The Faster I Go, The Farther Behind I Become

He chased success as if speed alone would bring him closer to it. He filled his days with tasks, his nights with deadlines, and his heart with pressure. Yet, with every hurried step, he realized something painful: the faster he went, the more disconnected he felt from himself, his friends, and even the meaning of his journey.

Nations' yearnings and community sorrows of deceit keep him awake. Life racing made him efficient but not fulfilled. It made him present in places but absent in spirit. It took slowing down, listening, breathing, and reflecting for him to see that life is not a sprint but a rhythm. Growth is not measured by speed but by depth. Is it that sometimes the path forward requires standing still long enough to feel one's own footsteps?

Born into a world where contradiction was law, where truth was forbidden, and illusion was baptized as virtue. His village lay nestled in the hills of Bamenda, a place carrying the burden of colonial scars like tattoos carved into its very soil. The Germans had come with iron and whip, the British with laws and distance, and the French with cunning and assimilation. From all of them, the people inherited a fractured identity. Becoming neocolonial, nicknamed "Anglofool" and "Francofools," colonized and recolonized by its own, forever torn between borrowed tongues. Out of this fracture rose a King who proclaimed himself savior, father, protector, but a real prosecutor. He wore the mask of unity but wielded the sword of fear.

Every morning the radio declared: “The King is peace. The King is father. The King is forever.” His portrait hung above chalkboards in classrooms, his smile thin as a blade. Children learned to recite multiplication tables only after chanting his name. The very air seemed to bend toward him.

Yet Ndongmuh saw the cracks. He saw market women beaten for smiling, selling late, teachers unpaid but forced to praise the government, neighbors jailed for whispers, and soldiers demanding bribes at checkpoints. Granny Nini Yuoh whispered to him once, “Child, your tongue is quicker than your legs. Do not let it outrun you.” It was advice laced with both love and terror, for she had seen tongues silenced by bullets.

But Ndongmuh’s mind ran faster than his caution. He devoured books, borrowed newspapers, copied articles by hand. He scribbled equations not only of numbers but of truths:

x + y = z,

where $x$ was dream, $y$ was toil, and $z$ was silence.

Ndongmuh tried to share what he learned. “Is silence peace? Is fear peace?” he asked his friends during debates. They avoided his eyes. \textit{“You think too much,”} they muttered. Pa "Horney Moon", his uncle Atah and his dad Mah, nicknamed "Pa Ray" warned: “Truth may set you free, but here it first puts you in chains.” Their words began to fall into an abyss. The faster Ndongmuh tried to enlighten, the more distant he became from those he hoped to reach.

Ndongmuh turned to writing. He filled notebooks with essays, letters, visions of freedom. He mailed articles to small newspapers, who published them only to see the issues seized by morning. The censor’s scissors cut deeper than any sword. Editors grew weary. “We cannot risk it,” they told Ndongmuh. His words became orphans, birthed only to be buried.

"My letters lie in coffins sealed with wax,

My pages sleep in prisons without keys.

If truth be child, then censorship a plague,

And every birth a funeral of hope."

Still, Ndongmuh wrote. But every line seemed to push him further from his people, who dismissed him as restless, reckless, and too bookish. He realized: the faster he wrote, the farther behind he became.

In time, he turned to the language of machines. Computers fascinated him. They promised escape from paper prisons. He spent nights by candlelight, teaching himself programming. He rushed into internet cafés, racing tutorials before the firewall cut him off. He dreamed of a platform where citizens could confess truth in anonymity.

[language=Python, caption=Silent Truth Program]

truth = "hidden"

voice = "silenced"

while king == "illegal":

if people["fear"] > people["courage"]:

voice = "unheard"

else:

truth = "revealed"

But the regime was faster. Firewalls grew higher. Emails vanished. Malware swarmed his laptop. It was as if invisible soldiers patrolled the wires. The faster he coded, the more resistance appeared. Speed itself was betrayal.

If paper could be burned and code corrupted, perhaps clay could carry what words could not. Ndongmuh turned to pottery. He shaped vessels with hidden inscriptions, spirals of resistance etched beneath glaze. Each pot became a manuscript disguised as household ware.

On one, he carved:

Justice = Truth × Memory / Time

or

{Justice = Truth X Memory / Time}

Neighbors admired his craft. “Beautiful pots,” they said, drinking water from rebellion without tasting its bitterness. The faster he shaped clay, the less people perceived the meaning. Again, the paradox of speed.

He cast his net wider: social media. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube. He launched the "Inventive Creativity Foundation" to channel his voice. He made memes mocking tyranny, songs lamenting stolen freedoms, videos urging resistance. But algorithms rewarded laughter, not sorrow.

\[

\text{Attention} = \frac{\text{Entertainment}}{\text{Truth}}

\]

He asked himself bitterly: “Is truth but dust in the wind of algorithms?” People sent private messages of support, but in public they clicked “like” silently, afraid. Cruelty had worn the mask of care so long that unmasking it seemed like bad manners.

Then came the election. Villagers queued with ballots like prayers. Hope bore the name Issa Tchiroma Bakary. By nightfall, the oldest illegal King in the world, aged 92, proclaimed himself victor again. Ballot boxes vanished, numbers twisted, soldiers filled the counting halls.

Ndongmuh cried: “Rise! Do not let the crown of night eclipse your sun!” A few obeyed. They marched. Bullets answered. The streets ran red. The state declared a holiday “to celebrate peace.” Soldiers sang unity songs where bodies had fallen. Peace was painted in blood. The community sighed: better silence than more graves.

Ndongmuh withdrew in despair. He listed his efforts speeches, writings, code, pottery, social media, protests. He drew equations of futility:

\[

\text{Protest Outcome} = \frac{\text{Courage} - \text{Fear}}{\text{Bullets}}.

\]

The denominator weighed like iron. He drew supply-demand graphs of fear and freedom: demand for liberty rose with oppression, but the supply of silence rose with fear. Their intersection was rebellion, but rebellion was priced beyond reach. He whispered: “The faster I go, the farther behind I become.”

Yet even despair birthed reflection. He remembered his grandmother Nini Yuoh: \textit{“Your tongue is quicker than your legs.”} Maybe it was not about speed. Maybe haste itself was exile. He began to slow down.

He taught children quietly, planting questions like seeds. He disguised courage as patience, smuggling it into riddles, proverbs, games.

" I sought to fly, but wings burned in the sun.

I sought to run, but road outpaced my feet.

Now I seek to stay, to root, to grow."

He learned that change is not fireworks but gardening. Not haste, but depth.

Neighbors asked, “Why trouble the water? It looks calm.” He replied: “It looks calm because the fish are dead.” Teachers warned him: “You must learn the rhythm of this place.” He asked back: “If the drum is cracked, should we still dance to it?” Soldiers whispered their doubts: “I am paid to keep the peace. But if I break heads to keep it, do I keep peace or fear?” And his grandmother told him once more: “A tree that grows too fast topples in the storm. A tree that roots deep laughs at wind.”

His pottery changed. He painted stories instead of symbols: mothers shielding children, students guarding books, soldiers lowering guns. His code changed too: from barricades to bridges. He built small literacy apps, secure notebooks, whisper networks. Tools that taught memory, consent, resilience.

\begin{lstlisting}[language=Python, caption=Depth over Speed]

def progress(depth, haste):

return depth - haste

life = []

for step in range(1, 6):

depth = step ** 2

haste = step

life.append(progress(depth, haste))

print(life) # [0, 2, 6, 12, 20]

\end{lstlisting}

The numbers grew with depth, not speed. Families learned to remember, to record. Memory multiplied truth.

Yet the community remained trapped in its old habit: mistaking cruelty for care, silence for peace, tyranny for fatherhood. But now mirrors appeared in marketplaces: pots etched with parables, walls chalked with equations, apps whispering choice. People began to notice the mask slipping. They began to ask questions. Sometimes silence cracked not by shouting but by watching.

The King still ruled. The radio still lied. Night still patrolled. But Ndongmuh no longer sprinted into exile. He walked at a steady pace, sowing seeds of depth. A youth reading group here, a parent circle there, a proverb etched into clay.

"Not the swiftness of our step, but the depth of our root defines us.

Not the race to dreams, but the patience to dwell within them.

The faster we go, the farther behind we become."

And so, the misery lingers. The tyrant still sits; the portrait still smiles. But between slogans, something else grows: patience that is not surrender, courage that does not shout. Depth, not haste. Roots, not race. In the soil of memory lie seeds that no soldier can uproot.

"The faster we go, the farther behind we become.

The deeper we grow, the nearer we are to home."