Days Come and Go Quotes

“So I lived in their midst, always on the fringes, insignificant, and they spoke freely in my presence.
I saw how little regard they had for us, how much they held us in low esteem. They did not know us, and were not really interested in knowing us either. By virtue of their faith, their mission, and their biases, they did not have to: they knew better than us, both what we needed and how we should live.
I cannot discount the unparalleled work they did in education and healthcare. I would not have had a formal education had it not been part of their plan. The free dispensary was always full, rolling back childhood diseases in the region. I saw them clean the most putrid wounds with a straight face. Yet, their mission required locals to forfeit ancestral practices, including our indigenous languages, which we were forbidden from using in their presence. The essence of our being in the world, its core tenet, ingrained in us across generations, was being violently questioned. Their work demanded allegiance, utter surrender, from us.
I did not realise this then, but these demands threw us off balance, divided us, made us doubt ourselves and weakened us. They birthed a cruel conflict in us, putting our loyalty to the test. We were inhabited by this childish and conflicting desire to please and resist them all at the same time.
Our people claimed neither detachment from the world nor dominion over it. We did not have the universe and its mysteries, meant to be conquered, subjugated on one side, and humankind, the mighty owner of it all, on the other.
We were the world and the world was us: water, wind, sand, the past, the future, the living, the dead... we were all woven into the fabric of the world. They, however, had appropriated it, simplified it to make it intelligible and malleable. They had invented words and concepts that dismissed our more complex and comprehensive intuitive understanding of reality. There is no denying that, seen through their eyes, conceptualised in their terms, the world was unmistakeably coherent, logical. For those of us who embraced the mysteries of the world, the encounter was a matter of course, and a tragedy. I doubt we will ever fully grasp the exact extent of our distress.
Today, I believe Western knowledge is both simple and despotic. There is only one God and he is present in church. Education is found only in textbooks. Art is separate from spirituality, confined to specific spaces. The law applies equally to everyone and all values have a price.
The sole measure of success is material. Our paths in life are already charted, marked out, and you can choose to follow... the path assigned to you. A promise of comfort, a ready-made life so enticing it warrants universalisation; a dream no human should be denied. Masters, gurus travel the world to guide lost peoples towards this path of salvation, readily resorting to violence to crush every resistance, driven by the firm conviction that their philosophy is the philosophy and their religion the religion.
Perhaps it spread so far and wide due to the active proselytism inherent to the Western vision of the world, or maybe it was so easy to replicate because it was the most simplistic doctrine ever developed by humans—it did a better job of dismissing our diversity and disregarding the complexity of our being. Our material realities would become more bearable, that was the promise. It mattered not that this would devastate nature and leave our inner beings shuddering with anxiety.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“He was also a brilliant product of that upbringing that rent and rebuilt us at the same time.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“A woman’s body is exceedingly more demanding than her heart.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Museums of primitive art are filled with masks, figurines, bas-relief sculptures, all looted from all over the world and robbed of their meanings. For those who created them, life resided not in the object itself, but rather in the spirit that inspired it. A corpse, even one artistically entombed, is still a dead body. They are no longer works of art, but simply objects. They are beautiful, whereas they should be alive, From time immemorial, humans have sculpted to magnify their gods. There is a reason why some religions are against any depiction of their gods while others are committed to the practice. There is some form of highly human insolence in recreating the god that created you, and there is a risk of adoring the tangible representation in itself instead of the discarnate deity. That is what sculpture is: both a tribute and a challenge to the gods. Some spiritualities tolerate this ambivalence, others don't. Others yet use representations to further tighten control over their flock and guarantee their submissiveness. They select the artists and dictate the dogma they should represent.
Sculpture is both the easiest and the most delicate of art forms. It is more than just hewing a form out of a compact block, or reproducing a model: you have to breathe life into It. That is not something you can learn or improvise. There is always some part of yourself that you infuse into the material. In our modern world, where art is a business like any other, techniques are taught, but the magic, on the other hand, is still a gift, midway between bliss and suffering.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Everything God does is good,’ Aunty Astou simply murmured.
This statement, whatever it means, is an irredeemably unassailable argument.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“As contradictory as it seems, our societies are built on bonds and silence. Our joys are loud and our grief demonstrative. Our voices are strong and our laughter thunderous, but rarely do we say a word about our private lives. We do not have as many taboos as people claim, but messages are blurred by esoteric interpretations.
Abi is in tune with her era. My grandson, Max, even more so. They demand answers, all sorts of explanations.
They ascribe virtues of all sorts to transparency, which they label truth, and have no patience for pretence. Where do they get this strength from, this confidence that I envy, this arrogance? We are so much more than the sum of our parts. Our grey areas would not stand the light. What world would survive the systematic exposure of everyone’s secrets? This is blasphemy in Abi and Max's eyes. I understand them. I have long thought that there are instances where silence buttresses the bond better than baneful truths. I am not so sure anymore.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Dying is such a long journey. I have come to the end of my road. My daughter's anguish hinders and holds me back. I linger despite the pain, despite my desire to get it over with.
I stay because of Abi.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“They believed in me, paid for my tuition, enabled me to glean the culture that I embraced with great devotion. They taught me principles and values. For this, I will forever be grateful to them. Likewise, I know that they beguiled, manipulated, and broke me into a thousand pieces. They treated me like clay that they could shape as they saw fit. Yet, I bear them no ill will. The outcome has been quite different from what they hoped for—not that it exceeds their expectations; it is just starkly different from what they could have expected. They gave me the tools to create a perfectly unique patchwork, full of all these things—books, culture, experiences—but also of Awaya, sinking deep into the forest to harvest her medicinal herbs.
I am the product of the generosity of the reverend sister who first called me 'Anna' and who widened my horizon. I am also the product of the protection of Samgali and my deceased mothers. I am made of movies and music, of the contradictions that ripple through my country, of the political consciousness born of the covert, dirty war that set Bamileke country on fire.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“A woman's body is much more demanding than her heart. Have I said this before? It has only one life and never forgets that. It keeps an account of blows like it does the memory of kisses, the wounds we inflict on ourselves and those that life deals us. It does not heal, is not restored, but forges ahead with great haste — nothing matters but the past and present; it is unconcerned with the future. Hence, it cannot accommodate any form of hypocrisy: the body scoffs at our gimmicks, unceremoniously dismisses our dalliances, the petty deals we strike with ourselves. It does not entertain excuses and irrevocably punishes lies that the heart condones.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“No one taught me how to analyse a book, how to read from a safe distance, how not to lose sight of context, how to grasp the things left unsaid. No one taught me about schools of thought or even the ideologies meant to give depth to a mundane story. No one taught me aesthetics, language... All these, I discovered in high school while studying the classics, and broadened this knowledge at the Higher Teachers' Training College in Yaounde, from which I graduated as a French teacher. But I had already developed a habit. All my life, I would read the same way l had started off—intensely, passionately, instinctively—and sentence fragments would stick with me […] Books soothed my soul, made me angry, made me strong. They made me laugh and cry. They pushed me to examine existence with my own mind, to trust my intuition, to stretch my mind to perceive—against the backdrop of characters, nature, and plot—the intricate symphony of time that beams our being to the world.
As a child, reading made me feel less lonely, less insignificant, less vulnerable. As an adult, I developed enough discernment to understand that, while reading had not made me a better person, it had made me more levelheaded towards my own motivations, and freer.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Non-violent resistance supposes that the almighty enemy, at the very least, considers you to be a human being, capable of logically arguing why you disagree.
It supposes that this enemy is ready to hear your demands and find common ground. Yes, Bamileke maquisards took up arms! But did they have a choice? Colonial masters feigned departure, but their cruel puppets continue to safeguard their interests through murder. We were cheated.
Our struggle has been used to different ends. And, you will see, they will chop off any head that stands out, and then falsify our history. In fact, they won't; they will not even bother to record our history."
"Who is "they?" I asked.
"This 'they' is 'we’,” replied Louis. "We are the ones killing ourselves. Our killers are encouraged, trained, and funded by the former colonial power. But, and this is what makes it worse, we ourselves are the ones doing the dirty work with senseless enthusiasm," he added.
That was how Cameroon—not just myself as an individual, or my village, Ombessa, or Bafia and Yaounde, the places where I had lived, but also this multi-layered, nuanced, bruised entity called my country—took shape in my mind.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Terror is a bottomless pit. Did you know that, Max? When you think you have hit rock bottom, that your heart cannot take any more of it, something unexpected happens and the dread and anguish spike as if your brain is acknowledging your imminent death. Then you realise that you can still fall further than you already have.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“The expression of grief may be a key stage in the mourning process, but it is not the ultimate goal. We still have to characterise the pain, revisit our mistakes, uncover our excesses, understand our anger and our humiliation.
We will have to drain the cup of our failures to the dregs and accept its bitterness.
We will have to understand the evil eating away at us to hope to defeat it and finally find peace.
We will have to let go of our dead, unburden them of the weight of our anguish, render them justice to secure their support.
Too much blood has been spilled. Pretence is a luxury we can no longer afford.
Grieving entails this brutal confrontation between the inevitable end and life that must go on. Only then does loss fortify the community rather than impoverish it. It strengthens and safeguards the living. It enables them to celebrate life once again.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“I wish I could write their individual stories in the book of our lives with indelible ink, because we cannot compel the world to share our affliction, but we still have the duty to honour our dead.
Tina said it: all it takes is for one person, just one, to burst into grief for the others to take up the song of mourning. That is our mission. That is our duty as survivors. We are all survivors in this country, to varying degrees. To survivors, the Lord, in His languid Mercy, grants unending years of contrition. This, at least, is necessary; otherwise, where would the salty water in the oceans come from?”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Misery wreaks havoc. The yawning gap between this place and the rest of the country is unfathomable to anyone who has not experienced it. Boko Haram recruits them like child's play because the sect at least offers a tangible, immediate solution. As shocking as we might find it, their message appeals to some. Dying for God is more thrilling than dying of hunger, humiliation, or because the neighbourhood dispensary has run out of antibiotics. Maybe one day someone will study just how personally distressed one must be to weaponise faith against one's own people, but that is not my job.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“He loved her the same way hurt children love: with passion and selfishness.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go

“Grown men send children into battle throughout the world, all the time. Old men create conditions for conflicts, fuel hostilities, and pretend to defend core values—good against evil—whereas all they are doing is ferociously protecting their privileges while coveting the riches of others. They hatch toxic strategies, then send their children charging at the enemy.
To hide their deadly avarice, they speak with conviction about courage and patriotism while bunkered in their headquarters, in offices or on television sets while the blood of youths is spilled in combat, their spirits mangled by the ferocity of battles that will pollute their souls forever.
This vicious cycle starts all over again with every generation, because no war is ever won for good. Hatred feeds the desire for vengeance, which is transmitted alongside genes. The first drop of blood spilled at the dawn of the world triggered the bloodshed that we stubbornly perpetuate all over the earth.”
― Hemley Boum, Days Come and Go