Title: The Poor Christ of Bomba
Author: Mongo Beti
Published: 1956
Setting: Colonial Cameroon (French Equatorial Africa) during the 1930s
Narrator: Denis, a young, impressionable boy and servant to Father Drumont
Understanding the setting is essential:
The novel follows a missionary journey led by Father Drumont and his team, including the narrator, Denis, as they travel from Bomba to nearby villages to inspect the state of Christianity. Their mission is to enforce Christian values and root out sin—especially sexual immorality and polygamy.
However, the journey reveals deep hypocrisy and moral failure, not only among the African converts but also within the missionaries themselves. The journey ends in chaos, disillusionment, and tragedy, especially when Raphael, a devout convert, commits a murder motivated by jealousy and religious obsession.
| Character | Role/Description |
|---|---|
| Denis | Young narrator, observant and innocent at first but grows disillusioned. |
| Father Drumont | A passionate, idealistic priest. Symbol of missionary zeal and colonial imposition. |
| Raphael | A convert and schoolteacher who commits murder out of misguided religious loyalty. |
| Catherine | A young woman and Denis’ crush; represents youthful curiosity and sexual temptation. |
| Zacharia | An African priest who symbolizes adaptation and African response to imposed religion. |
The Poor Christ of Bomba is a powerful and eye-opening novel that helps learners understand the deep struggles Africa faced during the colonial period—not just politically but spiritually and culturally. Through satire, irony, and the innocent eyes of Denis, Mongo Beti encourages readers to question imposed beliefs and reclaim African identity.#
The Poor Christ of Bomba is a satirical novel by Cameroonian writer Alexandre Biyidi Awala, otherwise known as Mongo Beti or Eza Boto. First published in French in 1956, it centers on the efforts of French Catholic missionaries to convert the tribes of southern Cameroon in the 1930s.
The Poor Christ of Bomba is told through the journal entries of fourteen-year-old Denis, whose catechist father sends him to Father Superior Drumont to serve as a steward after the death of his mother. The first chapter takes place on the first day of February in Bomba, with Father Drumont’s announcement that he will be touring the six-tribe Tala region for two weeks—an area the mission has abandoned for three years. He will bring Denis, his cook Zacharia, and other attendees.
On the first few stops of the tour, Father Drumont is displeased to find that the churches built for each region have been abandoned and left in disrepair. Many of the locals have also been failing to attend mass and pay their cult dues. At each palaver, where he listens to the locals’ grievances, Father Drumont is disappointed to discover that polygamy is still commonplace. He emphasizes the importance of sending girls to the sixa, a program that houses and prepares them for Christian marriage.
At Kota, Father Drumont meets with Administrator Vidal, who informs him there are plans to drive a road through the Tala region. The reverend surmises that this project might bring the locals closer to religion, as there will be forced labor, floggings, and much suffering. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Father Drumont, a girl named Catherine has been following their tour and sleeping with Zacharia. It is revealed that she is one of the sixa girls back in Bomba. Although Denis disapproves of this, he says nothing.
During the palaver at Bitie, Father Drumont hears the case of a son who enlisted the help of the local witch doctor, Sanga Boto, to prove that he did not cause his father’s death. The reverend is informed that Sanga Boto lives in Ekokot as a rich man, having convinced the people of his mystical powers.
The following day, Father Drumont drags Sanga Boto to the presbytery and humiliates him during High Mass, condemning him as a false prophet. He then makes a show of forgiving Sanga Boto’s sins and orders him to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Later in the afternoon, the reverend falls into the water while attempting to cross the river. He becomes very ill as a consequence.
Denis lays in bed at night, worrying about Father Drumont’s condition, when Catherine sneaks into his room. They have sex after she makes advances on him. Even though this drives Denis mad with guilt, he has also fallen in love with Catherine. Meanwhile, Sanga Boto has fled the village, all the while spreading that he cursed Father Drumont and caused him to drown.
Denis is confronted by Zacharia’s wife, Clementine, who had been secretly spying on them and discovered her husband’s affair. The mass in Kondo is disrupted when a public brawl between Clementine and Catherine draws the congregation outside.
Father Drumont breaks off the fight and arranges a private meeting with the two girls. He listens to Clemetine’s side of the story and has Catherine thrashed with a cane as punishment. Meanwhile, Zacharia insists that Clementine should’ve been the one to be punished.
At nightfall, Father Drumont calls Denis to his room and orders him to confess. After Denis tells him everything about Catherine, Father Drumont advises him to be more careful of women.
Main Characters
Father Drumont, a bearded, middle-aged, archetypal Catholic missionary who founded and for twenty years nurtured the mission at Bomba. A stern but not humorless man, he is obsessed with sex and disillusioned by his failure to persuade Africans to follow church teachings on chastity and monogamy. Frustrated by the persistence of the traditional African social and religious practices that he sees on his tour of the Tala villages, he concludes eventually that he cannot successfully Christianize the Africans. At the end of the tour, he decides to return to France. By then, he is a wiser man but is dejected because he realizes that his work has functioned to soften and prepare the Africans for an exploitative and brutal colonial system.
Denis, the fourteen-year-old narrator and Drumont’s house-boy. He naïvely and ironically identifies with the Christian and European values of the missionary. Accompanying Drumont on a pastoral tour of the bush, he records, but rarely comprehends, the conversations and activities of the entou-rage and the villagers. Loving and admiring the priest more than his own father, Denis criticizes his fellow Africans for their failure to adhere to Christian principles and their lack of respect for Drumont. He is a sensitive and sweet adolescent who matures quickly as a result of the tour and his mentor’s realizations about the brutality of the colonial mission.
Zacharia, Drumont’s fun-loving, irreverent African cook. A realist, he uses his position to acquire wealth and sexual conquests. Indifferent to Christianity, he explicitly opposes Drumont’s views and explains the “reality” of colonialism and African traditions to Denis and the missionary. He is a wily and independent man, unwilling to modify his behavior to please either his wife or the priest. After his wife exposes his affair with Catherine and the latter’s fiancé soundly thrashes him, he flogs his wife and moves his mistress into his home. Rather than answer charges of mistreatment brought to Drumont’s attention by his wife, he packs his bags and leaves the Bomba mission.
Vidal, the young, enthusiastic French colonial administrator of the region who uses forced African labor, floggings, and other brutal methods to build roads. Without training and a proper education, he feels that his best opportunities are in the colonies. Fond of Drumont for his essential “Frenchness,” he tries to persuade the priest to remain at Bomba, believing that the French colonial mission is correct. Parroting colonial paternalistic arguments, he fails to persuade Drumont that Africans, if left to their own devices, would succumb to Bolshevism.
Catherine, a beautiful and playful villager who is a sexually desirable member of the sixa, a work camp at Bomba for the prenuptial training of young women to encourage monogamy among the traditionally polygamous Tala people. As Zacharia’s mistress, she secretly accompanies the pastoral tour, spending nights with him, often in the same house as the unsuspecting Drumont. One night, she seduces Denis, who quickly falls in love with her. Before the tour’s end, she is assaulted by Zacharia’s wife, the opening event in Drumont’s uncovering of the true nature of the sixa, which functions as a brothel.
Clementine, a practicing Catholic and the jealous young wife of Zacharia. In spite of having just given birth to their child, she is suspicious of her husband’s activities with the sixa. When she discovers that one of the girls, Catherine, disappeared at the same time as Drumont’s entourage departed, she follows them to catch her husband with his mistress. An angry and self-righteous Christian, she expects Father Drumont to solve her marital problem.
Raphael, a catechist and the mission assistant in charge of the sixa. He arranges liaisons between sixa women and local men. A cowardly bully who coerces the women into sexual relations by assigning brutal work to those who are uncooperative, he flees when Drumont discovers the nature of the sixa operation.
Father Jean-Martin LeGuen, a young, inexperienced vicar recently assigned as Drumont’s assistant. He is an enthusiastic priest who speaks the local language better than Drumont but is unimaginative and dependent on his superior for instruction on most matters.
SETTING OF MONGO BETI’S THE POOR CHRIST OF BOMBA
1. The Poor Christ of Bomba (1956), Mongo Beti’s major novel set in French Cameroon, depicts the effects of French colonial infringement on the Cameroon landscape and consciousness. The novel illustrates the story of Father Superior Drumont, a Catholic priest assigned to the rainforest region of Cameroon around the 1930s. His professed task is to convert the indigenous of a six-tribe region to Catholicism. Despite Father Drumont’s seeming piety, he is not what he seems. Governed by the French colonial ideology of assimilation, he is bent on forcing his Christian converts to forsake their African traditions and cultural ways as a condition for Christianity. This is based on by the writer to develop the theme of Colonialism and religious hypocrisy.
2. The Sixa is another form of setting that is used by Mongo Beti to portray sexual immorality, rot at the Mission of Bomba. It is a church establishment aimed at grooming young female converts in preparation for Christian marriage. It is Father Drumont’s signature project during his twenty-year tenure at the Bomba Mission. In practice, however, the Sixa is a complete mockery of Catholicism and a subversion of African traditional marriages. Raphael, the mission administrator opens the door of promiscuity and all sort of sexual vices to the people – the innocent young men and women of Bomba. Their girls delight in opportunity open to them through sex. For them, it appears the only remedy to their plight; sex, then, becomes for them a means of escape. If there is any strong factor responsible for the Sixa girls’ sexual degradation.
It is also an epitome of exploitation in form of forced labour and coercion of the young women enrolled there take place, and is evident that Drumont cannot claim to be ignorant. For instance, Drumont deploys the young women when building the mission itself, especially whenever men were scarce: All the bricks and tiles are made by the Sixa girls. Every week he calls up some of the village Christians to help. But despite that there still isn’t enough manpower. So He puts a girl from the Sixa to work wherever a man is missing, and prove to the people that girls can do jobs that no one has ever dreamt of, like sawing wood into planks (p.16). They do so in context of forced labour for the mission, not willingly. For instance, the young women are never given any further chance to demonstrate their abilities but only during labour. It is also worth noting that Drumont also approves the extension of the requirement of stay in the Sixa from three months to four months in order to maintain a labour force (p.16).
Work with a will,
Then strive harder still.
And never give up,
But work till you drop (p.14).
3. The Catholic mission of Bomba is another form of setting used by Mongo Beti to satirize religious hypocrisy. It is an establishment of Father Superior Drumont, the catholic priest who mirrors French imperialist views about colonized territories as wildernesses with natural and human resources waiting to be explored and exploited for the glory of Empire. Although the priest’s official mission is to convert indigenous people of Bomba to Catholicism, he pursues his assignment without attempting to win the hearts and souls of his converts. His silent arrogance is predicated on an assumption about the inferiority of the black race, a notion that was largely at the base of French colonial indoctrination. He attempts to force the Africans into accepting Christianity at the Mission. This contradicts with the Christian teachings of true brotherhood.
4. The Bomba mission school which serves children from the region is used to portray the semblance of the Whiteman’s education that trains Africans to be exploited. Graduates from the school, who also are converted to Christianity, help expedite Father Drumont’s Christian conversion project. This is evidence that the Bomba Mission School is fulfilling its function as mandated by France’s mission civilisatrice, where students are educated to be used for the advancement of Empire. The case example is Denis, who is sent as a thirteen-year youngster to serve as a page for the Bomba Mission priests. After two years, Denis has learned sufficient French language and “culture” to serve as a mass boy and run errands for the priests.
5. The Tala country is utilized by Mongo Beti to portray the mounting resistance to his self-serving, hypocritical Christian conversion project. For three years Father Drumont has ignored the Talas, the most populous and most resistant to Christian conversion of the six tribes-depriving them of his spiritual nourishment, in hope that his starved “flock” would rush back upon his return. The novel begins at the end of his two-year moratorium, and it is an account of his two-week reflective tour of the Tala tribe. Father Drumont is shocked to discover that converts throughout the villages of Tala have not missed him. It becomes obvious to the reader that Father Drumont does not know his parishioners as he thought, the simple reason being he has never cared about them as people.
6. Timbi also reflects on the failure of Christianity to pick. This portrays the inadequacies that surround Father Drumont’s hypocritical conversion project, and he learns from one of his own catechists, in the village of Timbo, an unsettling truth that has eluded him for twenty years; that is, the Talas have only half-heartedly accepted him and his Catholic religion because they felt, from the outset, that the path to the white man’s secret power (money) is hidden in his church and school. Father Drumont asks his catechist: “Why is it, do you think that so many backslide from the true religion? Why did they come to mass in the first place?” (Beti 29). Accosted by Father Drumont, the catechist tells him what he doesn’t want to hear: “My Father, at that time we were poor. Well, doesn’t the kingdom of Heaven belong to the poor? So there is nothing surprising in many of them running to the true God. But nowadays, as you know yourself, Father, they are making pots of money by selling their cocoa to the Greeks” (Beti 29). Then Zacharia, Father Drumont’s cook adds, “I will tell you just as it is, Father. The first of us who ran to religion, to your religion, came to it as a sort of […] revelation. Yes, that’s it, a revelation; a school where they could learn your secret, the secret of your power, of your aeroplanes and railways […] in a word, the secret of your mystery. Instead of that, you began talking to them of God, of the soul, of eternal life, and so forth. Do you really suppose they didn’t know those things already, long before you came? So of course, they decided that you were hiding something” (Beti 30).
7. Mombet like the other places in the Tala Country portrays the failure of Father Drumont’s hypocritical conversion project. Analyzing this, Father Drumont concludes that oppression is the only route to salvation. The people in the interior, having sold more cocoa and therefore having come into much money were taking on wives and buying themselves the material things they thought the Whiteman’s God could give them.
It seems the more money they have the less they think of God.
‘We saw clearly enough how they were. Often we saw a bicycle or a sewing machine standing in a corner. Cocoa has made them rich here… In short, they live careless lives, quite unlike the people in towns, or along the main roads. As the Father says, they don’t strain themselves. And he adds that if they don’t often remember God, it’s because they’re too happy.’ According to him only the miserable have or the oppressed can have faith in God? ‘And why are they better Christians along the roads, unless it’s because they are constantly exposed to the exactions of soldiers and chiefs, or the demands of forced labour? Here they know nothing of all these woes. If God would only send them a warning!’ [19] This makes him an epitome of hypocrisy since it contradicts the religion he intends to impose on the Africans.
The Father therefore prays for a sign from God, a sign that would lead the people in the Mombet-Timbo areas to God. And this sign comes in the form of M. Vidal, the colonial administrator for that Province. M. Vidal has met the father at one of the villages and has informed him of his plans to construct a road through the Tala country. The construction of such roads requires the use of forced labour from the people. To the Father, this is the sign he has been waiting for.
8. Evindi also portrays the mounting resistance to Father Superior Drumont’s self-serving, hypocritical Christian conversion project. It is not surprising that in the novel, the people, natives from other towns except Bomba, already know the answer to this question. Little wonder then that a man should be so angry with the Father (when the latter tries to tell him about Jesus Christ after throwing down his xylophones and drums) that he rages: “Jesus Christ…another damned white! Another that I’d like to crush with my left foot…Do I come and tell you about my ancestors, huh?” The implication of this statement, therefore, is that Africans do not see the missionary activities of the white men in Africa as religiously driven; rather, they believe it is a sly path to colonialism.
Religious Hypocrisy in the novel, The Poor Christ of Bomba- Mongo Beti
To be candid, the Father shows his feelings against the forced labour development projects by colonial administration in the Cameroon, but contrarily in the Sixa similar forced labour and coercion of the young women enrolled there take place, and is evident that Drumont cannot claim to be ignorant. For instance, Drumont deploys the young women when building the mission itself, especially whenever men were scarce: All the bricks and tiles are made by the Sixa girls. Every week he calls up some of the village Christians to help. But despite that there still isn’t enough manpower. So He puts a girl from the Sixa to work wherever a man is missing, and prove to the people that girls can do jobs that no one has ever dreamt of, like sawing wood into planks (p.16). They do so in context of forced labour for the mission, not willingly. For instance, the young women are never given any further chance to demonstrate their abilities but only during labour. It is also worth noting that Drumont also approves the extension of the requirement of stay in the Sixa from three months to four months in order to maintain a labour force (p.16).
Work with a will,
Then strive harder still.
And never give up,
But work till you drop (p.14).
From the foregone, it is evident that the Sixa works for the material interest of the colonial mission, coercing and forcing young women to work under the pretext of spiritual and moral guidance and development. The novelist in The Poor Christ of Bomba, powerfully deploys these women characters as representation of exploitation, maltreatment and oppression by both the European colonial Church, being represented by the Bomba mission, its missionary and M. Vidal, and by the African male, represented by Zacharia and Raphael. All this is an epitome of religious hypocrisy.
Father Superior hands down the running of the Sixa to Raphael, a catechist. However, he in turn has turned it into a brothel and is pimping the girls to men in town, on the blindside of the Father, for the Father, trusting Raphael to do good and having given him all the resources he needed, has never visited that part of the mission since its construction twenty years ago. Raphael takes advantage of the situation to sleep with the girls, though he is married, and to profit from their services. To girls who are unwilling to participate in his diabolical scheme, he assigns them the hardest work at the Sixa until they relent. He goes further to deceive the fiancés of some of the women who come to visit and inquire why the Father has not approved their union to take place. All this combined contradicts with the reason the Sixa is established and brands the church as hypocritical.
After years of preaching and conversion, the Father realizes that he has failed in converting the natives in the interior of the region. To get them to seek God, he abandons them for three years hoping that after this period their yearning and desire would have peaked and his presence would have been like water to the desert traveler. This reflects on religious hypocrisy because as a priest he is expected to help them know God and he reserves no right to punish them. This doesn’t even bear any fruit because what happens during the Father’s tour of the villages, after two years of absence, is exactly what he had not expected. He finds the natives who live farther away from the road happy and unconcerned. In fact, they have reverted to their old ways: men who had married in church had taken on extra wives and others who are not married are living in concubinage.
Denis’ father, who is a catechist, would wish his daughter to have a baby outside wedlock like most Africans in Bomba. They don’t easily give in to Father Drumont’s teachings since they are only interested in the fruits Christianity will come with: “After all, my father is a catechist, yet I’m certain he’d be the happiest of men if my sister Anne had a baby before marriage, especially a son. That will be one man more in the household. The only thing is, my father might be excommunicated by Father Drumont over thing like that, especially as he’s a catechist” (1971, p. 9). In fact, this act would tarnish the image of both Denis’ father and sister in the Church, but Denis is sure it would please his father. This reveals deception and religious hypocrisy in the text.
Denis’ dogmatic belief of the mission, he always emphasizes the Father’s position on polygamy as sinful. For instance, he makes reference to a man’s polygamy and refusal of Christian marriage as an “odious situation”. However, most the converts do not rigidly hold to the Church’s stance on this issue as Denis does. For example, at a village Mombet, Denis notes that most of the converts “…have taken a second wife or even third wife” (p.13). As we have earlier seen in other instances of customary village festivals, converting to Christianity does not mean a total renunciation of traditional beliefs that conflict with the missionary teaching.
However, Father Drumont launches a serious struggle against polygamy, but is without any relevant attempt to protect the rights of Christians or their well-being. The incident between Drumont with the chief of Timbo, for example, depicts that Drumont desires to convince the chief to disavow polygamy. The chief converts but when his first wife cannot bear children, he decides to take another wife. And he feels this is a personal since he decides not to seek the consent of the priest, and it is vital to note that “…his first wife does not bear him a son. He must have discussed with the Father and been counselled…. But long the inevitable happens; the chief takes a second wife, and this is the first time since his baptism that he has taken a decision without consulting the Father” (p.28). Thus, the chief chooses to separate the mission when it comes to the issue of polygamy, so as to distance himself from the Father’s hostility and condemnation, or possible sanctions.
In the meantime, the chief of Ekokot attempts to convince Drumont to approve his taking of other wives, his reason is that his first wife is a barren. Therefore, he postpones his scheduled conversion to another date. That he will no longer convert till he has enough children and until such a time he no longer desires another woman:
‘So when will you be converted?’
The chief thought for some time before replying: ‘Oh, Father…Mmm, well, when I’ve had enough children!’
‘Indeed!’ the Father exclaimed.
‘Certainly, Father; you know what I mean. You know my first wife, eh?
The one I married in church? Well she’s sterile. Yes, Father, she’s sterile!
So, you understand me when I say I was forced to take other wives in order to have children. But when I have enough children I shall perhaps let my other wives go. Yes, perhaps…’ (p.65).
Father Drumont sees this as another ruse, claiming to dismiss the “extra” wives when they might have had enough children from them. It is assumed that Father Drumont will reject the idea of baptism of any polygamous man like the chief when decides to convert. Unfortunately, the response of the mission depicts that he might be ready to accept the chief were Father sure he would stick through to his word of riding of his ‘extra’ wives. Once small, the imperative for Drumont is based mainly on the abstract concept of polygamy. The resultant effect for the affected women, who would be abandoned and shunned, seems not to be of any concern to the Father.
To further demonstrate the missionary’s lack of personal concern to the plight of the Africans in his manner of dealing with polygamy and consequences, is exhibited when a woman visits him in Ekokot. We all know that Drumont takes clear positions against polygamy on several occasions, particularly if the men involved do not hold the position of chief in the society. And his position is always strict as to completely split families. His demonstration of dogmatic stance against polygamy practically exposes his lacklustre concern for the personal consequences either from the system of polygamy itself or from the rigidity of his own reactions. For instance, when meets a woman who frequently visits her daughter that is married to a polygamous husband, his judgment is simple but rigid, because he insists that the woman
“Give up these visits to your daughter!”(p.62).The woman insists that she be allowed by the priest to continue the visits to her daughter: “Father, she’s my child, my own child, and I love her…. Punish me in any way you like, Father, but don’t forbid me to see my daughter. I would die! Have pity on me…” (p.62). In response to the request, Drumont says that any Christian mother must agree to put an end all relations with her daughter who would be married to a polygamous man.
Father Drumont concludes that oppression is the route to salvation. This is aptly wrong and contradicts with the Christian teachings. The Father therefore prays for a sign from God, a sign that would lead the people in the Mombet-Timbo areas to God. And this sign comes in the form of M. Vidal, the colonial administrator for that Province. M. Vidal has met the father at one of the villages and has informed him of his plans to construct a road through the Tala country. The construction of such roads requires the use of forced labour from the people. To the Father, this is the sign he has been waiting for. The people in the interior, having sold more cocoa and therefore having come into much money are taking on wives and buying themselves the material things they think the Whiteman’s God could give them. This makes Father Drumont approve their suffering.
Father Drumont does not know his parishioners as he thought, the simple reason being he has never cared about them as people. His relationship with Denis, for example, is impersonally focused only on the chores that the lad performs in his house and church. It is not a holistic, father-son relationship that Denis assumes and seeks. Father Drumont’s paternalism is consistent with the master-slave relationship and typifies the unequal nature of colonizer-colonized relationships. After living with the priest for two years, Denis does not know anything about Father Drumont’s family or his homeland. His paternalistic view is also reflective of his relationship with converts throughout the Bomba Mission, which equally reflects France’s view of the colonies. His only interest is in turning his parishioners away from their native traditions, converting them to Christianity, and collecting all kinds of membership dues for his church coffers. This also makes him an epitome of religious hypocrisy.
Father Drumont imposes all kinds of dues on his church members and enforces collection of these dues through a feudal system of church catechists, similar to the taxation of natives by the colonial government. This also makes him an epitome of religious hypocrisy and exploitation.
Father Drumont’s response to the problem of moral decadence is one of rage, not compassion, when he is forced to acknowledge the pattern of sexual exploitation the Sixa girls have suffered at the hands of his staff. Although Doctor Arnaud’s report indicates that most of the girls have been infected with syphilis, Father Drumont refuses to authorize treatment that is recommended. Shocked by the response, Doctor Arnaud tells the priest: “Then, Father, you have only to write to me with your decision. But if you will permit me to advise you, you’d better decide quickly” (Beti 202). Instead of providing the girls treatment, Father Drumont closes down the Sixa for good and sends the girls away. In effect, his institution that was supposed to prepare the girls for monogamous marriages has raped and disposed of them. One girl shares her sense of agony and loss: “I have no family now and no homestead to return to. The only home I have is the mission” (Beti 206), but her wailing is to no avail as Father Drumont closes down the Bomba mission in preparation for his return to France.
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