Simon Mol
The train thundered on, bringing us closer to Berlin, from Warsaw. Each moment was magical. Each place we passed was replete with a power of its own. At certain points, place and moment merged to produce stupendous views— stirring unfathomable, overwhelming sensations. We passed a valley. The environment there radiated its virginity with such impact that, out of sheer respect for its sanctity, I shall not name the place. Kilometres away I was still asking how it would be like there at night: ‘What Beings thronged its sacred petals with owls, rodents and insects as spectators?’
I beheld the horizon and felt a freedom within. My spirit rebelled against its temporary enslavement, and in an immortal tongue, proclaimed its oneness with the universe. Overpowered by emotion, I opened my diary and wrote:
On my way— the traveller I am,
As I journey on I own views...
And possess Landscapes in my mind ...
Forever.
The flame of inspiration petered out three hours from Berlin, bringing me down to earth with a feeling akin to the taste of flat beer. With time to kill my mind returned to a subject that had been testing me: Britishness. ‘The British eye’, my intuition hammered, ‘is a no-nonsense moral device that strives to reinstate social decorum through what is often perceived as acidic criticism. As a minority English-speaking people in a multi-lingual country, this British inheritance is a simultaneous curse/blessing that followed one everywhere.’ As the thought reeled across my mind it evoked pride, terror, courage and disappointment in one rush. It was that ironic. I settled back in my seat, closed my eyes and surrendered to contemplation.
For me, English was much more than just a vehicle for conveying feelings and ideas. Or just a language. It is the soul of a culture established as a way of life.
I had grown up learning that language had a tremendous impact on one’s conscience, which influences perception of reality and conviction in acting. It had been drummed into me that ‘word is an arrow with an incredible potential to result either in holistic redemption or irreparable affliction. And language is its bow’.
“A good example my son,” my father’s words came back to me, “is the saying ‘You have a bad heart’. Within the context of our culture, this stretches beyond the literal meaning that the organ which pumps blood and generates oxygen is not functioning properly. ‘You have a bad heart’ is a dense metaphor meaning you are evil to the marrow.” ‘Perhaps it is an influence of the ‘British eye’ on my African way of perception,’ I mused. To me, language and culture are so intertwined that limiting cultural distinction to skin colour is a myopic and imperialistic misconception. Cultural distinction is a more sophisticated tongue thing— a pragmatic projection of the Biblical Tower of Babel.
‘If you should say to someone here ‘You have a bad heart’, you could be prosecuted for impersonating a physician.’ My conscience humoured.
‘I know!’ I replied half aloud. My fellow passengers must have wondered what was bothering me. But with eyes closed, I didn’t worry. A reflection which might have caused an ideological revolution in Britain was scaling my thoughts;
‘What does it ‘take’ to be British? The mere acquisition of a passport is not enough. What it ‘means’ to be British is much more. This means upholding a cultural value that cannot be compromised for anything else.’ Opening a file I had with me, I pulled out an old magazine that had been in my possession for years. There was an article in it, which, for me, constituted a cultural sacrament. Reading through it for the umpteenth time, my eyes stayed longer on a particular fragment; ‘In the halcyon days of British Cameroon, every cashier lived in perpetual fear as the Financial Controller always arrived like a thief in the night - unannounced. Woe betide anyone who was found not only short of funds, but, strangely enough, if you had one shilling more than you were supposed to have, the journey to jail had begun!’
The article reflected my school days. Several of my school teachers had never been to Britain but they prided themselves on their Britishness, which manifested itself in their manners; discipline, commitment, honesty, punctuality, and above all outspokenness— some of the traits attributed to ‘Britishness’. The image of teacher James Njunge, fresh like morning milk, oozed from memory: snow-white short-sleeve shirt that had been drenched in cassava-starch and painstakingly ironed. Khaki shorts with straight lines, which we often joked, were as sharp as the edge of a razor. And neat white socks above well-polished black boots. His habitual admonition accompanied this imagery; ‘Look here my little friends! Failure to do your homework tantamount to gross negligence of duty— a disturbing moral evil that can be remedied only by twelve strokes!’ But underneath this toughness he was like a father. Fully aware of how this inherited ‘British eye’ had influenced my fate in the contexts of being a journalist at home and in exile, the image of teacher Njunge and the concept attached to it will follow me to the grave.
‘Britain isn’t necessarily a prototype of the absolute perfection of nationhood. No.’ I reminded myself, ‘But Britishness epitomises moral/ethical rectitude which amounts to individual leadership at home and abroad, at school, work, everywhere, with English as the unquestionable universal language of the heirs to Magna Carta.
‘You seem to consider yourself a bona fide Brit don’t you?’ The voice of conscience jabbed pompously.
Logic’s response was dense; ‘It is more sophisticated than just consideration. It is ‘being British,’ adding, ‘I don’t have a British passport. Come to think of it, I am a reflection of Africa’. But look at it this way; Ewoma Naowa my great Grandfather was a Chief in the very town that served as the capital of Cameroon during the First World War, under German occupation.
Because he opposed the German colonialists, and during WW I sided against them, he had been captured, imprisoned, only to be liberated by British forces. The same town became the capital of British Cameroon. For him, Britain was the liberator and English was the language of freedom. Taking over from the Germans the British strove to right what the previous colonial occupiers had wronged. This increased respect for the British. The Germans had ruled with an iron fist under a domineering policy of isolationism, treating the people as inferior, almost sub-human. The British on their part inculcated their language, culture and lifestyle into the psyche of the people. This was how I inherited the ‘British eye’. The French on their own half of Cameroon, did the same. The effect is still very much alive. And the struggle in Cameroon today is interestingly not ethnic, but cultural. These two exported cultures (English and French), limited by geographical boundaries, blended with the local traditions to breed an exotic, sophisticated cultural duality (Anglophone and Francophone), which today are pitched against each other socio-politically.
What I had garnered from experience and history didn’t alter much by contact with contemporary Britain through its institutions including the Commonwealth, after I was plunged into the sea of European cultures. I survived four problematic years in exile. My saving grace? English. Ironically, because I insist on seeing with the ‘British eye’ and hell-bent on navigating my ship through life, I have become increasingly isolated as a result of language and cultural disparities.
Back home and in exile I am considered as someone who constitutes an intolerable nuisance. Even by the most radical British sceptics. ‘Was it that those who administered the colonies were an exceptional British breed? And this ‘British eye’— where exactly does it leave me?’
With these questions roasting my brain, the train unleashed a deafening whistle, announcing its arrival at the Berlin station. A briefcase containing a few items and three classic novels in hand, (a donation from the English Centre of International P.E.N to broaden my reading) and an ironical smile caressing my lips, I eased out of the station, heading for the heart of Berlin. The smile would have provoked tears in Mbamba Etonde—my Grandma and personal Saint who too had acquired the ‘British eye’, was never in Britain, and returned July 8, 1988 to the Great Beyond.
Warsaw; February 26, 2003.
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