The Mother of All Gods

• Published in: Transition (Kampala, Uganda) no. 125; pp. 119 - 182
• Main Author: Wakai, Kangsen Feka
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Indiana University Press 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Politics; Cameroon
• ISSN: 0041-1191; 1527-8042

[...]my mother had insinuated on several occasions that my behavior was probably a consequence of smoking weed which, though I had tried it, did not appeal to me the way numbing my senses by switching from beer to whiskey, and then red wine did to me back then. There is the image of her honking like a maniac at the driver that cut her off in rush hour traffic, or of her storming out of her Peugeot 504 into the house after work, in search of something wrong, and then scolding-full of rage and fury, distant and unfeeling. An hour earlier, a family friend had alerted my parents to my father's impending arrest, and my parents had taken the caution of ridding their room of my father's unregistered artisanal shotgun pistol, and any sensitive documents in my father's possession. Two months later, during my Christmas break, late one night my mother received a call from a sympathetic prison guard informing her that my father and other detainees were being transferred to Yaounde, Cameroon's political capital.