Yaoundé is the political capital of Cameroon, founded by the Germans in 1889. The distance between my village, Komo Endeo, which belongs today to the district of Evodoula, and the capital Yaoundé is about 70 kilometers. I am from the Béti tribe, the race of Lords. We have never had a chief before the Germans arrived, because everyone was a Lord, everyone was his own chief. The Germans invented the idea of kingdoms and kings. My great uncle Ambassa Tsimi Toua was born before the German Colonization of Cameroon. About the year 1900 he was enlisted as a German soldier. This is the reason why people wearing a police or military uniform are being called “chief” until today. The German governor of that time was Karl Ebermaier. He was the last Governor of the Kaiserreich in Cameroon before the First World War put an end to Colonization.
At that time the road which left Yaoundé and led to my village stopped about 23 kilometers before the village itself. It was a dead end. Beyond it there were just food paths weaving endlessly into the equatorial jungle. These paths were interrupted only by larger or smaller villages inhabiting more or less people .

One of the roles of the indigineous German soldiers was to collect taxes for the German administration. Today, the word “toya” which means taxes comes from the German word “Steuer”. Another task was to catch young men and enroll them in forced labour. The Germans in fact undertook major infrastructural projects in the Cameroonian “Hinterland” as there were building roads, railways, bridges, trading centers. They also exploited destructively exotic woods, diamonds and ivory…So the Germans ordered all their Black police officers to see to it that their people who were scattered throughout the forest to move towards the road’s dead end. It was about 1911, when my great uncle, Ambassa Tsimi Toua, in order to set a good example, moved with his seven wives and fourteen children and settled at the end of the road. At that time, the uprising of the people of Cameroon was rumbling throughout the country. It became clearer every day that that the Colonial pact the Douala chiefs and the Germans had agreed upon, was a contract of fools. The response of the Germans was brutal and bloody: public lashings, public hangings, public executions and the like. It was in the regime of Karl Ebermaier that Cameroon’s best-known martyrs were executed: Martin Paul Samba, Rudolf Douala Manga Bell, Ngosso Din, chief Madola of Kribi, the Lamidos of Kalfou and Mindif, as well as other dignitaries of North Cameroon.
In the course of two years, twelve of my great uncle’s fourteen children died one after the other in the order of their birth, without any plausible explanation until only two children were left. My great uncle thus came to the conclusion that the place was haunted. So he decided to return to the land where he came from. He duly travelled to Yaoundé to meet Ebermaier and notify him about his decision. At that particular time, there was no transportation and my Great Uncle thus started on his journeys by foot. It took a whole day to cover 52 kilometers. Although my Great Uncle had never went to school, he knew exactly that in order to get there and come back it would take him two whole days.
Coming into the Governor’s office, Ambassa Tsimi Toua addressed himself to the Governor:
-Herr Ebermaier, if you had fourteen children and if, in the course of two years, twelve of them died, what conclusion would you draw out of that?
-Well, I would conclude that I should have married just one wife. I should have spent less time in bed to to avoid all sort of foolish things. I would have limited myself to two children and I would have devoted the rest of my time to real useful work, he replied in a growling way.
It must be explained that people from my tribe have always perceived the German language as a military language, a language to give orders. The German language is like growling thunder and each word comes out like a canon ball. A German, a real German does not talk, he gives orders. And even when he replies, “Jawohl” rings out like an order. Sitting under the palaver tree in my village, where meetings are held, we often wondered whether the Germans were even growling when they were making children: “Do it like this!”-“ Hurry up!”-“Harder”, “Not there, here!”- “Come now…”
– Well, answered Ambassa Tsimi Toua, I personally conclude that within a century the German Kaiserreich will be full of old people. In oder to live out their last days they will be forced to import manpower from developing countries. These workers will have to look after these old Germans, push them around in their wheel chairs and change their diapers in old people’s homes. And within two centuries, the Aryan race will have totally vanished from earth.
The German can not believe his eyes nor his ears. He turns totally red and in a strangely normal tone of voice asked my Great Uncle to repeat what he had just said.
-I’ve come to inform you that I’ve decided to return to the land of my ancestors.
-You’ve come to ask my permission to leave, or are you telling me you’re leaving?
-I don’t speak with water in my mouth. I’ve said all I had to say.
Having heard this reply, Karl Ebermaier opens the curtains, opens a large window giving onto the garden in the rear courtyard and asked my Great Uncle to tell him what he was seeing. Ambassa Tsimi Toua saw about thirty black people who were buried alive, with just their heads above ground, like mushrooms. The Governor slowly closes the window, pulls the curtains and asks him how many heads he had counted.
-Twenty-nine!
-Wrong! shouts Ebermaier. Go outside and count again.
My Great Uncle Ambassa Tsimi Toua comes back five minutes later:
-They are thirty. But even if they were five or one thousand, I’ve made my decision.
Thus Karl Ebermaier did something he had never done before. He behaved as he had never dreamed of doing, even in his boldest dreams: he surrendered and agreed to Ambassa Tsimi Toua’s decision. In the moment of parting from another, Ebermaier said to him:
-In one year, to the day, I will come and visit you on the land of your ancestors and promote you to the rank of highest chief of the Eton tribe.
My Great Uncle went home and started to get ready to return to his native land. Three days later, an ambassador from the Governor came looking for him. Ebermaier had something very important to tell him. A day’s walk later, Ambassa Tsimi Toua was back in Karl Ebermaier’s office. The latter welcomed him in an extremely friendly manner, without growling and scolding as he usually did. He guided him into his palace. They walked through the parlor room and they crossed the dining room. The table was covered with the most succulent dishes. The flavors wafting from the table made Ambassa Tsimi Toua’s mouth watery. My Great Uncle started wondering within himself whether his last hour had not come. It was well known that colonists never invited natives to their table, except to clear the table. Ebermaier did not invite him to take a seat. This reassured him a little bit. They walked down a long aisle and stepped out into the garden behind the palace where a beautiful horse was grazing happily.
-You see that horse… How do you like it?
-A beautiful beast.
-It’s a thoroughbred Arab. Come, let’s go back inside. That’s what I wanted to show you.
They walked back they same way they had come silently. First they walked through the dining room with its lusciously laden table, then through the parlor room, until they reached the threshold. The churbell of the White peoples’ church stroke twelveo’clock noon. Ebermaier then took his leave of Ambassa Tsimi Toua:
-When I will come and visit you on the land of your ancestors in a year’s time, the dew must not blemish the feet of this beautiful beast. You know what you have to do. I have nothing more to say. Have a good journey. It’s time for me to eat now.
When Ambassa Tsimi Toua returned home, he forced his people to build 20 kilometers of road, with their hands, without any tool, without being paid. But he made sure they were assisted and motivated by whips, harangues and scolding, as he had learned from the German Colonists. Even the handicapped, even the women and children, who were usually spared such tasks by the colonists, had to submit to the will of my Great Uncle. They were not only constructing 20 kilometers of road, but spent liters and liters of blood, sweat, and tears building it. When a black soldier is given an ounce of power by the White Man, his whip on his black brother’s back is more cunning and brutal than the White Man’s. All that took place in 1913. A year later the road has been built. But Ebermaier did not go and see Ambassa on the lands of his ancestors as he had promised to do. As a result, my Great Uncle has never been promoted to the rank of high chief of the Etons as he had been told. War had broken out in Europe. In 2013 there are still hundreds of villages in Cameroon which cannot be reached by a road. The transport vehicle leaves you miles and miles away and you have to continue on foot. It is because of this spirit of sacrifice and this self-denial in work, those virtues universally recognized in the Germans, that there is a road today that reaches my village. It was worth Ambassa Tsimi Toua being invited to Ebermaier’s table, wasn’t it?
Übersetzung: Simon Pleasance und Petra Kama-Welle
“Über die Grenze der Zweifel” / Verflochtene Spuren / ask