In The Service of People

About the Book

The author paints the rural geographical and sociological environment in which he was raised and highlights the careful parental care and the early death of his mother at the age of 32 years. He was then 12 years old and his siblings 8, 5, and 3 years old. This provides the base from which traditional and western education were pursued with determination and vision as the source of progress and power, thanks to the encouragement of his father. Armed with a liberal and professional education, Ejedepang-Koge, a teacher through and through, his autobiography reads like a book on the education and constitutional changes in Cameroon. He served and successively as a teacher, Head of Service, Deputy Director in both the Departments of Private and Secondary Education, Director of Education of Private Education in the Ministry of National Education and, in Diplomatic Service as Cultural Counsellor in the Embassy of Cameroon in Washington DC. By virtue of such services, he mirrors beautifully the joys and pains of a conscientious and patriotic civil servant striving to do his duty honestly and refusing to be discouraged and thwarted.

About the Author

Samuel Ngome Ejedepang-Koge loves his village Ndom very dearly. As such, he has fond memories of his childhood in the village. For three years, he served as President of his age group or set, The Star of Peace (Tintine a Nsang). Very close to his father, a man who was much steeped in the culture of his people, his father took him along to various meetings. Thus, from early in his childhood, young S. N. Ejedepang-Koge continually drew from this rich source until the death of his father in 1979. In this Way, he got acquainted with the administration of the village. In 1958, at the age of twenty he rallied his village friends to try to resolve peacefully the attempted secession of the so-called Essossong Ndom Two, which was provoked by the seduction of the wife of a villager by a royal. Because the village trusts him as a credible and honest broker, it submitted to his reconciliation efforts when in 2005, youths, elders and the Chief were logged in a long drawn quarrel. This is the history of the village as he heard and as he is living it. He is happily retired in Yaounde.