Unbelievable! Totally Unbelievable! Kitts Mbeboh! K.W. Mbeboh! Or, just simply, Prof! What are we hearing now? Could you really be dead? I thought some people were immotal. I thought Mbeboh was! Really! You taught us murder and redemption and tragedy and comedy and all that. But you also reminded us that all that was fiction. Is this just another lesson in fiction, or could you have found a way to tell us that even in fiction, there is always an element of reality? Paul, you say you knew him barely 18 months ago. But see what an impression he made on you. Then you think of what many of us feel today. Those of us who sat on those benches in Yaounde University every morning waiting impatiently for this icon to come in and have us drink from the spring of knowledgeus. And, for decades thereafter, we checked on each other even over thousands of miles away. Mboboh's reputation as an exemplary university professor was so widely known that students who went to Yaounde University during his time there, but who never had him as a teacher, or who probably never knew him in person, have, over the years, spun their own stories about Mbeboh. In those rough and tumble days of Yaounde, Mbeboh always opened his doors to us, and Mrs. Mbeboh always had enough to feed us. Did we not trek from Cite to Tchinga through Marche Mokolo to share the food that Mboboh's household had to offer? For someone that was larger than life, someone that so many students looked up to as the icon of intellectual purity in a society where politics triumphed over intellectual liberty, it felt good being from the same place like Mbeboh. We could always boast to our friends that he had had us over for lunch or dinner. Kitts Mbeboh and his wife and their little children reminded us of what the modern family was meant to be. Watching them helped us to appreciate that it was alright to love and cherish those you had around you. Now I can't help but wonder what went wrong! Could life be full of such mysteries? Take this little example: Mbeboh once came to Harvard for a program, and when we shared this with friends in Washington, scores of individuals accepted to host a reception for Mbeboh here. Unfortunately, though, nothing would persuade Mbeboh to come to Washington, not even the promise of a round-trip air ticket. So we offered to go to Boston, but Prof Mbeboh thought that was too much to ask of us. Whether you were talking to Mbeboh in his office in Yaounde U., or over the phone during the various years he served in several political positions, whether he was speaking to you from his London home, Mbeboh was always reassuring, and the sound of his voice remains most vivid in one's mind. Whatever surrounds Kitts Mbeboh's demise, we can only say that we are witnessing a tragedy on a scale greater than that which only Mbeboh himself ever taught us! As Mbeboh himself would say, this one is a classical tragedy with no heroes, and, I may add, here is one in which looking for villains will be a futile exercise. All we can do right now is to pray for Mbeboh and his family, and to find ways to keep Mbeboh's legacy alive.