Azore Opio
25 February 2008
column
Some people are optimistic about death. Others are pessimistic. Both are right and both are wrong.
In any casse, death needs no further acknowledgment of its significance than it has already attained in the large number of its graduates.It is sometimes difficult to write anything about people who have died because they stir up painful memories.
And when you see them lying still, silent and expressionless in their wooden cots, you begin to imagine that they are just catching a cat's nap and they will be up and about in a short while. But you wait. Minutes tick by and become hours and the hours start to acquire the colour of day.
And the body in the casket has not moved, blinked nor complained of lying in the narrow confines of the box. Yet, you keep on wishing and hoping, against hope, that by some miracle, even if it is not Jesus Christ performing it, the still body might come back to life. But when the hours have matured into a sunlit day and the person is still in the box, unmoving, you begin to know that the spirit has left the human shell.
That is how Prince Henry Mbain lay in state in his humble house in Buea Town on Friday 22 - as humble as ever and peaceful. As I looked at my old friend, I knew his spirit was already half way to heaven, because, take it or leave it, that is where the Prince is going.
Anyway, I paused in my sorrowful moment and reminisced, albeit briefly, of the days when the cheery Prince was still on his feet, how he always spared a minute to greet me and then we would chat about politics, the economy, the society and the Archives. Then the Prince would be on his way; soft-spoken, calm, unpretentious.
Last year, the Prince spoke prophetically when I accosted him at the Archives: "...it won't be long before I leave (to die or to rest?). They want to ride a willing horse to death." Prince Mbain came to the end of the treadmill on February 15, 2008. Fortunately, he was not taken to the knackers for his 'hooves' to be boiled into soap. The Prince was conveyed to his fatherland in Anjin-Kom, Northwest Province.
We pray that Prince Henry Mbain Ankia will find perfect peace and harmony now after travelling over different avenues in pursuit of those virtues while he lived.
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