By Kanute Tangwa aka K(C)anute Tangwa
Let me tell you a story.
Warning: Don’t echo Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Abami Eda. He did sing, ‘I want to tell you a story (no be story o).’
However, I want to tell you guys a story; a real story that exemplifies our values as they were until the whiteman came with the big stick.
I would spare you for today the famous song: We were one and the whiteman came with the big sense…Yeah Mamfe Youth Choir comes to mind. Please don’t shed a crocodile tear. Hypocrites 
Indeed, we once had values of honesty and integrity that cut across our myriad cultures.
Those who used to ply the Bamenda-Sabga Hill road should know a thing or two.
Once you engaged the breath-taking and picturesque Sabga Hill, you would see huts dotted far off but as you drive on you would see by the road heaps of wood or bunches of bananas with prices tagged on them.
First observation, there are no persons standing by to sell; only heaps of wood and bunches of bananas of different sizes and corresponding prices. You are taken aback!!
In these parts, the gainakos or cattle rearers and farmers are often far off in the fields. As usual the kids or children accompany their parents for cattle rearing or farming is a generational thing.
Hence, you would think they are the dumbest people on earth to leave their firewood or other wares beside the road unattended to.
No! In this seeming rustic environment, the inhabitants have lived for decades and why not before the whiteman set foot in Africa with two fundamental values : HONESTY and INTEGRITY.
Indeed. For example, you pick up or collect a heap of firewood for CFAF500 and in turn leave a 500k coin where you took the firewood and go your way.
However, there is a catch. Woe betide the dishonest traveller who collects a heap of firewood or bunch of bananas and fails to drop the required amount in CFAF. As they say in pidgin: YOU MUST COME BACK!!!
There is this dishonest traveller who collected heaps of firewood and bunches of bananas, thinking he had met the most stupid and primitive people on planet earth. The upshot: He travelled back to base, Mora or so.
You would imagine the joy exuding from his wife and kids as they offloaded the goodies.
Lo! Early the following morning they could not understand why their breadwinner, the dishonest traveller, carefully reloaded his vehicle with the firewood and bunches of bananas he did not pay for.
The wife, bewildered, asked the husband: “Where are going to with the firewood and bunch of bananas?”
“I am going back to Sabga.”
“Why?”
“Silence.”
“You did not pay for it?
SILENCE!!!