Description

Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti (Mission terminée) is a powerful comic novel set in late colonial Cameroon. It describes the visit of a young Yaounde-educated man to a village in the interior. Jean-Marie Medza, the narrator, has just failed his Baccalauréat exam, and returns home expecting humiliation.

Instead, he finds that as a scholar his prestige is immense, and he is charged with the duty of travelling to Kala, a remote village, to secure the return of a young woman who has fled her lazy, demanding husband. In Kala, while awaiting the return of the woman to the village, Medza stays with his uncle, who exploits the young man’s celebrity status to have him showered with gifts, most of which his uncle keeps.

Medza is the focus of a series of amusing incidents, becomes unexpectedly married, and eventually completes his mission – but then has to return home to deal with the anger of his ambitious father.