God's Bits of Wood

“Three million francs is a lot of money for a Negro lathe operator,” Doudou said, “but even three million francs won’t make me white. I would rather have the ten minutes for tea and remain a Negro.”

Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood is an interesting, though surprisingly boring read simultaneously. As a fictionalized account of the 1947 railroad workers’ strike in what are now Mali and Senegal, Ousmane, a Senegalese writer and filmmaker, shows how the strike affected men, women, children, and the elderly from Dakar to Bamako. Published in 1960, the year of political independence for both Mali and Senegal from France, which briefly established a confederation that included both former colonies, Ousmane’s novel could be read as a call for unity between the peoples of Mali and Senegal. In this novel, that would be the Bambara, Wolof, Peul, and other ethnic groups of the region. Thus, God’s Bits of Wood, using the metaphor of the strike that shows the power of unity, serves as a reminder of the power that the people of both Mali and Senegal will need to maintain their independence.

            The novel is also quite similar to Jacques Roumain’s Masters of the Dew, a clearly pro-Marxist/Communist peasant novel about the power of collective organization, based on the Haitian koumbite peasant tradition. Like Roumain’s magnum opus, Ousmane relies on themes of colonialism, race, labor, and unionism to support socialist systems. Sembene Ousmane’s experiences as a worker in the docks of Marseilles struggling to strengthen working-class union activism and solidarity despite barriers of race is a theme he used in his semi-autobiographical novel, Le Docker Noir, his first novel. Due to his own background with unions and his presumably leftist or socialist sympathies, it is no surprise that God’s Bits of Wood focuses on the necessity of unions to protect the interests of the working-class, and weaken white French colonial domination and racism. Just as the peasants of Roumain’s novel struggle with their own village feud and a highly exploitative state, the men, women and children associated with the railroad strike transcend ethnic barriers, confront the liberation of women who initiate their own march and riot against the pro-white police, and address the issue of political autonomy for Africa. Unlike Roumain, Sembene’s novel actually deals with women’s liberation instead of reinforcing patriarchy. Before the strike, women never talked publicly, silently supporting their husbands at home. The strike, which led to starvation and government repression since the colonial government supported the white railroad administration, forced women to act autonomously from their husbands, thereby abandoning some gender roles assigned to women. Women such as Ramatoulaye, an elderly woman sick of the colonial regime and the suffering forced upon blacks, helps incite the women to riot and resist the police. Others, such as Penda, a prostitute, and Maimouna, a blind woman, lead a march to Dakar in order to win more press attention and support in the French colonies of West Africa. On the other hand, women are still expected to obey their husbands, who are polygamous, which creates tension between men and women during and after the strike. Indeed, some of the inspiration for men continuing the strike was the Frenchman Isnard and Dejean, the railroad manager, insisting that they could not provide family allowances since the blacks have so many concubines. Referring to the wives of the workers as concubines since polygamy is not practiced in France served as a rallying cry for anti-colonial, pro-labor activism among the men and women associated with the railroad strike. However, this displays a paternalistic attitude among the men, who continue to insist for family allowances and other benefits to protect the honor of their wives and themselves.

            Sembene Ousmane’s novel also explores the white settler mentality through the characters of Dejean, Isnard, and other whites. These Frenchmen refuse to give in to the demands of the strikers, especially regarding family allowances, because it will recognize and give in to Africans. To them, the Negroes are children who owe the railroad, or ‘smoke of the savanna,’ in addition to everything else to white men such as themselves. Their paternalistic attitude toward the people they see as children leads to them taking credit for everything in the colonies, despite the obvious fact that the majority of the labor that constructed and maintains the railroads as well as other colonial enterprises and industry was black. Like white settlers in colonies everywhere, these whites’ refusal to compromise and their racist paternalistic worldview leads to violence, intransigence that prolongs the strike, and their eventual dismissal from the railroad company. Ousmane obviously attacks anti-white racism as well in the workers’ struggle, with Fa Keita and Lahbib reminding Ibrahim Bakoyoko that “…happy is the man who does battle without hatred.” That is, the strikers cannot hatred enter their hearts during their struggle, since violence begets violence, leading to a perpetual cycle of murder and death. Indeed, throughout the strike, men, women, and children are tortured, killed, and imprisoned by the French colonial regime, which relies on its black agents to carry out the repression. So the union’s actions does not condone anti-white ‘racism’ of any kind, but seeks to ensure higher salaries, rights, and benefits for the workers, in addition to formal recognition of the union. Of course the only way the union’s strike succeeds is through collective action, which culminates in a general strike after the women’s march to Dakar and Ibrahim Bakayoko’s speech. Ousmane also deals with issues of colonialism in the battle over language (French versus Wolof and Bambara) and the character of N’Deye Touti, an educated, beautiful young woman who suffers from self-loathing and francophilism.

            Besides dealing with issues of colonialism, gender, class, and race, the novel avoids romanticizing the strike. The individuals involved in the leadership are all flawed, including Ibrahim Bakayoko, the Bambara spirit of the strike whose character only becomes significant near the conclusion. As he says himself, he prostitutes his life to the strike, ignoring his family obligations and lacking a heart. His infidelity toward his wife, Assitan, and absence after the murder of his mother illustrates his willingness to put his life into the struggle before his personal obligations. Others, such as Penda, lived an idle live of harlotry prior to becoming involved in the strike. Or N’Deye Touti, who hates her own people for practicing polygamy, living in poverty and ugly dwellings, and lacking the ‘civilization’ of French whites, whose literature she devours, eventually learns to accept who she is and serves the strike through manual labor, collecting water. The problem of internal division and ethnic barriers should have been stronger, perhaps. For example, the strikers all seem to concur on the importance of using Wolof instead of French, since it is one of their languages, yet the Bambara of Mali seem to have no problem with the use of Wolof instead of their own tongue. One would think that the ethnic tensions between the two groups would have remained high, despite the widespread comprehension of Wolof across Senegal and apparently, Mali. Perhaps the use of Wolof over Bambara was due to the fact that when the issues arose when to use French or Wolof, the situation was set in Senegal rather than Mali. Regardless, the novel’s heroes and heroines are from both ethnic groups, reinforcing the message of solidarity in order to achieve mutual goals of liberation.

            Overall, God’s Bits of Wood is an interesting novel, though somewhat hard to follow at times. Each chapter switches its focus to a different city with different characters after every chapter, so it becomes confusing keeping up with all the names. However, the tactic does work in showing how the strike becomes more inclusive and significant in the lives of people from Mali and Senegal, since men, women, and children from the cities of Dakar, Thies, and Bamako ebb and flow during the strike. Still, I cannot help but feel that the novel would have been better if it had focused on the strike in one particular city, allowing some of the characters to become more fully developed and incorporated in the story. Still, for essential francophone African literature, this novel remains a classic taught in university courses.