L’aventure ambiguë or Ambiguous adventure

By Cheikh Hamidou Kane

Background

This book is sometimes viewed as the author’s autobiography in a very loose way; indeed, we notice some similarities between him and the protagonist such as their family background, life experiences, studies, faith and religion. It touches on a lot of spiritual and philosophical subjects related to colonisation, cultural assimilation, traditional and spiritual values in the pre-colonial Africa. The notions of work, happiness, purpose and destiny are also addressed. This criticism will mainly focus on the spiritual and philosophical aspects of the concepts brought up in the novel.

Summary and criticism

We follow the protagonist, Samba Diallo, from going to Quran School, where he was the favourite student of his master, to being removed from this nest, this place that he called home and be sent to the French colonial school. This book can be viewed as a journal relating the spiritual journey, the spiritual quest of Samba, as he goes on with life through the occidental schooling system, succeeding brilliantly his studies while struggling to remain faithful to his traditional spiritual values and beliefs gained during childhood mainly through the teachings of his master and his father.

The decision to send Samba to school was a hard one since he was originally destined to succeed his master to be the spiritual leader of his community. At a very young age, he had a lot of potential; clever, witty, knowledgeable and well-spoken causing the jealousy of some of his peers. He was also the son of “the chevalier”: his father was a high-ranked figure in his tribe. Most of his entourage was against him going to school, however, it was his father’s decision, in order to set the example for the community. The wise people council who was deciding on the schooling issue pointed out a lot of facts that lead us to challenge most of the standards that make up the society we live in. Some relevant points are as follows; “What they will learn, will it be worth what they will forget?”, “At the Quran school, what we teach the kids is God. What they forget is themselves, their flesh, and this tendency to superficial reveries, that becomes an habit with age and suffocates the spirit” “We say no to their school to maintain our identity and keep for God the first place in our hearts.” The fears of these wise people, in most of the cases, materialised; our current society is driven by individualism, competition, wealth accumulation, lack of compassion and genuine relationships. Everything is so fast-paced that we forget to take a break and just be grateful. Is it because we forgot about God? Because we do not give Him the first place as it should be? Have we really forgotten about Him? Or have we just put Him inside a box? And when something goes wrong, we come back to Him, begging for forgiveness, for Him to take us back. We are limiting His impact in our lives. To explain this, the author alludes to the fact that technological advancement and science slowly took over, changing people’s habits up to a point where the idea of God has been set further off. In fact, this is what happened to the occidental societies with the industrial revolution and the developments in medicine, navigation and astronomy. With colonisation, cultural assimilation, growing trade, economic and financial interdependence, this is becoming a universal truth in most societies.

In the same dynamic, Samba’s father, during one of his discussions with a French colonial administrator, said that they didn’t have the same past but they would have the same future indubitably, that the era of singular and unique destinies had come to an end. That is the most saddening part, this idea of people being snatched away from their actual purpose, not being able to find fulfilment through the expression of their gifts, impacting and inspiring others as they ought to. The colonial system especially, was setting up a factory, a machine through their schooling system to create subordinates. This contributed to deepen this inferiority complex of the local populations towards their colonisers. Cheikh Hamidou Kane himself, during a 2018 interview available on Le Monde website, was criticising the fact that the colonial administration was preventing the students to choose their formation and therefore limiting their prospects; they could only go through a predetermined set of formations, he said for example that they could be nurses but never medical doctors. This affirmation highlights the emotional and mental abuse that the local populations suffered for decades. The consequences are still very much visible given the mindset of most people in the ex-French colonies; there is this general feeling of inferiority and impression that everything that comes from abroad is better than what is available locally in terms of alimentation, education, art, music, values and traditions. Cultural diversity which is crucial is in danger. Why should we all be the same? A prototype of an ideal they didn’t even achieve. This is very hypocritical, selfish and limiting.

When Samba finally finds himself in France, he has this feeling of emptiness, of spiritual dryness, spiritual lack, not being able to get back this connection with God that has been his foundation very early in life. His relationship with God gave him a spiritual maturity that was shining through him from a very young age, retranslating into this spark, this gift that people saw in him causing them to say “Poor kid, he should have been born in the same period as his ancestors, he would have been their guide”. We can all relate to a certain extent; moving countries, moving continents, having to adjust to a new culture, a new lifestyle, a fast-paced one with people not having the time for God calling themselves “civilised”. For Cheikh Hamidou Kane, being “civilised” is actually being available, available to love the others and to love God. I would say emotionally available because if one is able to love the others, it means that he has already received and experimented God’s love and peace, because ultimately, we can only give what we have, only explain what we perfectly know and understand. Kane said that we are born and thrown in a “jungle of questions” and made-up societal and social standards and conventions. It then becomes more difficult to find ourselves, our true and unbiased identity, to reconnect with our fundamental God-given values such as love, care, compassion. The circumstances and places we often find ourselves in may affect at different levels, depending on our sensitivity, our intimacy with God. With the rise of social media especially, seeing people who are admired and accepted pushes us to imitate them so as to also be accepted, validated. This is the biggest threat since this process involves self-denial; we lose focus and this drives us away from our purpose, our potential. If God loves us as we are, created us as we are and renews every day His breath within us, it must mean that we still have something valuable to do, something valuable to bring to the others. What is it? Proverbs 20:5 states that “The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (ESV). Understanding means deep connection and relationship with God through His Holy Spirit, but if we don’t have that, of course we will sink, we will be misled, drifting away, losing ourselves not asking the right questions. The consequence is spiritual stagnation, lack of rest, lack of peace, lack of happiness.

Regarding happiness, Kane wrote that it is reached through God’s presence and guaranty, that it does not dwell in the quantity of answers but rather in how these are allocated. I share his view; according to the season of our life, we need to learn some lessons, to mature and find the specific answers that would enable us to go to the next season. What is decisive is to discern the seasons we find ourselves in and ask the right questions. Also, who are the people surrounding us? Which season are they going through? What are their advice worth? Can they lead us to ask the right questions? Can they give us the right example? Before even worrying about going to the next season, can we find contentment in the very situations and circumstances we find ourselves in? Can we find some beauty in it? Can we appreciate the challenges we are currently facing? Understanding that these help us grow, that this process is actually the real purpose.

Finally, Cheikh Hamidou Kane said that the occidental culture is throwing away the simple, yet essential ideas that constituted the core of the fundamental values in the traditional Africa, this culture started to put God in quotation marks. Then, two centuries later, having acquired more confidence, they said that “God is dead” to cite Nietzsche; in the era of the industrial revolution, God wasn’t there to measure and to justify. This is at the loss of the current society but as an Italian poet said, the fundamental destiny of man repeats itself; it is a circle. I think that we have the capacity to affect it. We can make it virtuous, we can make it vicious. We have that free will to do it. Samba couldn’t cope, the system ate him alive, but us, we still have the choice, we still have to make a decision and this, every day.

References

· Bible, The book of Proverbs, chapter 20

· Steven Furtick, (Un)qualified

Go deeper

· Check out the interview of Cheikh Hamidou Kane by Le Monde (in French)

· You can read Les Gardiens du Temple from the same author, it is considered as the sequel of L’aventure ambiguë regarding the discussion about the parallelism of both the traditional African culture and the occidental one.