• By Kah Walla
• Friday 29 April 2016

Tribute to Monique Koumatekel

Monique Alvine Koumatekel,

You lived an important life. Important for your loved ones but even more so for the nation.

Your life was important not because you were a celebrity, a public figure or a figure of authority. But rather because you were woman, mother, daughter, aunt, wife, a Cameroonian like millions of others.

We pay tribute to you first for the life that you led. That of a mother who fought every day to feed her children. That of a daughter who was cherished by her parents. That of a spouse, a companion in difficult times and in happy times. The love, the sorrow and the pain that your loved ones are going through, are proof of the woman, of the worthy Cameroonian that you were.

Alas, it is through death that we got to know you. A shocking, appalling, tragic death. A death which outraged an entire nation. A death which dumbfounded us, which questioned to us, which woke us up. Monique, as tragic as it might be, you may have come to this earth to die in this manner. It does not mean that you deserved such a death, no, far from it; but rather that your death served as an electroshock to over 23 million Cameroonians.

Through death you have asked us critical questions:

• Who are we as a nation?
• What value do we give to life? To our lives? To the lives of our children? To the lives of women who by the way, give life?
• Are we going to live in a growing savagery, without any respect whatsoever towards one another, or are we going to build a society where the dignity of each individual is preserved, and where the community is proud to have offered every opportunity to each individual?
• Are we going to continue shrugging our shoulders when faced with poor governance, the lack of the most basic services for the population, and corruption that contaminates absolutely everything in our lives? Or are we going to act as a dignified people, a people with integrity, a patriotic people and finally put an end to it all in order to build the society we deserve, the society that you, Monique, deserved, the society that very definitely, your children deserve.

 

Through your tragic death, you have asked us critical questions and today here we are, face-to-face with ourselves.

History will tell us if we, Cameroonians, were able to provide the right answers. History will tell us if we Cameroonian women and men, had the courage, the loyalty, and the pride to provide the right answers. History will tell us especially, if we were able to overcome the fear that paralyzes us, if we were able to do the work in depth and in duration, if we were able to stand up for Cameroon.

As far as you, Koumatekel Monique Alvine, are concerned, you have done your part. You have lived: woman, mother, sister, daughter, companion, beloved,....woman, Cameroonian woman, with your head held high.

 You died as a heroine for the nation, sacrificed like the 7000 other women who die each year because they are trying to give life in Cameroon. Your twins died, like those other 58 000 children who do not reach their first birthday each year in Cameroon.

Monique, you died in a way that made us unable to remain indifferent. You died by putting us face to face with ourselves, face to face with these critical questions. It is up to each Cameroonian woman and to each Cameroonian man to respond. You, you came, you lived, you did your part.

On behalf of the Cameroon People's Party, with reverence, I salute you.

 

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