Who Is a Clan Head? — Rediscovering the Living Temple Among the Mbum People

 Among the Mbum people, words are never just words. They carry memory, spirit, lineage, and worldview. A mistranslation is not a small mistake—it can quietly reshape identity, authority, and spiritual understanding. So we must ask a serious question: Could it be translators from Limbum to English are causing confusion and loss to Mbum people?

In Limbum ‘to’ means head or top. ‘to ndap’ – head or top of the house. ‘to chi’ – top of the tree. ‘to tap’ – top of hurt. ‘to manjo’ – owner of a system. I have heard people who would like to be head or at the top or to rule over in Mbum called themselves ‘to ngong’, ‘to nkfu’ etc and I wonder because from growing up and having physical and spiritual education from my grandparents, parents and others we have never heard of ‘to ngong’. Instead, in Mbum spiritual practices we know of ‘tu ngong’. ‘Tu’ or hole, because a hole both in Limbum and English does not have a head. And ‘ngong’ is cyclical in both English and Limbum and if this be true, like science says the world is round, how does it have a head?

Now every Fon in Mbum is sovereign. We all know the systems that when a Fon has them it means he is sovereign. Now can a sovereign leader or Fon have a head or leader over him? It is just like saying the Paul Biya, the President of Cameroon, has another head over him. What would be the office or title that this head occupies? How is it that in Mbum land some Fons are called clan head? Is it confusion of English translation or do Fons have heads above them in Mbum culture?

In our compound we have ‘Tar la’ and he leads the whole compound but he is not excited to lead individual houses, so his function is not physical leading but father, because father represents or incarnates the original creator in a genealogy but not necessarily biological or has to take internal decisions within families in the compound. He is steward of the common good. He is the spiritual father of all because it is an office he incarnates, not by birth, because he can even be biologically the son of another older person in the family and son to many others in the compound.

I have also been hearing that Jesus Christ is the head of the church. In what can to be likened to a church that my grandparents had was ‘ndapngong’, and we do not have a ndapngong head. We have the ambassador or messenger or apostle of God who leads in the ‘ndapngong’. One of my aunts is even named ndapnong and got married to Binka which shows that in a sense anyone in my genealogy could even name themselves church (‘ndapngong’) if colonization had not disrupted our systems and imposed foreign structures over our traditions.

If Christ said “destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days” and we all know he was the temple, is Christ being head of the church meaning the fullness of Godhead body sits at the top and is connected to us to be head, or he is the church himself? As it is written in Gospel of John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And later it was explained that he was speaking of the temple of his body. The apostle also teaches in First Epistle to the Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” And again in Epistle to the Ephesians 2:21, “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.”

Sometimes I write that I am ‘ndapnong’, and if I say I will do something in the world or ‘ngong’ you may think I need to go to the Kieku Tang where that groove or temple is located to do it. It seems to me people in every epoch are thinking and believing the same thing that the church is a building, just as it was in the beginning, even after the clarification that Jesus Christ gave that he is the temple which was destroyed and raised up the third day. Then why are those believing still not realizing this resurrection which they believe in, and what truly happened?

In Tangmboh we have small sub chiefs (pTar la bee), sub chiefs (pkibais), and Nkfu (Fon), and it ends with Fon (Nkfu) as the supreme, and there is no other physical or spiritual entity above nkfu or Fon. And if such were to exist, and I have never seen or heard, I hear that if you come with such supremacy to Tangmboh you must keep it aside and surrender under HRM Ta Nfor Nkwi Tang, the Fon. Now the supposed clan heads we have in Mbum land, if they come to Tangmboh to stay permanently, unconditionally they must surrender or dethrone themselves because we cannot have two Fons in Tang. So how can you be a clan head or head of a church, for example, that you cannot be there to control all your jurisdiction permanently? Why claim to be head of a geographical Mbum or church only in name and not in power? How can another Fon claim to exercise clan power over other villages simply by calling themselves a clan head? How can another Fon claim to exercise clan power over other villages simply by calling themselves a clan head? If the President of Cameroon were to try something similar in the CEMAC sub-region, he would at least be issuing formal decrees—so what authority or traditional decrees are clan heads issuing to exercise their power in other villages?

The Fon of Tang, wherever he may be, is still the Fon of Tang. And myself Tfurndabi Tawong, wherever I am, I am still the Tawong. Why are the other Mbum Fons who have been made clan heads not having the sovereignty all over those clans as Tawong has in the Ngong and Ta Nfor Nkwi Tang has in Tangmboh?

And as the scripture says in Gospel of Luke 17:21, “The kingdom of God is within you.” If the temple of God is living, if the church is living, and if sovereignty is living, then the question before the Mbum people today is deeper than language. It is a question of identity, memory, and truth. Have translations slowly shifted meanings that our ancestors clearly understood, or are we ready to look again at our language, our spirituality, and our sovereignty so that the fullness of what we are is not lost in translation?

Let this be a call to reflection among the Mbum people: Is this conversation merely about language, or is it revealing deeper truths about our history and structures? Are we confronting colonial administrative systems that reshaped our traditions? Are we rediscovering the sovereignty of our kingdoms?

Tfurndabi Tawong