Text-Auszug:
My master should have known better. You cannot walk too
long in a quarter like Madago with your wallet in your back
pocket without being stung by an awas. They were teenagers
who played ndjambo in the backyards of the public school, the
ones my master was convinced could not be Cameroonians
because they were so wicked, "they are all Chadians, no be so?"
Aladji was their leader. One day while Massa Yo was watching
television, he came into the living room and greeted him.
"Hello, grang", he said. "How are you?"
My master was alone at home, Soumi having gone to the
university, his sister to school and Mama Mado to the market.
The deference of the bangando was such that Massa Yo did not
raise his head from his scattered phone, before answering,
"hello, perifrere."
He was one of the people whom Mama Mado had banned
Soumi from talking to, one from the gang of njap smokers that
in the evening occupied the courtyard of the public school and
shit in the classrooms. But Massa Yo would know such details
only later. The evidence with which the guy had entered the
house that was not his home, extinguished the television that did
not belong to him, disconnected the electricity of which he did
not pay the bills, and had gone out saying "goodbye, grang".
This had not only disarmed the owner of the place; it had left
him in his couch, his lower lip down to his knees. After all,
Aladji was carrying his television set on his head, and was
walking out of the house with it. Later on, my master would say
that the youngster had fully hypnotized him, for "who does such
a thing?" That is, later at the gendarmerie.
What he did not say is that my barking awakened him. I
followed the thief, growled, threatened to bite his legs, called up
the quarter, but since no one understood that I was yelling
'Thief! Thief! Thief!' he easily disappeared between houses. In
fact, some people even threw stones at me. Having seen Massa
Yo seated in his living room, they certainly thought he had
commissioned the bangando with some repair job. After he
shook himself out of his petrification, following my voice, my
master found Aladji and his friends at the sissonghos of their
shenanigans, in the backyard of the school, about twenty of
them, watching their Eto'o soccer match. I welcomed him with
joy and ran around, wagging my tail and barking. The awas were
not easy to distract though. They had a Tritri or a little Guigui
between their legs, each one of them. They sat in a semi-circle in
front of what was too obviously the Samsung television set,
which for ten years had adorned Massa Yo's living room, but did
not even look at him when he appeared in front of them.
"Na my TV!" he said, pointing at it.
"So what," replied a young man with a frightful guitar, his eyes
glued on the screen, "Move for ya."
Massa Yo walked over to his TV, and I followed him, dancing
around his steps. He switched off the set, and turned to face the
general protest cry. To tell the truth, there are very few
Cameroonians who would not have slapped him in the face at
this moment, or at least who would not have apostrophized him
("you think you are two-headed, eh, touch that TV again, and
you will see me!"). My master had cut electricity just when Eto'o
was dribbling a kengue-useless defender and was putting, or was
not putting a goal. Twenty faces with identically bloody eyes
clustered in front of him, and the same number of clenched fists
rose before my nose.
"Old man," said one who was visibly the most frustrated by
the ecstasy that shook the Mokolo market in the distance and
lifted the city like a wave of voices ("Wouooooo!"), and talked in
slow motion, "don't make I commit assassinat for ya."
"Na ma TV," Massa Yo told him stubbornly.
I barked, "na his TV!"
"Mouf, ta mamang!" a voice insulted.
Hands opened before his face and mine.
"Tara," said a young man, "it is not the web that you make at
the crossroads with your waka sister, o, here we are the boss."
"While you're chatting," said another, more than nervous, "the
match ends."
"This na my TV," insisted Massa Yo.
"Na his TV", I barked. "A no bin tok?"
"Reppe," interrupted Aladji, and snatched the current out of
his hands, searched for the grip, and the TV opened its luminous
square on the commentator's voice, "touch this again, and you
go see."
Massa Yo did not want to see any longer. He left the crowd
grumbling. On his back, the match continued.
"The cuyong made us miss a goal."
Nobody even heard the voice of my master pronounce the
word 'gendarmerie.' I, who had led Massa Yo through the tracks
of the quarter, carrying his bag of rage, barking the resolution he
merely grunted, "They will know me, onong", soon returned,
walking behind him, disappointed, "Madagascar is a quarter of
bandits", but without his TV. Aladji, instead of shouting like his
friends, calmly, scratching his arm at a camnogo spot, had
explained this to him: in this Biyaland also known as Cameroon,
he, Aladji, had made the police cells, and those of the
gendarmerie, spent time in Kondengui, even Mfou he had done,
not to mention the Kousseri prison where only 'opposants' used
to be sent, and yet he was well in Madagascar, free as everyone
could see, with his beer between his legs, watching his Eto'o
football game that only the Sonel could interrupt, and last time
he checked Massa Yo was not Sonel, walai!
"Touch that TV again, we see."
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