"Mission Accomplished"... before you think I am doing a George Bush by declaring victory in OBOC a bit prematurely (I still have 100 odd countries to go, and I only hope it won't last as long as the Iraq war!)... I am just referring to Mongo Beti's comic novel "Mission terminee" which I read in English as "Mission Accomplished".
Despite failing his Baccalaureat exam in the "best tradition", Jean Marie Medza is charged with an all important duty as a messenger to the remote village of Kala, to bring back the wife of a relative, Niam, who had fled her husband's home unable to bear his abusiveness. Going to Kala on a bicycle with nervous apprehension, our hero is pleasantly surprised by the welcome he receives at his uncle's home, and the friendly warmth of his cousin Zambo only to discover that the object of his mission has run away from her father's home with another man. Forced to spend many days at Kala, he receives the attention of everyone in the village as the only town-boy amidst the country folk who was educated by the white man. Compared to the abuse he suffers at his father's hands, Medza finds himself being elevated to a demi-God status in the village and for the first time forms a great friendship with other boys of his own age thanks to Zambo and his friend.
What starts out as a comical adventure, turns about to be a coming of age story of Medza, where he develops a deeper understanding of himself, his culture and the "colonized African". At the end of his journey, he finally stands up to his father but is forced to leave his home and his young wife. He summarizes his entire understanding in light of his experience in the following words "the tragedy our nation is suffering today is that of a man left to his own devices in a world which does not belong to him, which he has not made and does not understand. it is the tragedy of man without an intellectual direction, a man walking blindly through the dark in some hostile city like New York....How will he solve the intricacies of a subway map or know where to change trains?"
Besides the comical nature of the story, I loved Mongo Beti's sketches of the lead characters, Medza, Zambo and Medza's father ("living example of the astonishing results that can occur when Western hypocrisy and commercial materialism are grafted onto a first-rate African intelligence") in particular. Also the seemingly pointless jocular ramblings that Medza had with the villagers of Kala were also very revealing - what did Colonization, Constitution, Law, Capitalism, Communism mean to people flung in remote corners of Cameroon?What does it say about Medza, who finally escapes the tyranny of his father, while at the same time benefiting from the education he received, but never comes back for his wife? How does he resolve the conflict between his heart and his mind? Is this the dilemma the educated elite of Africa (or for that matter, any colonized developing country) face?
Wikipedia tells me that the book received praise for its realism and criticism from the likes of Chinua Achebe for romanticizing the past. To me, it was one of those books which appear very easy to read, with farcical situations, but actually have a few layers if one cares to look.
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