MacMua, Who Was He?
McMua? Who was he?
He was quite an amusing and agile character. He and Mbi Charles, I believe, were among the small boys of their class. Small in size but big in statute and deeds. In the early years, McMua was a student and a school typist (secretary so to speak), a typing skill he acquired in his student days in typing school before booting out to Mamfe.
I saw him at the best display of his talent during the production of the first edition of the “Beacon” – the Student Magazine. In the Secretariat adjacent to the Principal’s he was rattling on the keys of the typewriter and also talking to students (like us) who stood in his admiration. He would work on the stencil, use red correction fluid to blot out or override errors. In the end he would move on to crank the stencil through the cyclostyling machine to produce the final readable copies.
McMua was also the school time keeper. Prior to the days of morning assembly in the auditorium, students from the lower to the upper sections lined outside of their classrooms in the corridors. Prefects will do the usual announcements and inspections. They took turns depending on the content. Mbah Ndam (SP), Tangye Samuel (Health/Sanitation???); Ngonkum, etc. Then McMua standing on the stairs of the Upper Block or section, at the conclusion of the announcements, will ring his hand bell; time to go in and begin the first period of the day.
The sound of McMua’s bell was as disciplinary and governing as Pa Ngwa, the Discipline Master’s voice and presence,. You obeyed the bell and did what had to be done at that hour or begin to move to your next activity. This meant knowing your timetable. One day we were at the 10 am recess – Mami “beignet” was on duty with her fish rolls – beignets. These were the students who came to buy and those who came to beg from their peers out of non-affordance. McMua was chatting with a group of junior students – they were not eating; they had nothing at hand to eat. Meanwhile a good number of students had made their purchases. McMua was observing perhaps keenly, building on the momentum of his strategy.
At some point he rang his handbell for “break over” when the break period had not elapsed. Some of the students, to the obedience of the sound of the bell, immediately dropped their fish rolls and began to run to class. And of course, his friends who could not afford stayed back to pick up the dropped beignets to consume at no cost.