Fw: [Colo_Anglo-BSC] In loving memory of a dear friend

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Greg Takor <gtakor@yahoo.com>
To: "Colo_Anglo@yahoogroups.com" <Colo_Anglo@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 4, 2012 10:59 AM
Subject: [Colo_Anglo-BSC] In loving memory of a dear friend

I wish to pay tribute to the loving memory of a dear friend of mine, Greg Vola Tita Levai, whom I am told, passed away in Minnesota recently. My friendshp with Greg dates back to the 1970s when, as secondary school graduates from different Catholic schools in Nigeria and Cameroon, were employed by the Public Works Depeartment of the West Cameroon government. After the fraudulent referendum of May 1972 which resulted in the evisceration of West Cameroon independence and its institutions, Greg was transferred to the Treasury Department of the United Republic of Cameroon, and worked at the Sub Treasury in Tiko, Fako Division, and I to the Ministry of Territorial Administration, and was posted to the Subdivional Office in Mundemba, Ndian Division, and later to the Subdivisional Officer in Limbe, Fako Division.

Greg was a native of Bali in the Northwest area of Southern Cameroons, and attended St. Bede's Secondary School, Ashing. He came to the United States in 1977, enrolling at University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, later transferring to Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he received a B.A. and M.A. in Communications.

He was a member of an exclusive group of young Anglophone secondary school graduates I met and befriended. It was an exclusive club because of the very few secondary schools that existed in West Cameroon at the time, and getting admitted to any one of them, let alone actually attending, writing the GCE and succeeding was a herculean task; thus, also a highly priced commodity at that time. Besides Greg, I met budding, ambitious and aspiring young men like Samuel Karawa and Bennette Latche from Joseph Merrick College, Ndu; Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Emmaunel Mbi, Etchi, and Ekiti from Presbyterian Secondary School, Kumba; Bernard Somndah and Martin Ngum from Sasse College, and Carlson Anyangwe from Federal Bilingual Grammar School, Man O War Bay, which later moved to Molyko; and Joseph Kikam Nkwadi and Christopher Sama Ndikum from Sacred Heart College, Mankon, to name but a few.

I recall one of the enduring chats I had with Greg in Washington, D.C., in 1991, when I asked him in the presence of his wife, why he was married to a Meta woman, as Meta and Bali people appear to be enemies because of the land dispute they had which resulted in a war between the two ethnic groups in 1954, and took the intervention of a batalion of the Nigerian Army in which Ojukwu and Gowon served as 2nd lieutinants, to bring the situation under control. He looked at me pensively, smiled, and asked a rhetorical question, "so you remember that incident because you attended secondary school in Nigeria? I replied that it is an important aspect of the history of Southern Cameroons; so, he shouldn't forget, but that it shouldn't preclude him from marrying the woman he loves, even if she hails from Meta. Greg wrote and spoke English with flair, and it clearly showed.

As I mourn Greg's transition to eternity, I am reminded by the following lines from a shakesperean play: All the world is a stage, and both men and women merely actors; they have their exits and entrances, and one man in his turn plays many roles. Rest in perpetual and heavenly peace my dear friend. AD MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM.

Takor

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