In Ink in My Blood Charlie exhibits a candour about even his personal peccadillos which makes his journalistic frank talk look more like a natural way of life than just an occupational deformation wonder how many of you present here have ever heard of permanent black ink. Most of you belong to the Biro generation. I am going back here to the era where you dipped the nib of your penholder into a small ink bottle or a little inkwell carved into your desk.
Unlike other inks which were washable, Permanent black was so concentrated that it was not just indelible but seemed to burn its way into the paper, making it hard to read anything written on the other side of the same sheet.
Ink in My Blood presents us with that kind of sheet in the person of Charlie Ndi Chia himself. Unapologetic self-assertion, unassailable integrity and a propensity to revolt against injustice were so deeply imprinted into his character that anything different was hardly readable. He was thus a guaranteed headache as child to his parents, a student to his teachers and staffer to his boss wherever employed him.
Should he have pursued a career in woodwork? Well, prone as he is to thinking out of the box, who knows what revolutionary shipbuilder Charlie could have made?
But alarm bells must have ding-donged in heaven (or even in hell) the day he opted to carry such an explosive baggage into no other field than journalism. Journalism, a profession that sharpens your sensitivity to details that easily elude the perception of most ordinary citizens because it trains you to see and hear not just for yourself but for everyone else; a profession that emboldens you to say whatever you see because everybody has a right to know.
And a natural propensity like Charlie’s, primed by this kind of professional training, produces a cocktail too explosive in any place and at any time, worst of all in country like Cameroon at the bridge between the 20th. And 21st Centuries. Charlie entered active professional life as a journalist in the dusk of Ahidjo’s regime and the dawn of Biya’s – both characterized by neocolonial aversion for dissent and intolerance to free speech.
It was also the moment when the Arab spring was giving impetus to voices like Charlie’s in defense of democratic governance, blurring the line between impassionate reporting and pro-people advocacy.
Little wonder that Charlie quickly joined the ranks of the regime’s enfants terribles. Often teetering between sheer professional bravado and what he himself describes as childish daredevilry, Charlie constituted with Sam Nuvalla Fonkem and Akwanka Joe Ndifor a trio in the spirit of Shadrack Meshak and Abednego – regular inmates of the Kondengui prison and visitors to Fochive’s den.
In Ink in My Blood Charlie exhibits a candour about even his personal peccadillos which makes his journalistic frank talk look more like a natural way of life than just an occupational deformation.
Like many other children, Charlie may have felt shortchanged by his own parents when they sent him to Ombe instead of Sasse. But between the lines of Ink in my Blood, people of my generation can read a touch of the fine finish that was once the hallmark of Ombe training. That was a time when there was no other name to the finest and most durable joinery, masonry, carpentry or motor mechanics than good old Ombe. From a very recent conversation about my ceiling I learnt that, so many years after leaving Ombe, Charlie is still very finicky about getting the wood and the finishing right. And reading Ink in my Blood, I see him as sensitive to the texture of his words as an old Ombe carpenter would be to the grain and seasoning of his wood.
There are many who write when they really have no story to tell. Others may have a good story but spend sleepless nights writing just to send readers to sleep. The story of Ndi Chia’s youth and professional life is not just a story, it is a must-watch movie. And it comes so alive in his writing that those who know him cannot read it without seeing his naughty smile when he pokes fun at one of his bosses or colleagues, or even at himself.
Just as Ndi Chia pays glowing tribute to Jerome Gwellem, Adamu Musa, Sam Nuvalla Fonkem and other journalists who mentored him, I am sure the huge number of young journalists and interns whom he mentored will not stint his praise either. If they forget everything else, they will remember the caustic sense of humour with which he treated any verbal diarrhea in their scripts, and the outlandish nicknames he always found for each of them.
OK you must be wondering why I mention them in this book review. It is because I consider these young men and women, now serving in may newsrooms nationwide, as the first book Charlie wrote.
And if you are a young journalist just about to read this book, I have no doubt that you will soon become another of his books for people to read about how good journalism can be used to fix a country.
I know that You-tube and Tic-tok have been driving some nails into the coffin of the reading culture in Cameroon. Yet I have no doubt that you will find Ink in my Blood, difficult to put down once you start reading.
It reminds me of something that happened in my days in journalism school. One of my teachers who knew that I was also taking a degree in English, remarked in French during a staff discussion that I should stay in the faculty and become a novelist, playwright or poet, not a journalist. The word he used in French was ecrivain (writer). But he was quickly shut down by, none other than the late Professor Bernard Fonlon who asked him in French, “Qui t’a dit qu’un ecrivain ne peut pas etre un ecrivant? I think this book vindicates Professor Fonlon. In it, and without perceptible effort, Charlie blends an uncanny skill in creative storytelling and factual journalistic writing.
His language is straight to the point and, knowing him, he made an obvious effort to break his verbal dollar bills down to nickels and dimes. No rigmaroles, only the occasional innuendo when he tries to avoid the bluntness of his youthful days.
One surprise he has for everybody though. Even as a former CRTV colleague, I admit I was taken aback when I read Charlie denying paternity of “And now, lies from from Studio Four”. Who would hesitate to attribute that to a guy who goes on air with “I hate the President”, or who would very casually make slips of the tongue like “headache of state”? – deliberately challenging Atango’s monopoly of lapsus linguae.
But it all goes to the candour I talked about earlier. No kind words for bullies, no sympathy for chorus-boy journalists, zero tolerance for anything that cheapens his cherished profession. And to the question whether a good journalist is born or made, Ink in my Blood is a pertinent answer: Good journalism is a calling – and Charlie Ndi Chia certainly heard his name called, and answered.
And finally, let me to go out of the book to mention that Charlie’s obsession with telling things as they are, his unrepentant empathy with victims of injustice and his aversion for abuse of power – make him something of a kindred spirit to me. Which makes our stint as partners in the Rambler newspaper a most memorable chapter of my own professional history – an episode on which I would not hesitate to hit replay if only it were possible to put time on hold. |
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your time.
*The Review was done recently at the launch of the book in Buea. Ink In my Blood is available on Amazon .