Chapter Three: The Religion of Bali Nyonga
3.1. Bali Nyonga: A Religious Tabula-Rasa?
3.1.2. The Missionary Period
3.1.2.a. Jakob Keller.18
Jakob Keller was among the first three resident missionaries sent to Bali to open a mission station in l903.The mungaka language owes its written form to the efforts of Keller and Adolf Vielhauer. Keller initiated the work that was later carried on by Vielhauer. These missionaries' first and most important task in a new area was to tirelessly learn and research the language. The propagation of the Gospel would become possible only when the language had been completely mastered by the people. This would enable missionaries to wean the people away from 'false gods' and 'idols' to the true living word. This view was held by Missionary Fr. Lutz in 1905 during an inspection of the Basel Mission's work in Bali Nyonga.1
Keller's earlier view of Nyikob can be gleaned from his notebook and the Bali Primer.20
Keller's pupils tell him that they do not eat frogs because "a nyekob"2[ [it is God] and no matter how hard he tries to convince them they respond, "it is God for sure."22 He observes a thanksgiving after the birth of twins where the family head killed a fowl and dripped the blood on his father's grave as a type of blessing while he thanked nyekob ba me [god of my
"Max Esser, An der Westkuste Afrikas, p. 148.
18 Keller was among the first three missionaries to settle in Bali from 1903. We shall say more about him later.
19 Fr. Lutz, Im hinterland von Kamerun:Uber Bali nach Bamum, Basel: Basel missionsbuchhandlung,1907, pp. 16-17. Excerpts of this work have been made available to the South West Provincial Archive [S.W.P.A.] by E.M.Chilver under the working note: "An inspection of the Basel Mission's work in Bali-Nyonga in 1905".
!0 Excerpts of this work have been made available to the S.W.P.A. by E.M.Chilver under the working note Extracts of Bali-Nyonga interest from: Paul Valentin [ed.], Volkerkundliche Aufzeichnungen aus dem Notizbuch eines Kamerun-Missionars, 1890 - 1914, Basel:Basel Afrika Bibliographen, 1978. Our source says that this is a pamphlet of 37 pages based on Keller's notebook. Keller served in Bali 1904-07, 1909 - 1914.
21 M. D.W. Jeffreys in his collections between 1936 - 1945 states "The Chief and his elders denied that the frog had any significance.",p. 111 in M.D.W.Jeffreys, "The Bali of Bamenda," in African Studies 16-2-57.
22 Paul Valentin, [ed.], Volkerkundliche Aufzeichnungen, p.33.
father]. He states further [possibly through questioning] that it is a good sign if the fowl flutters for long and finally falls on its left side, but if the fowl dies at once, it is a sign that the father has not accepted the sacrifice in which case a diviner will be called in to investigate the matter, and a second fowl will be slaughtered.
He also found out that "pagan spiritism crops up especially in connection to psychic illnesses."24 Also in the Bali Primer of 1906 it is written that "Ju-ju be nu nyikob bun si-si [juju is the God palaver of black people or juju is the religion of Africans].25 Since Vielhauer arrived in Bali in late September 1906, the phrase in the primer surely belongs to Keller.
Vielhauer mentions Keller as a senior missionary who was in favour of Nyikob but Balz has pointed out that Keller's view on the issue is not known. However in 1925 Keller published an article in Germany captioned "Nyikob ba me".26 This is his view as quoted directly by Balz.
This cult of the Nyikob ba me was and is the great obstacle for the Bali man which has prevented him from reaching a higher and purer knowledge of God.
He knows almost nothing of a great spirit, creator of heaven and earth, as other pagan people know him. The ancestor's burial place and their spiritistic cult has tied the Grasslanders' eyes down to the earth. His heart, eyes and senses were not able to elevate to the more sublime and pure view and idea that the Supreme Being has his throne above them, beyond or in the stars. For them, 'the earth is God'. This great importance of Nyikob ba me also deprives the Bali man of the real understanding of salvation in Christ. It is, after all, not more than a mere way of talking if the Bali say: 'I believe in Jesus, I agree with the God matter'.
Jesus came from God and became man-'the same is true of my own father'.
Jesus died and went again to God, he was and remained God-'my father too, was born of a woman, died and became a god, he became Nyikob ba me, that is father god.' Jesus is present among his people, he helps and supports them in troubles and is invoked in prayer: the same is the case with the Nyikob ba me,
23 Paul Valentin[ed.], Volkerkundliche Aufzeichnungen, p.34.
24 Paul Valentin, [ed.], Volkerkundliche Aufzeichnungen. p.35.
25 Bali Primer, 1906.
26 This article was published in Neue Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, 1925, pp.211-219, in Heinrich Balz, Where the Faith has to live-Studies in Bakossi Religion, Part II: The Living, the dead and God, Berlin: Dietrich ReimerVcrlag.1995, p.642.
I
which is a great difficulty for accepting and understanding the fullness of salvation.27
3.1.2.b. Adolf Vielhauer.
The long list of mungaka literature is to a large extent the achievements of Vielhauer. Dah tells us that Vielhauer was the first university-trained theologian of the Basel Mission to be sent to Cameroon before 1914. Upon arrival in Cameroon in 1906 he was sent straight to Bali station.28
Vielhauer wrote that nature spirits were unknown to the Bali unlike their neighbours who revered those spirits. The Bali call sparrows, frogs and earth spider "ba nyikob' but they do not sacrifice to them, but only protect them from being killed and children are scolded if they kill any of such creatures.29 The opinion of the Bali was that:
Everybody had his own God who made him and who, after his death, makes a new person. This protective god is not a spirit of a special ancestor. Hence the expression: "That came out of my nyikob', in reference to an inborn disposition.
It is responsible for his creation but not sacrificed to...all prayers and sacrifices are made to nyikob ba from whom all good things stem who hears the prayers of his sons scattered over the earth." The Bali single God for all mankind was called nsi or nyinsi. His function goes beyond fulfilling curses and allaying illnesses. However "the origin of the world and growing things is put down to a Nyikob but he is not further described or prayed to.30
Although the missionaries had used Nyikob for the Supreme Being in their preaching and translation of Bible stories, they nonetheless had an argument whether the name Nyikob
27 Heinrich Balz, Where the Faith has to live, pp.642-643. Balz has observed that 'this is a rather pessimistic conclusion after some twenty years of preaching the Gospel in Bali and in the Mungaka language.' p.643.
28 Jonas N. Dah, Missionary Motivations and Methods - An examination of the Basel Mission in Cameroon 1886-1914, n.10, p.301.
29 E.M.Chilver found them in the field notes of Bernhard Ankermann [first ethnographer to visit Bali 1907- 1909], which appeared in 1959 in Baessler Archiv. Among them is a letter from Vielhauer of 29-2-1910 in which Vielhauer attempts to answer some questions raised by Ankermann. Vielhauer gives one Gwe as his informant who E.M.Chilver was unable to trace. We have these extracts in the South West Provincial Archive, sent by E.M. Chilver under the title: "Bali Nyonga: Brief notes on spirits, divinity, and occult powers [1960- 1963]"., p.5. These are from her notes.
30 E.M.Chilver, Bali Nyonga, pp.5-6.
once chosen should remain or there will be consideration for substituting it for a more appropriate term.31 The senior missionaries in the field preferred Nyikob, but Vielhauer opted for Mbu'timvi. The discussion did not satisfy Vielhauer and in 1912 he wrote a letter to the Director of the Basel Mission requesting an official decision on his proposal. His studies of the names of God in the region revealed that Nyi, Nyikob and Si in a religious context always refer to something that is down or in the earth. It was only in Bagham that the sky god Mbomve is understood to be in a special relationship with the chief. Since Mbomve is equivalent to Mbu'mvi or Mbu'timvi, in mungaka, it is preferable to use Mbu 'timvi rather than Nyikob who is associated with frogs, caterpillars, spiders, persons and all sorts of things called nyikob. He argued that since a chief is the most elevated status the Grassfield people could imagine, Mbu 'mvi for God will make him to be seen as the chief of the world, the chief of chiefs. Balz has summarized his main arguments:
1. The Lord or ruler of the world would mean much to the Grasslanders because of their strong chieftaincy;
2.It would exclude superstition better than Nyikob ever can do, by making a
"sharp cut" between what is old and what is new'
3. It would facilitate the spread of the Gospel by clearly defining what is new not through the person of Jesus only, but through a new understanding of God as well; and
4. Translation into other tribes around Bali would also be less problematic since they all have words both for 'ruler' and for 'world' or at least for 'land' or 'earth'.32
Excursus I
In the late 1970s Professor Heinrich Balz33 collected information from the whole of the North West Province, part of the then Grassfield region. His findings are worth mentioning.
He attempted a regional classification of the use of Nyi. He explained that the Bamilikes
31 Jakob Keller, "Nyikob Ba Me", p.218f. Heinrich Balz, Where the Faith has to live, p.641.
32 Adolf Vielhauer, Handwritten letter to the Director of the Basel Mission, dated Bagham 31/5/1912, in the Basel Mission archive files, transcript by Mrs. I Dah-Steger, 12 pages, no numbering, in Heinrich Balz, Where the Faith has to live, pp.641-642. Basel considered Vielhauer's letter of importance and sought the opinions of two experts on African languages and religions. They were C. Meinhof and D. Westermann. Their opinions were finally rejected in favor of the view of the majority of missionaries in the Grassfields. See Dah, Missionary motivations and methods, pp. 192-194.
" Prof. Balz was Principal of the Presbyterian Theological College Nyasoso. See his book Where the Faith has to Live - Studies in Bakossi Religion. Part I & II, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1995.
further east [in part of the Grassfield who are now in the Western Province following the present administrative organization] have names like mbong or Si for God unlike the Tikars and the Chambas who are relatively new in the area. Nyi [Nyuy, Nwie) is used in Babungo, Nso, Kaka and Wimbum. Moving to Santa, Mankon, Bafut and Bali, Nyi titles are restricted to parents of twins like in Tanyi or Manyi [father or mother of god], which are names, adopted by parents of twins. Here Balz attempts to understand Nyikob in the same way Vielhauer and Zintgraff tried to understand him. He sees the name Nyikob as consisting of Nyi the common name attributed to deity and kob [forest], thus the two words combined as Nyikob [god of the forest]. The Mankon and Bafut call him Nyingong [God of the earth], while the Widikum tribes call him Nyieko understood as creeping upward.34
What is curiously absent in the studies of Keller, Vielhauer and Balz is that nothing is reported about deity from any of the other Bali fondoms. God in the mubako language is Vodneb as Tita Nyangang and other elderly people told this researcher. It would also have been necessary to find out the name by which the Bati35 addresses deity. Is it possible that all along in their migration and with the assimilation of other ethnic groups they did not have a name for deity until they entered the Grassfield region where they borrowed from the Tikars? Was there no name for deity in the Bati language that they adopted? These are questions that lead one to the suggestion that to say Nyikob is a combination of two words is like trying to force or support a theory. It is possible that Nyikob stands in its own right. The former researchers on the notion of the knowledge of deity seem to have ignored the
Heinrich Balz, Where the Faith has to live, pp.715-720. Pascal Fossouo in his Doctoral Thesis is led to the same misrepresentation by stating that the German missionaries, misled by their language helper, wrongly added 'kob' to Nye to describe the Supreme God and the missionaries included it in the mungaka Bible.
African Sacral Rule and the Christian Church: An Investigation into the Process of Change and Continuity in the Encounter between Christianity and African Tradition with Particular reference to Cameroon and Ghana, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003, p. 103, n. 141. His line of argument is not tenable because before the missionaries came many colonialists had documented Nyikob beginning from Zintgraff as we have already seen. It is a misrepresentation to group all the Grassfield fondoms together and treat them as one. All previous researchers have acknowledged this difficulty; and this becomes more difficult when looking at the concept of God.
35 The 'Pati' are sometimes called 'Ba Ti' or 'Ti'.
historical dimension of Bali, which reveals that they had probably come into contact with Islam.