Ba'bila Mutia

The Journey's End Ba'bila Mutia

When Akuma, a youthful African government secondary school teacher, leaves his hometown and goes to the capital city, he hardly knows that he will be paralyzed and will not be able to use his legs again. The Journey's End is a character-driven narrative that explores the lives of two men who meet in Yaoundé, the capital city: Lucas Wango, an elderly pensioner who comes to collect his back pay of seven years' pension money, and Akuma, a physically challenged man who helps him recover his pension arrears. Wango doesn't know that Akuma, aka Général, is a mobster and the boss of a city gang that commands and controls a better part of the metropolis. Running parallel to this central plot are two subplots that eventually converge at the end of the novel: Lucas Wango's meddling in and eventual frustration with national political life and Général's relationship with Martina, a woman with whom he falls in love in the city. Set in the rural African landscape of Yambe and Menamo - Akuma's home village which he left to come to the city, and the urban backdrop of the rapidly populated city of Yaoundé, The Journey's End epitomizes the predicament of Africa's expanding slum-cities, characterized by poverty, corruption, and survival-driven individuality. For whom does the journey end - remains an absorbing question that animates every single page in this extraordinary urban adventure.