The Streamed Storyteller: Keeping the Ancestors Alive Online

 

The Storyteller and the Smartphone

Streaming the Ancestors –When the Drumbeat Meets Wi-Fi

A young Cameroonian YouTuber, fueled by curiosity and love for his roots, wants to keep his culture alive but in a way the world will notice.

He sees a crisis no one talks about: the village stories–the oral wisdom that shaped generations are dying in silence.

Yet when he begins to record and remix his grandfather’s tales for YouTube, a new problem emerges:

“These words are sacred,” says his grandfather. “Not for the crowd, not for the algorithm.”

External Problem: Youth no longer visit elders to hear stories.

Internal Problem: The YouTuber feels torn between honoring tradition and reaching his generation.

Philosophical Problem: Should sacred knowledge ever go viral?

His grandfather, a respected cultural custodian, doesn’t just tell stories he guards them. Though uneasy, he sees his grandson’s fire, and offers a challenge:

“If you must digitize, do it with consent. Tell the story with its spirit intact.”

Together, they forge a new kind of transmission:

Permission First: Only tell stories the ancestors would allow shared.

Spirit Intact: No edits that distort meaning, only those that translate it.

Shared Stewardship: Credit the elders, cite the clan, honor the drum.

“Don’t scroll past your roots—stream them.”

If we don’t act: The oral tradition vanishes, and the digital world fills with noise instead of meaning.

If we do: The ancestral voice lives on rhythm by rhythm, reel by reel. Youth reconnect. Elders are honored. Culture evolves without erasing its soul.

The YouTuber becomes more than an influencer he becomes a bridge.

The grandfather, once cautious, sees the stories echo in Ottawa, New York, Nairobi, and Yaoundé.

The world hears Cameroon’s soul one story at a time.

“Tradition is not what we worship it’s what we carry forward.”

Stream wisely. Speak with reverence. Remember together.

🔴 Ngang Unveiled: The Secret Codes and Ancestral Power of the Boo-Nsoh Lineage in Tabenken

 

Meet ‘Ngang’: Disclosing the ‘Boo-Nsoh’ Code and the Juju That Shapes Tabenken’s Identity

There is much that many sons and daughters of Tangmbo do not know. Just like in the 1980s, the buzzword was “think outside the box.” While many people are familiar with this old trend, very few apply it in their daily lives. Eventually, the concept evolved from thinking outside the box to systems thinking - considering all systems as interconnected, and using journey maps to identify where the pain points lie.

Lately, I have been reflecting on the very first traditional system in Tabenken. The original Tangmbo people–those who did not migrate from elsewhere are known as the Winkor. They are still present today and are now referred to as the ‘Boo-Nsoh’. The term ‘Boo-Nsoh’ in this context does not refer to children from Nso (although some individuals from Nso did later settle with the two Winkor houses to form part of the ‘Boo-Nsoh’). Rather, the ‘Boo-Nsoh’ of Kieku in Tabenken refers to those who founded the land–those who chiselled out the caves to make habitable dwellings and began living in the valley.

Their first settlement was at Bileleng, and researchers are encouraged to visit their forest, known as Kop Bileleng, to explore these caves further. The ‘Boo-Nsoh’ later moved from Bileleng which is now used as farmland and settled at the present site known as Kieku. The ‘Boo-Nsoh’ of Tabenken can trace their lineage to the founding ancestor MBIIEREHGY, who established the valley now called Tabenken. Any celebration or expression of identity that fails to acknowledge this ancestor reflects a serious gap in knowledge. I am aware that due to cognitive dissonance, this newly revealed knowledge long suppressed may provoke conflicting reactions.

As a descendant of this lineage, one of my responsibilities is to erect a statue in honour of MBIIEREHGY at Bileleng in the near future.

Two of his biological descendants brothers from the Mbiierehgy line are known as the Winkor. These brothers moved from their original settlement in Bileleng to Kieku. The elder, known as Nto, settled near the bat forest called ‘Kop Mlee’, while the younger, Mbep, moved across to settle at Njikor or Konkor.

It was Fai Njilah Nkur, a Winkor man of this lineage and a warrior in ‘Nfuh Bee-Njong’, who transformed into a bird of prey ‘Nkur’, a type of hawk and rescued the Fon of Tabenken after he was captured by the Germans and taken far away, as far as Mbijah, passing through Kurbar.

In the photo below is my uncle, the current custodian of the ‘Nlah Boo-Nto’ or ‘Boo-nto’ compound in Kieku, Francis Mburli, fondly known as Mburli Mbep. Though this nickname may have originated in another way, the name ‘Mbep’ clearly connects to our ancestor who settled in Konkor. It is the way of the ancestors to bring back or recycle names and characteristics in future generations.

Though the royal and sub-royal families of Tangmbo arrived later coming in from Talla and Tamba, along with their own power structures, the ‘Boo-Nsoh’ remained hospitable. They welcomed these newcomers but maintained their own systems, power, and landownership. During this era, a two-headed grandfather from this lineage was expelled by the newcomers, who feared him. Some ‘Boo-Nsoh’ people followed him to Nkor-Noni in Lasin, Bui Division while those who stayed behind preserved their systems and influence. Traces of this legacy are still found on the land in the form of the jujus and shrines ‘Ngon’, ‘Ngang’, ‘Mndengto’, ‘toh fuh’, ‘ntar’, ‘ndapngong’, and more.

Mbep, as he is fondly called in the photo, is leading the ‘Ngang’, which is praised during its display as ‘ngang Taa-Ngwang’, ‘Kamangang’, ‘Kamakam’ etc. The juju system shown here is incomplete. For it to be fully represented, the ‘ngon’, ‘mfirngang’, ‘ngang’, and others must be present. The red cloth he Mbep wears, called ‘bang cher cher’ in Limbum, is a symbol of the highest authority within Tangmbo–it outranks spiritually all other traditional power structures in the valley.

What is particularly remarkable here is the red garment worn by Mburli Mbep–an emblem of ancestral authority and power.

In the next write-up, I will explore the ‘Boo-Nsoh’ power system in more depth, and how the arrival of royal and sub-royal families, with their own traditional structures, gradually fused with the existing MBIIEREHGY ancestry structures to shape the functioning of the valley today. The royal family was given land at Konkor, where they still maintain their ‘Nkoh’, before later relocating to their current settlement at Manji in Mulah. The sub-royal family was granted ‘Memnkwa’, a rocky area which they initially undervalued, but in those days, land no matter its appearance was the greatest wealth.

Ta-Tfurndabi Tawong Cornelius

Edmonton-Canada

Wimbum Wisdom and Symbolism

Why would I go so far away and start talking about what is so near, and people aren’t taking it seriously? Where did Wimbum great-grandfathers get all this wisdom from, considering they didn’t go to school? Now, I am sitting in Alberta-Canada, about 11,033 kilometers from Cameroon. I still have memory of my arrival and I was fortunate enough to meet my sister, Amike, and her husband, Shey. Everything I ate and drank here was strange at the beginning. I couldn’t feel what I was eating until one day when Amike prepared water fufu and eru. I kept enough of it to eat for a week and truly enjoyed it/entered into the joy of it. This dish was far away from Tabenken, which I had only started eating while in Douala. I can never forget this experience, and I shall remain forever grateful to my sister, Amike.

 Her good husband, also showed me a place where we could buy Cameroonian beer. Here, I drank three bottles of Castle at $20 each. I enjoyed it very much. Why do we go far and the things that were so near and not meaningful become so beautiful, and why do I miss these things and people so much?

This was just the beginning, but later, I ate fufu and njama njama, and now I can feel the food, especially my origin - Tangmbo.

I know the people in Douala would be excited to join me here if they had the opportunity, also those from Tabenken. If I can’t bring Tabenken to Alberta, I will take Alberta to Tabenken – this has always been my ideology.

Now, back to the important issue: I want to talk about our beautiful compound in Kieku. What is beautiful about the compound is not the nature of the buildings, although our house in Kieku would be rated above many others here. But comparison is foolishness. What I am thinking of is my navel – it was buried under a stone to the right of our old kitchen. The grass kitchen is no longer there, but its structure and all the cabinets inside are still in my mind. Our old kitchen door faced to the north, and to the east, just to the right of the kitchen door, was my navel buried in the ground when I was born.

This is the symbolic point of connection I have with the whole cosmos. That is the sacred space. The holy place. The holy compound. There is no other one like that on earth for me. Although the navel, alive, is still in my abdomen, the symbolic or sacramental connection remains important to me.

The Wimbum knew that the root of any human being, which connects them to the whole of creation, was the navel. That’s why this ritual was performed, and I wonder about the wisdom of my great-grand Wimbum ancestors. They knew that from your roots, the navel, things proceed to the heart. Not the biological heart, but the heart where emotions – love, hatred, anger, etc. – arise. They knew that essence or being begins at the navel and is linked to everything. That’s why they buried it beneath the earth – so interesting. The only advice my mother gave about the heart was to keep it open when she saw me showing hatred.

From the heart, it proceeds to the head or mind – the wanderer, the portion of us confused by the foreigner, the part of us that eats from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge is necessary but also very evil. What you focus on grows, so guard your mind from unproductive thoughts

I remember that our parents had very stable marriages. Each time they brought a new bride (ngwagu), they would shave all her hair and bury it in the ground. This is tradition and Wimbum wisdom. They would shave the wanderer, the head or mind and bury it - sacrament. The bride has come, and with this symbolic sacrament, she would remain in her matrimony forever.

What do those Wimbum who desire lasting love think about this? Have they done so? Even if you’re not Wimbum, and not the hypocrite trained by religion with ideals that can’t be achieved, keeping people hypocritical, lusting, angry, or hating, and saying these sins will be forgiven, you might still reflect on this.

Our grandparents knew that by burying our navels in the earth, we would be linked to the whole of creation. Anything that comes to us comes from creation, and anything we do affects the whole of creation. If we hate, lust, love, etc it affects everything. God is Love! Creation is love! Love can’t come to me except from the whole of creation. Now, everything has become artificial because we have forgotten the roots of our bodies, the center and our origin, with everyone desiring love but not truly loving. We protect our heads, our professions, our accomplishments(ego), because we know that if we truly love, something will happen because we can’t protect ourselves from what will happen if we fall truly in love. That’s why it is said that to truly love is blindness, is foolishness. Yet, everyone moves in their heads, desiring love, talking about love, but not loving. They are marring and separating but creation that is love has never separated. They are not becoming one with love, not becoming one with creation.

Tfurndabi