Martin Jumbam

My struggles with information technology

Given my age and educational background, it is understandable that I struggle with information technology.

Nestor, a victim of Biya's war of attrition

Martin Jumbam

Nestor, not his real name, is a taxi driver in Bamenda. I prefer not to mention his real name for fear he might be harassed and accused of supporting secession, were his story to be known to the forces of repression that seem to smell a ‘secessionist’ in every young Anglophone in every hidden corner of this part of our land –  this “land of promise, land of glory.”  Where is the promise, where is the glory!?

“A Luta Continua!”: A brief review of the poetry of Lusophone Africa.

First carried by Cameroon Tribune of Friday, February 13, 1987.

Mention the name Agostinho Neto to any sober Cameroonian and he or she would likely tell you, and rightly so, that he was the first President of the People’s Republic of Angola, whose untimely death in 1979 came as a shock to the progressive world – and to the other world as well. Mention Marcelino dos Santos and those who followed the recent events in Mozambique would likely tell you that he is the hefty-looking, eloquent, middle-aged man, with a snow-white goatee, who was in charge of organizing the funeral services of the late Mozambican President Samora Machel, whose plane was shot down killed in enemy territory late last year (1986).

But tell those same Cameroonians that both Agostinho Neto and Marcelino dos Santos are two outstanding Lusophone (i.e. Portuguese-speaking) poets and you would either have eye-brows raised in amazement, or shoulders shrugged in indifference because Lusophone literature is still to a large extent an uncharted territory to many English-speaking Africans.

Retirement: why the panic at the university?

By Martin Jumbam

First carried by Cameroon Tribune of Friday, July 22, 1988.

On Thursday June 30, 1988, the French edition of Cameroon Tribune tackled what is fast becoming to some people a sensitive, heart-breaking topic of conversation these days in this country: retirement from the civil service. What I found most interesting was the near-frantic reaction from the University of Yaoundé where age seems to have caught some members of the teaching staff completely off-guard.

The translator as a tourism booster

This was a letter to the editor of Cameroon Tribune of Tuesday, July 4, 1989.

Dear Sir,

Many knowledgeable Cameroonians, who had long regretted the neglect of our tourism industry, gave a standing ovation to the decision to raise the industry into a Ministry in its own right. One of Cameroon’s trump cards which, if used diligently, can stand us in good stead with tourists, is our status as a bilingual nation.

Our use of French and English as official languages puts us in a class of our own in Africa. Our position in the eyes of the world has just been further enhanced by our wise decision to make our presence felt in the assembly of French-speaking nations, “La “Francophonie”, and in the Commonwealth of Nations. To make ourselves understood in such international bodies requires, of course, that we present our case in both English and French. Hence the importance of translation and the translator in our tourism industry.

Some well-meaning Cameroonians have expressed amazement that Cameroon’s embassies and diplomatic missions abroad, notably in English-speaking countries, have been presenting material about touristic sites in Cameroon in one language only – French!! The new Ministry must steer clear of such short-sightedness if we are to make any noticeable inroads into the highly competitive tourism industry in Africa.

Tourism brochures or pamphlets issued by the new Ministry of Tourism must not only be in English and French, but also in German and, if possible, Japanese and Chinese. This means that the new Ministry must give serious thought to setting up a powerful translation pool to be run by at least six competent, well-qualified, experienced Cameroonian translators.

Since the bulk of the translator’s work in this country is usually from French into English, I’ll suggest that four of the six translators in question be those with English as an active or target language, i.e., those translating from French into English. The translator has a crucial role to play in promoting tourism in this country. Officials of the new Ministry must recognize this fact and not bow to that widespread, narrow-minded tendency to consider the translator as an expendable maverick with nothing useful to contribute to national development. Were they to ignore the translator, the tourist would ignore our country.

Martin Jumbam

The Cameroonian intelligentsia caught off-guard

By Martin Jumbam

First appeared in Cameroon Tribune of Friday, February 6, 1987.

President Paul Biya’s call to the Cameroonian intellectual community to reflect and advise him on just what future we intend to bequeath to our children, was as unexpected and surprising as it was totally unprecedented. Never before in the history of this nation has a ruler ever so openly stretched out a hand of friendship and recognition to the intellectual community, or thought of inviting it to the table of ideas. Suspicion and at times outright hostility had become the hallmark of relations between our intellectual community and our rulers prior to Biya’s accession to power on November 6, 1982. You’ll no doubt recall the famous reminder to recalcitrant intellectuals: “Vous avez vos diplômes, nous, on a le travail – mangez vos diplomes, alors!” (you have your diplomas, we have the jobs. Go ahead and eat your diplomas!).

Handshaking: A Dying Practice Among the Nso People

By Martin Jumbam

Revised and reproduced from Cameroon Tribune of Friday, January 15, 1988.

When this innocent, comical piece first appeared in the English edition of Cameroon Tribune of Friday, January 15, 1988, it did not win me many friends in the Nso community in this country. I was accused, among other abominations, of being an ungrateful son of Nso, who had lived outside his community for too long and was now totally alienated from the daily realities of life among his people. What a strange accusation!

When Gobata decides to hang up his boots

By Martin Jumbam

Revised and reproduced from Cameroon Post # 0214 of April 20-17, 1994.

When my desk phone suddenly buzzed to life and the receptionist announced the noisy arrival of Mola J., I immediately braced myself for another long argument with him. For several weeks following Gobata’s decision to “crucify” – the word is Mola J’s – his column, “No Trifling Matter,” in Cameroon Post, Mola J. has literally been haunting the corridors of my office, loudly complaining about people who are already chickening out and abandoning the struggle for Anglophone liberation from what he likes to call "our new colonizers – the Frogs. "

Polygamist holds up traffic in Douala

By Martin Jumbam

Revised and reproduced from Cameroon Tribune of Tuesday, May 3, 1988.

Ask any one of the over one million inhabitants of the city of Douala to give you in a nutshell the causes of the rush-hour traffic jams that have become part and parcel of the daily life here and you will likely hear, among others, answers such as dangerously offensive and aggressive driving, especially by taxi drivers, who totally disregard the rudimentary principles of the highway code in their rush for passengers. You’ll also hear of unauthorized parking along narrow, pothole-laden streets, etc. It is, however, highly unlikely that anyone is going to think of adding a polygamist to that list of irritating causes of traffic backup in our city. But that is precisely what I intend to do right now.

Cameroon is like a mask dancing

By Martin Jumbam

(Revised and reproduced from Cameroon Post, No. 88, November 6-13, 1991, p. 11)

The early nineties were knotty times for Cameroon. As the country slowly untangled itself from the suffocating grips of over thirty years of a well-oiled repressive machinery put in place by the country’s first president Ahmadou Ahidjo, and used with such devastating efficacy by his hand-picked, French-approved successor, Paul Biya, violence spilled over onto the streets of just about every city and town in this country. The “wind of change” then blowing throughout Africa seemed to have caught Biya and his cohorts completely off-guard as they tried in vain to block it from touching this triangular oddity called Cameroon.

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