Mission to Kala

88/2021. Mission to Kala, by Mongo Beti, is a 1957 Cameroonian comic novel about a young failed college student sent on a mission from his home village to find someone else's runaway wife. Our educated westernised city-dwelling protagonist quickly finds himself out of his depth when faced with the wiles of his country village cousins and their traditional ways of getting things done. As you can probably imagine from that description the primary form of humour is satire and no character is spared. The author side-eyes tradition and those who cling to the worst of it, he mocks colonialism and those who co-operate with it, he is quizzical about his contemporaries and their impotent hopes for the future, he even manages to tease his show more (presumed) French/westernised readers with subtle digs such as the implication that postcolonial Africa will turn to the USSR because the peasant farmers have more empathy with their Russian counterparts and their drive for modernisation than cities paved with illusory capitalist gold in the Western alliance. The protagonist claims this is a sentimental novel rather than picaresque one but the author does tend to want it both ways which results in twice as much fun for the reader. The story is well written and smoothly translated into English by Peter Green but, as in most bildungsroman novels revolving around a young male protagonist and his inner journey, characterisation is mostly through interaction with the (anti-)hero protagonist and the road trip plot is merely a vehicle, albeit in this case a satisfyingly structured vehicle. The protagonist's attitudes towards women are coloured here and there with feminist ideas about fairer division of labour, but the sexual attitudes might upset some 21st century readers although the protagonist's immature behaviour is self-acknowledged and doesn't go unexamined. If I had to describe this by comparison I suppose it would be Catcher in the Rye goes to Cameroon. I'm wavering on my rating but I can't recall any major flaws so let's say 5*.

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I especially enjoyed the chapter headings: "Chapter Three : In the course of which the reader will become convinced that the final climax of this story is at last in sight - a conviction which is, most unfortunately, mistaken." show less

The narrator of this story is a young man who returns to his home in town for school vacation, only to be sent on a "mission" to an upcountry village to retrieve a cousin's wife. While in the village, he finds himself a celebrity due to his "high education." With the help of his cousin, the village sports hero, he quickly immerses himself in the social life of the village, enjoying the freedom of his cousin and friends along with his status as an honored guest. When he returns home, he finds life under his oppressive father unbearable. While the book is written in a comic tone with plenty of funny moments and mock heroic allusions, it also is a serious commentary on colonialism and Westernization and the confusion of values and show more identities that go with them. show less

Mission to Kala is a chronicle of a young man's journey to retrieve a relative's run-away wife from another African village far away behind five river-crossings and twenty mails. This premise is a vehicle to display (once more) the effects of the 'modern' (=European) on the African way of village life, and the conflicts between the old and the new.

The tone of the narrative was a little annoying and the style is somewhat aged (the book is from the 1950s). Other than that the book is positively critical on both and very good in many ways.