Oougubomba: Legacies of Newfoundland’s Colonial Misadventure
by Bert Redpath (reproduced from The Daily Telegraph, 28 October 1997)
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of independence from colonial rule for the Confederation of High Volta in West Africa. Few will celebrate. Instead the demoralized and terrorized citizenry will be forced to engage in mass worship before giant portraits of Dr. Dr. Raymond “Big Teach” Yasedit Yuhu, the ruthless septuagenarian dictator of High Volta. The heavy hand of Big Teach and his dreaded Office of Human Management (OHM) is most heavily felt in the Oougubomban Free State, the largest of High Volta’s three provinces and a former colony of Newfoundland. Alas, though we continue to trade with High Volta and so legitimize Yasedit Yuhu’s regime, Newfoundlanders are largely ignorant of the plight of our former colonial subjects, not least because our school system continues to suppress the ugly story of Newfoundland’s single, ill-advised colonial enterprise.
Our involvement in Oougubomba dates from 1927, when the British Prime Minister requested that the new Dominion of Newfoundland send troops to the Bomba region to put down tribal conflict that was threatening the interests of English and Ontarian betel-nut planters. Newfoundland’s then foreign secretary, Sir Peyton Osbourne, eager to prove that the new country had “a spot of vim”, and trying to divert public attention from the Furlong’s Confections corruption scandal that was rocking the Monroe government, sent the 4th King’s Own Jowls and Cavalancers Light up the River Bomba.
After fierce fighting, the Newfoundland regiment under the command of Sir Russell Winterbridge was able to take the strategic trading post at Bebopalulah. The Sagoonay market town had been overrun in 1926 by Mordecai warriors from the Eastern Townships, supported by the tribes of Inner Kanduland. The result was a severe disruption of the flow of ivory and betel nuts. The “liberation” of Bebopalulah in the name of the Sagoonay people was followed by the infamous Massacre of the Dancing Men, when Sir Russell tragically mistook an ecstatic gift-giving moment in the traditional Sagoonay welcoming ceremony for an affront to his manhood and ordered troops to “act accordingly”.
In the wake of the massacre and the general behaviour of the Newfoundland soldiers, all tribes in the area rose up against the Jowls and Cavalancers. A general bloodbath was avoided only by the skillful diplomacy of Colonel Xavier Lundrigan, the notorious “Mad Colonel of the Bomba”, who was able to achieve some semblance of colonial order. A period of more orderly colonization of the fertile interior of Oougubomba followed, mostly by new waves of Ontarian betel-nut farmers (ancestors of the present Ontaricaans). Newfoundlanders themselves failed to heed the call of their government for settlers, however they did staff the colonial bureaucracy, and the Catholic Church and Salvation Army established missions throughout the territory. The more elite within the tribes of Oougubomba (and even those of Inner Kanduland) also began to send their children to St. John’s for secondary and post-secondary education, inaugurating a long history of cultural interplay and influence.
To give the Newfoundland occupation some sort of legitimacy, befuddled sub-imperial administrators created the Oougubomba Free State in 1938. At the same time, Col. Lundrigan, the only man capable of keeping the mutant political beast alive, was arrested and court-martialed for forming polygamous unions with the daughters of 17 chiefs, and for his involvement in a murky betel-nut smuggling ring. Lundrigan escaped from captivity and disappeared up the Bomba, from where many believe he secretly co-ordinated the anti-colonial resistance. The separatist aspirations of Oougubomba have their origins in these tribal and anti-colonial conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s. Complete independence has been the goal of the Sagoonay-dominated Oougubomban Freedom Front (OFF) since its foundation in 1941. The problem was compounded in 1947 when Newfoundland was militarily defeated by the prolonged guerilla warfare of the OFF. The new Oougubomban state was only weeks old, however, when Britain and Canada conspired to recolonize the area. Oougubomba was given limited sovereignty and self-government as one of three provinces in a new Confederation of High Volta (Inner Kanduland and Ramalamadingdong being the other two). The Sagoonay peoples have continued to seek independence to this day. Their aspirations, however, have been continually resisted by the Mordecai people, who mainly inhabit Beebopalula and the Eastern Townships, and who have a historic tribal mistrust of the Sagoonay. The Mordecai have forged uneasy links, first with the powerful betel-nut planter class (dominated by Ontaricaans) and the colonial powers of Newfoundland and Great Britain, and more recently with Dr. Dr. Yasedit Yuhu and the High Voltan military elite (mostly Inner Kandulanders), to thwart the Sagoonay-dominated OFF.
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