Thursday, January 30, 2020

Cameroon - The Poor Christ of Bomba

Book 29: The Poor Christ of Bomba - Mongo Beti


"In Bomba the girls who are being prepared for Christian marriage live together in the women's camp. Gradually it becomes apparent that the local church men have been using the local girls for their own purposes."
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Sure, the book is about that. But first, you have to suffer through over 100 pages of the narrator talking about following the priest while he travels from village to village, judging everyone for not being pious enough (read: not giving the church/him enough money) and damning them all to hell. And throughout this journey, the narrator is fully supportive of the priest. So supportive, in fact, that nearly every sentence is an exclamation. But I digress. Eventually, the narrator tires of the priest. It happens sometime after a village woman gives the narrator a handjob and he falls in love with her. By the time they return to the main village, everyone has figured out that the priest is a sleaze who has been forcing women into slave labor in exchange for agreeing to perform Catholic marriages. 

This was not one of my favorites. To say the least. 

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