By Peter Vakunta
Francis B. Nyamnjoh's Stories from Abakwa is a remarkable depiction of the socio-economico-political realities of Mimboland aka Cameroon. The writer does more than re-write the events that characterize the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of this terrestrial limbo. What strikes the reader the most in this anthology of short stories is the linguistic engineering that the author adeptly avails himself of. Camfranglais-- the mumbo-jumbo that not only baffles Fineboy Ayuk but leads to his unanticipated demise, is the hallmark of the code-switching that Nyamnjoh employs as a narartive technique in the collection.
Code-switching is perhaps one of the most effective strategies of linguistic appropriation at the disposal of this Cameroonian writer. It enables him to make the inter-language (third code) bear the burden of an experience for which terms and experiences in the inherited language do not seem appropriate. Code-switching occurs when the Empires writes back, as Ashcroft et al. would have it. By directly inscribing Cameroon Pidgin English into his text Nyamnjoh succeeds in showing that the socio- economic dichotomies created by colonialism have been retained in postcolonial Cameroon, for the Pidginized form of a language is often a marker of social status.
Throughtout the narrative, the reader enjoys not only the narrator's virtuosity in fictional narrative but also his verve at word-smiting. All in all, Stories from Abakwa is a replica of the travails of life well known to Cameroonians.
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