136 interacting with highly literate Bafut, Kom and Banso residents, it was evident that mixing
oral mother tongue with written English is not considered at all unusual; for example, group meetings held in the mother tongue are generally minuted and documented in English.
136
In working with the three local-language speaking research assistants on procedures for
collecting interview data, it became clear to me that they were also accustomed to recording in written English the content of oral interaction they had in the local language. Specific
details of print use, in English and in local language, are discussed in chapter five. Wherever a group is not linguistically homogeneous, even in the homeland, members
tend to switch to a language understood by all. This happens, for example, when non- speakers of the local language come to the homeland for development project visits,
government meetings or church services. Peter Yuh, a member of the KLDC executive committee, observed:
Almost every development meeting has an argument at the beginning about what language to use. If there are outsiders, lets use Pidgin or English. The language
policy is decided at the start of every meeting We say, What will work in a given context? OI: Yuh 26 Nov 02.
Thus, the homelands function as supportive environments for the oral use of the local language. Written mother tongue appears in few environments - the church and the
PROPELCA classroom, in particular - and it is less certain that the homelands serve today as a supportive environment for written mother tongue. Certainly that is the goal of the language
committees; but as Martin Yunteh, a member of the NLO executive committee observes, writing the mother tongue is not something people are accustomed to:
It is actually a process, because for long we have not been very used to reading and writing Lamnso. All along we have been educated in English or French, and we
have not been used to reading and writing the local languages and the mother tongue. So it is a development that many people who are educated are also getting
used to. And sometimes they find it very difficult to get used to OI: Yunteh 11 March 03.
4.5. The elite
The term elite as used by analysts of Africans sociopolitical environment has several identifying characteristics. Originally created as a class to serve the colonial powers in
136
One Nso friend told of a meeting in Banso, held as usual in Lamnso, in which he substituted for the secretary; as he is a fluent Lamnso writer, he took meeting notes in Lamnso though they were normally kept in
English. Upon attempting to use the notes he had made, however, the rest of the group were nonplussed, unable to read them as easily as they did the English notes.
137 Africa, the elite were provided with an unusual degree of education relative to the rest of the
population and learned to speak the colonial language as well. Prah 1995:27 characterises the elite as becoming linguistically and culturally alienated from their roots by this process.
Chumbow and Bobda 1996:408 tie the term in anglophone Cameroon to English fluency and political power. Mazrui and Mazrui 1998 refer to linguistic, political, employment-
related and educational components of the elite identity in Africa. In the Northwest Province of Cameroon, the term has different facets of meaning as
well. The most commonly accepted local definition of the elite identifies them as those who live outside the homeland, have paid employment there, and usually participate in
development associations for their communities in the homeland OI: Waingeh 14 March 03. However the term is also used to refer to intellectuals OI: S. Mfonyam 26 March 03; or to
those who live in the homeland but have a broader view of how their people should advance OI: Ambe 12 March 03. Through all these definitions of elite run the themes of prestige,
leadership and control of resources. 4.5.1. Attitudes towards the mother tongue
The attitude of the Bafut, Kom and Nso elite towards the homeland seems to hold some tension. Those who have left the homeland sense their loss of cultural currency. One
male Nso teacher at a PROPELCA teacher training course explained:
In past years I was out of Banso. When I returned people laughed at my Lamnso and called me a foreigner. So I am learning more about my language here, so that I
will not be called a foreigner in my own place GIT: Nso 8 July 03.
A small segment of the highly educated elite have thrown themselves into support for use of the written mother tongue, seeing in it the maintenance of the cultural identity and
vitality of their people. These mother-tongue advocates are incensed by what they consider an unthinking rejection of home culture and language on the part of many members of the elite,
and they are certain that Cameroonians who do so are losing something extremely important. BALA chairman Samuel Mfonyam derides those Cameroonians who he says identify with
the foreign in their lifestyle:
People who are ignorant think that the foreign is better. In colonial times, especially on the francophone side [of present-day Cameroon], people would talk
about going home, meaning Paris They wouldnt eat Cameroonian food, and insisted on a fork and spoon. Yet these people are not French. But if they have lost
their culture, then they are not that either. Homes where the parents don’t speak their own languages are pitiful OI: S. Mfonyam 27 Nov 02.
138 The organisation NACALCO
137
was shaped by this passion for valuing ones own local culture rather than deserting it for the culture of a European nation. Dr. Gabriel Mba,
the PROPELCA programme director for NACALCO, articulates NACALCOs perspective on the relationship between local and global cultures:
We who have been supposed to be the elite of our areas, who have all the outside education, we think that what we have got from the outside is the best way of
producing knowledge. But how much are we sacrificing? Now, with globalisation, what can we Africans bring to the global communion? We arent bringing
anything, because we have been brainwashed to think that we have nothing to give. . . . Those who say we should not teach mother tongue are the parents who do
not speak mother tongue themselves. They are building a world for themselves, using English or French for daily communication. They say we are in a new era -
but they are neglecting what is in their own communities. . . . When the school and community worlds are separate, returning to the community means going back
to a foreign world. I would like to have the school be within the community culture instead OI: Mba 11 Oct 02.
The KLDC was formed by similarly motivated members of the Kom elite including author Dr. Paul Nkwi, who launched the language committee in 1989 Shultz 23 Dec 03.
However, not all members of the elite see promotion of the mother tongue as being in their own interests. Patrick Meliim, NLO executive committee member and literacy
supervisor, explains the reluctance of the local elite to identify any longer with the language they grew up with:
[The elite] are very shy over use of the mother tongue; they live in cities and don’t fit back into the culture. They dont use the mother tongue in the house with the
kids, they send their kids to the USA and elsewhere. In order for them and their kids to fit in in the homeland, they play down the role of the mother tongue
Patrick Meliim, LCO: NLO 29 March 03.
For these people, increased attention to the mother tongue only emphasises their own failure to maintain the language and lifestyle of the homeland.
The ambivalence of the elite towards the mother tongue is clearly evident among primary school teachers. These professionally trained and salaried school personnel certainly
qualify as elite; the fact that they live in the homeland does not detract from their elite status, but rather increases their influence in the local community.
A few of the teachers observed in this study demonstrated a degree of aversion to the use of the mother tongue in the educational context, pointedly ignoring the informal
PROPELCA classes in which their students were engaged. Others expressed to me their
137
National Association of Cameroonian Language Committees in French, lAssociation Nationale des Comités de Langues au Cameroun, ANACLAC. See section 3.2.2.
139 belief that the local language is simply not appropriate for classroom instruction. A major
goal of primary school, as they see it, is that children learn to use English properly OI: Lawyer 19 March 03; OI: Mbi 19 March 03; this is not best done by prioritising use of the
local language. Other teachers believe that use of the mother tongue is crucial to good learning in the classroom; these are the teachers who volunteer to become PROPELCA
teachers. Section 6.1.3 of this study discusses the language-related interests and motivations of the classroom teacher in greater detail.
4.5.2. Maintaining contact with the homeland One important way in which the elite living elsewhere support and influence the
homeland is through development associations. Development associations also called development unions are groups of people in a particular town or city who come from the
same village or town in the homeland.
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They gather regularly, often once a month, to socialise and discuss the news of their village or town; significantly, the meetings are held in
the mother tongue of the associations members. In addition, these associations promote infrastructure development in their home area and raise funds for such projects: roadwork,
schools, and other development initiatives. They see this kind of development as being in the best interests of their homeland communities, and they tend to be impatient of homeland-
dwellers who resist their efforts. One member of the Kom elite in the capital city of Yaoundé spoke disparagingly of those who resist innovations which the development associations
bring into the homelands:
Those people who never leave the village, they just stay and don’t go to school and dance juju, then they speak against bringing roads or pipeborne water into the
village. This makes no sense OI: Chia 22 April 03
Their ability to marshal financial resources on behalf of the homeland gives the development associations certain status and influence. However, they do not carry more
authority in the homeland than the traditional leaders do. One member of the Nso elite described it this way:
For the Nso, there are two centres of influence. One is among the Fon and the traditional authorities out in Banso, and then the successful Nso businessmen and
such in the cities like Bamenda, Yaoundé and elsewhere. So the influence flows both ways between city Nso people and Banso people OI: Nga 15 Nov 03.
138
Bray et al 1976 describe a similar type of entity in Nigeria, the development union. They describe these unions as wielding significant influence over the development of education in the rural areas. By my
observations, the development associations in Northwest Province have not played such a dominant role in education in the region.
140 This two-way flow of influence is one reason that elite who live outside the
homelands are very enthusiastic about the local-language pocket calendars produced by the KLDC, BALA and the NLO described in 4.6.3. The pocket calendar serves as a kind of
bridge between the world of city offices and schedules and that of ceremonial holidays and market days. The ceremonial designation of certain days each year by the Fons palace has
already been mentioned in 4.1.3 above; added to that is the fact that the Grassfields societies continue to function on an 8-day market week. These two factors make it difficult to keep
track of important dates when one is outside the homeland, and the pocket calendar helps the Bafut, Kom and Nso people living elsewhere to stay in touch. The Kom literacy supervisors
explained how the pocket calendars meet a need for the elites who are struggling to keep up with homeland social expectations while living elsewhere.
When people leave here, especially those Kom people who are in Yaoundé, downside, they will very much like to have the diaries, because it helps them to
know those things that are happening in Kom and the periods in which they take place. So they… like to take the diaries. You can plan to celebrate a death
celebration in Kom here while you are in Yaoundé and it will be no problem. And it has country Sundays [market days occurring every four days], where they will
always know, even one who has to live outside the compound will always know I can arrive on a market day GIS: 8 Feb 03.
Samuel Mfonyam, the BALA chairman, further illustrates the felt need by elite members not to be out of touch with the homeland:
If Bafut people in the city want to programme something in the village, the diary is very helpful. So some of the intellectuals are now being interested because of the
diary. When in Yaoundé, they dont know the days of the week in the village OI: S. Mfonyam 26 March 03.
Thus, it appears that for members of the elite living outside the homelands, the ever- present tension of maintaining their links and social responsibilities to home while living a
westernised life elsewhere appears to result in a degree of ambivalence regarding promotion of the mother tongue. The elite appear to have little or no influence on homeland
residents use of the mother tongue; at the same time, their financial resources and prestige could be a great help to programmes that promote the mother tongue in the homeland. The
language committees are very keen about gaining the support, particularly financial support, of the development associations OI: Ngwa 21 March 03; OI: Meliim 5 Jan 03; OI: Waingeh
14 March 03. So far, however, it appears that a greater role for the local language in the homeland is not what the elite would unequivocally consider development - or in their own
best interests.
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4.6. The language committee
