Another face of grief--The death of Gazawa Andree

The old chief of our village, and the father of my best friend in village, and my old counterpart, died on Saturday evening. He was hit by a car, crossing the road, coming home from the field.
It was about 6:30, not dark, and I was doing work on my porch, getting ready for my trip home for two weeks. I heard women, near the center of town and it sounded like they were singing. I assumed it was a van full of church women, going to a conference or celebration, as often they sing songs as they pass in their car. But the location of the noise didn't move, and continued. I looked up to the road and saw people running a few at a time towards the carrefour. Surely an accident, and by the sounds of the women who I now realized were crying, it must be a very bad one, children? many people? I locked up the house quickly, threw on a pagne over my shorts, and walked hurriedly up the path through my neighborhood, joined by other villagers along the way. As we neared the carrefour, the keening increased, and a woman coming from down the road, from the sight of the accident announced "It's Andree, Gazawa." By the time I reached the main road, the highway that splits the village, 200 people were out and on either side of the road. There was a very nice new white compact car parked on the road, the driver having left the site for the moment, possibly hiding somewhere. From the point where he had hit Andree, he had been thrown over 50 yards. People didn't know what to do, and rightly so. Such a bad accident, no ambulances, no 911. They tried to hail some of the passing vans and cars, to take him to the hospital in Garoua, but no one would stop, as they were all full. And even if he had been transported, such an accident for such an older man, it seems to me there is little that cold be done. After about 20 minutes he was pronounced dead. By this point it was dark, and I searched all over for my best friend Rebecca, one of his daughters, but all the women were crying shadows, and every time I recognized some clothing of hers it was on a different body type. I finally found her back home, and spent the night with her an other women, in their courtyard, sitting in silence through the darkness, as she cried silently.

I was really angry. It was one of the big Angry moments of my time here. Because the cars race through the village at obscene speeds. To me, it is one of the pinnacles of selfishness, how these drivers (both private and those driving "taxis") will go through these settled areas at 50, 60, 70 miles an hour, just to get there a little faster, with no regard to the villagers who live there. They are willing to kill animals and People just to go at a high speed. There are numberless amounts of goats, sheep, dogs, donkeys killed in the village each year by cars passing, which is a major blow to household economics, and there is always the fear of children as well, crossing the road each morning and afternoon, going to school. As such, in January the village listed as one of their top three priorities for village development the installation of a couple of speed bumps. But here, now a 74 year old man, crossing the road, obviously slowly, not darting out in front of the car as children might, is hit by a car who would not slow nor veer and thrown 50 meters? That is insane. And to me absolutely unpardonable. I was so angry at this driver, at his selfishness and carelessness, I wanted to sit on his car and wait for him to come back out of hiding, and get in his car and say "we are driving to the Mayors and Sousprefets right now." Not that that would have been possible. But it was my sentiments. As it was, he stayed hidden for a while, and I returned home to be with my friend.

Andree had not been chief for about 3 or 4 years, perhaps, and he was around 74, certainly aging. He often came and visited me from time to time, to talk about his dreams (renovating a building to improve the village, and preparing to plant soy this season) and also to make sure that every thing was ok with me, in his village. in many ways, though old and no longer chief in name, he still played the role for many people, settling disputes, active in village meetings and affairs, always showing up to check on different neighborhoods and activities. . His natural death would have most likely arrived in the next few years, and for him to have fallen sick and died, while sad, would not have been surprising. But the manner of his death, how sudden, how brutal,how "unnatural", is what made this so tragic. And so shocking to the system.

I called the Mayor of the area, hoping to inform him of the death, and also bring up the conversation of speed bumps along the village, as its something that I have gone to talk to him about in the past, but which seems like a difficult thing to obtain, because the decision is at the level of the national department of transportation, and as he told me when I asked about it in January, "Cameroon does not want to slow down circulation between Ngoundere and Garoua." He did not answer the phone the times I tried to call before leaving town, so maybe when I return I can meet with him again, concerning this much needed installation in town.