Comfort Eneke Ashu a.k.a MADAM

Oh this is sad! Until I saw the flurry of emails on the UB alumni forum, I did not know it was our dear Mrs. Ashu that had passed. I had been following the news on another forum but did not know it was her. Oh gosh...I remember her in the early days of UB.   As a pioneer Faculty Officer for the FSMS she is one of those who helped craft the administrative structure of that faculty and other admin issues at UB. Her office was right next to my department's (that was back in the days when the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication was a tiny room with three tables for three staff!). I ran into her office many times. Picked up my mail from there too. Mrs. Ashu was a constant and assuring presence for many freshmen trying to navigate their way through the maze of university bureaucracy. Her voice was unmistakable. So was her smile. So sad to learn she has passed on. 

My deepest condolences to her family and loved ones. May her gentle soul rest in peace.

Lilian

Dear Aunty,
Life they say has it ways at throwing things at us. Sadly enough God decided to take you away from us this soon. Despite, all our prayers and hopes for a better life for you, sure HE knows best why it ended this way.  
I cannot forget the third term holiday I spent with you before heading out for Secondary School. How can I forget my blue blanket that you got for me. I remember you calling me to your room and wishing me the best in Form 1 and handed over to me my blanket. Aunty these memories and more I hold dear. Thank you!
Just as that blanket kept me warm during my cold days and crying nights in school, I pray that as you are away from us physically, may You continue to watch over your family from Heaven.
Thank God for giving you  to me as an Aunty!
Thank you for  the good and bad times!
Thank you for the laughters and sorrows! 
  R.I.P Aunty
your Niece,
Catherine Ayokosok.

For Mrs. Comfort Ashu from a Family Friend and Former Student.

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I was shocked, saddened, experienced a fair measure of emotional distress, and reduced to meditative silence when I heard of the passing of Mrs. Comfort Ashu. She was a teacher’s teacher, nay, a master teacher. Mrs. Comfort Ashu was my English teacher during my formative years in Cameroon. She did more than anyone else to expose me to the joys of African literature. She taught me to appreciate African expressiveness–the exquisite literary craftsmanship and heuristics of the kernels of knowledge and wisdom embedded in African proverbs, parables, metaphors, and maxims.

“This life has no duplicate,” Mrs Ashu used to tell us at the Bilingual Grammar School in Molyko, when in moments of youthful exuberance and indiscretion, we behaved as if we were immortal and indestructible. 

Since Mrs. Ashu and I attended the same church in Soppo, Buea, over the years, I got to know her outside the context of the classroom. Her actions always matched her words. Her life exemplified her Christian beliefs.  Once when there was a death in my family, Mrs. Ashu comforted us with advice to the effect that death was baked into the cake of life. Her point was that no one gets out of this life alive. She did this, characteristically, through a proverb that I retell below:

 

Proverb from Mrs. Comfort Ashu, Cameroon (retold by Lyombe Eko):

“A bereaved man who had lost several relatives in quick succession approached the village elder, healer and seer. His request was simple. He wanted the elixir of life, the portion of immortality, the cure for death!  The wise elder told the emotionally distressed villager that his request was simple. All he had to do was to go to the village and bring him a spoonful of wood ash from the fireplace of a home that had never experienced death, embers from a family that had never lost a loved one. The unhappy man walked the length and breath of the village in vain. He tried the next village, and the next, and the next. His search was frustratingly fruitless.

At the end of his fruitless peregrination, the sad, hapless, hungry and exhausted villager stood empty-handed and speechless before the elder, his brow furrowed, his teeth clenched in frustration, sweat dripping from every pore, his clothes in tatters.  His disappointment was palpable.

The elder addressed the silent, dejected villager, his voice carrying the ring of authority of a judge passing sentence on a convicted criminal.

“Death is part of life. Get over it, Mola! Only those who understand this truth live life to the fullest. Living a good life is the antidote to death. Those who live good lives, live in the lives of others–even when they are no longer alive.”

Mrs. Comfort Ashu lives in the lives of the countless people she touched in one way or another.

May she rest in peace with her ancestors and her God.

Lyombe Eko, PhD.
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
School of Journalism and Mass Communication,
Co-Director, African Studies Program
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa 52242
USA

Mama,

I still don't know if this is a dream or not.  Yes I heard the bad news but I guess it only began to hit me and dawned on me that this could be true when I saw the tributes on this website. Infact, I broke down and cried aloud.  I said in another forum that I cried and cried a lot during your ordeal in hospital.  The tears seem to have dried up since I last spoke to you.  It all seems like you went for a vacation and here I am waiting for you to return.  While I wait, it is hard to imagine you are not there anymore, especially because I have not seen you for a while. 
You see, I am still struggling to share my memories of you because memories tend to reflect the past.  Somehow I am still thinking you will be there someday waiting for me when I come home.  I will surely be sharing more of my thoughts with you in this forum as the reality of the present circumstance unfolds to me.

Your daughter and "mother"

Ayuknnso

Mrs Comfort Ashu shall be sorely missed!

My memory of her as Faculty Officer of the Faculty of Social and Management Sciences at the University of Buea in the 1990s are still fresh.

I can still see and feel her laugh that was so full of life, hear her well-fed voice and occasional comments on a joke, and feel her compelling and articulate presence at Faculty Board Meetings, in the days when Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Chumbow was doubling as Dean, and I was still at the University of Buea.

I am pleased that through her writings she has left a world of wisdom and dedicated creativity to be remembered by. She has also left us with a librarian in the person of her daughter to preserve and replenish her contributions.

As we mourn her, we should also take the opportunity to explore how best to keep alive her legacy, hold her dream, and do her proud in every way.

Mrs Comfort Ashu, may your well tended soul rest in perfect peace.