The Lab
Monday, August 9, 1999
Two days before the sun was scheduled to die.
The heat in Bamenda had transcended weather; it had become a spiritual condition. The sky was a bleached, sickly white, stripped of blue by the dust and the atmospheric pressure. It felt as if the sun itself was sick, feverish, pressing down on the zinc roofs until the metal groaned.
In the shop, the silence was absolute. The Thermo King compressor chugged in the back thump-thump, thump-thump but the front door didn't open.
The Bookman had unleashed his weapon, and it wasn't a gun. It was a story.
At 9:00 AM, Liyen returned from the market. She wasn't carrying her notebook. She walked slowly, her shoulders slumped, her usually vibrant wrapper trailing in the dust. She looked like a woman who had been beaten, though there wasn't a mark on her.
"They wouldn't take the ice," she whispered, setting the cooler box on the counter.
"What?" Tashi asked, looking up from his empty ledger.
"The women," Liyen said, her voice trembling. "Ma Mary. Auntie Manka. Even the ones I helped with the machines. I opened the box, and they turned their faces away. One of them... she spat on the ground."
"Why?" I asked, stepping out from the Lab.
Liyen looked at me, her eyes filled with a terrified confusion.
"They say you are Nyongo, Nkem."
The word hit the room like a stone. Nyongo. It was the darkest accusation in the Grassfields culture. It wasn't just witchcraft; it was the specific, predatory magic of the wealthy. It was the belief that a man gains riches by selling the souls of his kin, or by sucking the life force from the community.
"They say the Bookman told the Market Chief," Liyen continued, tears spilling over. "He said you are not catching the sun. He said you are stealing it. He said you have trapped the sun's spirit in your batteries, and that is why the sky is turning pale. That is why the Eclipse is coming. Because the Wizard Boy has eaten the sun."
It was absurd. It was scientifically impossible. But in 1999 Bamenda, where the line between the physical and the spiritual was porous, it was a lethal narrative.
"They think I am causing the Eclipse?" I asked.
"They think you are draining the world to power your machines," Liyen sobbed. "They are afraid, Tashi. They are terrified. If the sun goes dark on Wednesday, they won't blame the moon. They will blame us. They will burn the shop to release the sun."
Tashi sank onto his stool. "He is smart," he whispered. "The Bookman is a devil. He turned our strength into our death."
I looked out the window. Across the street, a group of young men okada riders were watching the shop. They weren't smiling. They were muttering, pointing at the solar panels on the roof with suspicion.
"We cannot fight this with logic," I said. "I can't explain orbital mechanics to a mob that believes in Nyongo."
"Then we run," Tashi said. "We pack the truck. We go to the village."
"No," I said. "If we run, we prove them right. If we run, we are guilty."
I looked at the thermometer on the wall. The shop was cool. The world outside was boiling.
"We need a stronger Juju," I whispered. "We need to show them that my power doesn't eat life. It protects it."
"How?" Tashi asked helplessly.
"What is the one thing Bamenda people fear more than the Bookman?" I asked.
Liyen wiped her eyes. "Bad death," she said. "Ancestors who are not buried well. A corpse that rots before the cry-die."
I nodded. I turned to the map of the city pinned to the wall. I pointed to a complex of grey concrete buildings at the bottom of the hill.
"The General Hospital," I said.
The Bamenda General Hospital was a place of last resort. It was underfunded, overcrowded, and smelled of antiseptic and despair. But the darkest corner of the hospital was the Mortuary.
For months, the compressors at the morgue had been failing. With the SONEL blackouts, the situation was a catastrophic open secret. Families had to bury their dead within 24 hours because the bodies wouldn't keep. It was a source of deep, communal shame. To bury a swollen, decaying father was a curse on the whole family.
"Uncle Lucas," I spoke into the radio handset.
"Go ahead, Engineer."
"Bring the truck. And bring your uniform. We are going to the Hospital."
The Negotiation
We arrived at noon. The heat in the hospital compound was suffocating. Flies buzzed in thick, lazy clouds near the rear entrance.
I walked in flanked by Tashi and Colonel Lucas. Tashi looked terrified; Lucas looked ready to invade a country.
We marched into the office of Dr. Awa, the Hospital Director. He was a thin man with exhausted eyes, sitting under a ceiling fan that was barely turning.
"Colonel?" Dr. Awa stood up, surprised. "Is there an incident?"
"There is a crisis, Doctor," I said, stepping forward.
Dr. Awa looked down at me. "Who is this?"
"This is the Engineer," Lucas rumbled. "Listen to him."
"Doctor," I said. "The Eclipse is coming on Wednesday. SONEL will cut the grid. They always do when they are scared. Your generator is broken. I heard it coughing from the street."
Dr. Awa wiped sweat from his neck. "We have fuel..."
"You have fuel for four hours," I countered. "The Eclipse panic might last two days. What happens to the bodies, Doctor? What happens when the ancestors start to smell in the heat? The town will riot."
Dr. Awa slumped in his chair. He knew I was right. "What do you want, boy? Money? We have none."
"I don't want money," I said. "I want access."
I laid a schematic on his desk.
"Tashi & Son will install a Solar Thermal Mass System in your cold room. Today. Right now. We will use my batteries and my panels. We will fill barrels with brine—salt water—and freeze them. Even if the sun dies, the thermal mass will keep the room at 4 degrees Celsius for forty-eight hours."
"Solar?" Dr. Awa frowned. "The same solar they say is stealing the sun?"
"The same," I said. "Let me save your dead, Doctor. And you let me put a sign on the door."
Dr. Awa looked at the Colonel. He looked at the flies buzzing against his window. He looked at the shame that hung over his hospital.
"Do it," he whispered.
It was brutal work.
We stripped eight panels from the roof of our shop leaving only enough to run the fridge and the security lights. We loaded them onto the Unimog.
At the hospital, we worked like demons. Tashi, Lucas, me, Collins, and even Sergeant Abang.
We didn't touch the bodies. They were on metal trays, covered in white sheets. But the smell was there sweet, cloying, and terrible. It was the smell of mortality.
I tried to breathe through my mouth. Tashi was pale, gagging every few minutes, but he didn't stop.
"Respect, Papa," I whispered. "We are serving them."
We installed the panels on the flat roof of the morgue. I wired them in series for high voltage, running thick cables down the ventilation shaft.
Inside the cold room, we set up four blue plastic 200-liter drums. We filled them with water and bags of rock salt.
I hooked up my Thermo King compressor the one I had built for the ice business. I sacrificed our commercial capacity to save the hospital.
"Turn it on," I told Tashi.
He flipped the switch.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The compressor roared. The cooling fans spun up.
I watched the temperature gauge.
28°C... 25°C... 20°C...
By sunset, the drums of brine were beginning to freeze. The room was chilling down. The smell began to recede, replaced by the crisp scent of cold air.
We weren't unnoticed.
As we worked on the roof, a group of men gathered in the courtyard below. They were old men, wearing heavy, embroidered gowns and clutching carved staffs.
They were the Notables. The elders of the Kwifor the traditional secret society that enforced the laws of the Fondom. They were the guardians of tradition.
One of them, a man with a beard white as wool, pointed his staff at me.
"Boy!" he shouted. His voice was cracked but commanded instant silence.
I climbed down the ladder. Uncle Lucas stood beside me, his hand on his gun, but I touched his arm. No guns here.
I walked up to the Elder. I bowed low, touching the dust.
"Mbeh," I said, using the respectful title.
"They say you are the Sun Thief," the Elder said. "They say you are Nyongo. Why are you on the roof of the House of Sleep?"
"Mbeh," I said, keeping my head lowered. "The Bookman says I eat the sun. But a Nyongo man eats life to make himself rich."
I pointed to the morgue door.
"I have brought my machines here. I have brought my batteries. I have emptied my shop. I am not taking from the dead. I am giving to them. I am using the sun to keep them cool, so they can sleep with dignity until their families come."
The Elder squinted at the cables. He walked to the door of the morgue. He opened it.
A wave of cold air rolled out. It touched his face.
He closed the door. He turned to the crowd of watchers nurses, patients, market women who had followed us.
"Cold," the Elder pronounced. "It is cold like the top of the mountain."
He looked at me.
"A witch does not give his power away," the Elder said. "A witch hoards."
He struck his staff on the ground. Thud.
"This boy is not Nyongo. He is a Keeper."
He looked at the crowd.
"The sun is not stolen. It is working. Leave him be."
The tension in the air broke. It shattered like glass. The accusation had been judged by the highest traditional court, and I had been acquitted.
We slept at the shop. None of us wanted to go home.
The city was on edge. The churches were holding all-night vigils. The bars were full of men drinking quickly, as if the beer would evaporate tomorrow.
I sat on the roof of the shop with Tashi. The night sky was hazy, the stars dim.
"You saved us today, Nkem," Tashi said quietly. "The Elder... if he had condemned you, they would have stoned us."
"We saved ourselves, Papa. We aligned with the culture."
I looked at the streetlights flickering below. SONEL was struggling.
"Tomorrow," I said. "At 11:00 AM. The moon will cover the sun. It will be dark for three minutes. Total darkness."
"And the Bookman?" Tashi asked.
"He is wounded," I said. "We took away his story. We proved his lie. But a wounded animal bites."
I pulled the envelope from my bag the one with the logbook and the photo of Razor.
"It is time to pull his teeth," I said.
"Razor?"
"Yes. If the Bookman orders a riot tomorrow, Razor will lead it. We have to take Razor off the board before the sun comes up."
I handed Tashi the envelope.
"Collins knows a police officer. An honest one. A young constable who hasn't been bought yet. Give this to Collins. Tell him to drop it at the man's house tonight."
"What is it?"
"It is a ghost story," I said. "It is the proof that Razor killed a man in 1988. It has the truck number. The date. The motive."
Tashi took the envelope. He weighed it in his hand.
"This will destroy him," Tashi said.
"He destroyed himself when he picked up the tire iron," I said. "We are just the delivery service."
Tashi climbed down the ladder.
I stayed on the roof.
I looked at the solar panels. They were dark now, sleeping.
But the batteries below were full. The capacitors were charged.
Tomorrow, the world would end for three minutes.
And when the light returned, I intended to be the one holding the switch.