ABSTRACT
In every myth of human origin there is an episode in which the deity departs and a gulf appears between creator and creation. Myths of creation explain why things are as they are. One of the things we need to know is why things are not all as they should be. Why there is pain, suffering, and evil, and, more prosaically, why there is work. Since the myth itself is an explanation of how independence of thought came about in the first place it means that such independence existed when the myth was conceived so a certain level of recognition, if not admiration, is permissible. The essential message of the Cameroonian myth is precisely the message of the European Enlightenment. As prescient as this Cameroonian myth of separation is there is irony in the fact that it does not reflect the reality of the African situation with regards to secularism.
