JK: John Kale and the Lost Generation

By Moki Monono (Chiefs Palace - Great Soppo, Buea)

When JK first returned to Cameroon from the US, all of his brothers were abroad. Some people blamed him for returning. They felt that having arrived in the paradise of America he should have continued to live there. JK’s love for Cameroon was very strong. He kept on coming back to a country which did not merit his love.

he came, the only one who returned, to save
   the old family and its old house, to continue
the ancient line, a quite life
   a life of modest soups with a quiet woman

Ten years have elapsed since JK died. The precise date Tuesday last, was heralded with a libation his younger brother Julius Kale, a US based architect gave in his honour. His Majesty the Nakuve of Buea brought the brandy himself and poured it at 5.30 am that morning over John’s grave. Much brandy flowed that morning.

Ten years ago when Jk died after collapsing in a classroom at Buea University, the small town of Buea was frozen for two or three hours. Traffic came to a halt and all movement stopped. The pain of JK’s death has not completely disappeared, but now one can look back at Jk’s life and times.

Frustrated by the civil service and its serpentine bureaucracy, he suffered under the delays in payments which are part of the life of every Cameroonian civil servant, suffering from “advance de solde”, half salaries and unpaid arrears for years. He tried politics and was elected Vice Mayor of Buea but when I visited him in his office it was clear that he, the most educated member of the council, had been given no assignments and spent his time smoking the “Captain Black” tobacco which he loved in the tiny office which had been assigned to him. Posted to IPAR Buea (one of those research institutes created by a forgotten decree), apparently an intellectual graveyard, he despaired of losing touch with the intellectual and academic world he had come in contact with in his early years at Columbia and the Ivy League.

he came with the girl from the Bronx
   to save the old homestead from collapse
to plant an American flower,
  american flowers
geraniums, daisies, lilies
in his front garden, a woman of class
  and refinement
reddish and high yellow, a quadroon,

Married twice, his first marriage was to Cecile, an American woman. He and Cecile planted flowers in Paul Monyonge mo Kale’s compound. JK’s father was Paul Monyongo Kale, himself a polished and urbane politician and a speaker of the West Cameroon House of Assembly whose fame in the history of Cameroon was based on his the proponent of the “third option” theory: an independent Southern Cameroons which would not have been part of Nigeria or part of the francophone Republic of Cameroon. The American flowers flourished in the rich and moist Buea soil but the American girl returned to New York. JK was pained and when his friends laughed at him he said: “ Never mind I’ll get another one from the Bronx!”

“never mind I’ll get another
        one from the Bronx”
the derisive laughter of cynical yokels
to whom a wounded heart was a joke,
the hidden despair of one more failure

A girl from Bonjongo, his second wife, who planted yams, tomatoes and vegetables, inherited the garden prepared by the girl from the Bronx who planted flowers! Alas the garden thrived but JK died.

Known for the flamboyance of his dress and his large colorful pipes, and his aristocratic mien and habits, JK was a connoisseur who loved wine and song, and the company of intellectual and creative people. Snobbish and inordinately proud of his Ivy League PhD, like the first Duke of Wellington, he was intellectually contemptuous of his social equals, and socially contemptuous of his intellectual equals; he loved good tobacco sent to him from the US, and the tobacco went with brandy, good coffee, whisky and all night beer blasts: In short, this was a lifestyle, which was meant to increase blood pressure.

I remember one night, which he and I spent at the Mini Tropic, a tiny bar in the Yaounde Centre Ville at the Immeuble Hajal. Present were of course, Sam Nuvalla Fonkem, his apartment mate and bosom friend, the late Ayissi Bruno (who always reminded everyone that he went to three universities, Wales, Edinburgh and Khartoum - this fine English master subsequently died by falling into the pit of a newly dug pit latrine after a night of serious boozing.) The singer KoKo Ateba, and Paul,the mulatto flute player, as well as some comely female undergraduates were also present. The beer flowed and the conversation brilliant, humorous, analytic and radical in its criticism of the state went on unending. Koko Ateba, inebriated and happy, burst into beautiful song sporadically to the accompaniment of Paul’s flute playing. The flutes played, Ateba sang and the beer flowed till six in the morning! Then we all retired to Sam’s house for breakfast.

JK’s lifestyle was like that of many members of his generation, which was a lost generation. A generation lost by dictatorship, bureaucracy, corruption and intellectual sterility, unpaid salaries and advance de solde. It was a generation paralysed intellectually by the fact that it could not even communicate effectively in French with the ruling group of its own country. It was a generation which often prolonged a bohemian lifestyle into middle age with a hemingwayesque purposelessness of late nights, wine and forgotten song. It was a generation in which the francophones prospered and the Anglophones stagnated and the Kumba Mamfe Road was never tarred!

The experiences we went through were very different from those which our parents experienced in the orderly government of West Cameroon: arbitrary arrest, political dictatorship, one-party system, torture, unpaid salaries, graduate unemployment, the stagnation and final destruction of the old peer group of the Anglophones, the senior service and of course the permanent marginalisation of the anglophone. For 40 years no Anglophone has ever served as Minister of Education, Armed Forces, Territorial Administration, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Secretary General at the Presidency, Public Service, Even the GRA’s collapsed into ruin and decay as government houses became and are even today unpainted, unrepaired and even unswept.

As JK traveled to and fro between Cameroon and the US, in search of a good education, his salary was stopped at least four times. He incarnated the frustrations of his age but each time he traveled abroad he came back again for love of his country, emerging with class, and aristocratic polish over all the vagaries of the Cameroonian system. Let that be his epitaph.

Comments

[EQ]

Mola Moki:

It turns out that the epitaph "Lost Generation" was first used for those who came of age during, or just after the First World War. Apparently, they were so traumatised by their experiences that they were disillusioned, cynical, and disdainful of societal norms. I'm not sure this applies completely to JK's generation, which I define as those born from 1946 to 1958. This cohort probably takes in the CPC and Saker pioneers, and includes most of the last batches to write the London GCE.

A better name for them would probably be the "Last Generation" of optimists. You see, they came of age when the Wind of Change was allegedly blowing accross Africa, Man was going to the Moon, and Cassius Clay was inspiring all young people of colour. Ahidjo was an autocrat, but he was an Africanist with a plan. JK's generation was paid to go to school (the "Bourse" in the professional schools was as high as CFA 45,000 a month!), overseas scholarships abounded (Sam was trained in Canada), and jobs were freely available for those with diplomas.

The members of this Last Generation went to good schools, went abroad,came back, and usually got a decent initial foothold in society: VT Ndando, Aunty Ngowo, JK, Habby, Meoto, Litombo, HJB, Franz, Dr. Luma,
Suks, Njalla, Ice Water, the Birdman, to name just a few from our neck of the woods. With a little bit of creative accounting, I could probably squeeze in PMM as well.

Unfortunately for me, after them came nothing. Those born from 1959 to 1968 are the Forgotten Generation. Ahidjo had begun his disastrous handing over when we came of age. Scholarship money dried up in mid-course, getting visas became almost impossible if you applied honestly, and we were neophytes in crookery. The idiocy of stifling all dissent and promoting sycophants led to a calcified society.

Those of us who stayed in it got weighed down in it, while those of us who managed to get out had insufficient social, bureaucratic and financial tools to make it elsewhere.

Those who came of age with the advent of Monsieur Chop Broke Pot are our own Lost Generation.VCR's arrived around the same time, so they were introduced to pornographic and other hedonistic "styles". The new power wielders were no longer afraid of being literally lashed by the Head of State himself if they misbehaved, so all hell broke loose right in front
of impressionable adolescents. They grew up to be masters of netherworld activities both at home and abroad. They also refuse to
kowtow to any authority which they perceive as illegitimate. They are thus ideally equipp
ed to make it in future, as long as they survive the big disease with a little name.
EQ

[bosung]

I am very pleased to read this tribute to the memory of JK.
As a mostly intellectually lost newly arrived young student at Princeton/Columbia in the early to mid 80ties, I was extremely fortunate to have met John as he was wrapping up at Columbia. I spent countless hours taking in cigar smoke, tons wisdom in his company. I was provocative and I enjoyed the intellectual fights we had which no matter how deep our differences were always washed away with a single malt host. I picked up a lot of 'attitude' (amour propre and self confidence in myself) from him which on balance has served me well in life. I will be forever grateful for the brief period I knew him.

[Zacchaeus Chumfong]

I met John at Bambili; he and Ernest Endeley recruited me for the EXCO club, along with my friends Lifanda, etc, etc; many years later, I played tennis on Saturdays with JK while he was at Columbia and I lived in Manhattan, on 82nd & York. He won each time, but I never held it against him; we just had beers & laughs afterwards and I went home. I had him, Julius, and his Professor brother from Chicago at my appartment for a bash once and they all had a blast. He met my spouse and loved her hair {she is still proud of his comment today}. I eventually met his fiance too, and soon after he returned to Buea with her. In 1989, when I was Director of Finance at Meridian Bank Cameroon S.A.{after leaving Coopers & Lybrand}, I went to Buea on a business trip but insisted on finding John. He came out of a council meeting and received me warmly. The feeling was mutual. That was the last time I saw John, because shortly thereafter I returned to the U.S. It was a shock when I learned of his passing. I will always miss him! Consolation is we had fun in Bambili and a lot more of it in New York.

[YOTI ELISABETH MUSAKA]

I LOST AN UNCLE,I MISS HIM SO DEARLY.
PAPA JK AS WAS FONDLY CALLED WAS A NICE PERSON.HE CALLED ME "SMALL NICE THING".
HOW I WISH HE WAS THERE TO SEE ME GROW,
TODAY I AM A WOMAN NO LONGER A SMALL NICE THING.

REST IN PEACE PAPA JK.