{"id":1632,"date":"2020-11-02T12:14:35","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T11:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.institutafriquemonde.org\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2021-05-11T12:29:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T10:29:04","slug":"reading-note-from-the-avenue-to-the-chateau-rouge-metro-chronicles-of-the-world-below","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.institutafriquemonde.org\/index.php\/en\/2020\/11\/02\/reading-note-from-the-avenue-to-the-chateau-rouge-metro-chronicles-of-the-world-below\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Note: From the Avenue to the Chateau-Rouge Metro, Chronicles of the World Below"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitter News from \u00ab\u00a0Eternally Developing\u00a0\u00bb Places, by Jean-Pierre Listre<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Akono, a Cameroonian Jesuit priest, gives us a series of bittersweet chronicles of trying realities, around little people whose way out one day is not very clear.<\/p>\n

First of all his style: he writes in small incisive sentences, sometimes \u00ab\u00a0poetic\u00a0\u00bb but precise, never practicing melodramatic emphasis. His vocabulary is rich, imaginative, but clear and accurate. His words are rigorous without being pedantic, often returning several times to an idea in order to enrich it, improve it, extend it; where we can see, moreover, in this way of advancing in his narrative, that he is a philosopher by taste (and, often, by profession).<\/p>\n

Secondly, the general tone of his writings: he is never excessively demagogic, but always deeply empathetic to the poor beings he evokes, whether real or imaginary. And, in his sober but forceful style, he can in fact be much more bitter and punchy than all the second-rate pamphleteers, skilful at surfing on the good commonplaces that are so well seen and easy (everything that happens to this unfortunate Africa is always the fault of others, the eternal bad colonisers, the dirty whites who are decidedly undrinkable and doomed to disappear, …), but incapable of an autonomous and original thought.<\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Akono knows how to be raw, even more so, to the point that one sometimes forgets that he is a priest. But, once again, this is unavoidable, and very well so, in front of certain revolting situations. And besides, his words – even trivial ones – have a flavor and a kind of sad elegance that show that they do not come from just anyone. If one did not know that he is a man of God, one would nevertheless say that the author is a good man, who suffers deeply from what he sees, and not a journalist in search of sensations or a politician who is no longer close to hypocrisy. He also sprinkles his texts with numerous references to African writers, artists and singers whom we sometimes know little about, but whose productions accurately reflect the lamentable daily life of the little people with a sharp and courageous bitterness.<\/p>\n

And, all in all, these pieces of text – a kind of \u00ab\u00a0writing in dots\u00a0\u00bb – are as many merciless charges against the profiteering, vicious and rotten local \u00ab\u00a0elites\u00a0\u00bb who give no chance to the little people to get out of it except the possibility to howl with the wolves (for the men to work for the party in power, for the women to accept the classic compromises and degradations…) and thus to reach a very small – and so provisional – plot of reward. The Whites are not spared, but this is natural, because they seem to \u00ab\u00a0let it all go\u00a0\u00bb, not out of contempt or a desire for gain – besides, there is not much to be gained in these little stories – but out of weariness and the feeling that, from now on, there is not much they can do.<\/p>\n

However, in the imagination of the rest of the world, the Whites still have such a head start in \u00ab\u00a0getting by\u00a0\u00bb! … Perhaps not for much longer, by dint of becoming impoverished and blind, without pride and without compasses…<\/p>\n

We can distinguish some major recurring themes and some favorite places that the author desperately surveys, in the hope – always disappointed – of an improvement. Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Akono’s characters live a lot on the sidewalks (of Paris, of Yaound\u00e9…), setting up poor strategies to survive, essentially from very small jobs of reselling indispensable goods; they often have more than enough time to meditate on the way the world is going and think only in the present tense.<\/p>\n

Moreover, their miserable environment is deteriorating as global society becomes more fragmented, allowing the wealthy to live among themselves in a well-protected universe, leaving the rest of humanity to fend for itself in the midst of the garbage heaps. All of this degraded humanity survives \u00ab\u00a0in an environment where bars with high noise levels are plentiful and alcohol flows freely\u00a0\u00bb. She sees, in particular, \u00ab\u00a0incivism developing in the form of a calamitous management of household waste […] or the negligence of road maintenance\u00a0\u00bb. The \u00ab\u00a0structural adjustments\u00a0\u00bb imposed in the past on these poor countries are obviously not responsible for their difficulties either.<\/p>\n

A few anthologies grouped by theme:<\/p>\n