Mission To Kala

By Mongo Beti
THE LITERARY WORK

Prepared and presented by:

DR MOONDE ABC

CENTRAL PROVINCE
At the 2019 National Conference
Held at Kitwe College of Education – 16th to 19th April
Theme: ‘Fostering Effective Language Teaching and Capacity
Building for Improved Learner Performance’
 SYNOPSIS
 The author belongs the ‘Negritude
Movement’.
 Negritude is the affirmation of black identity,
especially the awareness of a distinct black
history and culture as something to be proud
of. These in a way staged a war against
European supremacy.
 SYNOPSIS CONT’
• Motif: A young student is sent to a rural village
to persuade a wayward or a decamped wife to
return to her husband.

• Setting: A novel set in the Cameroon Republic

in the late 1950s, before it gained
independence from France; published in
French (as Mission Terminée ) in 1957; in
English in 1958.
 The Novel in Focus
Plot Summary

 Mission to Kala is a comic novel that draws on

several classic traditions:
• The coming-of-age story,
• the fish-out-of-water story and;
• the story of mistaken identities.
Its hero, Jean Merrie Medza, is at the centre
of all these elements—at times, “victim” seems
to be a better word than “centre.”
• The novel creates a voice of subtle, slightly
self-mocking irony for its protagonist. But
underneath the humour and gentle satire, Beti
shapes a compelling critique of the harm that
Western education can do to an African mind,
and the novel ends pessimistically, as Medza
exiles himself from his family and the culture
that is so attractive, but so alien, to him.
The novel opens as Medza returns to his hometown.
School has just finished for the year, and Medza has
just failed the all-important baccalaureate
examination. He is confused, uncertain about his
future and— perhaps most of all—terrified: he
expects his demanding father to be furious. However,
when he arrives in the town of Vimili, near his home
village, he meets his Aunt Amou, who gives him news
of a development that will allow him to avoid
meeting his father. (Mission to Kala, p.5)
 Amou tells him of a man named Niam, who is
in fact his cousin. Niam married a woman from
another clan and then began treating her
badly: he forced her to work too hard, while
doing nothing himself, and insulted her
because she did not bear him any children.
Niam’s wife began an adulterous affair (p.7)
In itself, the novel notes, this did not
attract disapproval: adultery was
common, and people did not take it very
seriously.
 However, Niam’s wife made the unpardonable
error of choosing as her lover a man from a clan
that is not her husband’s: “For a woman to grant
her favours to a man from a neighbouring tribe
is bad enough; if she goes with some rootless
stranger she is, in all intents and purposes,
deliberately giving the most deadly insult
possible to her own kin” (Mission to Kala , p. 8).
Finally, Niam’s wife flees, and returns to the
forest village in which she was born.
It makes little difference that Niam does not
like his wife, or even that she does not want
to be with him. She must be brought back:
his honor and the honour of his kinsfolk
demand it. However, all their attempts at
negotiation have failed, and now, desperate,
they see Medza’s arrival as the perfect
solution. Almost at once, they request that
he travel to Kala to secure the return of
Niam’s wife.
• Medza is confused: he does not understand
how he, a teenage boy, can succeed where
others have failed. He debates this point with
Niam and the other villagers. Finally, an elder
named Bikokolo tells him the truth:
• Shall I tell you what your special thunder is?
Your certificates, your learning….Have you any
idea what these upcountry bushmen will
seriously believe about you? That you only
have to write a letter in French, or speak
French to the nearest District Officer, to have
anyone you like imprisoned, or get any
personal favour you like.
• (Mission to Kala, p. 15)
Convinced, and more than willing to avoid
having to tell his father of his failure, Medza sets
out on bicycle to Kala. When he arrives, the
villagers are engaged in a game against the
neighboring village.
 However, as soon as they arrive at Mama’s
house, a meeting imposes a different pattern
on their relationship. Zambo introduces
Medza to his mistress, who lives with him
quite openly in the house of his father. Medza
is shocked, even scandalized. He knew that
the sexual mores of his people were more
permissive than those of the French
colonizers; but he was not prepared for the
actual experience of this looseness.
• He hides his surprise, but the central irony of
the novel is established. The people of Kala
are fascinated by Medza, seeing him as a
sophisticated, French-educated cosmopolite.
 So dazzled are they by his scholastic
accomplishments that they cannot see his
perpetual amazement at their subtlety,
manners, and firm grasp of life. He struggles
to project an air of unsurprised acceptance,
while attempting also to comprehend their
ways.
• Medza’s stay in Kala falls into a pattern that
has very little to do with his mission. On the
second day he and his uncle—a taciturn
carpenter—visit the father of Niam’s wife in a
fruitless attempt at negotiation.
 After this solitary attempt, Medza proceeds to
party. During such times he is flashed with a
lot of gifts from the villagers.
 At the same time Zambo is attempting to
orchestrate a gift of his own for Medza: he is
trying to find Medza a woman.
• Zambo is convinced that if a country boy like
him is sexually experienced, a city boy like his
cousin must be unbelievably sophisticated.
Little does he realize that Medza is not only a
virgin but also terrified at the prospect of sex.
 It does not help that Zambo’s first choice for
him is a girl from the city who has spurned
every other man in Kala, or that one morning
Medza awakens from uneasy, drunken slumber
to find Zambo and this girl sitting on his bed.
 Zambo leaves, smiling, but Medza ignores the
girl’s obvious advances, and she leaves, baffled.
Medza explains to Zambo that he suspected
the girl had venereal disease, and Zambo is
satisfied. But he does not give up the chase.
 Instead, he turns his attention to the daughter
of the village chief.
 Late one night he awakens Medza and leads
him through the dark to a house where this
girl, Edima, is waiting. Medza and the girl
fumble at each other in the dark, but she
leaves before consummation.
 Nevertheless, Medza is lovestruck. From this
point on, he devotes all his attention to
spending time with Edima, who, for her part,
is more than willing to be chased.
Medza’s life in the village settles into a customary
pattern; he spends time with young people during the
day, and is feasted by the older people of the village
at night.
The affair with Edima is consummated, ironically,
during the wedding feast of her father, who has just
married his seventh wife. During these gaudy
festivities, no one is paying attention to Edima or
Medza. The two take advantage of the opportunity to
sneak away to Mama’s house. (P. 138)
 Their idyll is interrupted by the unwelcome
arrival of Edima’s mother. She bursts into
Medza’s room, screaming, and drags her
daughter out of the house naked, hitting and
scolding her violently. Medza is terrified; he
assumes he must face dire consequences and
cannot imagine what will happen to his young
lover.
• But when Edima has been dragged off, Zambo
bursts out laughing. He explains, “That old bag
simply wanted to be able to tell the whole
village that it was her daughter you’d
honoured with your—h’m—attention…. Did
you see how she was beating the kid?
 At this dramatic point, when she has been all
but forgotten, Niam’s wife reappears.
• It turns out that she has been living with a
man of ill repute in a house outside her
village; her open return with him creates a
scandal.
• Though adultery is tolerated, shamelessness is
not. Medza is convinced that he should leave
Niam’s wife to her own abandonment, but
Mama and Zambo convince him otherwise.
The wife may be an immoral slut, but she is,
nevertheless, a wife: she is necessary to Niam
as a cook, field worker, and (potentially)
mother of his children
 Accordingly, the family goes to the chief, and the
matter is quickly decided: Niam’s wife cannot
afford to repay the dowry, so she will return to
her husband.
 After settling the affair, the chief invites Medza,
Mama, and Zambo to his house for dinner; they
decline, but the chief insists. As they eat, they are
entertained by dancers, drummers, and
processions that grow steadily more elaborate,
reminding Medza of the chiefs wedding
celebration.
 At this point, Edima paces in, accompanied by
handmaids and dressed as a bride. To his
shock (although he certainly does not object)
he has been tricked into a wedding. The chief
marries the young couple.
 Now Medza has done about all he can do in
Kala, and he has little choice but to leave.
 At home, Medza finds his father in a mood of
indifference. The father utterly ignores the boy.
Medza attempts to provoke a confrontation by
whistling and being insolent, but his father is
imperturbably icy.
 Only when Edima arrives is there a
confrontation. His father attempts to beat
Medza, who alternately fights back and runs
away.
 Zambo comes to his cousin’s aid, tackling a man
who tries to capture Medza. This prompts Mama
to begin chasing Zambo, with the whole town
watching.
 Finally, Medza’s father gives up and goes huffing
into the house. Medza watches him for a moment,
feeling genuine pity, but then he decides the only
recourse left is to leave. He walks along the dusty
path out of town, followed by Zambo.
 A brief epilogue informs the reader that neither
boy ever returned to Kala or to Medza’s village.
Edima eventually married Medza’s older
brother. Medza and Zambo wandered together,
adventuring in unspecified ways. But the tone
is as much elegiac as humorous; at the end,
Medza informs the reader that he is haunted by
“his first, perhaps his only love: the absurdity of
life” ( Mission to Kala , p. 183).
Perhaps the most amusing example of Medza’s
confusion occurs when his uncle asks him if he
knows what “blood” is. Medza replies, “Blood is
a red liquid circulating through our veins and—.”
Of course, Mama means blood relations
(Mission to Kala , p. 87).
• Medza’s final comment sums up the plight of
the “colonized African,” who has been
separated from the ancestral wisdom of his
people but not given a new way of
understanding life: “The tragedy which our
nation is now suffering 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” ( Mission to Kala , p. 181).
I THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION