, Banka. I pause to think of my family after receiving a letter from my sister, Yefon. Share it with me, will you? 

 

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Four

In Chapter Four of my diary, I introduce you to our mutual friend Jesus Ndongo. He is a young man, who lost his parents through political violence in his native Equatorial Guinea, dropped out of school and is now peddling revolutionary ideas in the streets of Madrid, dreaming of the day the guns of liberation will, as he likes to say, “roar down the streets of my precious Malabo” and “dislodge the lies of oppression that have been sucking the blood of our people.” Bassey and I hold him in high esteem. Here he is.

 

Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student's Diary: Chapter 3

Hi. I’ll like you to meet my Nigerian friend, Bassey. He holds center stage in Chapter Three of my diary.  We met for the first time in an American night club in Madrid and have since become inseparable buddies. Here comes Bassey.

 

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter Two

We met and shook hands for the first time in Chapter One of “A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary.” Today, in Chapter Two, we meet and shake hands with my buoyant and boisterous landlady, Doña Maria, a very pleasant individual, if ever there was any, as curious as a monkey. She gained some form of «celebrity» among her neighbours for hosting a young African student, who smoked like a chimney and, «can you believe it, wrote love letters on torn packets of cigarettes!»  Here’s Doña Maria. 

A Letter from Madrid: A Cameroonian Student’s Diary. Chapter One

By Martin Jumbam 

Hi there! My name is Leinteng Basha. I am from the Republic of Cameroon in Central Africa. Up until a few months ago, I was a student in Madrid, Spain. Like most African students, who are alone and lonely in European cities, I have fondled, and have been extensively fondled by solitude. In the many hours of loneliness and pain that characterized my stay in the Spanish capital, I found solace in keeping a diary.

When my friend Martin, who owns this blog, read a few pages from my diary, he became convinced that others would likely enjoy reading it as well. Being the jolly good fellow he’s always been, he suggested, and I gratefully accepted, to post my diary, chapter by chapter, on his blog.  Here’s Chapter One.