Name: Mission to Kala
Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Mongo Beti

Medza is sent off to retrieve a villager's wife who has run off with a man from another tribe.

A Novel by Mongo Beti

Mission to Kala

Marion

'Young man,' said the woman with the frown, when things had quietened down again, if you make all that money, that means you'll live like the white men, doesn't it?'

'You'll live in houses with a garden all round them, and a hedge to fence them off from each other. You'll sit about in the evening smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers. You'll drink your water from a tap, not fetch it from the spring.

You'll lose your taste for palm-wine, and take to their red stuff instead. You'll travel around in a car, and have a tablecloth at dinner, and boys to wait on you. You'll speak nothing but their language. And perhaps, like them, you'll come to detest the sound of tom-toms in the night. Very well. But here's my real question - where do we come in to all this? Shall we be able to set foot in your houses as freely as we do in those of our own children? Will we be free to talk and enjoy ourselves there just as we like? Walk in with bare feet, as we're used to doing?

Eat from the same dish as you do, even if we don't know how to use a fork? Will we be able to do all this?'

For you the Whites are the real people, the people who matter, because you know their language. But we can't speak French, and we never went to school. For us you are the white man - you are the only person who can explain these mysteries to us. If you care for us at all, my son, do this thing for us. If you refuse, we've probably lost our only chance of ever being able to learn the white man's wisdom.

A few years ago my sister had some friends from University visit our home in a village in Uganda. I will never forget the ruckus that caused in the village--guests and far off relatives we had not seen in years came to visit. I thought about this while reading Mongo Beti's 1957 French translated novel "

".  His protagonist Medza a character Mongo Beti refers to as the "

star in ascendant, the coming man of the tribe

" is a city dweller and college educated. This new status confers him with a lot of prestige exceeding that which would normally be given to a young person--he is rewarded with gifts, parties in his honor, a wife and ability to forego a lot of customary practices. 

Mongo Beti novel is a sophisticated satire like most of the books published by Heinemann under Achebe's editing period which are concerned with the effects on colonialism on local customs and hierarchies. This is a period where lots of people are negotiating their place in colonial society--the chiefs are suspicious of what an educated elite will mean for their role as colonial administrators while women in oppressive marriages found freedom in colonial laws that allowed divorce. We also see the new class of Africans for whom education by any means becomes a way to escape the subjugation of the rest of the "natives".  Medza describes his father as "

a living example of the astonishing results that occur when Western hypocrisy and commercial materialism are grafted on first-rate African intelligence--my father was the quintessential Westernised native of one generation

".  Medza's father unscrupulous business practices are all in the effort to educate his sons in the white mans schools. Sadly, these problems from the 20th century are still in effect in most African countries with stories of corrupt politicians looting government coffers to educate their children in boarding schools in Switzerland. Mongo Beti's book is still relevant now as it was then

PS) when i found this book a few weeks ago I was excited because its my first Cameroonian book and there were 3 other books of Mongo Beti in the book store. I told myself I'd read this and go get the others if I liked it, of course those books were sold out when I returned because they are rare and out of print. Adding to my list of life regrets. I should also add that this is a very funny book

A few years ago my sister had some friends from University visit our home in a village in Uganda. I will never forget the ruckus that caused in the village--guests and far off relatives we had not seen in years came to visit. I thought about this while reading Mongo Beti's 1957 French translated novel "Mission to Kala".  His protagonist Medza a character Mongo Beti refers to as the "star in ascendant, the coming man of the tribe" is a city dweller and college educated. This new status confers him with a lot of prestige exceeding that which would normally be given to a young person--he is rewarded with gifts, parties in his honor, a wife and ability to forego a lot of customary practices. 

Mongo Beti novel is a sophisticated satire like most of the books published by Heinemann under Achebe's editing period which are concerned with the effects on colonialism on local customs and hierarchies. This is a period where lots of people are negotiating their place in colonial society--the chiefs are suspicious of what an educated elite will mean for their role as colonial administrators while women in oppressive marriages found freedom in colonial laws that allowed divorce. We also see the new class of Africans for whom education by any means becomes a way to escape the subjugation of the rest of the "natives".  Medza describes his father as "a living example of the astonishing results that occur when Western hypocrisy and commercial materialism are grafted on first-rate African intelligence--my father was the quintessential Westernised native of one generation".  Medza's father unscrupulous business practices are all in the effort to educate his sons in the white mans schools. Sadly, these problems from the 20th century are still in effect in most African countries with stories of corrupt politicians looting government coffers to educate their children in boarding schools in Switzerland. Mongo Beti's book is still relevant now as it was then

PS) when i found this book a few weeks ago I was excited because its my first Cameroonian book and there were 3 other books of Mongo Beti in the book store. I told myself I'd read this and go get the others if I liked it, of course those books were sold out when I returned because they are rare and out of print. Adding to my list of life regrets. I should also add that this is a very funny book

Mission to Kala A Novel by Mongo Beti

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