In his essay, the Ambiguous Adventure in the Cameroonian Novel: Mongo
Beti’s ‘Mission to Kala’ and Ferdinand Oyono’s ‘Houseboy,’ Chikaodiri O.
Okpara asserts that, the colonial experience by most African countries has
emerged as an indelible landmark in the history of the continent. In Chinua
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart the white
men send in missionaries to instill a religion that encourages peace at the
beginning of colonization, because if they can change the fundamental beliefs
of the tribe, then they can control the natives more easily.
The concept of colonialism is when a supposed
stronger country rules a supposed
weaker one and then establishes its trade and society there. The idea of
colonization is to quietly gain a foothold in the country and then move in and
take over when the country has been destabilized enough to be ruled by foreign
forces. The European colonists came to Africa solely to exploit it and split
its values. To a great extent, African colonization was as a result of stories
told about Africa and its peoples.
As a documentation of the colonial experiences of African societies,
African writers were given to creative exploration of the harsh methodology of
the whites meted on African societies.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’O is one of the African writers who dealt critically
with the relationship between Africa and the Western colonists. Weep Not Child deals with the Mau Mau
uprising and the dispossession of an entire people from their ancestral land.
This action reminds us of something: that the easiest way colonialism gained
foothold on African soil was by dispossession of the continent’s values. A
situation where a man comes into another man’s hut and defecates. Ngugi reveals in Weep Not Child where six
men are dragged out of their houses and executed in the woods.
In reviewing colonialism in Africa, one has to bear in mind Oyono’s
assertion that, ‘everybody tells his own little story about Africa to refute
and demonstrate that the African is a child or a fool.’ Stories told of the
continent were merely to demonstrate the primitiveness of its societies.
Administrator Vidal in Beti’s The Poor
Christ of Bomba sees Africa as a place filled with monsters. Hence he says,
‘…I always dreamt of an Africa filled with monsters, but the truth is far
stranger than the fiction.’ To compare the fictitious belief of an Africa
filled with monsters and the reality of the ‘stranger’ thing he has seen is an
erroneous and gravy factor to describe the continent.
In Houseboy and The Old Man and the Medal, Oyono
portrays colonialism as undermining and suppressing indigenous culture and its
institutions. Meka is dispossessed of his land – or rather dispossessed himself
of his land – to the colonial missionaries, as a result of the suppressing
hypnotism by the colonists. ‘And now lives in a small wretched hut in the
village which has given its name to the mission and lies at the foot of the
Christian cemetery.’
In the extreme measures used in tormenting the natives, Gullet in Houseboy sees Africans as people with
iron heads, that when he tortures them and they don’t scream, he hits them on
the head with a gun. A white doctor’s conversation with Gullet about Tounde
explains:
‘We’ll see about that tomorrow,’ said the white doctor.
‘Meanwhile, what about his temperature…?’
He looked at my chart.
‘…only 103 – that’s not serious for them. He won’t slip through your
fingers,’ he said, to reassure Gullet. (Oyono: 121)
The white doctor’s
view of the natives is on the grounds that they have extra lives, extra
temperature, and that the things capable of killing the whites a hundred times
cannot kill the natives. The commandant’s wife says,
You look as if you find
it a drudgery. Oh of course we are very satisfied with you... you have no
faults, you are always punctual, you are a conscientious worker but you haven’t
got that joy one finds in African workers... you give the impression that you
are doing a houseboy’s job while waiting for something else to come along. (55)
The commandant’s
wife does not see the natives as people with hope. She sees them as people who
are only good enough to squat on the floor while they (the whites) step on and
climb to the top. Toundi finally escapes from the colonial measures into
Guinea, where he meets neo-colonialism and dies. Perhaps, Oyono’s point is that
Africa cannot escape entirely from the shadows of the colonial masters.
Ngugi’s Weep Not Child and Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba portray more on
the hard measures of colonial administration. The trial of Jomo Kenyatta while
protesting for his right, and his subsequent execution; Ngotho and Njoroge (a
father and a son) are brutally beaten for their innocence. More so, at Bomba,
the people work and die and the Father goes many times a day to confess the
dying. Administrator Vidal gives Father Drumont a concept:
Absolutely! You will
protect them spiritually. You will tell them: ‘My dear children, you must
accept the sufferings of this vale of tears. In death, you will find your
reward. (35)
Father Drumont does not accept this directly, or rather immediately,
but he advises a poor old woman who has come to complain of poverty to try
harder and pay her ‘church tax’ before he confesses her.
This explains the reality of the real intention of the Christian
colonial missionary journey in Africa, as contained in King Leopold 11 of
Belgium’s letter to colonial missionaries:
And
make sure that niggers never become rich. Sing every day that it’s impossible
for the rich to enter heaven. Make them pay tax each week at Sunday mass, and
use the money supposed for poor to build flourishing business centres.
