The Poor Christ Of Bomba Analysis

Failure of Proselytization One of the recurring themes of Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba was proselytization or the manner of attempting to convert someone in another religion. Here, one of the main character which is a priest named Father Drumont has a mission and that was to proselytise the natives in the forest region of Cameroon. He believed that the natives did not know God and therefore will be entitled to oppression. Reverend Father Superior Drumont ,thus, took it as a life’s mission to bring the natives back in the arms of God. Conversely, misconception arises when Father Superior Drumont thought that these natives did not know how to critically reason out and that they lack the value of judgement. It was from this point that

The Father Superior then prayed for a sign from God, an omen that would lead the people to God. And this sign came in the form of M. Vidal, the colonial administrator for that province. M. Vidal informed the priest about his plan to construct a road through the village of Tala. The construction of road would require the use of forced labour from the people so as to Father Drumont, this was the sign he had been waiting for. On page 38 it says “Ah, if only they'll build that road, if they'll beat and persecute these people, then perhaps they'll all return to God...”. According to Nana (2013), the symbolism of roads is clear. In colonial times, it led to the extraction of resources, the loss of culture, the destruction of innocence, increased oppression and subsequently enslavement. In most colonial countries, education was also used as the route to proselytization. Those who attended school were taught the superiority of the Christian God over the pagan gods and the evilness of their animism and fetishes. When the people turned to Father Drumont's church in the beginning what they were seeking was not religion, as Zacharia, the Priest's cook, explained to the Father, when he lamented on the state of affairs. What the people sought was the secrets of their power, how they made things like cars and railways; however, when they resorted to talking to the people about the Christian God, as if the people had no idea of things of the soul, they left the church. Zacharia said on page 30 of the novel “That's not the truth of the matter at all. I'll tell you just how 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