Willem Ngouane - From his shadow to his darkness. Story of a downfall

He was then flaunting the distress of a child abandoned in the street by his careless parents and obliged to push passers-by to look at him pitifully while displaying his goodness as moral caution and proof the injustice he was enduring. Every human has weaknesses and limitations, among them, the ones we all shared our feelings and death, but the most powerful one will always be popular, no one would ever claim to dictate people’s sincere opinions until they reach a unanimity. Even God has haters, so who is the human being who can be loved by everybody? Mister Agbwala was a human like all of us, even though he was unique and great in our eyes, he had to accept to be criticize like everybody on this earth even if in my point of view those criticisms were abusive. As a close witness of his political venture since many years, I thought he was strong enough to face hate and jealousy, but I had before my eyes, this morning, the demonstration that nobody can be strong enough against these nuisances. I was deeply sorry for him; it was painful to stay powerless and condemned to only wish him to be continuing his mission and not abandon.

After using ten minutes to express his anger, suddenly, he began arranging his office before putting the controversial edition of the Herald that turned him moody in his cupboard. This unexpected behavior pleased me, it gave me the impression that he had turned this page and embraced the rest of the day in a better way. I was then hoping that he had definitely considered those media as enemies to stay away from and that he will never give much importance to these tabloids again. The main problem with popular people as he was, is to easily deal with persistent hatred and criticism. As a leader in a country where freedom of speech is supposed to be assured, he also had to tolerate opposition denigrations even if it can be as painful as torture.

Gracefully, my impressions were confirmed two minutes later. Matter of fact his humor switch became brutal even though I felt the premise before. He first started to hum a Papa Wemba song before deciding to play the disc of the Congolese musicians in his DVD. Just as the first song of the CD started playing, I saw him singing and dancing on his chair joyfully as if he was in concert attendance. That was stupefying! How could he so suddenly change his mood from a deep depression to an astonishing enjoyment?

His happiness was so wonderful that my entire person was rapidly contaminated. But my delight didn’t last for very long; shortly after, he shocked me again by asking me a question that made me regret my coming to greet him early in the morning.

“Paul, how far have you gone with the organization of the meeting with strikers?”

“Everything is ready, sir.” I reacted quickly.

I wasn’t expecting such a serious topic in this thoughtless atmosphere it had immersed us in for five minutes but fortunately, the promptitude of my reaction to his question cover my stun. So he could make himself comfortable, sip some Martini, listen to some good music, sing, dance, put his company in a tranquil ambiance and then bring out a grave subject, all in a short time!

Since about two weeks, I had been avoiding discussing this matter with him. In fact, the whole week, I had skillfully dodged every single occasion to be alone with him. Alas, I was once again caught up by my habits; I innocently came to his office forgetting this concern.

Mister Minister assigned me the tricky mission of rearranging a meeting with a group of strikers who were threatening to provoke riot if we didn’t treat their requests with more consideration. This was previously the main issue we were focused on before the Herald brought out their accusation about supposed corruption in our administration. After the parliament approved the memorable and controversial labor law proposed by Mister Bottom, the Minister of National Labor, every trade union of our country expressed their dissatisfaction towards what they considered as unfair, as colonialism and slavery, but most of them did not turn their frustration into concrete actions with strike and limited their battle at the level of media. Unfortunately, among those few who showed a ruder reaction by going on the street, there was an organization under our responsibility: the Teacher’s Trade Union. The worst was that this association became the most active one and was gaining more and more support from the population as time was passing, for many citizens they were only expressing louder what people really think about the government. This popular approval they benefit was a serious challenge for us and especially for the minister who had always considered himself as the people’s hero. He was in a complicated situation; he had to choose his side between following people opinion on this law or supporting his colleague and the government he was working for. Regrettably, he followed his work obligation instead of his heart. I was, therefore, prepared to see his popularity decline, I even intended to warn him and advised him on staying loyal to people view but he insisted that his hands were tight. This situation was treacherous for him, I couldn’t leave things goes that way, so I presented him a judicious plan that could satisfy everybody, But he found it difficult to follow and refused to take it into consideration. His attitude really deceived me, he abandoned me with much apprehensions and frustrations by not even doing a small effort to make my brilliant ideas his. However, after that, I hoped that with the revelations of the Herald and all the other problems that came with it, he would change his decision and follow my advice. But sadly, he was just from destroying my last hopes this morning; I had no other choice than to do as he planned.

Despite my obvious lack of enthusiasm to follow his plan, I succeeded some days before to establish the first contact with the protestors. My dynamic colleague Christian noticed that he and one of them used to go to the same church, naturally, we used him as a liaison. So as I went out of mister minister office, I rushed to discuss the evolution of our plan with the young man hoping to catch him at his place, as he was most of the time assigned to activities in schools. I was lucky to meet him right at the corridor while he was preparing to leave his office into its ordinary wilderness. I discovered him in good company, Caroline, the new intern, was accompanying him with the goodness and devotion characteristic of every temporary staff. They were walking friendly; she was listening to him with much attention, and he was giving her some guidance for better work performance. Christian was literally glowing with happiness, and all this was because of the seductive prettiness of Caroline, it was so obvious that the young lady pleased him; I had never seen him cheerful like this before. I had a good opinion about him, for me he was a sincere and honest guy, a gifted, good worker with much value, and really disciplined person. Colleagues used to say that his good manners and his value were natural compensation for his unpleasant physique: he was thin, his dressing style was strange, and that he got a cuckold look. For me, they were just haters.

When I saw the way he and Caroline were enjoying working together, I started to imagine them as an eventual couple, in fact, that idea became interesting in my head: as the mentor and protector of this new intern, I preferred to see her dating a good guy like him than one these vicious people of this office. So I decided to cleverly push Christian to declare his obvious attraction to the lady soon and pray that a love affair begins between them soon.

“Hello young guys, I hope everything is going on well in the training? Caroline, is he taking good care of you?” I asked paternally.

“Good morning Paul, I am taking good care of her,” Christian replied instantly even though the question was not directly addressed to him. And soon, she will be capable to manage the communication process in school, he added while eyeing the lady as if he was expecting support from her. Hopefully, for him, she didn’t hesitate to promptly bear his affirmations.