An African novel about one man's corruption explores both the colonizer and the colonized.
By CARYL PHILLIPS
By Amadou Hampaté Bâ.
Translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor with an introducation by Abiola Irele.
madou Hampaté Bâ liked to describe himself as ''one of the eldest sons of the century.'' Born in what is now Mali in 1900, he died at Abidjan in the Ivory Coast in 1991. At the time of his death, he was widely recognized as one of the great humanists of his time, a man who had pioneered groundbreaking ethnological, historical and linguistic research into the oral traditions of West Africa. Hampaté Bâ was fond of quoting his mentor, the Sufi mystic Tierno Bokar: ''Writing is one thing and knowledge is another. Writing is the photographing of knowledge, but it is not knowledge itself. Knowledge is a light which is within man. It is the heritage of all the ancestors knew and have transmitted to us as seed, just as the mature baobab is contained in its seed.''
Hampaté Bâ may have regarded writing as a form of photography, but he understood both its intrinsic value as a means of preserving the past and its aesthetic appeal as literature. He played a central role in the development of an Arabic script that enabled the Fulani language to move from the oral mode to the written, and he adapted and translated many tales of religious and social significance from transliterated Fulani into French. Hampaté Bâ's major works include ''L'Empire Peul de Macina,'' which traces the development of Islamic religious authority before and during the period of French colonization in the early 19th century; ''Vie et Enseignement de Tierno Bokar, le Sage de Bandiagara,'' in which he celebrates his mentor and spiritual guide; and ''Aspects de la Civilisation Africaine,'' in which he relates Fulani culture to other West African traditions.
But it is the novel ''L'Étrange Destin de Wangrin'' (now skillfully translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor as ''The Fortunes of Wangrin''), first published in 1973, that is widely considered to be Hampaté Bâ's masterpiece. For although he uses the novel to examine a familiar subject, the vexed relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, he also goes far beyond this theme. Implicitly and explicitly, ''The Fortunes of Wangrin'' addresses that moment when a world dominated by oral traditions begins to teeter in the face of written authority. It also adroitly captures the farcical duplicity that ensnares the lives not only of the French colonial authorities but of the people over whom they rule, all of whom must engage in a vigorous sort of performance art so they may fully inhabit the roles that have been bequeathed to them by history.
The novel's hero, Wangrin, is an interpreter in the service of the French; thus his job is to assist those who despise him. This is a situation from which many an author might spin tragedy, but instead Hampaté Bâ's novel becomes an often comic romp. Framed by accounts of Wangrin's birth and death, the central narrative takes us on the roller coaster of his adult life, part picaresque adventure story and part proverbial lesson in the dangers of existing in the twilight zone between two peoples.
In his foreword, Hampaté Bâ announces that the novel is based on stories that were related to him by a man who really lived, an older man who wanted the author to take down the story of his life and ''compose it into a book.'' His only request was that his true identity be hidden behind the borrowed name Wangrin. The ''real'' Wangrin hoped, according to Hampaté Bâ, that the book might ''not only amuse but also instruct those who read it.''
"Traditionally, a woman in labor is compared to a soldier on the front line. When she has delivered, she is considered victorious, but if she dies in labor, it is said of her that she died honorably on the battlefield. The delivery of a boy is announced as being 'very good and double news,' that of a girl, 'good news.' The death of a woman and of her baby boy is termed a 'double and very bad' announcement, while the death of a woman and of her baby girl is related as 'double and bad.'" |
Young Wangrin grows up and proves to be an excellent pupil, but in this colonial world the highest achievement to which he can aspire is to be of service to a white man. After a short stint as a primary-school teacher, Wangrin is ''called'' to be an interpreter, ''which in those days was equivalent to slipping one's foot into a gold stirrup.'' And he soon learns that the only way to survive in the service of the colonial administration is to embrace corruption with more guile and energy than those all around him. This being the case, he sets out to exploit both the whites and the blacks, although he is careful to take only from the rich and equally careful to distribute some of his ill-gotten gains to the poor.
Wangrin's contempt for the whites grows as he learns more about the hypocrisy of their system. District officers would never, for example, ask their wives to accompany them to Africa, so it is understood that these Frenchmen may make ''colonial marriages'' with local women: ''French law, which as a rule takes such a serious view of bigamy, turned a blind eye on these colonial marriages. The real victims were the children born of these unions. They were officially registered as children of 'unknown fathers' and forgotten when the civil servants responsible for their birth left the country.''
Predictably, Wangrin's working of the system, his growing wealth and his own ruthless duplicity earn him enemies in both camps. He is transferred, investigated, briefly jailed, attacked and publicly vilified, but somehow he survives. He also gains the admiration of ordinary people, who regularly come to this rogue's defense because they recognize a man who is true to his word and generous with his wealth.
They also recognize that Wangrin is a man who respects the cultures that have shaped him. A product of the fusion of Islamic and traditional African beliefs, he has not forsaken his past in an attempt to mimic the ''white-whites.'' In his pursuit of wealth and influence, Wangrin remains true to his language, his customs and his beliefs. Colonial and postcolonial literature is littered with the evidence of those who have ''crossed over'' and the various tragedies that have befallen them. At first, Wangrin is vigilant, but when he begins to tire of a life of ceaseless negotiation between ''them'' and ''us'' and decides to retire from his post to establish himself in business, his behavior begins to change.
Free from the restrictive boundaries of the colonial service, Wangrin is able to indulge himself. He forms a trading company, establishes himself as director general, buys a sports car and begins to behave in a way that is surprisingly disrespectful of his own traditions. Formerly a strict Muslim who had sworn off drink, Wangrin develops a taste for alcohol; he also takes a white mistress. Worse still, he loses the pebble that symbolizes his link with spirit of his traditional god; not surprisingly, he eventually falls into a state of mental and physical disrepair. His mistress and her European ''husband'' succeed in exploiting Wangrin so that he has no choice but to declare bankruptcy.
Before his lonely and miserable death, however, Wangrin re-establishes himself in the community as a ''public entertainer . . . who neither gloried in his past splendors nor reproached anyone for his dire fate.'' At his funeral, even his sworn enemies pay tribute to his greatness, for although he dies in poverty, everyone respects the spirit of this man of the people, recognizing the lessons they are able to draw from his life.
Hampaté Bâ narrates his novel in the cadences of a village elder who is steeped in proverbial knowledge. When, for example, Wangrin triumphs over an enemy, a rhetorical flourish suggests the nature of his victory: ''When a hyena falls into a well, may God and Death rejoice!''
Occasionally, though, the imagery feels somewhat forced and draws unnecessary attention to itself: ''He took a small board covered in red copper and traced on it a few cabalistic signs. He leaned over them and fell into deep meditation. . . . As he was doing this, he oozed sweat like an earthenware pot full of water. Finally he looked up and noisily let out a deep breath, much like a diver when he returns to the surface.''
Hampaté Bâ's narrative tone is declarative and often didactic in a manner that will be unfamiliar to those steeped in a Western tradition of literary composition. But this is partly the author's point. ''The Fortunes of Wangrin'' is not a novel in the Western tradition. It is a remarkable work of fiction ''rescued'' from a dying oral tradition, a work that, if we meet it on its own terms, will help us to understand better not only the colonial adventure but the extensive roots of African belief systems. More important, it will lead us to recognize our common humanity as we laugh at, suffer with and eventually give thanks for the instructive life of Wangrin. His oral tale is our tale, and we should listen to it carefully. After all, it was Amadou Hampaté Bâ who observed that in Africa, ''When an old person dies, it's a library burning down.''
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