Ngoa Ekelle

After passing the GCE advanced levels, it was time to start thinking about University studies. There was at this time only one option available since I was just coming fresh out of high school. That option was to register at "Ngoa Ekelle"that is what we called our local university here in Cameroon.
At the time there was only one university available for everybody and the University of Yaounde was the one. Getting admission into the University is not a problem once you pass your GCE advance levels.
The only problem was getting admitted into the section that you wanted to continue your studies in. I wanted to do Bilingual series and not everybody got admission there. You needed some decent grades. I went to Yaounde and stayed with a friend of my dad while going through the admission process.
I got admitted into the Bilingual series and a couple of friends were admitted into the same department. Mokoro Michael was in the class. He had stayed in Lycee Bilingue and completed his high school education there. Leukenza Michael was in the class. He too was from Lycee Bilingue Molyko.There was a fellow called Tabe John who was a class ahead of us while at Lycee. He was repeating the class (this was common in the university at the time).Ako Pauline was in the class. I had known her from CCAS Kumba.
Going to the University at the time, my plans were to get the University diploma and to look for a job as a translator at the Presidency. That is what most of the graduates from the Bilingual series do after completing their university education. The educational system at Yaoundé was tricky though for a number of reasons. First of all, except for those in the department of English, the University was a continuation of the Francophone educational system.
So if you were in say the department of History, you were required to take History courses in the French language, no matter your background. In theory lectures could be provided in either French or English, the two official languages in the country. But the reality was that a large majority of the lecturers were French speaking. Getting through the university was also tricky in that we did not operate on a credit type system.
You had to get a certain average (either 9 or 10 out of 20) in your combine courses to make it to the next class. It is not easy to get a 9 or 10 average at the university. Also if you are repeating a class and you failed, you get thrown out of the university. It took a total of three years to graduate, but quite a few people got thrown out of the university from the second year.
So in theory lets say you repeated the first year before going to the second and in the second year you failed after two attempts to get into your final year, you have just spend four years in the university with nothing to show for. Anyway I had gotten temporary living arrangements close to the University (I was living opposite ENAM) and I was to begin school in October.
There was something that the government was doing at the time though that attracted a lot of students to the University. There was a scholarship of 25,000FCFA that was given to students monthly. You get the first payment of the money just before you left for the Christmas holiday. The payment covered the months of October, November and December. So once you passed your advanced levels it made sense to at least register in the University and you can sojourn for a year and live on your scholarship, while looking at opportunities to study abroad.
The following people had also registered at the University coming out of high school. Sunny Aiyuk, Angel Emmanuel, Munu Christian, Aurelia Enow, Fombou Henry, Ndifang Michael , Oben Victor,Ejuba Wilson, Kepe Jackson,Foba Melvis, Yenika Eric, and Tamen Fred just to name a few. These are some of the people that I knew from my days in secondary school or high school.
The first two months at the university are usually boring because you are getting yourself acquainted with the new environment. Classed are going on and payment of the monthly allowance does not start until late December. You have to get some documents made during this period. You needed a national Identity card made in one of the Police Commissioner's offices. I still have mine that I made in 1982(it is now expired). You also needed to make a student ID card. This would allow you to get into the restaurant and once the monthly payments start flowing; you would need the ID card to collect your allowance.
The restaurant was a popular place for all the students. I believe you could get meal tickets for 75CFA. This would get you a lunch meal. The same amount would get you a meal in the evening also. Most people did not bother getting breakfast. It was considered a waste of money since the lunch and supper meals were really huge affairs. The first three months at Ngoe Ekelle came and passed and towards the end of December we were given a lump payment of three months worth of scholarship money. A grand total of 75,000CFA. I used part of the money to buy clothes(most university students did this to go show off once they get back to the provinces). I kept some of the money because come January I was going to be paying rent and basically living off my monthly allowance.
Before I left for the holidays I did stop by the University campus to check on what was going on and the place was totally full of life. The students had gotten paid and he could just tell be the jovial atmosphere that was in Campus. At night all the drinking places were full of students and that is went you get to see some serious drinking. Guys would line up about four to five bottles of drinks in front of them and by the time people get home they are totally drunk. There are no examinations during the first term, so most of the students had been hanging around just waiting to get paid. The last week before everybody leaves for the Christmas break is a whole wild party.
In the evening we will all line up in the restaurant for the evening meal and as soon as darkness arrives everybody starts looking for the drinking spot. We take turns paying for the drinks and it gets to about midnight when places have to be closed and everybody then heads home to sleep. It is rumoured that some students end up needing to borrow money for their trip back home. This is after receiving 75,000CFA in just about a week. I remember while I was teaching in Christ the King College Tiko, a friend of mine who had stayed at the university showed up to borrow some money that would help get him home. He had drank up all of his monthly allowances and had felt short on change to get home. I got home for the christmas break and anybody was saying that I look very fresh and well rested. University life must be very good.
The christmas holidays were over very quickly and I hearded back to the university. This time around I joined Anjey Emmanue and another friend of ours from our days at CCAS Kumba and we rented a place close to the University. It was mainly a place that you could get some rest and sleep at night. We did not very much property in the place. Meals we would get in the restaurant. We now had to manage the 25,000CFA monthly allowance. It is funny how we always manage to run out of money before the next payment. You are suppose to budget the allowances very well but none of us were good at managing money. The exception was Anjey Emmanuel. He would use part of his money and buy enough meal tickets to get him through the monthly before he starts to spend the rest. He had been a day student while at CCAS Kumba and I guess that is where he got his money management skills. The rest of us will get are money and head first to get some clothes and at night hit the drinking spots. We will start managing the money when it is already to late and the time we get to the last week of the month we all will be depending on Anjey for his meal tickets. The guy would not give it to us though, who would blame him? We all got paid and none of us seems to be learning our lesson from one month to the other.School gets serious in Ngoa Ekelle during the second term.At this time you are back from the Holidays and the excitement of being in the University and getting paid a monthly allowance is all over.We had some cool lectures. There is only one guy that I remember who seem to want to get his way by threatening us each time he was in class.
Tabi-Manga was his name.Relatively young lecturer that had just returned from French and seem to be in a bad mood all the time. The guy had a nice looking automobile though.
Dr Lambo is a character also.He gave us a class in Literature. We studied part of the Bible with him starting with the book of Genesis and the Creation of Heaven and Earth. There was a French lady that taught us French Grammar. I remember her because her class was very well organised. The term came to a close and the last few days before everybody heads home is spend in the local drinking spots. You got high on alcohol for about four straight days before heading for home.During the third term you take the examination and actually wait for the results. I wasn't too sure how I was going to perform in the examination that gets you into the next class.
I took the exams just like everybody else and waited for the results to come out.At this time we had been in campus having a good time and when the result came out a lot of people including myself had failed. That dampened our spirits for a few days, but we had money to spend and we continued with our beer drinking nightly rountine. I headed home when the academic year came to an end. I could have come back to resit my exams in September but after talking to my brother we decided that I should plan on continuing my studies abroad. That was the end of my stay at Ngoa Ekelle