Ferdinand Oyono's Houseboy

“I could not hold myself from shaking as I watched. It was terrible. I thought of all the priests, all the pastors, all the white men, who come to save our souls and preach love of our neighbors. Is the white man’s neighbor only other white men? Who can go on believing the stuff we are served up in the churches when things happen like I saw today...”

Ferdinand Oyono's short novel, Housboy, is a brief exposé on the brutality of European colonialism in Cameroon. The protagonist, Toundi, dies but leaves a diary telling his life story, which is discovered by a Frenchman who then translate it into French, framing the novel. Sent in Dangan, Toundi, a houseboy, or domestic servant, grows up wanting to be like the whites, but gradually discovers the myths and lies of white European superiority constructed by colonial authorities. Soon, Toundi uncovers the sexual dalliances of Catholic officials, infidelity on the parts of whites, including the Commandant and the prison-director, Moreau, and the corrupt system of justice which relies on torture and exploitation of local peoples. Thus, the novel, published in 1956, is also part of the negritude literary movement because it criticizes European colonialism while defending local African cultural practices and history. For instance, Toundi begins to lose his fear and respect for the Commandant when he sees he is not circumcised like all men in his own community. Furthermore, the whites' hypocrisy and reliance on violence for exploitation, as well as the deviation from Christian morality, force Toundi to realize that the whites were  not nearly as good as he thought they were when he fled from his abusive father.

In the end, Toundi becomes a scapegoat for the theft of a cashbox from a white agricultural engineer by his African lover, Sophie. Toundi's tragic death, upon discovery of the excessive cruelty and savagery of the whites, challenges the myth of white supremacy. For instance, Africans are described as savage by whites for being polygamous, pagan, and culturally inferior, but white Europeans in Cameroon do the very things they attack as evidence of African barbarity. However, the diary of Toundi begins with the claim that his ancestors practiced cannibalism. From the little research I have done for classes or personal enrichment, the evidence for widespread cannibalism is largely a myth from 19th century white European writers about the Fang people of modern Gabon and Cameroon. White Europeans, wanting to find evidence for what was not there, insinuated that the Fang rituals and use of human bones for relics or their numerous military conflicts, were all driven by a desire for human flesh. In truth, there has yet to be any irrefutable evidence of cannibalism in Cameroon (or any other part of Africa). 

Anyway, if you want to read a short novel about colonialism in Cameroon, check out Houseboy. There is not too much character development, but it reveals a lot about contradictions of white colonialism, different concepts of gender for Cameroonians and Europeans, as well as providing a portrait of colonialism from an African's perspective. The segregated African township and white quarter, a hospital in Dangan known as "The Blackmen's grave," and violence and exploitation of Africans for increasing the wealth of whites are just some vivid examples of colonialism's dehumanizing character. Yet, there is victory in the end, despite the death of Toundi. His discovery, as well as the discovery by other blacks of Dangan about the hypocrisy of the whites, will eventually topple European rule and usher in the era of independence.