FROM GRASS TO GRACE: MY UNTOLD STORY (CHAPTER 1)- BY NKWETATANG NGUEKIE

Nobody should ever attempt to imitate my lifestyle – unless that person can see death approaching, and take the risk to embrace it pell-mell.

For thirty-nine years (1986-2025), I have led a lifestyle equivalent to an avalanche of suicides. Having survived a hail of disasters capable of killing many people, I have been nicknamed “Disaster Man.” How many people would like to stake their lives on disaster?

My shipwrecking turbulence began when I was fourteen years old, and had sought for freedom of choice, of opinion, of aspiration, and of lonely habitation. At that time, I was in Form Two. Desert dryness stretched out all my years in secondary school, in high school, in the university, and took the most deadly toll in 1996 after my postgraduate studies when I started my creative writing career.

Since then till today, I have sojourned from one village to another, from one town to another, and from one country to another building networks. Although gifted with a myriad of inborn talents and cultivated professional skills, I must honestly confess that in order to survive the very expensive demands of this protracted enterprise, I have been a beggar.

I have pestered many friends, relatives, classmates, neighbours, and even strangers to give me financial and material support. And I am not sure that they are aware of the extent to which I will express my gratitude for their enormous sacrifices for me.

I thank God for guiding me safely in my uphill journey from grass to grace, because I have achieved my utmost lifetime goal – to be polished in a high degree. It may sound funny in the ears of some people. This notwithstanding, “Like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither,” this baobab tree will bear fruits to be eaten by all and sundry.

© NKWETATANG SAMPSON NGUEKIE,

Bamenda, Cameroon,

WhatsApp: +237 677 26 19 86

Email: repsampson@yahoo.com

1. Polished in a high degree, as each froggie ought to be. From the poem “Frogs At School” by George Cooper.

2. Like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season. Psalm 1:3, NIV.