L’enfant noir or The dark Child

Camara Laye

Background

This book can be considered as an early memoir of Camara Laye who wrote it in his 20s. He recalls his younger years living with his parents, describing their relationship and the evolving familial dynamic with him going to school, preparing for another vocation than the one of succeeding his father as a jeweller. The story is set up during the colonial era in Guinea, where he was born. We follow him recounting his life experiences and teaching us about the traditions and habits of the people belonging to his community.

Summary and criticism

In this book, Camara Laye takes us on his life journey; from being a young kid playing in his father’s workshop, to getting his professional diploma that led him to be offered a fully-funded scholarship to study mechanical engineering in France, in the city of Argenteuil. The story is very refreshing and easy to read. The themes tackled on are quite light but they are surrounded with a certain nostalgia that makes us relate in a deeper way to the soul and childhood souvenirs of the author. We discover a lot of aspects related to the traditions and cultural rituals in Guinea which are very similar throughout West Africa. In fact other authors, such as Amadou Hampâté Bâ in his memoirs, also tackle themes related to religion, Islam, circumcision, the art of teaching and education in traditional Africa… However, the difference between both authors is that Hampâté Bâ addresses these with more depth and maturity; he wrote his memoirs at a quite advanced age so he had the time and opportunity to process and gain more wisdom and perspective on his life experiences.

We go through a succession of events that affected the choices and direction of Camara Laye. We follow him on the way to school with his sisters and friends from the small village of Kouroussa where he was born; we meet Fanta, a sweet girl for whom he had a profound respect and affection, they remained close friends until his departure for France. We also go with him to Conakry, in the technical school where he completed his professional diploma. There, at first, he was disappointed by the level of formal education he was receiving, but after a discussion with his uncle, he finally accepted to remain in this school. Although, he got ill and ended up losing one academic year. Finally, the following year, he went back to school and brilliantly passed his technical certification after 3 years. In Conakry, he also met Marie, his future wife. We witness their first very timid interactions playing games, dancing, studying together and going on bicycle rides to the beach. As the story unfolds, we also share with him the pain of losing his very close childhood friend at a young age due to a sudden illness.

In the book, we note a generational and ideological conflict between the mother of Camara Laye and his father. His mother was very much attached to the traditional ways; at first, she didn’t want her son to go study in France, complaining that he would be gone too far and for too long. She was also against the whole idea of the colonial schools. On the contrary, throughout the book, his father was encouraging him to take his chance at every opportunity coming at him since himself didn’t have the chance to go to school unlike his cousins. Therefore, he wanted his son to succeed and achieve more than him, be more than him; he had a very different vision and mindset compared to most of the people of his generation. For him, the occidental education was the future, the best part. In a way he was right since now, it is the norm around the world but intrinsically, the traditional education was complete and very rich, covering subjects from history, biology, philosophy, society, also preparing spiritually the children to be responsible and well-rounded adults. Thus, Camara Laye’s father greatly influenced him to always fight for the best part in life, wanting more education, more qualifications, more recognition. This way, colonisation changed the future and expectations of many families and parents having to send their kids to the colonial school. It created a huge fissure between the generations, giving the children who were sent to school a more globalised and occidental view of the world. Moreover, like many other children, Camara Laye didn’t take on his father’s occupation. His father belonged to the caste of the jewellers and he was a very skilled craftsman, but he couldn’t pass his knowledge onto his son. As a consequence, a lot of skills and expertise have been lost and forgotten, since not transferred to the next generations. Furthermore, this continual disinterest for the craft work and traditional occupations caused a massive rural exodus that resulted in increasing the rate of juvenile delinquency and poverty, mostly at the periphery of the cities. It augmented the inequalities and insecurity among the populations and this is a problem that the now independent governments are still facing.

A lot of African critics did not receive well this book from the fact that it was not engaged contrary to many other writers such as Cheikh Hamidou Kane and Ousmane Sembène from Senegal. In fact, they reproached him to depict a very wonderful period, without any major problem nor political awareness of the era he was living in; in the story, Camara Laye mostly wanted to assimilate to the occidental culture and knowledge, and succeed according to their ideology and expectations. However, we shall remember that Camara Laye was telling his truth, he shared his side and perspective about life and how he experienced it. His journey, his path, is different from the others so there should be more understanding and tolerance towards a man, who was willing to share a part of his life with us.