Limbe is a coastal resort city by the black, sandy beaches of the Atlantic in the Anglophone South West Region of Cameroon. It is also where Africa’s first million dollar novelist, Imbolo Mbue was born and raised. Her debut novel, “Behold the dreamers” is partly set there. Most of the flashback in her novel also goes there. Imbolo’s very moving reminiscences of places like Half Mile, Down Beach and Isokolo, resonated with me a lot because they are all places that I lived in or visited in Limbe while growing up. Yet, no matter how neatly she paints the portrait of that clean city in her novel, it is ironically a place that she left. It is also a city which her novel’s two main characters, Jende and Neni Jonga also leave behind.
