Day and Night in Limbo

written by Jean Tardif Lonkog

With humour, insight and irony, Lonkog recounts the joys and contradictions of daily life in a Northern Cameroon village. Living in Carrefour Poli in Northern Cameroon was never easy. How far will one have to go for drinking water during the dry season? Will there be money for kerosene to fill the lamp tank? For batteries for the torch? For a bowl of corn to make ‘fufu’ for the family? Will there be a night encounter with the poison of a snake or scorpion? The man of Carrefour Poli imagines when he last had a bottle of beer and when he will next have another. Children sit in class staring at the teacher, while their work suffers. People sit under trees for shade only to cut them down for firewood. Ministers run up and down, working very hard and sweating, but little changes. Day and night people turn around on the same spot. It takes a long time to build a nation. Everything is in limbo.

Jean Tardif Lonkog

Jean Tardif Lonkog was born in Santa, in the North West Region of Cameroon. He went to high school not far from home, at the Cameroon School of Arts, Science and Technology in Bambili, where he read the arts and graduated in 1993. In 2001-02, he attended the Mbengwi government teacher training college, and then taught locally in schools from 2002 to 2004. He travelled to China in 2005 where he taught English and learnt traditional Chinese medicine until 2008 when he returned to Cameroon. He is now a schoolteacher in the north of Cameroon. He also practices traditional Chinese medicine. He is studying for a bachelor’s degree in sociology via distance learning. He is married and a father of one. The Black Man and his Visa is his first book, and he hopes to keep writing.