The Burden of Custom and Tradition

Ngina the daughter of Mbaragha and A'Ngon lived ahead of her times. At a time when women were and still relegated to the background Ngina distinguished herself in activities which by tradition belonged to the men-firing a musket building a fence leading a goat to the fields to feed felling trees and playing the drum or guitar. Such disposition put her at loggerheads with her husband Mvodo an arch traditionalist as well as with the entire population of Ghost Hill Town later christened Mboa Zambe (God's Town) in the Christian era. Ngina evoked the wrath of Ghost Hill Town when she beat the Sacred Drum and narrowly escaped death by poisoning and physical assault by Mvodo who was then her estranged husband. Ondoa Ngina's son vowed to avenge his mother's near-death situation. He tracked down Yene one of his mother's attackers who divulged information that the other attacker was Mvodo. Meanwhile Ebanga the hospital nurse who was bribed by Yene to put poison in Ngina's coffee languished in jail. Later Yene and Mvodo were tried and jailed. However Ngina's ordeal tenacity love for her people good judgment and faith elevated her to high places in the colonial era of which she was the catalyst in the transformation of Ghost Hill Town in women's rights education jobs health matters and child care services. In fact Ghost Hill Town (Mboa Zamba) was never the same again.