Chief Dr. Kamanda Bayie, My Secondary School Buddy
March 27, 2021
by Chief Fonkem
One great memory of my days in Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Fontem was my meeting with Kamanda Bayie from RCM Takwai. Both of us were members of the 1966 Class of 42 Students, pioneers of the school. My admission number was 038 and his was 039. Both of us were admitted after the official interview had been conducted and 35 students admitted. Destiny brought us together and since kept us together until he left me on March 19, 2021. We were so close that Pa Wilson Bayie, his father, would go fishing with me without Kamanda. After Secondary School, I went to play in a small band in Ringo Bar, Tombel and Kamanda went to live with a relative in Buea.
In Buea, he took advantage of a private library owned and run by Dr. E.M.L Endeley to study for his A/Ls. I left the Band to teach English in Grand College de la Menoua in Dschang. After writing the A/Ls he joined me in Dschang to look for a teaching job too. He never taught because he passed his A/L exams that season and left me for the University of Yaounde where he studied Sociology. He earned a Doctorate under the supervision of Professor George Ngango before I joined him in Yaounde in 1989. He was actually the first student from Seat of Wisdom to earn a doctoral degree. When I arrived in Yaounde for Public Service work, I lived with him for about a year before I got my own place. And not only that. Even when I had blood relations in Yaounde, I still sent my oldest daughter to live with him when I was still in graduate school in Buea. I ascended the throne of Atoabechied in 1997 and soon after that Kamanda became the Ekpeti of Takwai. He fondly referred to me as "Atoabechied" with an exclamation that emanated from the energy he always had.
Following is one memory of our adolescent years in Secondary School. This memory was my swimming lessons from Kamanda at the River Begueoh swimming spot below the Roman Catholic School, Belleu. Swimming there was a test place of bravery. Bangwa people believe that deep water pools are one of the places where witchcraft thrives. The deeper a pool and the darker it is to see through the water, the stronger the belief that any such pool is a meeting place for water witches and wizards. Due to this belief, Bangwa people were and probably remain generally very fearful of eteng (deep water pools). And many of the different eteng were known to belong to different people or groups. For example, we grew up hearing stories about Ateng Atoh, Ateng Fuachap, Ateng Lefoc (the ateng of Atoh, the ateng of Fuachap, the ateng of Lefoc). September and October, the first months of the school year, were the last months of the rainy season in Bangwa, West Africa and usually had very heavy rains, which caused lots of flooding along the riverbanks. Then the rivers were still dangerous not simply because of the witches and wizards supposed in them, but also because the huge fast flowing currents could very easily sweep people away.
Students at Seat of Wisdom, our school in the first two years, started going down the valley to swim by early November when the rains stopped, the volume of water reduced, the sun was beginning to get hot, and the water was becoming a little warmer. Even then, it was not easy for people to jump into the pool with every iota of confidence. In addition to fearing being swept away, there was the belief that the people who inhabited the water depths in the rainy season were still in there. Witches and wizards were not the best friends of mortal human beings and people did not venture easily to those places believed to be where they were. In Bangwaland, such places as big caves, other landforms that appeared irregular or unusual to the Bangwa person’s mind, and deep dark pools were the abode of the forces of evil, including witches and wizards.
With these beliefs in mind, the cunning of the Bangwa boys was very evident when all the boys would pull off their clothing by the pool, but almost no one would readily jump into the pool. Everyone seemed to pretend to be busy with something else waiting for the first person to jump. If that first person jumped into the pool and swam safely and came out unharmed, then the water was safe for the swimming excitement. That one person to inaugurate the beginning of the swimming season was nearly always my cousin, Christopher Atem. He was raised in Kumba and had either known many daring adventures or did not know about the local Bangwa beliefs about witches and wizards in river pools. He was a very brave boy by my reckoning.
If he was not on hand to open the swimming season, my friend, Kamanda Baiye, would do so. As a Banyang boy, we all knew that they had the secrets of the waters and could communion with the witches and wizards in any kind of deep dark pool. And truly speaking, if a family lost a member by drowning, the family dispatched an emissary to Akap (Banyangland) to hire a Banyang swimmer (Nkwarre) as an expert to look for the body in the waters because those folks did not fear the waters, however high in flood, however dark, and however deep a pool was.
I will reserve for another occasion, the big baked fish meals that Mama Francisca Tiku, his mother, brought to us regularly at college. Mama Francisca Tiku was a great inspiration to us all.
Go well friend and brother until we meet again to part no more!
H.I.M Fuankem Achankeng I (Ruler & Professor)
.
In Buea, he took advantage of a private library owned and run by Dr. E.M.L Endeley to study for his A/Ls. I left the Band to teach English in Grand College de la Menoua in Dschang. After writing the A/Ls he joined me in Dschang to look for a teaching job too. He never taught because he passed his A/L exams that season and left me for the University of Yaounde where he studied Sociology. He earned a Doctorate under the supervision of Professor George Ngango before I joined him in Yaounde in 1989. He was actually the first student from Seat of Wisdom to earn a doctoral degree. When I arrived in Yaounde for Public Service work, I lived with him for about a year before I got my own place. And not only that. Even when I had blood relations in Yaounde, I still sent my oldest daughter to live with him when I was still in graduate school in Buea. I ascended the throne of Atoabechied in 1997 and soon after that Kamanda became the Ekpeti of Takwai. He fondly referred to me as "Atoabechied" with an exclamation that emanated from the energy he always had.
Following is one memory of our adolescent years in Secondary School. This memory was my swimming lessons from Kamanda at the River Begueoh swimming spot below the Roman Catholic School, Belleu. Swimming there was a test place of bravery. Bangwa people believe that deep water pools are one of the places where witchcraft thrives. The deeper a pool and the darker it is to see through the water, the stronger the belief that any such pool is a meeting place for water witches and wizards. Due to this belief, Bangwa people were and probably remain generally very fearful of eteng (deep water pools). And many of the different eteng were known to belong to different people or groups. For example, we grew up hearing stories about Ateng Atoh, Ateng Fuachap, Ateng Lefoc (the ateng of Atoh, the ateng of Fuachap, the ateng of Lefoc). September and October, the first months of the school year, were the last months of the rainy season in Bangwa, West Africa and usually had very heavy rains, which caused lots of flooding along the riverbanks. Then the rivers were still dangerous not simply because of the witches and wizards supposed in them, but also because the huge fast flowing currents could very easily sweep people away.
Students at Seat of Wisdom, our school in the first two years, started going down the valley to swim by early November when the rains stopped, the volume of water reduced, the sun was beginning to get hot, and the water was becoming a little warmer. Even then, it was not easy for people to jump into the pool with every iota of confidence. In addition to fearing being swept away, there was the belief that the people who inhabited the water depths in the rainy season were still in there. Witches and wizards were not the best friends of mortal human beings and people did not venture easily to those places believed to be where they were. In Bangwaland, such places as big caves, other landforms that appeared irregular or unusual to the Bangwa person’s mind, and deep dark pools were the abode of the forces of evil, including witches and wizards.
With these beliefs in mind, the cunning of the Bangwa boys was very evident when all the boys would pull off their clothing by the pool, but almost no one would readily jump into the pool. Everyone seemed to pretend to be busy with something else waiting for the first person to jump. If that first person jumped into the pool and swam safely and came out unharmed, then the water was safe for the swimming excitement. That one person to inaugurate the beginning of the swimming season was nearly always my cousin, Christopher Atem. He was raised in Kumba and had either known many daring adventures or did not know about the local Bangwa beliefs about witches and wizards in river pools. He was a very brave boy by my reckoning.
If he was not on hand to open the swimming season, my friend, Kamanda Baiye, would do so. As a Banyang boy, we all knew that they had the secrets of the waters and could communion with the witches and wizards in any kind of deep dark pool. And truly speaking, if a family lost a member by drowning, the family dispatched an emissary to Akap (Banyangland) to hire a Banyang swimmer (Nkwarre) as an expert to look for the body in the waters because those folks did not fear the waters, however high in flood, however dark, and however deep a pool was.
I will reserve for another occasion, the big baked fish meals that Mama Francisca Tiku, his mother, brought to us regularly at college. Mama Francisca Tiku was a great inspiration to us all.
Go well friend and brother until we meet again to part no more!
H.I.M Fuankem Achankeng I (Ruler & Professor)
.