A Place of Hope
Part of the Kondengui Chronicles series
Behind the rusted gates of Kondengui, a shattered camera lens cannot blind the truth.On November 21, 2016, the script of a people changed forever. What began as a journalist and filmmaker's attempt to document the "Coffin Revolution" at Bamenda's Liberty Square quickly descended into a nightmare of bullets, teargas, and a brutal arrest on "Black Thursday". A Place of Hope is an unflinching poetic memoir penned from the dark, suffocating cells of the notorious Kondengui Central Prison, Yaoundé Cameroon.Divided into three visceral acts-The Fire, The Cage, and The Roots-this collection transcends standard poetry. It serves as a cinematic documentation of the Southern Cameroons struggle, capturing the raw humanity of the "Bloody Eighteen" and the agonizing reality of the "Geography of Hell," where one hundred and twenty souls are packed into a five-by-six-meter cell.Through searing verses like The Cellmates of Conscience, the author wrestles with the physical torture of his chains and the surreal irony of sharing a cell with the very embezzlers and corrupt officials who orchestrated the nation's decay. Yet, amidst the stench, the hunger, and the violence, these pages bloom with an unexpected defiance: the choice to forgive, the refusal to break, and the realization that freedom is an internal state.Raw, evocative, and deeply historical, A Place of Hope is the archive of a survivor's scars. It stands as a profound prove to the fact that while a military boot can smash a camera, it can never format the mind of a man who knows what he saw. Tsi Conrad is an award-winning filmmaker, investigative journalist, and author currently recognized by the international community as a Prisoner of Conscience. Following his arrest in 2016 for documenting social truths in Cameroon, Conrad was sentenced to 15 years by a military tribunal-a conviction formally denounced by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. His case has been a focal point for global advocacy by Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Freedom House, and PEN America. Writing from within the walls of the notorious Kondengui Central Prison, Conrad has transformed his confinement into a literary mission. He is the creator of The Kondengui Chronicles, a book series that serves as a testament to the unbreakable human spirit. His works-ranging from raw poetry written in his cell to tactical "Resilience" manuals-offer a roadmap for anyone navigating their own "dark night of the soul." Conrad's mission is simple: to prove that while a regime can shackle a body, it can never imprison a mind. Through his writing, he continues to be a voice for the silenced and a beacon for those seeking strength in the face of injustice.
