The Untold Story

By Xlibris US

The Untold Story is a novel that portrays a special relationship between father and son.
As the story opens, the young lads grandmother is dying. While the rest of the family are celebrating the merriments of one of his brothers wedding, the young boy sits by his grandmothers bedside to listen to her stories for the last time. Listening to the tales of her own life and especially of his father, he learns more about his fathers life from his grandmother than from his dad directlyshe paints his life from his birth to how he came to marry his mother. Eventually, his grandmother dies. The many people gathered for the wedding become the mourners. After they are gone, father and son are left together in their grief, but this brings them closer and closer to each other. The father tells the son many stories about his life, explains how he became a teacher and an evangelist, and shares his experience through his career. He shares with his son the experiences of many places and many people he met and finally gives him the most important gift, the seven golden rules.
This novel, The Untold Story, shares anecdotes of life in the villages of Africa spanning several generations of a family

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499056303

Book preview

THE UNTOLD STORY

RUFIN ONDOUA

Copyright © 2014 by Rufin Ondoua.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014913534

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4990-5631-0

   Softcover   978-1-4990-5632-7

   eBook   978-1-4990-5630-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/09/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

552603

CONTENTS

1.   The Two Wizards

2.   God’s Tomato

3.   In the Agonizing Bed

4.   Earlier Life

5.   Manhood—the Initiation

6.   The Testing

7.   The Sacrifice

8.   The Marriage—a Chosen Wife

9.   Nna’s Advices

10.   Sorrow and Happiness

11.   The Hidden Mystery

12.   Dad’s Education and His Profession

13.   The Poisoner

14.   Leaving Efufub

15.   Final Destination

16.   The Lord’s Schedule

17.   The Lord’s House

18.   The Seven Golden Rules

DEDICATION

To the one who molded me the way I am today. When you corrected me, by spanking and by your look that penetrated me as a sword in the water, I thought that I had the worst father in the whole world. But today I thank you and dedicate these words to you to show my love and gratitude to you for the job well done: you made me know God. You fashioned me: my thoughts, my emotions, my behavior, and my faith.

The Untold Story is a novel that portrays a special relationship between father and son.

As the story opens, the young lad’s grandmother is dying. While the rest of the family are celebrating the merriments of one of his brother’s wedding, the young boy sits by his grandmother’s bedside to listen to her stories for the last time. Listening to the tales of her own life and especially of his father, he learns more about his father’s life from his grandmother than from his dad directly—she paints his life from his birth to how he came to marry his mother. Eventually, his grandmother dies. The many people gathered for the wedding become the mourners. After they are gone, father and son are left together in their grief, but this brings them closer and closer to each other. The father tells the son many stories about his life, explains how he became a teacher and an evangelist, and shares his experience through his career. He shares with his son the experiences of many places and many people he met and finally gives him the most important gift, the seven golden rules.

This novel, The Untold Story, shares anecdotes of life in the villages of Africa spanning several generations of a family

CHAPTER 1

THE TWO WIZARDS

The year was 1975. On a Thursday evening, I was reading Le Vieux Nègre et La Médaille (The Old Negro and the Medal), a novel by Ferdinand Oyono, with the window and the door of my bedroom wide open, enjoying the nice fresh air of the dry and hot season and, from time to time, watching the beauty of the red radiance of the sunset. I picked up a conversation between my father and an old man, Mr. Lukas. Mr. Lukas was the patriarch of the village and tribe called Yimbae. His visit to our family was a great honor and a privilege. The man gained his reputation due to his integrity, his faith in God, his dedication to his tribe, his old age combined with, or along with, his wisdom, and his intelligence. His old age made him probably the specimen of the whole nation, 120 to 125 years old. Despite his old age, Mr. Lukas’s five senses were still all functioning properly. It is a customary tradition in Betty’s tribe that when all the talks are done and that there is no obstacle to oppose the marriage, that the bride’s family accompanies her to her new family, so anyone who is able to go, whether they walk, ride, or fly, can go. Mr. Lukas opted to attend his great-great-grandniece’s wedding. Because of his large burden of age, it took him three days to walk a distance of only sixteen kilometers from his village, Yimbae, to Nkol-Oveng, my village (which means oveng HIL. Oveng is a huge tree that gives a very luxurious and expensive, hard and heavy wood for furniture and a tree can stand tall up to thirty-eight meters).

It was imperative to him to attend the wedding, imperative because he thought this might be his last wedding due to his age; this was imperative also because he loved his relative Pauline very much. Pauline was the only great-great-grandniece who always brought him wood during the cold season and nice traditional dishes of meat or fish called dumba. And let’s not forget that she made sure that Mr. Lukas had water to bathe every day.

The only two things missing from Mr. Lukas were his strength and his teeth; as for his strength, well… enough was left only for the basic functioning of his life: eating, walking, and taking himself to the restroom; his teeth were all gone, making his lips and his cheeks to cave in. That day, when he got home close to 1830, my father wanted to help him to climb the stairs. Mr. Lukas said, Don’t worry, I have a third leg, my cane, older than you. Then after he sat down he called my father and said, See… each year at the New Year’s Eve, I take time to make a mark on my stick. Count them. My father counted all the cuts. Surprisingly, there were seventy-nine cuts on the stick, and then my father was not seventy-nine years old.

After resting comfortably, my dad asked Mr. Lukas, Daddy. I know you must be very thirsty. What do you want to drink—water, palm wine, or chien noir [which was the nickname given to red wine Kiravi]?

Mr. Lukas replied, I love to drink water. I know that’s what you want me to say, but my clock is still ticking, a lot of ticks. Let me bark with the dogs.

No problem, said my dad.

My father went to get him the glass of red wine and gave it to him. Mr. Lukas swallowed the glass’s contents and handed back the glass to him. Dad filled it up again and put it back on the coffee table. Mr. Lukas grabbed the glass and poured it in his mouth as if he was rinsing his empty mouth, then with one push wolfed down to his stomach the mouth’s contents and then glanced at my daddy as if nothing had happened. My Daddy asked him, Do you usually bark with the dogs like this?

Ho no! said Mr. Lukas. Not at all! I feel good today, that’s why. You don’t get occasions like this all the time. Life is a treasure of happiness and miseries. Miseries always take too long to be forgotten, but happiness is very ephemeral, reason why you have to enjoy it fully."

Daddy said to Mr. Lukas, How old are you or do you think you might be?

Mr. Lukas replied, "I am