The Journey To Bandjoun

The exodus from our beloved Abakwa (I bless the very soil of this place) began not with a choice, but with a duty that weighed heavy on our hearts. Our story—the truth of what is happening within Abakwa’s highlands—could no longer be an echo trapped in the mountains. It had to be carried out, a fragile secret we would risk everything to deliver to the world.

The journey itself was a gauntlet. We trekked until our legs burned, scaling hills that seemed to push us back and descending into valleys that swallowed the light. Rivers, cold and swift, became obstacles to be conquered, and oceans stretched before us, vast and indifferent. Every mile was a price paid in time and precious finances we could scarcely afford, but our story, our cries, our very aspirations were the cargo. They demanded this sacrifice.
When we finally stumbled into Bafoussam, a wave of fragile relief washed over us. Our destination, Bandjoun, and the stage for the Bruises National Tour, felt almost within reach. But the road had one final test in store.

The driver we found eyed us with a mercenary’s gaze. The price was double—a brutal toll for our desperation. His promise, spat out with a cloud of smoke, was a lie wrapped in a threat: "I will leave you in Bafoussam. No, last last, I will leave you in Mbouda." Our hopes, already frayed, began to unravel. We were forced to abandon his vehicle, transferring our weary bodies and our precious mission into another, hoping this one would truly take us to Bandjoun. It didn't. The engine coughed to a final, defiant halt back in Bafoussam, the driver shrugging as if our entire purpose was a trivial inconvenience. "Find your own way to Bandjoun," he said. The last leg of the journey was a blur of improvisation and frayed nerves.
We finally breached the outskirts of Bandjoun under the unforgiving glare of the midday sun. There was no time to rest. The rehearsal awaited, a crucial run-through before we bared our souls to an audience. But a new knot of tension tightened in my chest. Leonette.

A message from her had come through, a cold spike of dread in the midst of the chaos. "I no go cam." The words were a gut-punch. After all we had endured, after the mountains and the rivers and the betrayals on the road, our story was now to be crippled by an absence? Despair began to set in, a cold certainty that we had fought this far only to fail at the final moment.

We were already deep in the throes of shock, trying to recalibrate our entire performance, our spirits at their lowest ebb, when she appeared.
As for the nature of that shock, and the storm of emotions her arrival unleashed… that is a story for another day.