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.

Mission to Kala quotes

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