In Paris, you always arrive like a prince. That is to say like a child of the country. Paris, it’s its style that attracts. The older she gets, the more she becomes younger and more seductive. Paris attracts legends. For centuries it has attracted scholars of all kinds, and the curiosity of men of the church is not to be outdone, as was the case with Pastor Roncs Etamé who visited the sunny city last month. The pastor had already been to Paris, but as Paris is a romantic city, he did not find the paths of old, because, in Paris, every day a fiction is born which renews it. This is why you are never sure of finding your street in Paris once you reach an intersection. The pastor had to be taken for a walk, the undertaking is not easy. I had to reread the maps and the places to visit. I was obliged to resume the life of a monk with him, and share the life of a pastor in a few days, which brings the man into the life of a monk. But Pastor Roncs Etamé is an endearing man, contact with him attracts you like a magnet, and you stay there gently. With him, we revisited time, we studied the mysteries every day, in continuity with the experience transmitted to us by the spiritual life relating to the scriptures.
Man of faith, the meeting with the pastor takes you into the silence of faith. A faith that respects the freedom of man and precedes him on the path he chooses to travel all. Traveling through Paris you have to let yourself be guided, that’s how I first took him to Saint Michel, then we went to the Eiffel Tower, we discovered the Champs Elysées, and the Arc de Triomphe, after having crossed all the doors of mysteries which mark this city: Porte d’Orléans, Porte d’Italie, Porte de Clichy, Porte de Vincennes. On several occasions, the pastor questioned me about the different aspects of monastic life while remaining attached to the mythical aspect of the city; In my opinion, questions are the heart of the tourist’s meditation. I was amazed and I assure you that what a pastor understands, everyone can understand. Pastor Roncs Etamé is a cultured man, with scientific and theological training, but he is very focused on the history of civilizations. The last place I showed him remained secret. He only discovered it on site, and it was the Père la Chaise cemetery, the oldest funerary monument in the world. He visited the tomb of Jean de la Fontaine, Molière, Diderot, the common grave of African fighters of the First World War, the tomb of Honoré de Balzac, Anatole France, and that of Manu Dibango where he delivered a speech in Douala language.
In the life of a Cameroonian in America, there is a big difference in their way of thinking and acting. Cameroonians living in the United States are pragmatic people. They don’t have prolonged conversations unlike those Parisians who try to explain everything. They are truly Cartesians, while we are Epicureans. For ten days he was my guest, I accompanied him wherever he wished. Like him, I ate the food that most of his acquaintances had concocted; I saw this way of eating frugal food, but with simplicity of gestures and sober conversation which are also a kind of prayer addressed to God. We discussed at length about the future of the world; Cameroonian politics and of course the church and its reforms.
The pastor has thoughts that strike his mind; he knows how to bite the heart; we talked about the Cameroonian heroes of times gone by, and we smiled at a few bastards. But we also discovered that there were many worthy men capable of being admired, and then like him, I slept at 10 o’clock at night. Pastor Roncs Etame loves reading and writing. We have spoken extensively about the principle of language or the Hebrew Alphabet, the Greek language; we spoke together and read Barack Obama’s work called “THE PROMISED LAND”. We debated the mission of living souls on earth. My bookish landscape is immense; who likes to read, at home will be faced with an embarrassment of choice. There are 3000 thousand books and we won’t know which book to start with. The main enemy is time because it resides in a person who gets up at 5 am.
