Liemba by Martin Moluwa Matute

Author:Martin Moluwa Matute [Matute, Martin Moluwa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781098061685
Google: QJAuEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2021-03-16T04:20:19+00:00

12

Transitioning of E-fvu-meh

Our ace football team was called Prison Buea Social Club; Prison because the team was originally started as a private club in association with the correctional and prisons department. In the early years of the team, the top players were all correctional officers or warders, some brought in from different provinces or regions of Cameroon. This will seem to suggest that they may not have been necessarily trained as warders but rather athletes of great repute. The prisons department under the ministry of territorial administration was a government department, and therefore, its employees were state civil servants.

Prisons Buea was therefore a football club with a mix of cultures. There was the Anglophones and Francophones, and among the Francophones, we had star players from the Littoral, Central, and Western regions or provinces. The two Anglophone provinces were ably represented and formed the core of the team. From our province, the southwest, the Mokpwes from Buea dominated and made us very proud. In my village alone, we had Tiya Efvumeh as the main man, then Joe Njuma, and the upcoming junior players like Kulu Ngembo, a.k.a. King Kulu, and Victor Lyonga, a.k.a. Molehleh; and also in our village, we had our Douala cousin and in-law, Francois Njava, the able stoppeur and half fullback defender. In “Las Town” and Bonaberi, we had David Nangoh, who was the captain and fullback defender, and Joseph Nwambo Ewukem, the right halfback defender.

The team had many goalkeepers at different times, including one from Douala, the Littoral province. Nammeh Bella, a Douala native kept for Prisons Buea, and like Njava, his fellow Douala comrade, he too could not be trusted when Prisons played a Douala-based team. Bella went on to being a national and an international star, making a productive career in football and sometimes dabbling sports with national politics. For many years, Bella was Cameroon’s number two goalkeeper at international events, like the FIFA World Cup and the African Cup of Nations.

As time went on, most of these stars left the team. Bella’s contract ended, some were getting old, some got transferred to other parts of the country when they could no longer be productive footballers, etc. In the southwest, Prisons Buea was the only Division I team throughout our childhood days. It was indeed sad to watch the dying giants and icons. It was Prisons Buea that opened the southwest to an influx of Francophones who used sports to see the Anglophone heritage of the country, and being that their destination was Buea, it made us see these folks and their fancy cars and mannerisms.

Thursdays and Sundays were cherished days during the league season. The dreaded and inevitable happened, and our beloved Prisons Buea was relegated to Division II. By this time, the team was a skeleton and shadow of its former glory. All but about two or three of the original stars were still with the team, among them Joe Njuma and Tiya Efvumeh.

Tiya Efvumeh stayed on to play as a Division II player while the rest of his contemporaries retired or relocated.

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