282. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (FP: 1818; Penguin Classics, 215) was the last book I read in 2013. The story is about one man's unbridled passion to acquire knowledge forsaking all other aspects of life, ending in his doom. Is it bad to forsake all else in the quest for knowledge? Is this not a fantastic quest for man to embark on? According to Mary, a false balance is an abomination to the Lord [Proverbs 11:1a] and the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being [Socrates]. Or that is what she implies in this Gothic creation of man's attempt at playing god gone wrong.

In Frankenstein, Mary describes the woes of a young Frankenstein who left home and his family and friends for school and there sought to investigate further and farther into the subjects of science and of creation to the exclusion of everything including his health. It was his single-idea to create a human being; yet, not being perfect, he could not perfect his creation and so produced a horrendous creature he himself could not love. His inability to love his creation, had a deleterious psychological effects on the creature and he who was love and gentle became suddenly wicked and murderous. And since it was Frankenstein's fault to have created him, he sought vengeance against his creator.

Certainly Mary Shelley never believed that a person could ever be created even when Dr Darwin had at the time expressed its possibility

The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr Darwin and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according to the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy. [Preface]

Irrespective of this impossibility of creating life, Mary called for a clear distinction between the things that are necessary and into which we must investigate and the things which the ordinary course of life could provide, which we must leave to nature.

It develops, and however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield. [Preface] 

Mary Shelley suggested that taking on the world, learning things beyond its current relevance leads to pain. She seems to be asking the extent to which we must quest. This question has bothered some scientists and moralists. It is that which led some to demand ethical science and it is that which confronts advancements in cloning and stem cell research. How far should we go as a people in our quest. Should every issue that is subject to investigation be investigated? It is irrefutable that science has made some positive contributions to life as we know it now; but no one can ignore its huge negative consequences. One of which we still grapple with today - nuclear weapons. Most apocalypse movies have been based on this negative consequences or fall-outs from man's insatiable quest: to investigate and to create. Should man play God, whoever this god is? Should man have the ultimate power in his hands? Or would Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Fukushima, be reminders? Should we not express, fully, our potential for fear of becoming evil? But into whose hands would these unconstrained discoveries fall? For the outputs of science are like tools. Their use is determined by the user.

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow. [51]

The field of genetics might not have been a branch of biology even in Mary's time since it was not until 1869 that the DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher and not until 1953 that double-helix structure was discovered by James Watson and Francis Crick. Yet if Mary were alive she would know that though the giving of 'animation to the dead' might not have been discovered, the creation of life through the use of living cells has become our reality. That Dolly was created and that Frankenstein is a stark possibility. That not only are we able to create living beings from cells today, but that the barriers to scientific advancement - let's call it progress - is falling (perhaps because of the unbridled commercialisation of scientific research findings).

Mary advocates for moderation and balance. To her, a single-minded fixation on a thing that takes you from the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life, from the now, from your family and friends, should be avoided.

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, america would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed. [53]

This quest of moderation is, to some extent, the central idea in Rober Musil's The Confusions of Young Torless. However, this is opposite to what Alexander Pope proposed in his poem An Essay on Criticism (1709). At Line 215 to 232, Pope writes:

A Little learning is a dang'rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind:

But more advanc'd, behod with strage surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleas'd at first the towering Alps we try,

Mout o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,

Th' increasing prospects tire our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps rise!

Whether follow Pope or Shelley, what is clear is that both moderation and dedication are equally important, and more so if we are bent on doing good. What good is, is another matter. Or even if good always end in good. For instance, most scientific inventions begin with good intentions only to be appropriated towards devastating ends. Inversely, some outcomes of military scientific researches - directed purposely towards the creation of destructive accouterments - have been used by civilians for peaceful purposes.

In Frankenstein human wickedness was emphasised, in some way. The horrible creature revealed man's evilness, his will to kill to avenge a killing: that man despises and kills with a clean conscience (whilst shouting murderer). The execution of Justine Moritz - a servant of the Frankenstein household - was absolutely unnecessary and she, who was loved by all, overnight became the enemy of all. No one was bold enough to stand for her and all were eager to bear witness against her even when they knew aught. Thus Mary Shelley suggests that man has no capacity to be god and bestow upon his creation the nourishment of life. In effect, good cannot proceed from evil; or something from nothing.

Yet Mary provides no respite for mankind; she showed that even though it may lead to greater dire consequences, man's quest to do extreme things, to break new grounds is unquenchable. Frankenstein's quest to kill his creation failed and into the world he fled. And like the devil one can only say 'Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short [Rev 12:12b].

This is a book worth the read; yet, apart from the enjoyment of reading one can say that none of the message here will be adhered to, for we are past the stage of care and of caution. Today, scientific inquiry - good or bad - is the order of the day. What this portends, no one can tell. Yet, we can get glimpses of the numerous attempts at cloning, surgeries to look like this and that and the rapid advancement in the field of Genetic Engineering. If sci-fi movies provide glimpses of the future, one could say that man has fast-forwarded evolution. An interesting read, nonetheless.

281. Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune (Berkley Books, 1965; 537) by Frank Herbert is a great science fiction that merges religion with science so that the point where one ends and the other begins is lost. Though it is a science fiction, and there is a complete creation of planets, its ecology, language and more, it is not too rigour so as to disturb those with no affinity for that genre. The extent of Herbert's creation is comparable to J.R.R. Tolkien's creation of the Hobbit's tales - in most of his books especially the three-part Lord of the Rings. The story shows the development of a leader with absolute control over the people. Since this is just the first book of the trilogy, the eventual end of the leader is not known. In Dune the extent to which man will go to destroy nature just to serve his excessive luxury, even if it is at the expense of his fellow beings, was, if anything, emphasised. But it also shows the patience of man to build what he has destroyed, not at separate time periods; destruction and construction exist within the same space and time. Of course, they are antagonists.

Another idea that flows through Dune is man's zeal for a messiah, someone to lead them, to direct them, to force them, to mobilise them for a cause; someone they can worship. So that when they identify one whose abilities surpasses them they quickly make heroes and gods out of them.

Duke Leto Atreides and his concubine Lady Jessica and their son Paul Atreides, an aristocratic nuclear-controlled ruling family of Caladan, had been given an Imperial order to take over Arrakis from the Harkonnen family. They had travelled from Caladan  for such a purpose but the Harkonnens were not going to leave quietly. Though Arrakis is dry and harsh (Arrakeens wear special suits to harvest their perspiration, and any mositure they emit; the dry and taxing climate and the deserts are what gave its name Dune), it had spice - a mineral that is responsible for the luxurious lives on most of the planets. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen wanted directorship of the CHOAM (Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles - which controls intergalactic trade, mostly of spice), a position that would increase the wealth and worth of the Harkonnens among the Great Families. And he had the silent support of the Emperor who, for his own reasons, wanted the Atreides family out of the way.

Paul, on the other hand, had a lot of prophecies about his birth and his life. His mother was a carefully selected Bene Gesserit witch who, in the breeding programme of the Bene Gesserits, must give birth to a daughter who would marry Feyd-Rautha, nephew of Vladimir Harkonnen, and whose offsprings would likely have the Kwisatz Haderach. The Bene Gesserit tribe had been waiting for the one destined to raise the tribe back to its glory - the Kwisatz Haderach - and the leaders had been working towards this through careful breeding and selection but had achieved nothing after several generations. However, Lady Jessica unilaterally decided to have a son and so with all the training she had received she bore the Duke a son, Paul. All potential Kwisatz Haderachs had failed one test or another. Paul, before moving to Arrakis with his father, had passed the last test - the test of will over pain - and was being monitored for other traits the Kwisatz Haderach must have.

The appearance of Paul and his Bene Gesserit mother revived an old prophecy among the Fremens of Arrakis, a prophecy that the son of a Bene Gesserit witch, a Mahdi, would come from the outerworld to lead them from their current bondage and oppression under rulers of Arrakis to paradise. Though this prophecy was implanted by the Bene Gesserits many years ago to be taken advantage of by any one of them who would find herself among the Fremen, the people were staunch in their belief. Hearing that Paul is the son of the Bene Gesserit Jessica, whispers of the prophecy of the messiah soon began to spread among the Fremen communities, with people lining up to see him. The Fremen were a secret tribe whose true numbers and secrets were unknown even to the ruling Houses. They managed to keep the Harknonnens looking left whilst they acted on the right. Their true strength and their abilities were beyond imagination. For instance, they were the only ones who were able to ride the wild giant spice-producing sandworms indigenous to the Arrakis, worms huge enough to swallow mining ships and unafraid of shields, a nuclear protector.

The prophecies that told of the birth and life of Paul, or the people Paul became, also told of the death of Duke Leto Atreides. And nothing was done to prevent it when all decisions he took, upon arrival on Arrakis, opened him up to the enemy. When the prophecy was fulfilled, the traitor - with the little means available to him, for he was himself tricked and manipulated before he was transformed into a traitor - set out to save Paul and his mother Jessica. Paul and Jessica fled into the deepest Fremen communities, which was unknown to the rulers. 

Paul with his fast-growing intelligence, perception, strength and preternatural senses, was considered to be Lisan al-Gaib 'the Voice from the Outerworld'. Paul could see the several paths to the future, the several threads that join, conjoin, separate, that made up the future. His abilities freaked him; they were beyond his conceptualisation. As a man-child, Paul had as many names as there were expectations: to the Bene Gesserit, he was the Kwisatz Haderach; as heir to this father's position, he was Duke Paul Atreides; among the Fremen he was the Lisan al-Gaib (the Voice from the Outerworld), the Mahdi - the prophet to lead them to paradise, Usul - the base pillar among the Fremen of Stilgar's sietch (the Sietch Tabr). He was Paul to her mother, Jessica; and to everyone of the Fremen, when he was in exile, he chose to be called Muad'Dib - the pop-hopping mouse. Thus Paul, in essence, was both a physical and spiritual essence. Before becoming the Prophet, the prophecy talked of a rite that he would pass: drinking the water of the sandworms, a poison that killed instantaneously. Jessica was to drink of it if she were to become the Reverend Mother of the Fremen. With her Bene Gesserit training she was able to change the chemical structure of the 'Water of Life, the water that is greater than water - Kan, the water that frees the soul', the water that 'opens the universe' to a Reverend Mother, into a non-lethal drink. But Jessica was pregnant at the time of her transformation, the transfer of power from the dying Reverend Mother to her, and this would bestow extraordinary powers on the foetus and the resulting daughter, Alia, would be feared amongst all the people both young and old and some would agitate that she be killed. For her manners and way of speech were those of an adult even at age three. Paul, having not undergone that training, was more susceptible but then again he was a freak and so he passed, after days of absolute unconsciousness.

Paul sees in the many futures the tendency of the people to embark on a jihad in his name. He sees a crowd of people with flags and weapons killing in the name of their prophet. This he sought to avoid by making different choices that would lead to futures. His abilities and charisma saw him, in the end, merge seamlessly into a religious and a political leader. To realise his aim and inherit his father and avenge his death and release the Fremen from their bondage, Paul organised a military attack against the House of Harkonnen and the Sardaukar troops of the Padishah Emperor. The Emperor, Shaddam IV, had helped the Harkonnens to defeat the House of Atreides, quietly. Using his sandworm-riding Fremen army further trained in the art of war taught him by the masters, Paul and the Fremen attacked and totally defeated the Harkonnen army and their fanatic Sardaukar troops.

This is a magnificent book. The best science fiction novel I have read, not that I have read many. However, Hebert's creation was so believable that one would have wished to be in that period of time, witnessing or participating in the rapid changes on Arrakis and on the other planets. It was also a period of chaos and creation. This novel had received much praises and there is no need to say it is recommended. I end with this question: will intergalactic travel ever become a trivial matter?

278. A Cowrie of Hope by Binwell Sinyangwe

Binwell Sinyangwe's A Cowrie of Hope (Heinemann AWS, 2000; 152) is the first novel by a Zambian I have read. The whole of their literary landscape is closed to me and with the exception of a few short stories in anthologies and Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid, it is one of the countries whose writing still remains hidden to me. 

A Cowrie of Hope is set in the early nineties, a period that was, across the continent, marked by economic reforms and structural adjustments; changes in government or democratisation; and the discovery and spread of the HIV/AIDS disease. To these add, and as part of the setting, drought. Thus, these were the nineties became the singular refrain in this novel, an indication of the importance of such a decade. It is the turning point in the politico-economic structure of most African countries with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) adding as a condition, political and economic reforms, to aid. As an aside: it is important to note how sometimes fiction and non-fiction could merge seamlessly, as Dambisa's treatise provides the account on aid and its eventual consequences.

It is in this period that Nasula, widowed and her husband's family having captured his property after refusing to marry his younger brother, had to find the means to see her daughter, Sula, through school. Wobbling on the edge of poverty, either she fell into starvation and death or abandoned her single-mindedness of schooling her daughter - an idea that had almost become a disease, she did not dither but chose the former.

The story is about Nasula's travel to Lusaka to sell her remaining bag of beans to raise the necessary funds to sponsor Sula, who had been admitted to a prestigious secondary school. Yet, life in Lusaka could best be described as the survival of the fittest. The economic hardship had sharpened people's survival instinct, with others succumbing to their treachery instinct. And into the hands of one of these, Gode Silavwe, Nasula fell and was rid off her priced possession without any payment made. Lost and lonely, she promised herself never to return to her village until she had retrieved her money from the famous trickster. 

This story that highlights a part of my life like no other. I called my mother and thanked her for the umpteenth time after reading this book. For in Nasula I saw her. All through the story we are confronted with a mother's love, that primordial instinct that many would attest to. Sometimes it is almost like an incurable affliction. 

However, in Sinyangwe's effort to describe the state of the protagonist's desolation, he fell into the trap of repetitiveness and unlike the situations where the back-and-forth lead to an unveiling of secrets and the telling of the story, in this situation they were mere rephrasing. For instance compare these paragraphs:

But misfortune had not caged the woman's soul. Poverty, suffering and never having stepped into a classroom had not smoked her spirit and vision out of existence. Her humanity continued to be that which she had been born with, one replete with affection and determination. It was this which fanned her desire to fight for the welfare of her daughter. Her soul had eyes that saw far and a fire that burned deep. She understood the importance of education and wanted her daughter to go far with her schooling. She understood the unfairness of the life of a woman and craved for emancipation, freedom and independence in the life of her daughter. Emancipation, freedom and independence from men. [Paragraph I, Page 5]

Nasula was poor, illiterate and clothed in suffering, but she was an enlightened woman possessed with a sense of achievement. She had not tasted success in her own life, but she wanted her daughter to achieve much. She wanted her daughter to reach mountain peaks with her schooling and from there carve a decent living that would make it possible for her not to depend on a man for her existence. [Paragraph II, Page 5]

Ideas could build on each other, like an inverted pyramid; however, when they say the same thing but with different constructions, it encourages the reader to skim or skip entire pages. Also consider this

The first time Nasula was told about how other children teased her daughter and how her daughter ignored them and held her head high, the story so touched her that when those who had relayed the story had gone and she was alone, she broke and wept. She was moved to tears because Sula herself never mentioned this ordeal. [Paragraph II, Page 74]

And paragraphs III & IV of page 74:

All along, Nasula had feared her daughter might be laughed at, given the child's awkward clothes and possessions. The possibility haunted her and made her wonder how she would pacify and comfort the little one. But she had deceived herself. She thought that when something of this nature occurred, she would either hear about it from her daughter's mouth or see it on her daughter's face.

But what she feared had already occurred and done so without her hearing a thing from Sula or noticing anything herself. She had remained in the dark until she had been told by other people.

There were also some incongruities in some of Binwell's statements. The setting was one of drought famine, diseases - the appearance of the 'slimming disease' (or AIDS) and the devastation it was causing, the economic reforms (elimination of free education; the privatisation of farmer loans to ensure repayment) and the change in government. These had taxed heavily on the people to the point of death and abject desolation. The concomitant survival strategy was one of thievery, trickery, and treachery. The consequential paucity of food resulting from these could therefore be linearly deduced from the preceding events. However, even though the nineties was 'The years of rule of money. The years of havelessness, bad rains and the new disease. The harsh years of madness and evil' [122], it had become .... years of no money but plenty to sell. The nineties were years of sale, not purchase [78].

Regardless of these issues and the coincidences which always beset events whose ends are already determined, the language in this book is poetic. It is sweet and demands reading and immersion even in the desolation of the period described. Binwell in this book showed that being a single parent was not a death sentence; he restated the path to women emancipation: education and information. Thus, when Nasula was forced to marry her husband's younger brother, because customs demanded it or forfeit any care or property of her husband, she stood her grounds and refused it outright knowing the kind of person this would-be husband was and having heard that the new disease could be contracted through promiscuity and unprotected sex. She also saw that her lack of education contributed to her predicament and the only way to prevent her daughter from becoming like her was to educate her irrespective of the demands or commitments this would make on her.

In A Cowrie of Hope therefore, Binwell established the tone for what would become the clarion call in the new millennium in Africa: education of the girl-child; democratic governance; and women emancipation and rights. These are the attributes of this book. Besides, the ending - though predictable - was fulfilling for who would not want to see Nasula succeed in her quest to educate her daughter especially after having gone through those difficult moments at the hands of the serial and fearful robber Gode Silavwe and his clique of policemen?

____________________

About the Author: Binwell Sinyangwe was born in Zambia in 1956. He studied Industrial Economics at the Academy of Economic Sciences in Bucharest, Romania, where he was awarded M.Sc. in 1983. His first novel, Quills of Desire, was published by Baobab Books in Zimbabwe in 1993. It was also published by Heinemann in 1996. The story Wild Coins was published in an anthology of stories by Zambian writers. Sinyangwe has also had a number of articles and poems published in Zambian newspapers and magazines.

273. A Bit of Difference by Sefi Atta*

As I pointed out in an earlier post, the discourse or specifically the debate in African literature currently is about the poverty-porn (death, more death, disease, hunger, war, famine, and anything with shock-value) and Afropolitanism. This debate came about when it became obvious that the only stories by Africans that gain headlines and about which all the buzz is made are those that deal with the former. Most often the quality of the prose is sacrificed for the macabre theme, sidelining authors who write differently. However, irrespective of which side of the debate you stand, the fact that "Africa now has the fastest-growing middle class in the world [with] some 313 million people, 34 percent of Africa's population, spending USD 2.2 a day, a 100 percent rise in less than 20 years" [The Network for Doing Business] means that one story cannot represent all the complexities and contradictions the continent poses, like the abject poor and the super-rich occupying the same space and time. Consequently, there are others on the continent whose lives are antithetical to the stories churned out by their country men and women. They are unable to relate to these stories which have come to represent the continent. Hence, the need for variety. 

It is this necessity for variety, for a different narrative - not to replace the nailed-down narrative, which would be written out of usefulness, but to add on and enrich literature coming out of Africa - that makes Sefi Atta's latest novel A Bit of Difference (AAA Press, 2013; 221) such an important novel. With her control over language, her beautiful prose, the author dissects the lives of middle upper class families, exposing their apprehensions, inadequacies and achievements; she writes of their ordinary everyday lives in a way that shows the complexities in life. 

The story is about a well-educated Deola, a lady who lives and work in London. At thirty plus, she is not married and her mother is getting worried, requesting that she come home to Nigeria, just like her siblings have done. However, Deola having lived in the UK for some time likes the kind of quietness and independence it offers, unlike Nigeria where personal problems are communal, where every elderly person has a reserved right to advise you on how to run your life and where you are not allowed to retort to such statements and questions of advice no matter what you feel about them.

Sefi's story shows that ethereal change that is sweeping over the lives of many Africans resulting in a kind of unconscious selective cultural osmosis: the middle class leaving behind certain traditional trappings whilst hanging on to others with all the strength that could be mustered. These changes are taking place both in Nigerians at home and those abroad. She shows the difference in opinions and values between the western-educated middle class and its Nigerian-educated counterparts; in most situations, like the quest to be independent, the difference subtle almost nonexistent, in others like the zeal for progress they are marked. Families are now difficult to categorise: they are European in certain lifestyles and very traditional in others. For instance, though weddings could be taken out of from the pages of an English magazine, it would not be considered complete until the traditional parts are added; married couple could maintain a nuclear family, but cannot live in isolation of families and friends. A Bit of Difference also points out the changing gender roles, so no more are women docile and described as if all they have is their sex. Here we meet men who keep families and women who travel around the world and who do not allow the lives of their husbands to oppress them. Here we meet the usual sexual escapades that adolescents and even married folks indulge in. The Africans in this story are either ambivalent about church or are very religious. They are not dumb, sitting somewhere and waiting for help to come from abroad. They are very well educated, after all data shows that Nigerians are the most educated group in the US.

Generally, Sefi wrote about life - the natural flow of life: love, sex, child-bearing, fear, religion, and more. Most stories from the continent make it seem as if the African could not have sex nor be sexually daring and independent. In this story just like in the real world you will meet educated ladies who become pregnant without marriage, who make their own decisions; you will meet gay Nigerian men who are hiding their little secret from their families. Still you will meet families who demand of their daughters marriage and children, and who believe that it is normal for a man to have extra-marital affairs; ladies with sugar daddies or men with area mummies. You will meet the unstable homes arising from cheating spouses, and ladies who do not mind being mistresses to rich politicians. In effect, you will meet real characters taken from life, not phonies trying to live in novels. Sefi captures all of life's dissonances, the contradictions of living, the imperfections, the everyday fears and struggles.

This story breathes, it lives, it has nerves. Sefi's keen sense of observation brings everything to life. The characters are such filled with life that one could just close his eyes and picture each and every one of them in detail. Even in the end, when it seems there is going to be a 'happy ever after' type of ending, Sefi threw in a tiny spanner (the toilet seat incident), providing us with a glimpse into how the Deola-Wale relationship will likely look like.

Another theme in the story, but which actually is a consequence of the whole story, is Sefi's indirect take on African fiction. This book seems to teach new (and possibly old) writers other ways to write, not necessarily about Africa but writing in general. Bandele, discussing African literature with Deola after he had entered a literary competition, described those trite stories that keep on winning awards as 'postcolonial crap'.

"Oh, who cares? Coetzee's a finer writer than that dipstick can ever hope to be. What does he know? He writes the same postcolonial crap the rest of them write, and not very well, I might add."

Deola laughs. "Isn't our entire existence as Africans postcolonial?"

"They should give it a rest, the whole lot of them. African should be called the Sob Continent the way they carry on. It's all gloom and doom from them, and the women are worse, all that false angst. Honestly, and if I hear another poet in a headwrap bragging about the size of her ample bottom or likening her skin to the color of a nighttime beverage, I don't know what I will do." [34]

And when Bandele lost out on the prize to this writer whose story checked correctly all the requirements of an African story set out by the establishment, he blurted out:

'Original, ay? I wonder whose bright idea that was. I still can't get over it, but I suppose this is what they want. I suppose this is what they're looking for these days, from those of us of a certain persuasion. The more death, the better. It is like literary genocide. Kill off all your African characters and you're home and dry. They certainly don't want to hear from the likes of me, writing about trivialities like love.' [140]

With this story Sefi shows that Africa and Africans are not always eking out their lives in extreme poverty; that there are trivialities like love; that our happiness is more than mere romanticism of our past and our bushes; that we are more than what we are in books. And even if this novel, like Bandele's, win nothing, its importance would not be judged by it but by how much it achieves within its just over 200 pages. This book is truly refreshing. My only problem is with the publishers; the font size was small.
_____________________
About the Author: Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was educated there, in England and United States. A former chartered accountant and CPA, she is a graduate of creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review and Mississippi Review and have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. She is the winner of PEN International's 2004/05 David TK Wong Prize and in 2006, her debut novel Everything Good will Come was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Her short story collection, Lawless, received the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Lawless is published in the UK and US as News from Home.

She lives in Mississippi with her husband Gboyega Ransome-Kuti, a medical doctor, and their daughter, Temi. [Source]

*I have scheduled this to be published on Christmas Day, it is therefore appropriate to wish all readers of ImageNationsMerry Christmas. Thank you for reading and for your encouragement; your presence, your comments, your suggestions, have all been helpful. 

272. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma

Waiting for the Wild Beast to Vote (Vintage, 2003; 445) is a quintessential Ahmadou Kourouma. Like the previous book, Allah is not Obliged, it is about political failures on the African continent. Like Wizard of the Crow, it mixes voodoo and African mysticism with politics to satirically tell the story of the evolution of dictatorship and its subsequent metamorphoses into questionable democracies, on the continent of Africa.

The story traces how Koyaga developed from a pro-French soldier to become the president and dictator of Republique du Golfe, through a series of prophecies, coups and counter-coups. Fricassa Santos became the president of Republic du Golfe, after independence following an election whose supervision by the United Nations and with Fricassa's own sorcery prevented the French from rigging it to suit their preferred candidate, J.-L Crunet, who had been the country's Prime Minister for the last ten years of colonial rule. Having assumed power, Fricassa's voodoo men had informed him that he should be fearful of one of the members of the Naked People of the Mountain, for he would be the one to overthrow him. Consequently, Fricassa further fortified himself with voodoo, thick walls, and a phalanx of commandos. So when Koyaga, a former pro-French soldier, son of Tchao - the first man to fight for the French, to wear clothes, and to lead his people against French invasion when they attempted to capture and bring the people of the mountain under French colonial rule - and Nadjouma - a woman of such physical powers that no one could face her and in whom even the famous and extraordinarily strong Tchao met his match - after years of service demanded his pension which the French government had paid into the country's coffers, Fricassa decided not to pay and also not to integrate Koyaga and his men into the country's army. According to Koyaga, such pro-French forces, stooges of the colonialist, who fought against the Nationalists freedom fighters in all the French colonies do not deserve to serve in the country's army. But the real reason of his decision was the prophecy.

However, as the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers shows, preventing and suppressing a prophecy is the fastest route to its fulfilment. Koyaga, who was oblivious of the existence of any prophecy - though there was one about him which professed great tidings for him and his people, decided to use force to obtain what was due them from the government. Steeped in the voodoo of his mother and Bokano - a Muslim spiritualist and a marabout, Koyaga's mission suddenly morphed into a plan to takeover the country, of which he succeeded. However, there were four of them who could become leaders: Koyaga; the former Prime Minister, J.-L. Crunet; Bodjo (later Ledjo); and Tima. 

Bodjo (or Ledjo) was a disappointed priest who ran into exile when on the eve of his investiture he was virtually killed by a man who accused him of sleeping with his wife. In exile he fought for the French in almost all their colonies: Madagascar, Morocco, Vietnam, Algeria.

Everywhere he proved himself a formidable leader and a pitiless foe of colonised people struggling to be free. During his travels, he acquired the prestigious rank of Warrant Officer Second Class and the conviction that, in life, only treachery and deception triumph and that they always pay. This credo informed his conduct and, on his return to his country, he played the game of intrigue.

However, even though Ledjo fought against the nationalists he was a quasi-nationalist who believed in certain nationalist ideologies as the non-eternalness of white supremacy and also that the black man was not inherently evil. This ability to believe one thing and do another emphasised his cunningness and his ability to fluidly change beliefs. These socialist tendencies, in a time of the Cold War, lost him the presidency. The power-sharing agreement that followed made him the president of the National Security Committee; ironically, the committee became more powerful than the government and the National Assembly. 

Tima who was openly a communist and an anti-colonialist and had studied under the tutelage of a homosexual patron in France became the president of the National Assembly. To J.-L Crunet, a mulatto who was "unhappy not to be white, but happy not to be black" [116], was given the position of head of government. And Koyaga became the Minister of Defence. Crunet and Koyaga became the liberal conservatives, influenced by the West (during the Cold War) and Ledjo and Tima became the nationalists and progressives (influenced by the East).

However, because "if you pull off a big robbery with someone, you will never truly enjoy the spoils until the other person is dead [Allah is not Obliged, 95], there were counter coups and insurrections, which resulted in the deaths of the three and the elevation of Koyaga into the presidency. Having achieved this, he sought to visit his peers to learn from them the trade of becoming a president in Africa. 

As a quintessential Ahmadou novel, there is a large dose of political history of Africa in the story. In fact, it could easily be described as a historical novel, if not for its surrealism. What he wrote about some of the leaders, beginning from their childhood and their route to the presidency, made it easy to identify them; they are information that Wikipedia easily provides. Through Koyaga's visits to these leaders, Ahmadou describes how leadership worked in that given period in Africa and the type of people who sought it. He also described how leadership was taken away from the people who fought for independence and given to the colonialists' stooges, who continued with the colonialists' policies of oppression and therefore changed nothing in the country. He adds that, like a con artist, these new leaders put on charades to present themselves to the world as leaders who were ready to represent their people; leaders who had denounced communism. Gradually, when they had obtained the peoples' acceptance, and an absolute hold on power, they moved on to call themselves father of the nation, his excellency, and such, turning their countries into one-party states, themselves the only rulers. Ahmadou labelled almost every leader on the continent, directly or indirectly, whose political party was the only one and who had ruled for some time, a dictator. With this generalisation, Kwame Nkrumah and others became dictators. 

According to Kourouma a people are defeated only if they allow themselves to be defeated regardless of the opposition. Thus, Africans complicit in their own colonisation were also complicit in their subjugation by these leaders.

In all these, Ahmadou discussed the role of the colonialists in creating these monstrous leaders; more importantly he pointed to the consequential effect of Cold War policies on African leadership. So that leaders with socialist beliefs, or presumed to be socialists because of what they might have said, but of great capabilities were denounced and killed to be replaced by anti-communists of doubtful capabilities and insatiable lust for power. Yet ideologies are useless if they are strategised to benefit a few individuals under the pretext of helping the people - the masses. It is useless if it does not address the people's needs, for an ideology is nothing but a tool to shape lives, behaviours, thoughts and their outcomes (or effects). The intellectuals who should have remained true to their training, in an attempt to gain positions and enjoy the perks of power, rushed to legitimise the positions of these new leaders in histories, poems and with their words. Though political allegiances and ideologies shift, the motive for the quest of power does not shift; thus, an anti-colonialist's (or a nationalist's) motive is usually not different from a colonialist's (a stooge of the colonialists): one to enrich himself and his bosses, the other himself and his bosses. The end of both situations is the suffering of the masses.

Like Allah is not Obliged, this novel has received glowing reviews. It was described by the Spectator as 'a witty and wholly authentic chronicle of black African atrocity...spellbinding' and the Guardian as 'a thoroughgoing indictment of African way of leadership'. How dictatorship is a black African atrocity is difficult to understand, as if there has never been such type of leadership anywhere in the world, as if these dictators just appeared from nowhere. There is no African way of leadership. There is good leadership and bad leadership. Strangely, what these reviewers at the Guardian and Spectator forgot to add was the fingerprints of the West on all the dictators mentioned in this story. They suddenly suffered amnesia on those part of the story that showed that Emperor Bossouma of Pays du Deux Fleuves (Jean-Bedel Bokassa, later Emperor Bokassa, of the Central African Republic), the man whose totem was the leopard of République du Grand Fleuve (Mobutu Sese Seko of Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire), and the dictator whose totem is the caiman of République du Ébenes (Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire), all three fingered in the story, were supported and maintained massively by the imperialists in their East-West dichotomous game. In fact, these leaders chose their allegiances carefully and brutally declared their anti-communist stand during the Cold War, staunching the flow of Communism into Africa with all their might.

Democracies will only help people who are anti-communist. Even if the Cold War, the struggle between communists and the West, is just a friendly scuffle between white men, between the rich, we have to get involved. We Africans get involved so we can reap the fruits of victory! [286-7]

The relationship between these leaders and their Western counterparts, and the stance of the latter during the Cold War was highlighted throughout in the text. In fact, it is common knowledge how undemocratic the relationship between the West and Africa was at the time. It was clear that had the Devil declared himself anti-communist, these leaders would have found a way to work with him, as they did the world over. According to Wikipedia

In 1975, the French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing declared himself a 'friend and family member' of Bokassa. By that time France supplied its former colony's regime with financial and military backing. In exchange, Boskassa frequently took d'Estaing on hunting trips in Central Africa and supplied France with uranium, which was vital for France's nuclear energy and weapons program in the Cold War era.

The 'friendly and fraternal' cooperation with France - according to Bokassa's own terms - reached its peak with the imperial coronation ceremony of Bokassa I on 4 December 1977. The French Defence Minister sent a battalion to secure the ceremony; he also lent 17 aircraft to the new Central African Empire's government, and assigned French Navy personnel to support the orchestra. The coronation ceremony lasted two days and cost 10 million GBP [Great Britain Pounds], more than the annual budget of the Central African Republic. The ceremony was organized by the French artist Jean-Pierre Dupont. Parisian jeweller Claude Bertrand made his crown, which included diamonds. Bokassa sat on a two-ton throne modeled in the shape of a large eagle made form solid gold.

Of Mobutu Sese Seko, it says 

Installed and supported in office primarily by Belgium and the United States, he formed an authoritarian regime, amassed vast personal wealth, and attempted to purge the country of all colonial cultural influence while enjoying considerable support by the United States due to his anti-communist stance. ... 

During the First Republic era, France tended to side with the conservative and federalist forces as opposed to unitarists such as Lumumba. ... During the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, relations with the two countries gradually grew stronger and closer. In 1971, then Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing paid a visit to Zaire; later becoming President, he would develop close personal relationship with President Mobutu, and became one of the regime's closest foreign allies. During the Shaba invasions, France sided firmly with Mobutu: during the first Shaba invasion, France airlifted 1,500 Moroccan troops to Zaire, and the rebels were repulsed; a year later, during the second Shaba invasion, France itself would send French Foreign Legion paratroopers to aid Mobutu (along with Belgium).

Additionally, Kourouma narrated the long history of the DR Congo, from the role of King Leopold II and his use of mercenaries in running a country that was his personal property. Again, these narratives are not different from what is available in public domain. Again, quoting Wikipedia

Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price in rubber in the 1890s, by forcing the population to collect sap from rubber plants. Villages were required to meet quotas on rubber collections, and individuals' hands were cut off if they did not meet the requirements. His regime was responsible for the death of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese. This became one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced to relinquish control of it to the Belgian government.

Consequently, the  idea to describe this evil repelled by the people, and supported and maintained by the West, as 'authentic African leadership...' is borne out of a prejudiced and warped mind bent on misinforming and putting the continent in that light. One could understand if this is meant as a marketing tool, for the publishers, to get as many Westerners, who turn to Africa to satisfy their love for the macabre and who think that is all the continent is good for, as possible to purchase it. But this goes beyond that. This is a deliberate attempt by those reviewers to skew the story to suit the West's construct of Africa. If anything at all, this is an authentic chronicle of Western influence in African politics and the effects of that acrimonious and sulphuric Cold War on governance in Africa.

The end of the Cold War marked the end of the usefulness of these dictators. Overnight, they became excess baggage that needed to be disposed off to save the sinking ship. They lost their appeal and their wickedness and lies - using communism as an excuse to crushing insurrections in their countries - were no longer countenanced. The new stories were reforms and democracy. However, as experienced politicians these leaders were able to transform themselves into the new governance system which became a condition for economic aid. And this is what happened to Koyaga, whose celebration of his thirtieth anniversary in power used up the entire resources of the country leading to protests and widespread violent demonstrations. When he shouted communism, he was told it had already been defeated, it no longer existed. He must reform if he were to receive any assistance. He must allow political parties to be formed and must go for elections, which he did in a spectacular manner, thus becoming the first democratic president of the country.

The narrative structure is somewhat complex. The story was narrated by Bingo, a griot, with interjections by Tiécoura, his assistant and Koyaga - the President, and his aide, Maclédio. But it was written down by a different person who occasionally appeared but largely remained anonymous, writing the story directly as Bingo reported, making it seem as if it is Bingo writing his story.

However, this story could have been half its size and would still have told all that it told. The extra stories were too long. It was almost as if Kourouma was writing the complete history of every figure or character in the story, even when it does not add to the story. This made some parts seem unnecessary and repetitive. For instance, excluding the entire lateral story of Maclédio and how he became Koyaga's right-hand man would have benefitted the story.

Furthermore, Ahamadou's penchant of intruding into his novels with his own understanding and point of views, though minimal in this story, was present. This always takes away from the novel. His personal influence could easily be distinguished from the characters'. It lacks that fluidity with which an author merges his desires with that of his characters so that the reader sees only the characters and not the author. However, his use of hyperbole in this story is accepted as griots are allowed to tell their stories in their own fashion.

On the side, it has been suggested elsewhere that the parodied the late Togolese Gnassingbé Eyadéma. For those who want a scathing read on African leadership during the Cold War read this book. However, if you want the same thing with much more bite read Wizard of the Crow.

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Click to read about Ahmadou Kourouma

271. Allah is not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma

African literature now has two unnecessary camps - Afropolitanism and Poverty Porn - and the discourse has been on which of the two represents the continent, sort of. But does it matter? Can one narrative represents the second largest and the second most populous continent of a whopping 1.033 billion grouped into "54 recognized sovereign states and countries, 9 territories and 2 de facto independent states with very little recognition"? [World Population Review, 2013]. That one theme cannot represent the continent is perhaps known by both 'camps'. So what incited this discourse? (By the way, there are several others who do not believe in either of the two and whose writings are not influenced by them.)

African writers who wrote in a particular style about wars, poverty, deaths, hunger, and such depravities have often been singled out for awards, even when the quality of their prose does not support the award adequately. It became (and is) the magic formula to fame and awards for the African writer who wants to see a meteoric rise in his fortunes. These writers have been accused of telling stories to suit the West's construct of Africa in order to get published, win awards, and become famous. Jose Eduardo Agualusa in his book The Book of Chameleons, described someone as having 'built up his whole career abroad, selling our national horrors to European readers. Misery does ever so well in wealthy countries.' (Pg 68 ).

Sometimes these accusations may seem justified; sometimes they may not. Most often they are debatable: the continent has had its fair share of difficulties and one cannot easily discount the diseases, deaths, poverty, and wars which it has come to represent. In fact, the continent has become synonymous with these. However, no group is happy to keep this narrative up than Africans themselves, especially the few privileged ones. They play this up so that any comparison with (to) themselves will weigh in their favour. They become our spokesmen and women, our representatives - the physical embodiment of what we could become should the continent be aided.

However, in no other book does the macabre and the praise converge than in Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah is not Obliged (Vintage, 2007 (FP: 2000); 215). Described as 'a work of luminous humanity' by the Financial Times with the author himself described as 'one of Africa's pre-eminent novelists' by the Guardian, Allah is not Obliged is a book that tell the story of a young boy of ten who, in embarking on a search for his auntie in Liberia following the death of his cripple mother, gets caught-up in a tribal war of historical proportions; civil wars that would see him trek between two countries - Liberia and Sierra Leone. The recent conviction of Charles Taylor, a Liberian War Lord and a major player in both wars, for war crimes in Sierra Leone shows the enormity and savagery of these wars.

According to Birahima - the narrator and an ex-street child,

The full, final and completely complete title of my bullshit story is: Allah is not obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth.

Thus, it is this unfairness combined with human stupidity and depravity that Ahmahou explored when he uncovered one of the large and deeper wounds that festered and nearly crippled the western part of the continent. The Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars were bitterly fought and because of the complexity of the factors that led to the war, it was just too difficult to disentangle. Together with his relative Yacouba, a confident trickster who would ply his trade as a jujuman to several mini warlords, Birahima would move from camp to camp, village to village and country to country in a war that would cruelly murder the leftovers of his innocence with their unwarranted massacres.

The war motif gives this book all the characteristics of what an African novel has come to be known and perceived. From a priest turned rebel to dead bodies being fed to dogs, Allah is not Obliged has it all, and more. Captain Papa le bon was trained as a priest in the United States. His ordination was to take place in Liberia; however, when all was set, war broke. He stayed in Liberia and became a soldier-cum-priest seeing to the spiritual and physical needs of the people under him and the emotional needs of the women. As a priest, Captain Papa le bon preached and exorcised spirits; as the alpha-male he slept incessantly with people's - including his soldiers' - wives. As a rebel leader, he trained and used child soldiers; took bribes from traders before allowing them to trade in stolen goods; killed whomever he wanted; and represented Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) in the Eastern part of Liberia. How much more classic than this get? Captain Papa le bon, in addition to carrying a Bible and Qu'ran in his hands, covered himself in magic talismans with Kalashnikovs hanging across his shoulders.

Though the narrative is at times sarcastic with its matter-of-fact tone exposing the stupidity of adult behaviour in such periods of war (when they are overrun by their animalistic passions instead of their brains), the praises this book received had nothing to do with the prose; it has everything to do with the content. One could see an attempt at filling every page with the macabre. For instance, the stories Ahmadou told before the war and those set in non-warring countries were themselves gruesome. This is the story of Sarah prior to the war and her path to becoming a child soldier: Sarah's mother was knocked down by a drunk driver. Her father who was a sailor did not know what to do with her so he sent her to live with his sister. Sarah's auntie physically abused her for the slightest offence. She was beaten and starved when she could not account for the fruits a gang of boys stole from her; when it happened the second time, Sarah stayed away from home and became a street child. On the street, she was raped and left for dead. She was hospitalised and upon her discharge ended up in an orphanage. The orphanage was attacked at the onset of the war, all the nuns were either murdered or raped, and Sarah ended up becoming a prostitute and from there graduated to a child soldier. Or rather, like almost all the child soldiers whose stories Birahima told, asked to be a child soldier. The stories of the other child soldiers were not any different, filled with rape and death. Even in Togobala in Cote d'Ivoire, Birahima's story was macabre and bloody. He described how his mother's leg was going to be cut and given to dogs. And there were a lot of dogs doing the munching in this novel. The men in Togobaland, like Yacouba, Sekou, and their friends, were crooks and thieves who swindled people out of their wealth. There is enough gruesomeness to make the skin grow carbuncular goosebumps.

The characters are one dimensional, that is if one can refer to them even as characters. They pass through the narrative like ghosts, leaving no impression. They were emotionless, unfeeling, like zombies, like automatons, like they are portrayed in African war movies. The only emotion they exude is an unquenchable urge to kill. He describes both the people and the countries as 'fucked up'. Every president in the story was a dictator, from Houphouet-Boigny to Qaddafi and those in between.

There are some inconsistencies which make the story come across as a sort of childhood braggadocio, especially since Birahima had once been a street guy who loved the thrills. Captain Papa le Bon was described as someone who went everywhere without his Kalashs; he carried them with him in his sleep and when he was having sex. However, in another breath, Ahmadou says Captain Papa le bon took his Kalash every morning and before going on his rounds. This may not be much since Birahima was just ten year old. However, it counts for something when it is compared to the other things Birahima talked about.

For instance, the kind of historical information provided at some places was not things a ten-year old illiterate could conceive. Birahima knew almost every date, place, and detailed occurrences that took place at the war fronts and in the conferences and meetings organised in hotels away from the countries during the two civil wars. He knew the histories of both wars like they were his mother's hut.

The second round of negotiations in Abidjan opened on 29 and 30 July 1997, back on the twenty-third floor of the Hotel Ivoire. ... Surprise! The Junta's new proposals are completely in opposition to the points established in the first round of talks on July 17. Now the Junta wants to suspend the constitution and stay in power until 2001. ... 

And it was not as if Birahima was a War Lord with a stake in the war or that he participated in those meetings and historical moments he described with such vividness. He was just a boy looking for his auntie who in the end turned out dead (with all the deaths going on, everybody could predict this).

Ahmadou most often forgot that he was telling a story through the eyes of a child. He could be virtually seen jumping in to vent his personalised anger, emotions, and perceptions about the war to the reader through his narrator. Thus, one is unsure if this is an essay or story; a treatise or thesis. Birahima mixes facts with fantasy and complete falsehood making it difficult for the reader to trust him, He makes his personal beliefs the facts and his facts history. The story, in this way, loses its status as a story. It becomes something else. A child narrator should be believable or at least should not say things he has no means of knowing in a story meant to be realistic. If it were fantastical images of the netherworld, or any of such things that only children see, it would have been acceptable and believable. He talked about Qaddafi having a lot of military camps training terrorists, with authority. How did Birahima get to know these things if it were not Ahmadou saying what he wanted to say through him?

Attempts were made to make the book sound street-tough with its excessive use of street-lingua such as 'fuck' and swear words such Faforo, Gnamokode, Walahe and others. Natives, niggers, savages, bushmen, and other such descriptions used in the book sounded too forced and artificial. And the frequent references to the use of dictionaries to justify Birahima's use of 'big words' was a let down. Whilst some very 'big words' were not at all defined, some other equally unnecessary ones like 'stuff', 'army ants', and others were defined. In fact, a person should know the word to search for it. A person cannot just pick the dictionary and suddenly discover the right word. There should be a starting point. Besides, how could an illiterate ten-year old read the dictionary? Similarly, the frequent use of certain refrains in the telling of the story was not only forced but annoying.

This is a story of a street child who found himself locked up in an unfortunate situation; however, it is more about the story of the wars than it is about the narrator's role or himself. There was too much an attempt at the macabre, which would have been acceptable had it been restricted to the war parts. However, from the first page to the last, the macabre was present in its graphic detail. In this way, it lost its significance and the war sections became just mere attempts at shocking readers the more. The story is written in a tongue-in-cheek manner with the intention to deride and scorn and to be sarcastic. However, the fact that the Liberian and Sierra Leonean wars occurred, the fact that the wars resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (Sierra Leone, 200,000; Liberia, 220,000; according to Wars and Casualties of the 20th and 21st Centuries), and the fact that the book itself records some historical  moments makes it an important book worth the read. If one take away the poor use of the child-narrator, the failed attempt at scatology, one will come out from reading this book with an average understanding of the history of the wars in those two countries.

______________________________

About the Author: Ahmadou Kourouma (November 24, 1927 - December 11, 2003) was an Ivorian novelist. From 1950 to 1954, when his country was still under French colonial control, he participated in French military campaigns in Indochina, after which he journeyed to France to Study mathematics in Lyon. He returned to Cote d'Ivoire after it won independence in 1960, yet he quickly found himself questioning the government of Felix Houphouet-Boigny. After brief imprisonment, Kourouma spent several years in exile, first in Algeria (1964 - 1969), then in Cameroon (1974 - 1984) and Togo (1984 - 1994), before finally returning to live in Cote d'Ivoire.

His first novel Les soleils des indépendences (The Suns of Independence, 1970) contains a critical treatment of post-colonial governments in Africa.Twenty years later, his second book Monnè, outrages et défis, a history of a century of colonialism, was published. In 1998, he published En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, (translated as Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote), a satire of post colonial Africa in the style of Voltaire in which a griot recounts the story of a tribal hunter's transformation into a dictator, inspired by Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo. In 2000, he published Allah n'est pas obligé (translated as Allah is Not Obliged), a tale of an orphan who becomes a child soldier when traveling to visit his aunt in Liberia.

In France, each of Ahmadou Kourouma's novels has been greeted with great acclaim, sold exceptionally well, and been showered with prizes including the Prix Renaudot in 2000 and Prix Goncourt des Lycéens for  Allah n'est pas obligé. [Source]

269. The Poor Christ of Bomba by Mongo Beti

The Poor Christ of Bomba (1956; e-copy, 220) by Mongo Beti is a fascinating tale of a priest with a mission and passion to proselytise the natives in the forest region of Cameroon. Mongo Beti told of Father Superior Drumont's struggles, his conceptions, his failure, and a possibility of his own conversion. Like most Europeans and others who entered Africa, Father Superior believed that the natives did not really know God. They faithfully believe that without the Christian God, the people were doomed and bound for hell. Reverend Father Superior Drumont therefore made it his life's mission, a decision that was set in motion twenty years before fifteen-year old Denis wrote about the events in his diary, to bring God's lost sheep into the fold. 

Proselytization. However, in doing this, Father Superior Drumont made the mistake that every Westerner makes when he meets an aborigine; he thought the people could not cogitate or reason for themselves, that they lack discernment. It was from this point that filled with fire and brimstone he built his church with a Sixa attached. The Sixa was a place where young women about to marry were trained and given Christian values for a period of four months before a Christian marriage was administered. In building his church Father Drumont used the women to work in ways that was beyond the allowable limits in their tradition. In fact he saw the women as docile with animal-like strength and made them work ten hours a day.

He got up and began pacing about, arms behind his back. He continued: The native girl, the docile little black girl, what a perfect machine! No need to grease it, even. No need even to go and see if it's growing rusty in the little garage where we've chucked it. A really unmatchable machine! She looks after herself all alone, do you hear, all alone! Above all, don't go and pull her out of the garage in the morning. What an asinine idea! No, she'll run out of her own accord and come and ask you: "Give me some work to do." Who has been able to invent the equal of that? [204]

After years of preaching and conversion, the Father realised that he had failed in converting the natives in the interior of the region. To get them to seek God, he abandoned them for two years hoping that after this period their yearning and desire would have peaked and his presence would have been like water to the desert traveller. After all, was he not Christ salving the souls of the afflicted?

What happened during the Father's tour of the villages, after two years of absence, was exactly what he had not expected. He found the natives who lived farther away from the road happy and unconcerned. In fact, they had reverted to their old ways: men who had married in church had taken on extra wives and others who were not married were living in concubinage. The church buildings were dilapidated and at some places the catechists in charge had deserted the church. The difference between the villages by the road side and those in the interior with no road access was clear: those who were near the road or had roads passing through their villages and were consequently much oppressed by the colonial administration showed enthusiasm in God - even if superficially, whereas those in the interior and far from the colonialists led life with reckless abandon. They cared less about Father Drumont and his church.

Analysing this, Father Drumont concluded that oppression is the route to salvation. The people in the interior, having sold more cocoa and therefore having come into much money were taking on wives and buying themselves the material things they thought the whiteman's God could give them.

It seems the more money they have the less they think of God. [14]

All along the way we heard women singing or calling to each other, and men laughing and slapping their thighs. We saw clearly enough how they were. Often we saw a bicycle or a sewing machine standing in a corner. Cocoa has made them rich here... In short, they live careless lives, quite unlike the people in towns, or along the main roads. As the Father says, they don't strain themselves. And he adds that if they don't often remember God, it's because they're too happy. According to him only the miserable have or the oppressed can have faith in God. And why are they better Christians along the roads, unless it's because they are constantly exposed to the exactions of soldiers and chiefs, or the demands of forced labour? Here they know nothing of all these woes. If God would only send them a warning! [19] 

The Father therefore prayed for a sign from God, a sign that would lead the people in the Mombet-Timbo areas to God. And this sign came in the form of M. Vidal, the colonial administrator for that Province. M. Vidal had met the father at one of the villages and had informed him of his plans to construct a road through the Tala country. The construction of such roads required the use of forced labour from the people. To the Father, this was the sign he had been waiting for.

Ah, if only they'll build that road, if they'll beat and persecute these people, then perhaps they'll all return to God... [38]

The symbolism of roads is therefore clear. In colonial times, it led to the extraction of resources, the loss of culture, the destruction of innocence, increased oppression and subsequently enslavement. One could see this in Ben Okri's The Famished Road and Infinite Riches. Ngugi's memoir Dreams in a Time of War also hinted, indirectly, at this.

In most colonial countries, education was also used as the route to proselytization. Those who attended school were taught the superiority of the Christian God over the pagan gods and the evilness of their animism and fetishes. When the people turned to Father Drumont's church in the beginning what they were seeking was not religion, as Zacharia, the Priest's cook, explained to the Father, when he lamented on the state of affairs. What they sought was the secrets of their power, how they made things like cars and railways; however, when they resorted to talking to the people about the Christian God, as if the people had no idea of things of the soul, they left the church.

That's not the truth of the matter at all. I'll tell you just how it is, Father. The first of us who ran to religion, to your religion, came to it as a sort of ... revelation. Yes, that's it, a revelation; a school where they could learn your secret, the secret of your power, of your aeroplanes and railways... in a word, the secret of your mystery. Instead of that, you began talking to them of God, of the soul, of eternal life, and so forth. Do you really suppose they didn't know those things already, long before you came? So of course, they decided that you were hiding something. Later, they saw that if they had money they could get plenty of things for themselves - gramophones and cars, and perhaps even aeroplanes one day. Well, then! They are turning from religion and running elsewhere, after money, no less. That's the truth of it, Father. [31]

According to Zacharia, the people discovered that money will bring to them the happiness they sought; that if they were not going to know the secrets required to make the gramophones and cars, they could at least work hard and acquire these things, instead of calling on God. Thus, the people replaced the quest for God with that for money.

But with all that cocoa and money, is it likely that men will think of God? They drink and take new wives and acquire all sorts of new wealth. [64]

Contradictions. The realisation of the important role money plays may have arisen from the Priest's own attitudes. For instance, payments were made before Confessions and the taking of the Sacraments. The people also paid cult dues. When a man trapped by a tree was dying, instead of helping him, the father first made him swore that he would pay his dues when he helps him become free. Similarly, he chased an old woman away from confessions when she could not pay her dues, because he did not want to set precedence for the people. Thus, the people considered the father no different from a crook trader, in this case a Greek trader. Zacharia told him what the people thought of him.

Father, they say that a priest is no better than a Greek trader or any other colonialist. They say that all any of you are after is money. You are not sincere with them, you hide things from them and teach them nothing. [20]

This resulted in the men leaving the church entirely.

No one is interested any more, except the women. Only the women have religion in their blood; the men are completely indifferent. They claim that there's no difference between a Greek trader and a priest, even one like Father Drumont. [97]

Besides, for the native Christians all that matter was miracles and solutions, or seeming solutions, to their problems. And Father Superior was different. So when Sanga Boto descended into their midst and charged them before performing miracles with his mirror, the people trooped to him. Sanga Boto became a competitor of Father Superior.

The people also spotted in Reverend Father Superior a contradiction, a discrepancy they could not reconcile. This increased their suspicions and decreased their faith in the Christian God. Whereas the Father asked the new converts to eschew the company of the unsaved, he was always found in the midst of his own unsaved people; whereas he berated the natives who lived in concubinage, he associated with his people who did same. These created a sort of insurmountable conundrum for the people. They therefore considered the priest as not honest.

They say that you must be hiding things from them. What about all the whites who live in concubinage with loose women in the town, do you ever rage against them? Far from it, you shake hands with them, go to their parties and ride in their cars back to Bomba. Nevertheless you preach that, after baptism, the blacks should cease to visit their own relatives who are not Christians. You are really a very dangerous man, for if everyone listened to you, the wives would all leave their husbands, the children would no longer obey their fathers, brothers would not know another and everything would be upside down. That's what they say, Father. [20]

In fact, it was not only the natives who discerned such discrepancies in the Priest's behaviour. When M. Vidal informed Father Superior of the road construction, the father had asked if the people would be paid or if they would be used like they were used in the Congo rubber plantations. M. Vidal asked him if he paid them when he used them to build his church.

In addition, the Father - who was Christ and who preached love - physically abused the people. He slapped them when he felt he could contain their actions no longer. At one of the villages, he confronted a group of natives who were drumming and dancing at a distant place away from his lodge, destroying their drums and their xylophones. He could not understand why of all the days these pagans have they should choose the Friday of Lent to disturb him with their paganism. The chief of the village who felt personally affronted by the Father's behaviour grew livid and was ready to fight him, if not for an old man who calmed him down. The old man, in calming the chief, explained that the Father was no different from the other whites and any attempt to beat him would invite dire and consequential reprisals from his colonialist brothers. This part is reminiscent of Okonkwo's actions in Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Listen, my son, listen to me. Have you forgotten you're dealing with a white man? What are you thinking of? Do you suppose he'd dare to defy us like this unless he was sure of the support of all his people? They always hang together like that. Go and rest, my son. Let him go his way and don't offend him. You can never be sure, with them. Go and rest, my boy. [56]

Another issue which could likely have put the Father in a very weird position, among a people who insist on appreciation and respect, was when the Father, after he was saved from drowning following his sublime encounter and absolute defeat of Sanga Boto, sacked the people from his side, the people he had referred to as pagans. This show of solidarity, even after the Father's abuse, together with the outcome of his strategy to win the people for God, by deserting them for a while, led the Father to his epiphany: that the people were not as bad or evil as he deemed them to be.

Conversion. Throughout the story, Denis described the Father as a man whose fire was waning, a changed man, a man who until now would brook no nonsense and would respond to no question any native would dare ask him nor would he allow himself to be questioned; a man who thought himself and his God superior to the people and their ancestors or gods. However, after this failure to convert them to his side, he questioned whether the people's religion was not enough for them? He questioned why the need to impose their Christian religion on the people? He reflected and explained when he would have commanded and shouted.

These good people worshipped God without our help. What matter if they worshipped after their own fashion - by eating one another, or by dancing in the moonlight, or by wearing bark charms around their necks? Why do we insist on imposing our customs upon them? [150-1]

Thus, he who wanted to use the road construction to draw the people to Christ saw the maliciousness of this stratagem and swore not to benefit from it. In so doing, he tried to draw a distinction between the colonial administration and the church.

'But you have always been on our side, Father,' cried the catechist.

'That doesn't stop my being a white man. And the Apostles of Our Lord also addressed themselves first to white men, but they couldn't change them or turn them from wickedness. Now the same whites have come here to inflict their cruelties on you. I refuse to draw profit from their malice; I cannot. And Christ refuses also. Look, it would be like the people of Saba. You know the reputation of that tribe, how they always travel in pairs? The first one walks far ahead, days ahead, sowing evil spells on every side; everyone falls sick as if there's an epidemic. Days later, the second Saba arrives; he takes pity on all the sick and sets about curing them. Naturally he knows how to but he demands piles of money for every cure he makes. And every coin he collects depends on his brother, who went ahead sowing misfortunes right and left. [113]

After two decades of unsuccessful proselytisation, Father Superior Drumont decided to go back to Provence, France. If oppression was the only way to get the people to Christ, and even then pretentiously, then he would have nothing to do with it. However, what sped up his decision to leave was the bigger failure of what his Sixa became.

Sycophancy. Father Superior had handed down the running of the Sixa to Raphael, a catechist. However, he in turn had turned it into a brothel and was pimping the girls to men in town, on the blindside of the Father, for the Father, trusting Raphael to do good and having given him all the resources he needed, had never visited that part of the mission since its construction twenty years ago. Raphael took advantage of the situation to sleep with the girls, though he was married, and to profit from their services. To girls who were unwilling to participate in his diabolical scheme, he would assign them the hardest work at the Sixa until they relented. He went further to deceive the fiancés of some of the women who came to visit and inquire why the Father had not approved their union to take place.

Zacharia, who clearly delineated his job as a cook from the church, was an enigma. He was both crook and honest; he honestly told the Father the people's opinion of him and of the church. He slept with the Sixa women, who were engaged to be married, including Catherine whom he took with him on the tour with the Father, though he was married. Thus, Zacharia and Raphael betrayed the trust the Father had in them. The Father, even though he knew Zacharia was not perfect, trusted him. Earlier, on the tour, he had asked him if he would take a second wife to which Zacharia had firmly answered in the negative. Like the natives who had come to know the essence of money, Zacharia saw nothing beyond money and believed strongly that that was all the Father was also about.

Thus, the natives who were supposed to protect their own people took advantage of them and oppressed them further for their own profits.

As a social experiment on the effects of imposing a religion on a people, Beti found that such actions made the people sycophants. They will put on the cloak of religiosity and belief only to please but within they will do whatever they like. The natives married in church to please the father, but went ahead to marry several other women when, citing several reasons. This is not different from Father Shakana in Mawuli Adzei's Taboo.

Narrative. The story told as diary entries by fifteen-year old Denis, the age of innocence and inquisitiveness. His innocence made him write down things as he saw them without judgement, creating a combination of humour and sarcasm. When he saw Zacharia whispering at dawn, he thought he was suffering from diarrhoea. When Zacharia invited them to meet Catherine, a lady from the Sixa, he was shy and afraid to sit. He considered himself better to his people because of his proximity to the Father. Sometimes he could not just identify his own prejudices. For instance, he did not understand why an unpaid catechist should abandon his church or why Zacharia should ask for a raise. He did not understand why they could not work for the love of God as he did. Yet it did not cross his mind to question why the Father should take money from the people before giving them sacrament or conducting Confessions.

Denis's character was well created. He moved from innocence into manhood in one breath of joy and cries when he was 'raped' by the wanton Catherine. From then on, Denis looked at Catherine lasciviously and willingly wanted to have sex with her. He became jealous of Zacharia, though he was also afraid of what might happened should Father Superior find out. Tormented by the thoughts of sin, Denis could not but confess. Yet, after the confession, Denis still referred to Catherine in the possessive form, 'my Catherine'. This together with the use of polygamy as a tool of opposition to proselytisation made it look as if Mongo Beti was discussing such Freudian concepts as the religious suppression of sex or sexual repression.

Suffused throughout the narrative were comedic and humorous scenes as this:

Without a moment's hesitation, the Father fell on the xylophones and scattered them in pieces. Then he turned to the drums, but they were more difficult to break. He lifted the great drum in his arms and threw it down with a terrible sound. He still hadn't managed to break a single drum when the chief came rushing from his house like a wild beast. [52] 

Tradition. There are things that need to be reexamined. As Africans, we constantly decry that nudity or premarital sex and some other practices or behaviours are un-African. People are quick to say that 'this isn't our culture'. However, several African books and stories, including Mogo Beti's, show that this was not necessarily true. For instance, in this book, it was said that a father would be happy if the daughter gave birth before marriage. Yet we are made to believe that this was abhorred.

Thus, it is important for us as a people to interrogate our pre-colonial culture. The African has never been shy of nudity. So when did long dresses become our culture? Was this not handed over to us through our conversion to Christianity? These are facts we must answer for. Similarly, facial scarification and tattos have been with us for a long time. However, these are issues that should be investigated beyond this post.

Aside. According to Mongo Beti the people who were given the power to rule the colonies were not the best the colonialists had to offer. They were mostly the riffraff, the untrained and power-hungry young men, the likes of M. Vidal. When Father Superior asked M.Vidal who was forcing him to stay [in Cameroon] he said:

And what could I do in Europe now, with no proper training? ... Not counting the taste for power which I've acquired. [161]

The Poor Christ of Bomba is a very complex book with several themes. Beti exposed a lot of rot. He showed the issues as they were without judgement, leaving that part to the reader. His use of Denis, as a young boy of fifteen, was excellent. He never expressed opinions more than he could handle even if one factored in precociousness. The story is similar to Ferdinand Oyono's Houseboy. This story is worth the read.
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About the author: Mongo Beti, also called Eza Boto, pseudonyms of Alexandre Biyide-Awala (June 30, 1932 to October 8, 2001), is a Cameroonian novelist and political essayist. An essential theme of Beti's early novels, which advocate the removal of all vestiges of colonialism, is the basic conflict of traditional modes of African society with the system of colonial rule. The Poor Christ of Bomba was followed in 1957 by Mission Terminée (or Mission Accomplished or Mission to Kala) attacks French colonial policy through a young man who, upon returning to his village with some hesitation because he has failed his college examinations discovers himself to be not only revered by the villagers for his achievements but also alienated from their way of life.

After publishing another novel, Beti stopped writing for more than a decade. When he resumed, his criticism focused on the colonial characteristics of Africa's post-independence regimes. Main basse sur le Cameroun (1972; Rape of Cameroon), a book explaining the emplacement of a neocolonial regime in his homeland, was immediately banned in France and in Cameroon. Two years later he published the novels Perpetue et l'habitude du malheur (1974; Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness) and Remember Ruben (1974). [Source]

This was the Book and Discussion Club of the Writers Project of Ghana's book for November (read the twitter discussion here).