About the series

RAMBLE in the JUNGLE is a series of reflections, opinions, questions and debates by Wanaku Verdzekov, the pen name of an African writer born in the 1950s, raised in colonial Africa and educated by Western missionaries. Over the years the author came to believe that real community development comes only through self-rule and autonomy, a position opposite to the neo-colonial system. That conviction runs through the whole series.

Each piece is a “ramble” with a subtitle naming the day’s theme. Some are essays, some are open letters or replies in a debate, and many are poems, limericks or songs. They were written 2008–2025, and this collection gathers 145 of them.

The themes

• Global (22): the world, culture, language and power.
• Africa & the Gulf of Guinea (41): Africa, the Gulf of Guinea and its “politricks”.
• The Cameroons (67): the history of the Cameroons and politics since independence.
• Kom & Indigenous (14): Kom and indigenous culture.
• Other (1): The AMBA Notebook, a stream of short sayings.

Reading the posts

The text is the author’s own, with grammar, spelling and punctuation corrected. The author’s voice is kept: words in CAPITALS for emphasis, pidgin, and Kom words, where the Kom letter often typed as “+” is written ɨ. Where something was left out or corrected, an editor’s note at the end of the post says so. Dates marked “approx.” are estimates, for pieces that were undated or survive only in a later draft; a note under the date explains where it comes from.

For teachers and students

The posts double as reading material for secondary schools. Each one ends with a Reading & grammar block: three questions to check understanding, a grammar point illustrated by a line from the post with a short exercise, and a prompt for debate. The grammar points are spread across the series, from conditionals and reported speech to rhetorical questions and poetic forms, so the posts can be read as a sequence. Where the author’s informal style differs from standard written English, the block says so rather than hiding it.

The textbook

Fourteen of the pieces are also gathered in a textbook, RAMBLE in the JUNGLE: Debating Africa and the World. Each chapter is an issue: a yes-or-no question with the author’s essay on one side and an editorial counterpoint, written for the book, on the other. It adds vocabulary, comprehension questions, a timeline of the Cameroons and a glossary, and the student edition can be read online or downloaded as a PDF.