I continue to alternating classical and new discoveries. The Poor Christ of Bomba (1956), the Cameroonian writer Mongo Beti is clearly classified in the first category. It is a pillar of African literature. Released at the same time that L'Enfant Noir (1953), Camara Laye , that is to say, in the decade before independence, this novel describes him as the French presence in Africa ... but with a much more acerbic. The two writers also do not fail to display their disagreement on this point. In The Poor Christ of Bomba , Mongo Beti enters the heart of the matter by taking care to follow a missionary tour in eastern Cameroon. Provencal governing an iron hand for twenty years, the Bomba, the Reverend Father Superior Drumont - everyone just calls "Father" - began to visit people the land of Tala; "the kingdom of Satan, the true Sodom and Gomorrah" , dixit Denis, the boy choir boy who accompanies and recounts in detail the events of this tour. It must be said that the PSR, to punish those believers pagan mores - with, in mind, polygamy - did not "honor" of his presence for three years ...
So here he is, which is flanked by Denis and his cook Zachariah, hit the road, bike, leaving time for a mission and "sixa" or living and working Christian women before marriage. The trio will go disappointment to disappointment, doubt SDN pounce soon before the little faith as evidenced by their "faithful". As for Denis, teenager fascinated by the aura of holiness that, in his view, emanates from the Father, he will discover the pleasures that it is wrong to confess ...
What strikes first in this novel and makes it so compelling is the strength of the main character. SDN is a true hero Drumont literary, colorful, but mostly in shades ... Mongo Beti also warns us early with some cynicism "In memory of Africa, there has never been a Reverend Father Superior Drumont and there probably never will be, least as far as I know my native Africa: it would be too good. "For , we discovered little by little, the RPS Drumont that sometimes makes blind faith, is nonetheless an ideal representation of Western humanism. Even when he uses the hard way, he thinks deeply for the good work. Harsh and naive, however, that he refuses to build a new road, enslaving the natives to their greatest misfortune helps bring them closer to God ...
Another key character in the novel, the cook, Zachariah, is midway between the angel and the bad conscience of the SDN. Christian unconvinced, incorrigible Rossard, it is enriched - and won - on the back of the RPS, while benefiting from its indulgence. The religious also seems to keep him for his outspokenness, Zechariah does not take tweezers to criticize the action of the RPS, which, pretending to ignore it, in fact shoots in many directions.
The tour ends in the SDN a bitter failure, beyond anything he could have imagined. And from the pen of Mongo Beti, the failure is more than that of evangelization - Today, SSA has 57% Christians - that of colonialism in breathless mix of false good intentions and enslavement, supposedly civilizing mission based on the infernal couple of carrots and sticks. The writer seems to presentiment same independence when he stages a PR shot, disillusioned, referring to his possible return to France after years spent trying to build something in Africa. Something which, unfortunately for him, the natives do not want and they pretend to accept, without adhering to very many of them, knowing that it will not last.
The Poor Christ of Bomba
of Mongo Beti
Laffont, 1956 reissue
Presence Africaine, 349 p., 8,90 euros
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