The Iron Womb: Betrayal and Resistance
by Sybille Ngo Nyeck

My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; my heart is poured out to the ground because my people are destroyed; because children and infants faint in the streets of the city. (Lamentations 2:11, King James)

All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them …the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:8,10)

I just finished reading a book of Claude Missalou published in 1986 by Presses Universitaires de France. The title is Anthologie de l’esclavage: Le ventre de fer et d’argent, which could be translated as Anthology of Slavery: The womb of iron and money.

After waffling about the slavery dialectic in the first part, the author dealt in the second part with what he calls "aristocratic slavery." He points out the advent of brigands as a mark of social disintegration. The "brigandage" was, according to him, a practice through which the kidnapping of captives is done between members of the same community, between parents and neighbors.

This private brigandage seems to have been found among populations of villages that — not necessarily being in the military course of predator’s states or of foreign raids — were situated in prospective areas for slave traders or areas attractive by being accessible slave markets.

With the brigandage, the kidnapping and selling of captives was not done by foreigners, but rather by members of the community who acted anonymously. No one was protected against those who were supposed to be community guardians.

Nowadays, although we talk about human rights, it is unfortunate that the brigandage is creating more victims. The terms have changed but the ideology remains the same. The strong exploit the weak by abusing them; by taking advantage of their dependence and consequently exploit their vulnerabilities. Henceforth, our enemies are people from our own homes.

Our relationship with others and with the environment has been wounded. The endemic brigandage creates each day a furnace of tension and insecurity. The spineless and the aspiritual religion are hallowed. Youths are more and more attracted by pernicious sects. This materialistic world has made money the absolute agent of reproduction. Everywhere, the mercantilist bell is ringing. Human connections are more and more those of competition, rivalry and suspicion.

Facing this social imbroglio, there is more than a little reason to ask: "Where are we headed?" More than ever, the threat of death seems omnipresent while safe space is limited.

I am not for a pessimistic or an apocalyptic analysis of our history. For nothing assures me that the future has fewer stories to tell. But the increase of unscrupulous crime is a call to re-think some of our behaviors and beliefs in the present case of the desecration of life in our society.

A few weeks ago, in the weekly newspaper l’Expression, Mamy Wata announced the murder of a ten year-old girl by her mother, a member of the sect group Maalah, and a couple of "brothers." The newspaper la Nouvelle Expression confirms:

The young and beautiful Selam Tiave Cynthia was carefully molested till death… The testimonies revealed that Ms. Djuiidje Félicité (the mother) was a princess in this sect and that this killing was to grant her an important promotion to become the leader of the sect in Non Glacé quarter.

Questioned by the gendarmes about the reasons for this act, she said that Maalah teaches her members methods to detect demonic folks. In the application of those methods, she diagnosed a demon within her two children. In order in cast it out Maalah would have taught them to help themselves with a machete previously blessed by her to beat up the child until the demon leaves her body. And so they did to Manuella. By the time of their apprehension, the killers showed no signs of remorse. Contrary to all expectations one of them said this was right and that if he were sent twice by Maalah, he would still do it… Maalah gains membership primarily in suburbs in Douala. More than 70% of its membership is under forty, don’t know how to read nor write, and, due to a psychologically poor state of being, they suffer from brainwashing that isolates them from the real world and plunges them into a universe created and controlled by the guru.

This brigandage — political, economic, and now in a family context — concerns us all. The beneficiaries of this social decomposition are always groups of lawless and faithless folks. According to Claude Missalou, "By selling their parents and neighbors — especially women and children — by kidnapping women for themselves, they challenge the authority of the elders, who are no longer capable of marrying them because of the kidnapping. The brigandage seems to have had two effects according to its political power: either the tribes organize themselves for resistance, as it was in the case with Mande in the 13^th century, or the warriors make this situation the foundation of their strength, as in Segu around the 15^th century."

Most of them have seen on the neighbor’s TV dogs overseas that are healthier than 50 percent of the African population… They know those dogs are actually more fortunate than they, and for this reason these people are ready to sell their souls to uncompassionate gurus who do not spare even a fetus.

The lack of education has prevented us from seeing and naming our true adversary. Luckily for us there is a devil and we have succeeded in making him responsible for our pains. But which devil? The gurus are telling us that he has found room in our bodies, our children, our parents, our friends — and without even thinking about it, we have turned mad, and are eating one another as you there eat hamburgers. She who commits genocide feeds herself out of indifference, and her womb will probably cause more catastrophes on the surface our beautiful land. "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?" (Matthew 7:9-10). Bread and fish in this world are unfortunately stigmatized by treason. We see the betrayal of the poor and the weak by those in power; the betrayal of the children by parents.

In many families nowadays, there are young mothers who are often jobless and without a degree (and are no longer in school). This precarious situation does not help at all, and despite campaigns run by feminist organizations, there are few good results.

Three weeks ago, I was working on a video documentary project focused on difficulties that women encounter regarding their self-affirmation as producers in our society. All the women I’ve interviewed agreed that uncontrolled maternity [motherhood] is a serious handicap for women’s empowerment. From our discussion it was established as a fact that a great number of women do not have power over their maternity, not because of the lack of means for contraception, but because of men’s veto of using it.

Ms. X, who participated in my video documentary, committed an abortion with traditional herbs. It cost her her life and the lives of three month-old twin fetuses. This was just unbelievable to me. I didn’t even notice that she was pregnant. She looked like a baby!

While I am still wondering how such a thing can happen, I realize that there are many women who are killed each year by clandestine abortions. If we could see through it, we must understand that they are fighting against the system that forces them to be the victims of social abortion. Ms. X, farewell.

Sybille Ngo Nyeck is a regular contributor to A Globe of Witnesses. Her monthly column is Colors of Conscience. Sybille can be emailed at sybeck77@yahoo.fr