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Draped in the resplendence of exquisite nudity, Wéli and Ruben lived in a state of nature for two years. Hand in hand, they strode the streets of Yagadoul, smiles on their lips and lassitude in their bandoliers. In the shantytown, this melancholic joy surprised the people, who had grown accustomed to revering them. After finding each other, disappointment pulsed through them. Lachrymose explosion was their favoured means of communication for 12 months. Embraces of sadness. An abundance of blue kisses. Here we are dreaming of tomorrow... Langston, Langston what happens to a dream deferred? Woy yoy woy yoy yoy yoy! The moans and heightened cries that sing wretched hope, the morbid pleasure derived from witnessing the torment of tomorrow’s dream – the dream that yearns to be born. Are we supposed to stop imagining the Other A Free Ka because she is moving at her own pace? Why acknowledge defeat before the fight begins? Kibera... You will see. Why did pessimism project its potent lenses on the children who filled the amphora of despair with vesperal tears of a sepulchral sun? Those who smiled and danced while sobbing over the airs of postbanania blues were great in number. Thrashed by the bland and soulless routine, they struggled to convert fear into courage, hate into love, resentment into forgiveness, nightmare into dream.
Everything is going wrong, but we refuse to die, we transcend.
Crying will make you stronger. Requiem lacrimosa. For months, Wéli and Ruben poured shiny pearls of desire on the land of the morrow. And why is Dumas crying? Dumas is crying because Dumas has tears. Too much sun kills love! Must we be accustomed to misfortune like Perpetua? Hidden in the lit forest like bats? So many stars – no longer lit – cross the inner core of the night, tracing the outlines of the day that comes? What became of the three little shoeshiners? Did Mamadou and Bineta eventually become grown-up? Don’t whisper too many cat-tail stories. One more season in the Congo... Grandsons of Christopher, when will the tragedy end? The fire next time! Speak to me of love, tell me tender things again... I would like to make essential encounters covered by the breeze of the day. It was nothing but a wood fire, but it warmed my body, in my soul, it still burns as if it is a fire of joy. The past before self, “Some people are born posthumously,” “It is only after death that we shall enter our life and become alive.” Nietzsche screams while Manu sings Soul Makossa. Am I my brother’s keeper? To die for ideas, the idea is excellent. Dread natty dread... Jah Jah city! Independence tcha tcha. Assi pata pata. Eye Adaba! A Free Ka! Casta diva. La Callas una soprano divina! Makeba was beautiful and powerful; Solomon dreamed of her black skin. All is going well except the rest.
Wéli’s and Ruben’s madness was too noisy. While their companions in the Great Lodge of Madpeople sauntered peacefully in the alleys of indifference, these two attracted attention. We wished they were done with mourning and depression. They refused to understand the discontent of the equinox. The show must go on! The rulers of postbanania republics had crushed hope while persecuting common will. Mr Heartless and Mr Jailer threw powder in the eyes of the Koumkanese who became daily prisoners of suicidal bread. The belly cried famine while clinging to the metallic harshness of a barbed existence. They died without living! Coffins were now sold on the streets. No difference between today and yesterday. Day and night. Sun and rain. Joy and pain. Dream and nightmare. Life and death. It was necessary to have feet on earth and head in the clouds. Only the acrobats would come to the end of the tightrope.
Nathalie Etoke is a Cameroonian writer and visiting professor of francophone literature, Brown University, US
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