Name: Ambiguous Adventure
ISBN: 9780435901196

Hamidou Kane

Sambo Diallo is unable to identify with the soulless material civilization he finds in France, where he is sent to learn the secrets of the white man's power.

Ambiguous Adventure

Marion

The foreign school is the new form of the war which those who have come here are waging, and we must send our élite there, expecting that all the country will follow them. It is well that once more the élite should lead the way. If there is a risk, they are the best prepared to cope successfully with it, because they are the most firmly attached to what they are. If there is good to be drawn from it, they should also be the first to acquire that. 

"The school in which I would place our children will kill in them what today we love and rightly conserve with care. Perhaps the very memory of us will die in them. When they return from the school, there may be those who will not recognize us. What I am proposing is that we should agree to die in our children's hearts and that the foreigners who have defeated us should fill the place, wholly, which we shall have left free.

For the newcomers did not know only how to fight. They were strange people. If they knew how to kill with effectiveness, they also knew how to cure, with the same art. Where they had brought disorder, they established a new order. They destroyed and they constructed. On the black continent it began to be understood that their true power lay not in the cannons of the first morning, but rather in what followed the cannons.

At the same time that work gets along without human life, at that same time it ceases to make human life its final aim; it ceases to value man. Man has never been so unhappy as at this moment when he is accumulating so much. Nowhere is he thought so little of as in the places where this accumulation is going on. That is why the history of the West seems to me to reveal the insufficiency of the guarantee that man offers to man.

I am not a distinct country of the Diallobé facing a distinct Occident, and appreciating with a cool head what I must take from it and what I must leave with it by way of counterbalance. I have become the two. There is not a clear mind deciding between the two factors of a choice. There is a strange nature, in distress over not being two.

The new school shares at the same time the characteristics of cannon and of magnet. From the cannon it draws its efficacy as an arm of combat. Better than the cannon, it makes conquest permanent. The cannon compels the body, the school bewitches the soul. Where the cannon has made a pit of ashes and of death, in the sticky mold of which men would not have rebounded from the ruins, the new school establishes peace. The morning of rebirth will be a morning of benediction through the appeasing virtue of the new school.

Chinua Achebe called this book one of the greatest books out of Africa. It is part of the African literary canon. It is an interesting book that probably deserves a second reading from me as it is very philosophical with heavy dialogue. 

The book is concerned with pedagogy of Africans during colonialism. I really enjoyed the first half of the book about the ambivalence and despondency Africans felt after they lost to colonialism. They sent their children to the mission schools not because they wanted to but as one character notes “

we must go learn the art of conquering without being in the right

”. Africans also considered these schools a form of warfare as they led to self and cultural alienation. The characters in this book are suffering and in grief for their defeat.

Even though I was not particularly drawn to this book the way it contends with the impact of colonialism on our psychology as Africans is brilliant. 

One controversial thing I will say I observed is that Islam in this book is considered part of indigenous culture, this was published in 1972 perhaps in that setting European colonialism is the most recent cultural upheaval but would be interested in reading a similar book on the spread of Islam in Africa. Some films that deal with this are Timbuktu (2014) and Ousamane Sembene’s Ceddo (1977)

Chinua Achebe called this book one of the greatest books out of Africa. It is part of the African literary canon. It is an interesting book that probably deserves a second reading from me as it is very philosophical with heavy dialogue. 

The book is concerned with pedagogy of Africans during colonialism. I really enjoyed the first half of the book about the ambivalence and despondency Africans felt after they lost to colonialism. They sent their children to the mission schools not because they wanted to but as one character notes “we must go learn the art of conquering without being in the right”. Africans also considered these schools a form of warfare as they led to self and cultural alienation. The characters in this book are suffering and in grief for their defeat.

Even though I was not particularly drawn to this book the way it contends with the impact of colonialism on our psychology as Africans is brilliant. 

One controversial thing I will say I observed is that Islam in this book is considered part of indigenous culture, this was published in 1972 perhaps in that setting European colonialism is the most recent cultural upheaval but would be interested in reading a similar book on the spread of Islam in Africa. Some films that deal with this are Timbuktu (2014) and Ousamane Sembene’s Ceddo (1977)

Dana Kraft

This book cuts right to the philosophical heart of the conflict between the colonizing West and Islamic Africa (at least west Africa). There is really no discussion of specific legal or colonial actions or policies on either side. The language is lyrical and philosophical, and there isn't a lot of literal "action" to convey. This made it tougher for me to read, but it also helped me focus more on the unique mindset of the African characters. That perspective was really interesting to me. It reminded me of the dangers of a dualistic mindset (us vs them, zero sum, winners/losers). This isn't a judgment on my part, just an observation as I've read several things about that recently. The main character's struggle with his faith also has some familiarity to it. One of his questions that really made me think was whether his doubts and struggles were just a part of him growing up or were part of a larger struggle for his people and his faith. No easy answers here. As part of my effort to read non-english fiction, this was a success b/c it presented a perspective that was local and unknown to me but also somewhat universal.

Ambiguous Adventure

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