Mechanical Africa

"I was here when all of these machines were installed...They have a big advantage over us - they can be repaired, recast, made new again. I knew the ones that were here before these; in the days when the line from Dakar only came as far as this. People said that some day the "smoke of the savanna" would reach as far as Bamako, but no one really believed it. But you could never swear that a thing wouldn't happen, if those red-eared men wanted it to happen! I remember my father telling me the story of Mour Dial, the tribal chief everyone called Greed. He swore that the rails would never cross his lands and make him lose the tribute he collected from travelers, but the re-eared men weren't interested in anything he swore or anything he lost. Their chief - the one who wore a round cap with a flat crescent of black leather at the front to shield his eyes from the sun - just put some of his soldiers in the railway cars and took them to where Mour Dial's lands began. When they got there they fired a few shots and there were bodies stretched all over the ground, but they were on Mour Dial's side of the ground because the shots cam from only one direction. Mour Dial was arrested and taken to Saint-Lois and then to Dakar, to the big council hall of the toubabs. People who saw that hall said that it was entirely red. After that, people never talked about Mour Dial any more, except with their mouths glued to their neighbor's ear, and no one ever knew what had become of him."

A single example, such as the one shown above, is suitable enough evidence to contrive a working behavioral theory on the automated view of humanity. Particularly when it comes to the book from which this quote is taken, where the fictional/cultural interaction between the French "toubab" masters and the entire native population of French West Africa collide in very estranging ways. Briefly put, their masters are overworking and underpaying the natives who work on the railroads and in the surrounding shops, when a strike is called against them and held. When seen from this perspective the whole ethos of the book, as it were, is mechanical.

The inception of this argument can stem from a number of its chapters, but one must go no further than the above paragraph on the bottom of page 129 to establish a broad view of the underlying psyche of the natives and their French masters. It was spoken by Sounkare, the watchman, a man who felt that he was deeply intertwined in the symbiotic relationship between his fellow workmen and the railroad machines they worked along side of. So magnanimous was the appearance of the railroad during his lifetime that he hadn't taken part in the strike that would paralyze them. He saw them not as machines, but as semi-human extensions of the biological. This point of view is expanded in another paragraph on the top of page 129 when he recalled the sight of a now-empty workstation that had been swarming with sweating bodies in the months prior to the strike.

Perhaps the gravity of this connection is felt to its highest degree when a middle-aged villager, Ramatoulaye, is forced to take drastic measures to ensure the survival of her town by killing her brother's ram for food as a result of the strike on page 69. The implication of this action, based on the villager's initial reactions to it, is that it was almost an unimaginable solution to the problem of hunger. They had abandoned a hunting life-style generations ago, which only compounded the anxiety surrounding the need to revert to such measures. Seen from a mechanical perspective, their taproot (the railroad) had been severed, and those natives feeling the effect of this were compelled to re-integrate into a position that placed them at odds with the mechanical schemata.

Though, undoubtedly, the people's positive connection to machinery is dwarfed by the big-ended view of their foreign bosses. To individuals such as Monsieur Dejean, the French regional director of the railway company at Thies, workers and their families are the machines themselves. From his reflection on the events of the strike it is obvious that it never occurred to him that they were alive in the sense that he is. Even when he has knowledge of the natives who died in the strike he brushes it aside and lies in a report to his supervisor on page 29 by saying "Dead? No, there are no dead. The soldiers have been ordered just to frighten them." Regardless of whether they are dead or wounded, content or starving, the over-all sense is that the natives are aware of something which the toubabs aren't...that they aren't machines but living people. As the heading line of the above paragraph insinuates, they "can be repaired, recast, made new again." Although this is a reference to Sounkare's take on the immortal quality of the rusted machinery of the railroad, the philosophy becomes interchangeable with the natives due to their tight connection with it. The toubabs perceived their lives as replaceable, as is illustrated by some other of Dejean's remarks to his superior, such as "The minute they have some money they go out and buy themselves another wife, and the children multiply like flies!" According to their convoluted thought process the machine will repair itself.

Thus far, the turbine of humanity's relationship to machines is an eerie sight when seen through the eye of the conquerer. Alternative solutions to this problem are on the rise throughout the book, as the initiator of the strike, Tiemoko, develops an awareness of the mechanical impetus of his oppressors. Gradually, by reading books from the toubabs, he programs his mind with the strategy of winning an argument itself over that of being right and presenting correct evidence. Yet, the most that can be said about him is that he values ideas as a tool of change on page 103. But in the process he is abandoning what makes him human by opposing Fa Keita's human approach to social relations during his uncle's trial and the injustice of the replicating patterns of similar culture when unique collectives are enslaved by industry on page 94.

People, even one's own, are believed to serve a function that is determined by those with the knowledge and power to execute what are seen as higher functions. After all, Sounkare's own description of the drive of the white men in the first paragraph above was that "you could never swear that a thing wouldn't happen, if those red-eared men wanted it to happen!" This doesn't come out of nowhere, but it is born out of the engine of philosophy that, as the same paragraph states "He (an african chief) swore that the rails would never cross his lands and make him lose the tribute he collected from travelers, but the red-eared men weren't interested in anything he swore or anything he lost. " Which itself reflects the less apparent legitimization in the book of enforcing the shutting-down of a social machine by shutting off water supplies to the towns along the railway and other such actions of the omnipotently withdrawn ones and their button pressing.

Kerfa: A Mere Man

Kerfa, known as a “madman” to his neighbors, is someone who embodies, in a sense, what it means to be free from imbalanced constraints. He is depicted as a madman, spouting accusations against a tyrant in a verbally nonsensical way. In Sia an unusual, if not untethered emphasis is placed on the unravelling of his character. But what does this unravelling reveal about him, and why is he singled out as a threat to the king if all he does is speak in mysterious language? Its simply because what he is speaking is a type of nonsense that can be understood because of the heavy use of metaphors. At one point he said something to the effect that the emperor wanted to turn him into a hippopotamus that he rode on in order to better rule his country. He asked him to help because he recognized that Kerfa could reach the people, but Kerfa refused because he had a conscience, which was why he should have accepted. He acted mysteriously more than logically, which is a typical trait of people exercising their consciences.

But what forms did this conscience or altered consciousness take in Kerfa? That word, consciousness, crops up in my mind because one of its forms: sleeping, is precisely what Kerfa accuses the emperor of doing. Another metaphor, this time used to compare it to a death of the mind. A light tap on the hand for the situation he’s placed Sia in, but none-the-less suitable for provoking all kinds of reactions to the listeners as if by saying that he’s “waking them up” in a sense. This never truly happens because of his social status, which despite the fact of his riveting affirmation of equality to a court official, remains unchanged.

Along those same lines he is the only person throughout the film who remains essentially unchanged, instead of changing into the reflections of others. He was the only main figure, save Sia, who didn't weave lies into the plot, and in doing so preserved his character's stability. Sia’s fiance becomes the new emperor, Sia the new Kerfa, but Kerfa himself is always himself. He was a man who had no one in life and therefore died with no one. As he puts it when talking to Sia (who is a very central figure): “All stories have madmen, but no madmen have stories.” The way the camera depicted him sauntering through the foliage, living in a house outside of town...outside of the activities of other human beings with each other set the structure for his character to resemble an un-glorified, non-pretentious supporting role, such as that of merlin.

What is even more significant is that this quasi-merlin figure is equally opposing the emperor in an indirect, subtle way, in tandem with his usual modality of going volcano on him. In a way Kerfa repels his authority because he not only opposes his actions in word but through the subconscious use of a symbol he attacks who he is. In the film the use of symbols are how, among others, the child running through the palace courtyard with a pink kite that can never gain altitude (symbolizing the ineptitude of the government and its inability to stay afloat), the subconscious mind teaches not only the cliche in question's but an entire nation's collective consciousness how to improve itself. Kerfa’s symbol is his homemade cape that he wears in mockery of the emperor, which is made blindingly apparent in the one scene where he has a private dialogue with the emperor.

This is the pinnacle of his social-aloofness because what he is essentially doing is dethroning the king...and in this story there is nothing higher to dethrone, even if it is Sia’s savage captors. The king has the final power over all collectively conscious minds. Except for Kerfa, who has his own consciousness, enough to pass it on to Sia, who will emulate him. And enough where he “knows how to wake up when he dies.” And how? Simple. He is the old king, the true king, the king who always was, but then wasn’t but is again.