John Nkemngong. Nkengasong's Across The Mongolo

TITLE : Across The Mongolo
Author : John Nkemngong Nkengasong
Publisher : Spectrum Books Limited, Ibadan,2004,200pp
Reviewer : Shadrach A. Ambanasom*
Coming on the heels of Alobwede Epie's The Death Certificate (November, 2004),
John Nkemngong. Nkengasong's Across The Mongolo (December, 2004) is a
welcome addition to our burgeoning imaginative writing, and, against a rich
background of anterior Anglophone publications, proof of the vibrancy of Cameroon
literature of English expression. Considering its subject matter and the manner in
which it is constructed, Across The Mongolo (across the Mungo) is a novel which, in
the Cameroonian context, is almost guaranteed, I dare say, to inspire critical
commentary for some time to come.
After a sound secondary school education in the Anglophone state of Kama, the
novel's central character, Ngwe Nkemasaah, proceeds to the Francophone state of
Ngola in the bilingual, Federal Republic of Kamangola to acquire university
education in Besaadi, the only university in Kamangola. But it is in Besaadi, within
the hegemonic influence of the French language, that Ngwe meets his academic
Waterloo.
Unlike in the Anglophone citadel of academic excellence of Wysdom College and
College of Arts where discipline, orderliness, hard work, and merit are the cardinal
values for success, in Besaadi fraud, personal interest, gamble, injustice and disorder
are the order of the day. Despite the official bilingual status of the country with
English and French as official languages, Ngwe is compelled to write his
examinations only in French, a language he does not master well. In the novel
Francophones ideologically textualize; the Anglophone as the inferior Other. Their
orientalising attitude consists in perceiving him as a kind of comic freak whose
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ehaviour gives rise to debasing appellations like Anglofou,Anglobête,esclave and
salaud etc.
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Ngwe goes through a great deal of humiliation, degradation and debilitating
frustration which inflict on him traumatic stress disorders that, several times, bring
him close to a nervous breakdown before he is finally done in. But he draws on his
great presence of mind and is determined to make it in Besaadi. However, for all his
tenacity on to his ethic of hard work and honesty, after six years in the university, and
even changing faculties, his academic endeavours end in failure, leaving him with
zero degree.
Gradually it dawns on him that his humiliation is not an isolated fact but one shared
by other Anglophones; that the Francophone government in place has a hidden agenda
to annihilate the Anglo-Saxon culture in the United Republic of Kamangola, with the
university as the experimental nursery ground; and that the Anglophones co-opted
into the government are there to destroy the Anglo-Saxon culture. It also becomes
clear to Ngwe that the older generation of Anglophones have failed and that unless the
young people do something to rescue the situation soon, the Anglo-Saxon swan-song
may well soon be sung. Consequently, he forms the Young Anglophone Movement
(YAM) to help keep alive the Anglo-Saxon heritage, to fight for the Anglophone
rights to full citizenship and not just to be some assistant somebody (138). In short,
YAM's goal is to uphold the Anglophone identity.
Though eventually hounded to madness by his woes and tribulations, his is a treatable
mental disorder. It is thanks to his gradual recovery from his insanity that Ngwe now
recollects and reconstructs his narrative from a cave in the forest of his rural
Lebialem.
Across The Mongolo thematizes the struggle for the survival of the Anglophone
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identity within the Francophone dominance. It is significant that, at the end of the
novel, Ngwe, though irremediably frustrated , is nevertheless alive. His survival
emblematizes the existence of YAM, and thus symbolizes Anglophone hope.
The social relevance of the novel is high, indeed. It is the only Cameroonian novel of
English expression, to date, to be a significant site for the dramatization of two
antagonistic ideological hegemonies: the assimilationist authoritarianism epitomized
by the formidable Babajoro (Ahidjo) pitted against the federalist cohabitation
espoused by Ngwe's YAM. Across The Mongolo's uniqueness equally resides in the
fact that it attempts to transcend merely deconstructing Anglophone victimhood to
reconstructing some of the positive values that constitute the Anglophoneness that
Anglophones are yearning to perpetuate.
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Nkengasong's condition of coloniality is an interesting phenomenon evident in his
text. He is a post-colonial subject whose text is written in an imperial language,
English. But the intimate and immediate circumstances of his life that make up his
subject matter are Cameroonian (African). He is a child of two worlds, the one by
virtue of his British colonial educational upbringing, the other by his close attachment
to his Nweh tradition. His characters speak in English but an English refashioned, in
many cases, to reflect the speech patterns, thought, idioms, and rhythms of Nweh
native speakers, a reality bespeaking Nkengasong's hybridity. Therefore, to go by the
flavour of the language of its characters, any informed student of literature in English
reading Across The Mongolo, will instantly recognize it for what it is: a post-colonial
text belonging not to English literature but to literatures in English.
Technically speaking, the author handles plot, structure, characterization, language
and narrative perspective well. He shows ingenuity in conceiving the narrative point
of view, focalized essentially from the text's central consciousness, with only
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occasional interpolations from the omniscient narrator. Even when, in
characterization, Ngwe is made to utter what some may term barbarism committed on
the French language "Je suit dit que" (61) etc, this, in the circumstances, is functional,
realistic and in character. It defines the speaker as one who is not only bad at French
but a character who has come to loathe French (66). This subverts the Francophone
colonial text that set out to rewrite itself in the Anglophone inferior Other, for there is
a big gulf between the pure text and performance.
Within the Cameroonian context Across The Mongolo is a serious indictment of
Francophone hegemony, and a scathing attack on Anglophones who deny the
existence of the Anglophone Problem. Ultimately, the text amounts to an unsettling
interrogation of history, a people, in short, the Cameroonian society as a whole. A
gripping human story beautifully conceived and constructed, it is a lyrical, soulful cry
from a sensitive mind, and a significant contribution to the development of the
Cameroon novel in English.
* Shadrach A. Ambanasom is Associate Professor in the University of Yaoundé I (ENS
Annex Bambili)
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