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?'

Mission to Kala quotes

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