Conclusion
This chapter has examined Jack Mapanje’s Of Chameleons and Gods from the angle of
exile and with specific exploration of how the experience is informed by the antecedent
experience of Western modernity through the desire to acquire higher education in the
imperial metropolis of Britain. To achieve this, the chapter has centralized the discourse
of travel and how the project of modernity through the agency of colonialism cannot be
said to have succeeded as much as expected in Africa. This is because to the formerly
colonized, the sense of fulfilment that is desired from the reversal of the travels that the
colonialist first engaged in, and which brought him to Africa, does not have the same
intimate attraction and gains that the colonialist derived from his occupation of Africa.
Moreover, various scenes and events which are on ground in the imperial capital do more
to deny the modernizing claims of colonialism than confirm them. The intimate
experience of modernity in the postcolony of Malawi is no less a failure, considering the
fact that the nation itself is a product of colonialism. The overwhelming background of
dictatorship thus points to this failure. The failure is made poignant in The Last of the
Sweet Bananas as it shows how the oppressive relations of the state with the nation have
resulted in the elimination, torture, detention and imprisonment of many. In such a
situation, exile of a traumatic kind becomes the only available option. There is, however,
some form of liberation from this experience through the abstraction and practice of
transnationalism, whereby the exile straddles two or more countries at the same time as a
way of still retaining his citizenship of homeland while asserting his presence in his
countries of destination. Yet it may be important to state on a final note that where the
possibilities offered by transnationalism provide greater guarantees of stay for the exile in
the Western countries of destination than in the countries of origin in Africa, only little
can be achieved in terms of development for the postcolonial African nation.
wang
(Wang)
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