Official Review: Passing Through The World A story of Chi...

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[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Passing Through The World A story of Childhood Curiosity and Perplexity" by Amin George Forji.]

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Passing Through the World is an autobiographical account of Amin George Forji who was born in a polygamous family in Cameroon. I would give this book a 2 out of 4 rating. The story takes the reader through Forji’s childhood and growing up years in Cameroon. Part 1 covers his experience of school from day one in his village Ndungated, and the emotions that he as a child goes through from excitement, to curiosity, to fear and then a sense of achievement and enjoyment. A descriptive narration of Christmas after that and his new experience of a car ride. It also covers the community’s traditions and stories revolving around them.

Part 2 describes a new chapter in Jorji’s life, town life in Buea where he attends secondary school.It is full of new discoveries, new people and new experience that Jorji encounters. It is a visual narration of a village boy turning into a town boy. The same kind of experience extends into Part 3 when he moves into another town Bertoua and finally the coveted town Yaounde’ . There are moments of downfall, uplift, pride and achievement as he runs the reader through his experience of going on with day to day life. A village boy grows into a mature young man with a mind of his own, with strong ideologies on religion, women, and his own ambition to ‘make great things’.

The story does give the reader an insight into the lives of people in Cameroon. It could be a good read for someone wanting to study the community and the society there.It is a fairly detailed account of how a fatherless village boy works his way up in life, facing various odds, learning not just through education but also through his experience with people he meets, be it friends, teachers, and of course the family that makes his move to the town possible.

However, I rate the book a 2 because I find it more as a diary that records several incidents of one’s life, put together, rather than be a story with a certain purpose or end to it . While the incidents in his life are written well and the nuances of emotions that a child grows through in life have been captured rather intricately, the story tends to become too descriptive at times. The reader ends up wondering why certain incidents were mentioned at all. For example, incidents of death has been described twice in Part 1. Jorji’s resistance to the opposite sex have been show cased more than once in the entire story. There is a plethora of names of people that he meets in his life, and at various points of the story, one gets lost and has to go back in the story to find out who’s who.

The writer definitely has a knack of translating incidents and emotions into words. He manages to keep the interest of the reader through Part 1, as he describes various events in his household. However, the same descriptive accounts continued in Part 2 and 3 become a little tiresome and difficult to follow. One ends up wondering where the story is leading to.For someone new to the Cameroon culture, names, words and traditions, it does not form an easy read in the first instance.

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