PETER NDUMBE

Dear Prof,

Can’t believe I’m writing about you on a memorial page…you the boss and professional mentor I had the privilege to work with. You taught me rigor, endurance, efficiency, empathy and transparency at work.

As a young graduate, God Himself enabled a chance meeting with you at your office in 1990 and within 5 minutes of presentation, you employed me to head the virus immunology laboratory of the CSCCD and later as technical coordinator of the center for 5 years, under your guidance and supervision. That confidence gave me wings to fly and also the luck to have subsequent jobs in France and elsewhere without any formal application.

Funny how we your collaborators, used to pray fervently for God to keep you safe……… else we knock our heads on stones. The truth is, you were the anchor for many families financially through the several projects you brought to Cameroon. Very often, you did not even have a dime from those projects but made the sacrifice for your collaborators. Your love for medical research and the need to improve health in the society prevailed and remain unforgettable.

I left CSCCD 17 years ago but have carried your professional values with me ever since. The transparency with which you handled projects was an eye opener to me. I think back to all those moments shared at work….moments of learning, heated discussions, exploring, screening, training, laughter....…singing praises to God on our way to field missions. I never could thank you enough. Now you are gone and it hurts so much. May God Himself keep you safe under His bosom and may He give you rest.

You are my professional roots and you will forever be my mentor and boss….…that candle will always burn!

Rest in the Lord dear Prof.

Viviane Lobe Jusot

The Jumbam family mourns Peter’s departure. 

The relationship between the Kepe family from Nguti in the Southwest Region and the Jumbam family from Nso in the Northwest Region goes back a very long time. It all began when a young CDC primary school teacher in Tiko, Kenjo Jumbam, became friends with another young man, an electrician by training, Martin Kepe and his wife, Fanny. 

When Martin Kepe was transferred out of Tiko, he and his wife decided that it was better for their first son, Peter Ndumbe, to continue his primary education in Tiko, and their friend, Kenjo, readily took him into his house. So Peter came in to cement a relationship that was already thriving between the Jumbam and Kepe families. The relationship later became so strong that when the Kepes had their only daughter, they named her after our mother, Lucela Labe.

 When the Kepes moved to Bota in the sixties, they kept the door of their home open to all the Jumbam family members, especially the young ones – Joseph, Martin and Denis -- who were already attending secondary schools in the coastal region of the country. Peter and Martin attended CCAST Bambili together and later went to the then lone University of Yaounde, although in different faculties. Denis spent long holiday periods with Peter in Tiko and has never forgotten what great influence Peter, who was a prolific reader, had on him. He attributes his great love of reading to Peter’s influence. He also remembers how much he admired Peter’s handwriting and did everything possible to change his handwriting to look like Peter’s.

Peter was a regular presence in our home. When he was in CPC Bali and later in CCAST Bambili, he spent a good part of his holiday period at our home in Metta quarters, Bamenda. We shared good times as well as sad ones. When our dad passed on in March 1997, the whole of the Kepe family stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Nso to bid him farewell, and Peter was there with them. A few years later, when the Lord called home our mother, Mama Lucela, the Kepes once more stood beside us as we interred her mortal remains. More recently, when our brother, Kenjo, who had raised Peter in Tiko, was also called to his eternal reward, Peter’s parents, Chief Kepe and Mama Fanny, came to his funeral, although both of them were not in the best of health. Peter, who happened to have been out of the country then, came to visit his grave some weeks later, and shed quite some tears over a man he considered in many ways as his father. 

The Jumbam family is in deep mourning. We have lost a son; we have lost a brother; we have lost a dear friend. Peter, our son, our brother, our friend, may your path to eternity be a smooth one! May the Good Lord, in his boundless mercy, receive you in his kingdom with trumpet blasts! Fare thee well, good son, good brother, good friend!

 Martin and Denis for the Jumbam family.