The white man of God

The Cameroonian novelist Kenjo Jumbam is not as well known as his work merits — in particular, his wry account of the cultural-religious clash in the mind of a young boy, Tansa , set in the vicinity of Bamenda in the Cameroon: the novel called The White Man of God (1980).

The work has a comic flavour and is narrated with disarming candour, although it is not, finally, funny — many incidents have biting satirical undertones or leave a feeling of desolate sadness.

The novel describes the family and village life of a group of Lamuso-speaking people, a community in which Christianity (brought by European missionaries) has been accepted by a substantial number of villagers, while the ancient traditions of their people are maintained by many others, in its own hierarchy. Because the indigenous culture is so vital and socially cohesive here, Christianity can only make inroads by discrediting it.

For most of the novel, we see how the representatives of Christianity, both inside Tansa’s family and in the mission hierarchy, wage a relentless battle against the enduring appeal of the inherited, established customs and ways. The struggle is an uneven one because the local culture is essentially tolerant.

It is an old story in Africa, told here with fresh insight and startling particularity. Although Tansa, whose parents are fiercely Christian, is the main narrator and witness, another character (his maternal grandmother) looms so large in his consciousness (and his narrative) that she becomes, in effect, another protagonist. Yaya (as she is called) cannot comprehend the attraction of the new faith. She says to her daughter, Tansa’s mother: “You follow this new way of the white man. He leads you to beg God through his own ancestors ... What is wrong with your own ancestors? Are you told that they do not see God in the world beyond?” (32).

Far more serious than this accusation of cultural apostasy, however, is Yaya’s recognition of the difference between the humaneness of the indigenous traditions and the harshness of Christianity preached by “Fadda”, (i.e. father, the highest ranking local missionary). Like most of his associates, he likes texts such as “but whoever refuses to believe is condemned already” (84). Yaya calls it a “snare” and says: “your new religion has impossible laws and its God is cruel. It is only the God of the white man who puts a man in hell-fire and lets him burn there like wood ...for ever and ever while God never lifts up an eye of mercy to him. What cruelty to imagine of a God!” (33)

By contrast, the local culture, without condoning it, can address and resolve even an instance of sibling incest, wisely and humanely. Jumbam does nevertheless show us another compassionate and open-minded representative of Christianity, the young priest father Cosmas who, from the moment of his arrival, demonstrates his ability to respect and accept all the Africans among whom he works — for social upliftment as much as for Christian instruction. He dies, tragically young, from an illness contracted during his selfless and exhausting efforts to combat the spread of an epidemic among the local people.

A key incident in the novel shows the unmasking, by the relentlessly zealous “Big Fadda”, of a figure described as “the biggest juju in the land” (143), the “Shigwala” (142). With typical crudity, the missionary kicks the masked figure — only to find that it is his own leading convert, who before his arrival had preached that, because “the black man” was so “bad”, “the Son of God ... sent the white man to teach us the way to heaven” (44). The shock of the exposure causes “Big Fadda” himself to collapse “on the spot” (144) .

The novel ends inconclusively. The emotional pressure from her family had caused Yaya, Tansa’s elderly, benign grandmother, to accept a deathbed conversion to Christianity. Yet the last thoughts of an adolescent Tansa echo Yaya’s perplexity concerning the lack of forgiveness of a supposedly parental God-figure:“ And yet, when the soul parts from the body, and the earth welcomes the body, God casts the soul into eternal flames! God!” (151).

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