Bongaman returns

Something else awesome happened last weekend.  I found Bongaman again. 

I'd been having dreams of him recently - his soft voice singing songs about the rain falling, the smell of the turpentine and paints in his little hut/workshop in Yaounde, and the mischievous twinkle in his eye.   

It's been about 3 years since we parted ways in Cameroon with only the occasional email exchanged between us.  Each time I wrote I would try to decipher where he was, what he was doing, who he was with, but in his own inimitable way his emails would offer up only the scantest details.  He was in the USA.  He'd got married.  He was still painting. I suppose that's the most important information - but I longed to hear the details, to see his picture, to see his new paintings.

After a particularly vivid dream last week, I wrote him a long email in an attempt to reconnect. What we'd shared in Cameroon was so brief but so beautiful. When I came home in 2005, the only tangible thing I could bring back of him were his paintings.  A large multimedia canvas called Clandestine which now hangs in my room, the odd little surrealist painting on burlap sack and a few sketches he'd made in oils whilst staying with me in Limbe.  He'd painted the rocks, the sea, the sun; the animals of Cameroon and the spirit of life that I'd experienced there in the rainforests and in the dry barrenness of the Far North.  In Clandestine, he captures perfectly the daily struggle for something better, the yearning of Cameroonian youth to get away, the tragedy of those who don't make it, but the vibrancy and life spirit of those who do, with all the beauty and tradition that follows with them.  The boat which carries these young men and women is alive itself with trees, birds, music and dancing, and yet in the murky waters below it we see the faces of those unfortunate souls whose dreams and bodies perish before they ever reach the West - and if they do it's often to find out that the streets here aren't paved with gold.  I guess it encapsulated perfectly for me the feelings and emotions conveyed to me by those I met in Cameroon - the young farmers, the volunteers in Limbe Botanic Garden, every taximan or shopkeeper who asked me to marry them or help them get to England somehow. And it also contains elements of the amazing power of traditional culture and its hold over people -its entreaty to younger generations to protect all that is sacred about the lands and ways of the Cameroonian people - best exhibited for me by friends from the Biodiversity Cultural Dance group (who I blogged about a couple of years ago here: http://biodiversityculturaldance.blogspot.com  )

Anyway, Bongaman wrote back.  And incredibly he sent me a link to his amazing new website, exhibiting all his latest work.  He's still in the States and still working prolifically - producing some of the most beautiful work of his I've ever seen.  I was so happy to hear that he's now resident artist at an incredible National Park called Glen Echo, just outside Washington DC. He exhibits his work there, teaches art classes and seems to be in his element.  

I wanted to shared his website with all my friends, and encourage you all to look at his amazing work, to support it however you can:  http://www.creativelinesarts.com