In the Bush in Cameroon

By Alain Normand, director of GRN Switzerland

Godswill Chongsi, recordist serving at the GRN base in Cameroon, is at the wheel of the Nissan Patrol. He is carefully driving it first on one side of the path and then on the other aClick for larger picture.s he tries to avoid the largest ruts. Beside him is Jean Onana Ndongo, who organized this bush country outreach, and is serving as a guide to the area. Alain Limbo Ntep - of the Cameroon board - and I rode in the back of the vehicle, trying to sit still as Godswill negotiates the ruts and potholes. We observed the splendor of the tropical landscape. Periodically, we pass immense, heavily loaded trucks which stir up reddish clouds of dust.

We are a team from "Audio Gospel Cameroun" (GRN Cameroon) and we are travelling some 120 kilometers north of the main city, Yaounde. We are going to visit the Bavek tribe and distribute cassettes with evangelism messages in their own language. I wondered what this place would really be like, and soon we found out.

After greeting the chief of the village, he invited us to set up in a large "community house." Soon we saw arriving more than a hundred people of all ages and sizes.

Jean Ndongo addressed the crowd like a story-teller. He used a "trade language" which many of them can understand at least in part, because of course he didn't know the tribe's language. First he asked them what they knew of the Bible - which was almost nothing. So then he started with Noah and told them several Bible stories as Godswill held up the pictures for all to see.

After speaking of Jesus and His grace which save us from judgment, Jean put a cassette in a hand-powered player and played Messages recorded in Bavek, the tribe's own language they all could understand. They were totally astonished; the crowd quivered with excitement.

When Jean stopped the tape, he announced that copies of the cassette would be offered to all so they could take them home and hear them over and over. The four of us started to place the little gifts into the hands of the tribespeople, but in the wink of an eye we were overcome as they anxiously grabbed for the packages and soon all the cassettes were gone. There was disappointment as the tribe realized there weren't enough for everyone in the community. Jean Ndongo, however, promised that he would bring more when he came to a nearby village the next week.

A Bavek-speaker asked me in French, "Why don't you come here more often? Why don't you form a church here in our village?"

As we returned to Yaounde, we kept coming back to those two questions. The churches of Cameroon will have to give an answer. Though it was late at night when I could finally go to my bed, sleep was hard in coming as Bavek faces seeking spiritual light kept coming to my memory.