Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence. Meredith Terretta

“there was no one.” He and his wife created the village surrounding his plantation, and he believed “it was his country that God had given him.” In 1983, Bondja was buried on his plantation, followed by his wife in 1988. During his lifetime, he had expressed his wish that his wife and all his sons be buried on the plantation as well.¹⁰⁷

      Bondja was one of the first converts to Protestantism from the Bamileke Region under French rule. He founded the Protestant church at Melong and served as the earliest catechist in the region. Bondja expressed a Bamileke convert’s perspective on the Grassfields spiritual alliance. He taught his children to respect their elders and give them everything they could during their lifetime, such that after death they would have no complaints.¹⁰⁸ He told his children that a guilty conscience was what inspired sacrifices to the dead, and that if one treated others well, such sacrifices were unnecessary. Bondja’s proximity to the administration, his conversion, and his wealth enabled him to finalize a separation from his chieftaincy of origin, but such a rupture was exceptional among Bamileke settlers in the Mungo Region at the time.