Ambivalent Tremors

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Dazed in a stupor of confusion from conflicting feelings which will not settle in any one direction, bipolar and extreme, a sense of right and wrong, angst, relief and pain tugged her from different directions. She picked up her pen and wrote the words:

Dear Ambivalence,

I have prayed for a while now that I will never get to write these words and that even if I ever had to write them, they will not be in a letter addressed to you... but here am I, sitting here, traumatized by guilt, hurt, steeped in pain yet convinced that it is the right thing to do. I have not come to this place easily... ah the agony which has rocked the path... it is amazing how a conviction of right can feel so wrong. I have given this careful thought, wrestled with every word, rationalized every feeling, debated every justification, and I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that for your good and mine, we stand at a junction in our relationship which offers us the gift of a forked path that we must separately take or forever be miserable on a single path to life imprisonment plus hard labor.

You have no opinions, say neither yes nor no, you quibble, have no positions on issues, and are constantly shirking the tough questions. I have struggled to find your identity and while you come forth as a sweet human being with no objections and a flow designed to shadow me, I have often felt like I was spending time with myself. I feel like I interact with a clone of me, a robotic prototype of my mind. Your detachment from taking a stance voids your personality and denies me the chance of getting to know the real you. When the rubber meets the road, I want to minimize as much as humanly possible the embarrassment of meeting you for the first time after I say I do and then life happens and you finally show up.

For our good, for your good and mine, for the sake of a future we still have a chance to salvage before it is wrecked by blind loyalty to a commitment entered in error and without the benefit of reason which happened to be drowned in the pleasantries of sweet emotions at the time, I ask you to understand and join me in moving on, on separate paths. I have your back... always... thank you for everything we shared, everything we learned.

Wishing you everything good you can become and with one last kiss, albeit virtual, I seal this note. 

Tremor.

Brussels © October 2014 afesehngwaHilary

You don’t have to be jealous!

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Looks like you are really serious,

You don’t have to be jealous,

When I give others material things,

In the process I give generosity wings,

Even if I gave the world silver and gold,

I give you something which could not be sold,

I give you something not as cold as gold,

I give you me,

I give you my heart,

I give you my time,

I only give them things because I have no time for them,

And can’t give them what is meant for you.

© October 2014 - afesehngwaHilary

The younger older lady!

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One of the upsides of using public transportation,

When news around the world is recipe for dark and grim and sad,

One is blessed to catch more glimpses of the finer angels of our being,

Seventy may have been the number of her years,

Her legs were tired but her heart was not,

When she saw the older lady who may have been eighty,

With slightly more tired legs,

And more evident scars of the nibbling effects of time,

The younger older lady sprang to her feet quicker than a running bunny,

Yielding her seat in a celebratory act of some of the finest moments of our humanity,

It was quiet,

It was powerful,

It was pedantic,

I stood there flushed with pride for sharing in their lofty humanity,

I stood there feeling blessed to have witnessed it,

Privileged for the opportunity to be hopeful,

I sealed it with an effortless smile,

There are still glimmers of hope burning with unquenchable rigor around the world,

Challenging each and every one of us to stay open to being those pockets of light,

That give our collective humanity might.

Brussels © October 2014 afesehngwaHilary

Courage which defies her age – what is your excuse?

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She debunks all myths that wisdom and fortitude only lie in age,

She cuts all threads of logic that a certain age is a requirement,

A requirement to make a difference in a world gone wild with unconcern,

Her breed and ilk is rare,

Her courage is beyond compare,

Her determination second to none,

Her most potent instrument is her tongue,

And an unquenchable desire to learn,

An unquenchable desire to make it possible for others to learn,

She opens up her mouth and speaks anywhere she is,

And somehow the world listens,

Maybe she earned her right to be heard by the bullet she took in her head,

Her assailants made their worst mistake with that fired shot,

For they unleashed the growing power of a voice,

One voice which is in no small manner changing the world,

What is your excuse today?

If it is your age then think again,

Look at the 17 year old Nobel Peace Price winner for 2014,

Her name is Malala Yousafzai,

She has accomplished in a few years,

What many live up to a hundred and never accomplish,

Today I salute her.

Brussels © October 2014 afesehngwaHilary

As if he had swallowed a bulb!

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If your light is faint and you want to shine the brightest light,

The smartest thing to do is to find the darkest night,

A pitch dark night swallowed up every trace of  light in his life,

As he groped through treacherous paths asking and making her his wife,

He held her hand and began to glow as if he had swallowed a bulb in one big gulp,

And then he started to shine as if sourced by light brighter than a thousand suns,

He wasn’t that bright, just that it was so much darker around them,

Even a flicker of light was enough to keep them going,

He suddenly remembered how he walked out of solitary confinement,

Into the larger prison yards and felt as if freedom rang from every wall,

You will appreciate the littlest of things when you are in total lack,

In plenty you dismiss the littlest precious gifts with curses and many barks,

So sometimes the sole purpose of your lack is to feed you a humble pie,

And bring you a happiness pill wrapped in packs of gratitude for the littlest things,
It can make you feel like you deserve a Nobel price for gratitude!

Brussels © October 2014 afesehngwaHilary

He was found nestling at her breasts!

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They were quarantined,

So nobody really worried when they were not seen,

A few days had come and gone,

The only door to their homestead still under lock and key,

As the health workers did a street to street tour to meet the endangered populace,

A weak falsetto cry pierced through the homestead cracks announcing the presence of life,

And when they broke the door to let them in,

They were greeted by the putrid stench of rotting flesh,

The air was so thick with the smell you could cut it with a knife,

Totally oblivious of the grim reality which surrounded him,

He lay there nestling at his dead mother’s breast,

Sucking hard at milk that wouldn’t flow,

The stench of death fed by Ebola camped around him,

A sight so inhumanly despicable many of the health workers cried a river of tears,

A sight that is bound to follow any one to their graves no matter how hard one tried to make it go away,

A sight that is sure to conjure nightmares in your dreams,

A tragedy of unspeakable sorts!

One of the health workers picked him up,

Dazed and confused and numbed by shocking pain,

They gave him a thorough chlorine bath and prayed that by some miracle he would live,

The baby boy found nestling at his mother’s breasts.

Their dog showed up,

Smelling the death,

And was the saddest of them all,

Crying uncontrollably!

©October 2014 afesehngwaHilary

Tribute to a man, a teacher, a father - Fare thee well papa… farewell Pa Saboh

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Death is something I have probed and spent a lot of prayerful thought time with and the deeper I probe the more determined it is to hold and keep the eternal promise of its mystery, revealed only to those who pass through the grand portal called death, into the unknown beyond. I wonder why I am always surprised and shocked when something like death which is bound to happen to every one of us without any exception happens. Even in the figment of our wildest imaginations, when we wish and conjure the opposite, wishing to live forever never has and never will translate into concrete reality for any of us. I guess part of the shock that grows instantly to inject a stinging dose of painful reality at the news of death, comes from a vacuum the parting loved one leaves in the house, family, social circles and in our hearts. It comes from the new realization that while their memories live on their physical presence is gone and when we still want to hold them and hug them and talk to them, walking down memory lane will henceforth be our only recourse.

I went to a boarding secondary and high school in the African country of Cameroon. Any account of any of the weeks of the seven years I went to school in Sacred Heart College Mankon, Bamenda would be incomplete without the mention of the man, the teacher, the choir master, the father Mr. Saboh Ivo Peter whom we, his students fondly called Pa Saboh. It is therefore unsurprising that my heart ached and my heart strings were painfully tugged when without warning I learned of the passing on to eternity of this iconic retired teacher of Sacred Heart College Mankon. I will not go into the cause of his death, for from my experience the method of death never really assuaged or eased the pain of the loss.

Like all men Pa Saboh could make no valid claim to perfection, but unlike all men, my memories of him are that he brought an unbridled passion to everything I ever saw him do. He brought his heart to his geography lessons, he brought his heart when he disciplined, he brought his heart to choir practices, he brought his heart when he parented and loved. We would tell a lot of stories, some included here to remember you if we could physically make it to your wake keep… this is to celebrate your life as I knew it.

As a geography teacher Pa Saboh made geography one of the lessons I found impossible to sleep in, whether he was teaching Fishing in Norway, teaching about the Ruhr industrial region or how to read maps amongst other things. It was during your geography lessons that I first learned in a really concrete way that it is possible to travel to and visit places one had never really been to physically thanks to miraculous leaps of an engaging mind and ambitious imagination. I cannot forget how you described these foreign lands like you were born and bred in each of them and reminded us that though you have never been there, you have been there with your mind. You took us to Norway and Germany, with many other places around the world and through different contours on maps to physical landforms we could only imagine. You made them real and brought them to our classrooms.

As discipline master you were a strict disciplinarian, a firm believer in the corrective power of the rod and with it you sometimes made us fear, because sometimes fear was the only incentive to get over 400 boys to do right and be right by right. I particularly remember the countless mornings when we overslept and you showed up and we would get up at the slightest sensing of your coming and run into nearby bushes or hide in lockers until the wave of terror your unmistakable personality brought with you on those cold Mankon mornings ebbed out. I remember how we made many decisions to show up neither for morning mass nor for morning preps after those chases due the undeniable painful consequences of being caught showing up late for any of those important morning starters. You came to the farms with us during manual labor and toiled through with us those Saturday afternoons after essay writing, even if only to keep us company with your good humor and make sure we did the job and did it right. I still remember like it was yesterday when you showed up during preps, countless times, holding a list of noise makers in your hands and how I prayed some of my most fervent prayers during those times for who in their right mind wanted their name on a list of trouble makers in your hand. I have no reason to doubt that you were motivated even in error by right and love.

Pa Saboh you were our choir master for a brief time and who can forget those choir practices we had together… “Glory be to God on high… three four”… and then the whole school chimed in “… and on earth peace …” … priceless memories.

Pa Saboh you were also a father as mentioned above and you brought an impassioned justice and passionate heart to your parenting. I have no recollection of you having favorites with the students – punishment was meted out according to crime, with love and loving words of advice dished out in better measure than the punishment you gave. You gave us two SHESAN brothers and some of us where lucky to come to your home as if it was ours. I have had the honor over the years to know your entire nuclear family, visiting frequently when I was around.

Pa Saboh you gave us countless reasons to laugh and we cannot meet as students during our reunions, at least with my classmates without throwing ourselves into some real fit of laughter because of some funny thing you said or did. We were and are blessed with your priceless sense of humor for it is undeniably one of the things we do remember you for. It was your humor which mostly made you approachable and made us your children look forward to the more pleasant encounters with you.

As you exit the stage of life and lead the way on a path we all are on, make people laugh where ever you go and wherever you are. I am consoled as I usually am in the face of painful death by the timelessly true words of Rabindranath Tagore that "Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come." It is in times like these that my Christianity is especially needful… when I reach my wit’s end.

Fare thee well papa… farewell Pa Saboh…may God meet those you leave behind at their very points of need. You are sorely missed.

© October 2014 afesehngwaHilary