Bernard Fonlon, America, and the Arrogance of Power

Culled from the Memoirs of Tony Barnicle, Former Priest

In his book The Arrogance of Power, Senator Fulbright tells the story of how our missionaries went out to teach the natives not to work on Sunday only to find that they didn’t work on any day at all! President Kennedy instituted the Peace Corps not to aid third world countries. The first purpose of the Peace Corps was to educate our youth by giving them an opportunity to live in another country and in another culture. This would be an experience far beyond serving in the military or traveling on a vacation overseas. 

“The greatest country in the world.” is a very arrogant and dangerous statement. It has cost our country dearly. It has sapped our neighborhoods of its resources. It has destroyed communities and even civilizations. Our “shock war” against Iraq last March is the latest casualty of this stinkin thinkin. Civil life began where the Tigris River meets the Euphrates. 8,000 years later there is question if it can be restored. Hundreds of American servicemen and women and 37,000 Iraqis have already died in the “liberation of Iraq”.

I can’t help thinking how it might have been different if I could only have taken the President and his advisors with me to Kikai Kelaki and let them experience life in what I have often described as the wealthiest neighborhood I have ever known.

I would like to introduce our President and his advisors to Bernard Fonlon. Bernard was a man of the highest integrity and character. Like Gandhi, he remained a celibate so he might dedicate his life to building his nation. Bernard held almost every ministry in Cameroon. Every time there was a serious problem in one of his ministries Ahidjo would appoint Bernard to that cabinet post to fix the problem. Because Bernard had two doctor’s degrees, one at the University of Paris and a second from Trinity College in Dublin he was especially suited to deal with their former colonial masters. Bernard was the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications when I first met him. He was placed in that position to negotiate a contract for telephone microwave towers. An American company had the best proposal but a French firm was a contender and the French were lobbying hard. Ahidjo appointed Bernard. The American company got the contract. 

Bernard came from Nso and considered St. Augustine’s his baby. He paid the school fees for many of our students. Every Christmas day he would have dinner with Jappie Nielan and me. He would arrive at noon driving his VW bug and dressed in traditional robes. As soon as we sat he would break a cola nut and offer each of us a piece. Then we would have a drink and a debate would begin – mostly between Bernard and Jappie who was also a Ph.D. from the Gregorian in Rome. In one of these conversations Jappie chided Bernard over corruption in the Cameroonian government. “Wouldn’t we all be better off if we were still under the British rule?” After a long pause Bernard leaned toward Jappie and said; “You don’t even begin to understand, I would labor for the rest of my life for the worst possible Cameroonian President before I would even serve for one day under the best possible English Governor.”

I think of this conversation when I hear our President and his advisors wondering why the people of Iraq want us to leave. If they had known Bernard as I have, would they not have had a better understanding? Would we be happy if the French liberated the US and stayed around to occupy our country? I keep thinking that if the US had “liberated Cameroon” Bernard would be on our infamous deck of cards with pictures of Cameroon’s most wanted. 

Comments

[Fonkem Blasius]

This is a wonderful piece of writing and truely Fonlon happens to have inspired many. I am only beginning to understand the Man, Fonlon and the baobab that he was. His philosophy reaches out and this statesman will be sheding tears in his grave at what happens today in Cameroon, the African mindset and the world. he would most certainly die a second time where he to see how the legacy he left behind has been divulged by pigs!!!