This site was created after I received repeated queries from my US friends, my colleagues and other acquaintances who wanted me to open up and talk about my life odyssey. Their push has now been joined by my own children and grandchildren. They all seem to have a valid point. I have been in retirement for quite a while now and I am getting older every day. Very soon there could be no one who could tell them the many unique stories they long to hear about my past. Indeed, growing up in a bush village deep in the forest of South Cameroon during the colonial era under the French, I never imagined that one day I would attend a university and become a research scientist, work for decades with colleagues in applied physics industries, live in a house with indoor plumbing and electricity, own a car and drive on paved roads, participate in something called democracy that elected the president of the most powerful country in the world, etc. But that is indeed what happened. My journey from a small mud hut in a small hamlet called Efoulan II —population ≤ 150 — to the Livermore National Laboratory in the US, was full of many incredible twists and turns. It was a long journey from a world where, to create food for their families, mothers toiled all day in subsistence crops fields and fathers conducted desperate hunts deep in the forest. My childhood was nothing but a long series of sharp zig-zags between countless misfortunes. For my so-called education, I had to travel dozens of miles away from home to reach rudimentary educational posts that, after many interruptions, ultimately prepared me for coming to the US to continue my long march toward earning a PhD in physics.
In this blog I hope to share some of those experiences with anyone who logs into the site — regular visitors, former colleagues, old acquaintances and friends. And as a father and grandfather,
I want to share some of my heritage with my own progeny, particularly stories about what it was like growing up as a boy in a Béti/Bulu bush village during colonial times, including the time during which I was growing up under the exclusive care of my old octogenarian grandmother.
May this brief introduction serve as a spur for the site visitors to come back regularly for updates on my current book project.
Africachronicles