Julius Atashili

The funeral video (approx. 1hr: laying in state and activities in his house in Buea and the burial in Bamenda) of Dr JA can be obtained from Mr Tony Epie of the IT Centre, Faculty of Health Sciences, UB. Email: akolle.epie@ubuea.cm; phone: 675228687/661169960.

You corrected my research proposal as if I were one of the students you supervised. It was a very difficult experience, but it is definitely one of the reasons for which it was almost perfect at the end! I remember the day of my MD. thesis defense. I was waiting for the Jury to come evaluate me. You passed by, and saw me almost panicking. Then you smiled and said "Momo Kadia, don't worry, it will be fine". And behold, it was beyond fine! In your own little way, you taught us to be "almost perfect" doctors. Your departure is an immense loss for us! May your soul rest in peace!
Momo Kadia, MD. 

I find this very hard to accept! How can we be talking about you in the past tense? How is it possible that there is a website in memory of Dr Atashili? This has been and is still a very bitter pill to swallow. Over the last few months I heard rumours that you were sick, and I called you almost everyday to no avail. You must have thought I  was crazy or that "my brain was fried" as you fondly said one day; but i didn't have the patience to wait for a reply to an email or sms. I wanted to hear from you directlly.I hoped that the rumours were false and that you were abroad and your number was going through because you were roamimg. I finaly heard you were in the ICU and my heart broke. I found it hard to imagine you in a coma, but Alexis gave me hope. He told me you wee responding and I believed indeed that you were. Your passing is one of the hardest things I've had to deal with lately. It beats my imagination that you are gone for real. Truly I am in denial.
You were my Supervisor. You had more than 20 of us, but you probably knew more about each of our subjects than we did ourselves. We would write to you and receive replies to our emails even at 3 am. Thats how devoted you were. You didn't just teach us Research or Public Health or Ethics; you thought us good manners. You thought us to be polite, how to respect appointments and be on time. You didn't tolerate lateness even by 1 minute! You thought the boys to be gentlemen and respect ladies. You were very meticulous and you taught everyone of us to be that way.
I would recieve an email from you and be so scared to read it, so traumatiezed after reading it but be so enlightened after discussing with you. I chose a topic, didn't know what I  was getting into, but you saw right through it and made me see things so clearly. You saw potential in each and every one of us, even when we least believed in ourselves. You were always worried about our safety, especially when Alexis and I had to travel to and from Yaounde. You thought us life lessens and adviced us like your children. The name Atashili opened so many doors for us. What a MAN!!!! How can it be that you are no more??!
In times like this, I wonder why God will do a thing like this. But then I remember that He has the whole world in His hands. I believe you are in a better place and that He took you becase He loves you. You will for ever remain in our hearts. Your impact in our lives will for ever be remembered.
Rest In Peace Sir!!!

Saturday 24th November, yet another black day of devastating pain and sorrow. At a grey hour of a grey dusk, the news of your passing to the great beyond hit me. The blow was hard, and the shock severe. why did you have to make such a hasty exit big bro, what was the urgency?
The Bible says there is a time to live and a time to die, yet i refuse to accept that this was the right time for you to close the curtains. I say gone too soon big Bro, gone too soon. But what do i know? God works in mysterious ways, doesn't He? With time, we may come to understand why we had to be subjected to a tragedy of this magnitude.
Ndiwa Atah, you were absolutely one of a kind: humble, gentle, loving, respectful, hardworking, disciplined, very intelligent....the perfect example to emulate. How can the cold hands of death be so blind? what is life all about? I have lived in denial for days as i kept telling myself this was all just a terrifying nightmare i will wake up from, but the clock ticked on and on, and with every passing second...minute...hour...day....reality gradually kicked in, shattering my heart into a billion pieces.
Oh Ndiwa Atah, the gap your passing has created is not a void, vacuum nor soft area of low pressure to be filled. It is a hard-edged gap chiselled into our lives and completely ineradicable. A billion times we will miss you, a billion times we will cry. If love alone could save you big Bro, you would still be here with us. In life we loved you dearly, in dead we love you even more.

oh....our genius, our fallen hero!
The intellectual world will speak of your greatness, and the beam in the legacy you left behind will forever shine on.
God has you in his keeping, we have you in our hearts.
Fond memories of you will give us the strength we need to bear the loss.
So long Ndiwa Atah....Rest in peace sweet bro.

My first encounter with you was during our first few lecturres in history of medicine with Prof Peter NDUMBE of blessed memory during which you carried his bags and handouts to our then lecture room in U-block E of the University of Buea. Since then you continue to impact my life with your humility and devotion to service. You die at a time we need you most to help us in our protocol / thesis. 1 week before your death when I visited you in the ICU of Douala General hospital I asked myself several unaswered questions like why should intelligent people be in such a critical state?, why should such a sick stroke good people?, not knowing that the worse (death) was still to happen.  Your death leaves so many young people with unaccomplished dreams. You will forever remain in our hearts. we love you, but God loves you most. RIP Prof

Paul TOLEFAC
Final Year Medical Student

I signed in here thinking i could share my memories. But it seems i am still dreaming. i can't just say anything for now. I AM JUST SPEECHLESS. i monitored your ill health from start to finish, i moved with you from Hospital to Hospital. you will call my name not less than 25 times a day '' Philip, please give me this, give me that, i would do it happily. you said many things but the one thing you didn't even manifest was any possibility of you leaving us at this very young age. when the Doctor in charge  at the ICU at The Reference Hospital in Douala called me and invited me to her office to break this unprecedented news, i shivered but as a man i kept hold of myself, then i hurrily dashed out of her office to see things for myself. What really Marvels me is that the day before you parted us, you showed positive signs of recovery, you moved your fingers and opened your eyes when i spoke to you; Dr Awunjia Alexis is my withness; he was there always. i just was too overwheled that you were recovering and i sent the news to your mother, siblings and close colleagues of the Faculty; so the next day when things turned up-side-down, i didn't know how to send the sad news anymore.

I am still Marveled Big BRO. where are you really going to? Is there a Medical School outside this world? Do you have Siblings to take care of where you are going? How can you do this to us? GOD!!!! please take control

PHILIP

My first personal encounter with you was when we were asked to find supervisors for our thesis. You had accepted 20 students already as the maximum number for that batch. A number larger than any single lecturer has ever supervised from one class. Then I approached you along the corridors, asking to be one of your students. After a moment of silence, you accepted on condition that I was going to work hard.
We would send you emails at 2 am at night and get replies with corrections for every line by 2:30 am. We wondered until now when you actually rested because you will get to your office by 8 am the next morning. With you we soon realized that paying keen attention to fine details is what makes the difference. Your quest for perfection was seen in every bit of work which you did, despite the tremendous workload.
We would stand at the door of your office with our hearts pounding for many minutes wondering how to approach you with our work or assignments. You were ever so knowledgeable to master everyone’s research subject even in more detail than the principal investigators.  Every encounter with you as a supervisor left us with a story to tell amongst ourselves. Most times, we would leave your office in anger, resentment, disappointment and dissatisfaction after receiving hard and unsentimental corrections from you. I remember after correcting a single page document three times and brought to you, you still found a mistake. After doing these corrections, we always felt good and took pride in the result of the hard work which you hard pushed us to do.
Soon, after very proudly defending our MD thesis, you made us see another side of you: very friendly, loving, caring with an intelligent sense of humor :-) .
We were all very excited to invite you to our graduation ceremony and tell you a special thank you for sacrificing your time selflessly for us. Then we heard that Dr Atashili took ill and left the faculty on Friday. Countless times we visited your office looking for you, called your phone number and it will not go through and then FOR THE FIRST TIME I SENT YOU AN EMAIL AND I WAITED FOR THE REPLY UNTIL NOW…
When the news went round that you had been admitted in the intensive care unit in DGH and was unconscious, I was there in less than 1 hr. I visited you everyday, sometimes twice a day. We knew how critical your condition was but we were very prayerful and hoped that if the prognosis for survival was only 0.5 % then our teacher was going to be that 0.5 %. Not until all this happen, did we realize that we loved you this much and we were your family.
Standing by your sickbed on one of your last days at the ICU, tears rolled down from your eyes, then you held my hand with a firm grip…, I wish I could hear what you were struggling to say at that moment.   
We only realized how much we loved you when we started missing you. I would ask myself many times if we could ever pay you for the work which you did for us.
You may have left us, but be rest assured that your teachings will not depart form us.

The one thing that moves through me now is a silence, a quiet sadness, a longing for one more day for him, one more word from him, one more correction. We may not understand why he left this earth so soon, or why he left before we were ready to say good-bye, but little by little, we begin to remember not just that he died, but that he lived. And that his life gave us memories too beautiful to forget. Our hearts are broken, we are deeply very hurt during this sorrowful time but we think of him and pray for peace for his soul and comfort to his family.  Be blessed in spirit. We will miss you sir.
You rest only now, for when you were with us you worked tirelessly.
Adieu Prof...

Dr Atashilli, 
        The world is a stage. A place where one will do more harm to his or herself by refusing to believe the unbelievable and suspect that which must not be suspected. A place where people are angry to find roses with thorns instead of being happy to find thorns that have roses. A place where people are angry with the rains that they bring mud instead of being happy that they lay the dust. 
       Research happens to be part of this stage too. It is navigated by researchers with very diverse opinions. People who are keen to carryout as many experiments as possible just to confirm that 1+1=2. You were such a selfless person. You catalysed my interest in Public Health. Even when the variables didnt fit the equation, you could explain over and over again. For my shortlived period in FHS, I learnt a whole lot from you. 
        It's been a long time without you Sir but I will tell you all about it when I see you again. Rest well Sir....Rest well.. 

Dr Julius,
It's so sad, very sad because I could never ever imagine, that I would be writing a tribute to you so soon, you were an inspiration to me, to all your students. Where do I even start? What did you not do as a lecturer to push me forward?. I remember during the hunt for supervisors and research topics in our class, I was still trying to figure out what topic I would do and who I could go to, a classmate of mine met me in class and said "Dr Atashili is calling for you in his office" I silently wondered what on earth I could have done that would warrant me to be summoned to your office. When I got there, you said "Erica, everybody is looking for supervisors, and my list is almost full and I haven't seen your name on it " I was dumbfounded, never in history have I ever heard a supervisor look for a student!it's usually the other way round! All the same I was honoured to be supervised by a man filled with so much intelligence and selflessness. When writing my protocol I would send you emails at 1, 2 AM and 30minutes later I have a reply, and I used to always wonder "when does this man sleep"? I could go on and on.....it's hard to accept the fact that you are gone, you went so soon, but I want to think that you are in a better place, and God knows why. I pray we continue to keep your legacy,and make you proud of us, and that wherever you are, you would smile when you look down at us. ADIEU MY SUPERVISOR. 
ACHIDI ERICA.