Martin Jumbam

Poetry - A review of Joyce Ash's collection of poems: Beautiful Fire

I thank Spears Media for giving me the opportunity to say a word or two on this award-winning collection of poems: Beautiful Fire.  My presentation, which I intend to keep short and simple, is in two parts.  In the first part, I talk about the author, not the traditional bio-data type introduction (date of birth, schools attended, diplomas earned, etc.) No, I simply want to pay the author, who I shall refer to simply as Dr. J., a debt of gratitude, which I have owed her for over a decade. In the second part, I zero in on her book, mainly on the title, which is what caught my attention most.

A reflection on “Bearing Witness: Poems from a Land in Turmoil”

I have read through these poems a number of times already and each time all my senses are on the alert. Clearly visible before my tear-soaked eyes is glaring proof of the senseless destruction of whole villages, with piles and piles of bloated corpses rotting in the sun and emitting an awful stench that floats in the air wherever the infamous bearers of death come knocking. In these poems, I hear the helpless cries of our men, women and children as they desperately flee for shelter into forests. Audible in the thick bushes is the agony of women in the pangs of child birth followed by the weak whimpers of new born babies, who barely have time to take in their first breath and then they are gone!

Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year B

Martin Jumbam

The Universal Church celebrates Sunday, July 22, 2018, as the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B. In the entrance antiphon we pray: “See, I have God for my help. The Lord sustains my soul. I will sacrifice to you with willing heart, and praise your name, O Lord, for it is good. Amen.”

BOOK REVIEW: MY CONVERSION JOURNEY WITH CHRISTIAN CARDINAL TUMI

By Canute Tangwa

Thumbing through Martin Jumbam’s MY CONVERSION JOURNEY WITH CHRISTIAN CARDINAL TUMI (2015) brings to the Catholic mind and to any avid reader THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE for this that the parallels are shouting: autobiographical of sorts, spiritual development, meditations, social commentary and the role of a moral colossus (Cardinal Tumi) in his conversion journey!

Reading on the bus between Douala and Bamenda

Martin Jumbam

One of the most challenging things you can do is concentrate on reading a book aboard a bus from Douala to Bamenda, especially with the incredibly bad, pothole-ridden roads, crammed up in what someone has misleadingly labeled a “VIP” bus.  What with seats that have been so tightly squeezed together that your knees are literally stuck onto your chest, with the middle passage, that should have been left free, in case of an emergency evacuation, having been taken up by other smaller seats that have been firmly welded into place.

Cameroon: Difficult Choices in a Failed Democracy (Book Review)

On Wednesday, August 12, 2015, I joined a crowd of book lovers at the Sawa Novotel in Douala for the launch of Professor Tazoacha Asonganyi’s controversial book, Cameroon: Difficult Choices in a Failed Democracy (Memoir). I was allowed a few minutes to give my views on the book and this is what I said.

Book Review: Mission to the British Cameroons

We owe it all to Mill Hill, Says Archbishop Paul Verdzekov

Mission to the British Cameroons is a book on the missionary activities of the Mill Hill priests and sisters in the British Cameroons

by American-born, Mill Hill missionary Father Robert J. O’Neil. It was published in 1991 when the Catholic Church that is in Cameroonwas celebrating its centenary. It is prefaced by Archbishop Paul Verdzekov of Bamenda who salutes it as an “opportune” and “indeed providential” work, which will benefit and inspire “present and future generations of Cameroon Christians”.

Bernard Fonlon: Honouring a Great Intellectual

Book Review by Martin Jumbam

Daniel Noni Lantum, ed. Dr. Bernard Nsokika Fonlon (1924-1986) is now a legend: Funeral Addresses, Tributes and Eulogies, Kumbo Town: Nso History Society Publication No 3, May 1988, pp. xii + 107. No price given.

Revised and reproduced from Cameroon Tribune, May 1989.

Three years ago come next August 26, Professor Bernard Nsokika Fonlon died suddenly in Ottawa, Canada. His death came at a particularly painful moment for our country that was still reeling from the blows of the Lake Nyos disaster, that tragedy that was to pin Cameroon in the headlines of world news for years to come, bequeathing to us a notoriety we would only have been too happy to do without.

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