Summary
Laye comments on his time at school. After attending Koran school briefly when very young, he begins attending French primary school. He and his male friends tease and harass his sister and her female friends on the walk to school. One day, Laye’s sister’s friend Fanta demands to know why he pulls her hair when she always leaves him alone. Laye cannot come up with an answer that doesn’t make Fanta laugh. From then on, he stops pulling her hair. In classes Laye is far better behaved, as all students are. They are hungry for knowledge and terrified of being beaten with a cane by their teacher, who will not tolerate the slightest unevenly drawn letter in their compositions.
When a student is a bit older, the punishments at school change. Laye comments on how students were put in charge of the herd of cattle the school owned. The herd was notorious because it comprised all the worst-behaved and ornery cattle from local farms, which farmers sell off cheap to the school. Students are made to bring the cattle to graze, and will be disciplined if the cows do not look to have full stomachs. Laye also hates being made to clean up the guava tree leaves that litter the school grounds. Older male students whip the young with branches as the crying boys sweep up acrid leaves with only their hands. The only way to avoid a beating is to bribe them with lunches brought from home.
Laye wonders why no one has ever told their parents about the slave-like treatment they received at school. Whatever the reason, he says “it was stupid of us to keep silent. Such beatings were utterly alien to my people’s passion for independence and equality.” Things change when Laye’s best friend, Kouyaté, declares that he has had enough. He tells his father about the beatings and arrives the next day with a plan. He invites the older boy who has been targeting him over that evening for supper to meet his father. The older boy goes along, not detecting anything out of the ordinary. However, when he arrives at Kouyaté’s concession, Kouyaté’s father confronts him. The older boy is stupefied as men hold him while Kouyaté’s father thrashes him.
From then on, Kouyaté and his sister are not touched by the older boys. However, they are ostracized, and everyone, including Laye, is forbidden from speaking to them. Eventually Laye goes over to his friend and gives him oranges, saying to hell with the older boys’ order. A moment later they are upon him, delivering blows. Laye escapes and sits down to cry. Fanta sits next to him and gives him wheat-cakes, pretending that he isn’t crying.
To put an end to things, Laye tells his father what is happening at school. Laye’s father and his apprentices come to the school in the morning to strip bare and thrash an older bully who has been particularly cruel to Laye. That same afternoon, Laye’s father confronts the director of the school about how older boys are stealing food and money from younger boys. The director is defensive, telling Laye to stay out of what isn’t his business. He also scolds Laye’s father for beating one of his students. When the director puts his fists up, Laye’s father fights him, knocking the man down before his apprentices step in to break up the fight.
Word of the scandal travels through the community, and Laye hears people pointing him out on the street that evening. However, the director drives his motorcycle to Laye’s concession and speaks with his father that night. Laye watches from a distance, and sees the men are treating each other with civility. From then on, Laye and all the younger boys aren’t bullied anymore. Within a few months, the director resigns. The community learns that he has been using students as houseboys for his wife in exchange for giving them special treatment at school. He has been boarding the boys at his home, paid off by their parents in cattle.
In Chapter Seven, Laye recalls how, as a young teenager, he reached the age when it was time to take part in the ceremony of the lions. It happens one night before the feast of Ramadan, the first night he has stayed in Kouroussa instead of going to his grandmother’s. At nightfall, crowds of people gather, playing tom-tom drums and singing and dancing. Laye’s father reassures him that he need not be afraid. The crowd collects all the uncircumcised boys of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, bringing them to the edge of the settlement. The women and girls drop away, returning to their homes.
Now it is only older boys and the uncircumcised. The older boys lead the younger boys down a path into the bush, arriving at a place in the woods where there is the massive hollowed trunk of a bombax tree. The ground has been cleared and a large fire burns. The boys are ordered to drop to their knees and bend their heads to the ground. Laye knows he would surely die if he caught a glimpse of Kondén Diara, a mythic being said to live in the high grass who has command over lions. Soon comes the sound of Kondén Diara’s roaring and what might be the roaring of thirty lions. Laye reassures himself that he is safe, but he remembers rumors of Diara jumping the fire and dragging boys into the woods with his claws.
Suddenly the immense roaring stops. From then, the night is spent chanting, the uncircumcised boys learning new songs from the older boys. Laye and the others don’t leave the bush until daybreak. Upon returning home, Laye’s father asks Laye about the experience with enthusiasm. However, Laye’s mother thinks it is a foolish male custom and doesn’t like the idea of her son staying awake all night.
Laye comments that over time, after taking part in more Kondén Diara nights, he learns that the roaring comes from the older boys, not lions. The sound is achieved by boards attached to strings that produce a roaring when swung overhead. Laye comments that the childishly simple ritual is an important precursor to the painful tribal rite of circumcision. It allows boys to confront and overcome their fears.
Analysis
With his commentary on his time at a French primary school, Laye returns to the major themes of pride, independence, and colonialism’s influence. Laye paints the picture of a student body that is simultaneously hungry for knowledge and frightened of the authoritarian discipline meted out by teachers. For instance, the strict French-language school punishes any fault in a student’s handwriting with a caning.
While caning and the practice of school corporal punishment were commonplace in many schools across the world in the twentieth century, Laye details his school’s unique practice of treating students as farmhands, forcing them to herd cattle the school owns. Laye is similarly traumatized by the needlessly uncomfortable practice of picking up guava leaves with bare hands while being whipped by older students who treat the younger as a slave labor force.
Laye comments on the strange phenomenon of no one going to their parents to talk about the slave-like conditions of their school. Reflecting in hindsight, Laye sees their silence as antithetical to the spirit of independence and equality that Guineans share. Luckily, Laye’s friend Kouyaté turns the tables on the bullies with the help of his father. In a satisfying instance of dramatic irony, the reader knows Himourana is in for punishment while Himourana ignorantly assumes Kouyaté’s father wishes to reward him despite his harsh treatment of the man’s son. Although the retaliatory ambush initially begets further bullying practices and ostracization, it precipitates more involvement of parental figures.
Defending his son’s pride, Laye’s father confronts the director of the school about the mistreatment he is allowing under his watch. Rather than promise to get to the bottom of the issue, the director is belligerent, leading to a physical fight between himself and Laye’s father. Laye comments that while the men quickly patched up their disagreement, the director resigned not long after. As it turns out, the man had a corrupt arrangement with several of the older boys’ parents. In exchange for giving their children room and board at his house, the director was paid off. He even made the boys work as servants to his wife. This inappropriate relationship meant the director looked the other way when the older boys misbehaved at school.
In Chapter Seven, Laye returns to the theme of ritual with a thorough and immersive recounting of the night of Kondén Diara. A folkloric figure thought to live with lions, Kondén Diara is a haunting figure that uncircumcised boys are brought into the bush to confront. Laye’s whole community takes part in the ritual, marching the boys out to a clearing in the woods before retreating to their homes as though terrified of the bogeyman-like figure attacking them. With his face to the ground—making it so he cannot see—Laye listens to the sound of lions roaring close by.
It is only when he grows up that Laye understands there is no Kondén Diara, or lions. Rather, the older boys intimidate the younger ones by tricking them into believing lions are near with the aid of instruments that create a roaring sound. From his sentimental tone, it is clear Laye has affection for the childhood ritual, though his mother thinks differently. Just as she disapproves of Laye’s father’s goldsmith process, Laye’s mother doesn’t think it is healthy to make boys stay up all night chanting in the bush. But Laye, looking back on the event, sees the opportunity to overcome one’s fears as a necessary precursor to the anxiety-inducing ritual awaiting him: circumcision.
