Hot Climes Do A Lot: A Review of Oscar Labang’s
To Err Is Divine: Sonnets from Maroua
by
Louisa Lum
Department of English
University of Yaounde 1
Every piece of literature written in English, in Cameroon, is a rare gem that I definitely love to collect and discover the treasure it contains. Oscar Labang’s poetry collection To Err is Divine: Sonnets from Maroua is one of such treasure-haunts which I have uncovered and find in it a great combination of wit, radicalism, and satire.
When I started reading the collection, beginning from the poem entitled “The Traveller”, I remembered a story about this German who came to visit his friend in Cameroon during which time they planned a trip to the northern regions of the country. On arrival at the train station, the German looked quite perplexed and doom-founded with the means of transportation, and when he could find his voice the poor guy said, “This was among the trains that Hitler used during the Second World War.” The poem, “The Traveller”, exploits the journey-motif and this exposes the inconsistency and decay of the Cameroon government. I take leaps from reading about “the vessel” that “jerked like a crone in a dying cough,” to associating it with a system of government because the voice of the traveler is that of any disillusioned Cameroonian who is helpless with the rottenness of the system.
I cannot talk about the poems individually because it will be tantamount to writing another book on this collection but I will express the ideas which run through many of the poems. “The Gadamayo” is a clear painting of the southerner’s reception in the North; the clash of cultures is evident and service to one’s country is also highlighted. “God Fatherism” captures and decries the favoritism that surrounds employment in Cameroon. This poem highlights the fact that interpersonal relationships with the recruiting personalities override on merit. It is really sad that a nation should, “be built with reeds while Geniuses are left to dry like stalks.” It is a shame that in the twenty-first century, when the world is a global village, we still don’t understand the worth of potential but still indulge in this nasty practice. “God Fatherism” is responsible for the continuous decay of the nation. However, not all is lost because even in this decay, there are still honest people, as evident in the speaker’s comment about his own God Father who is “not a godly man”; suggesting he believes in hard work and merit.
Reading through this collection can raise myriad of emotions especially when you read poems like “Ako- To Make and Not Mar” and “Colleagues”. You can get scared, thrilled and scared even more with the level of satire. Some people would say that naming contemporaries is kind of tacky in a literary work and that it tends towards journalism. But I think that since there is always a historical element in every work of art, naming real persons and places has its place in a literary work, as the case with the present collection. But I still get chills when I read lines like, “You may never in life grow tall,” about a man I know is short. However, the speaker seems to point more to academic/political growth/appointments than physical features. The poet calls on Prof. Ako (the pioneer Rector of the University of Maroua) to take his assignment as an opportunity to “make” and not to “mar”. Another poem that brings down a lot of people from their high horses is the chain of poems entitled “Colleagues”. The poem is filled with wit, satire and a lot of dark humour. Chaucer could not have given a better profile if some of these characters were among his pilgrims to Canterbury. Some of the poems express satire at its apex and I cannot help but think of Alexander Pope and his Duncaid. I adore the word play, and I’m even more enthralled by the frank portraits of people, some of whom I know at a personal level. It is true that there is a lot of mediocrity in the academia and I laud anyone who points it out. So characters like “The Head” can be any administrator nominated into any public office in Cameroon. The intention is to protect their kin and be the stooges of their puppet masters. They are totally unfit for the business of construction, though they pose like great sages. This is why our nation is built of reeds and not of the rich marble that we are so endowed with. I am prompted to laugh loud when I read lines like “A man of slight vice”; I cannot help thinking again of Chaucer’s biting wit.
To Err is Divine is the song of a soul disillusioned by the vices that characterize a great nation and facilitate its decay. Hot climes do a lot of things for many people, for Oscar Labang it has prompted the penning of great emotion on the malpractices that disrupts the nation’s growth. Yes Omar Bongo Odimba is dead but there are still other tyrants like Saul who stay on “and make our pain broader.” It is thus appropriate for us (Africans) to ponder on “Quel Avenir?” Labang’s sonnets represent the song of a caged bird, which sings of the favoritism, nepotism, decadence, corruption, police brutality and other vices that mar our nation.
Like every disillusioned bard, Labang is radical and, yet, conservative. He exposes the idiosyncrasies of the academia, the buffoonery in the government, and the tyranny in the State on the one hand, and vows his unending love for his wife and new born baby while exposing his catholic belief all in another breathe. And, like every great poet, Labang uses the force of the argument to challenge vice and not the argument of force. The sonnets follow the traditional style of previous great masters like Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, to name a few, but makes apparent diviations in structural style. The poet expresses hope for change since to err is divine, but this hope might never come to fruition until the one who willed tyrants to the throne should “willingly … reverse the device.”