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Back in the village when we were young, we listened to many stories by the fireside. Many of them were of the special genre called quest stories. A boy sets out to find a man who killed his father in a brawl many years ago. Or, a girl sets out to find her longtime lover who, for some reason, is stuck in a far away country. Or, a herbalist set out in the bush to fetch the roots of a herb that he had been shown in a dream…
A quest story is a journey story. In that story is an adventurous journey undergone by the main character or protagonist. The protagonist usually meets with and overcomes a series of obstacles, returning in the end with the benefits of knowledge and experience from his quest.
There are several elements to a quest story. There must be a protagonist, a stated reason to go on the quest or search; a place to go for the quest; challenges along the journey; and sometimes, the real reason for the quest – which may be disclosed later on during the journey.
In literature, the object of a quest requires great exertion on the part of the hero, who must overcome many obstacles, typically including much travel. The Odyssey by Homer is considered one of the greatest quest stories of all time.
Closer home, young people's novels like Mpho's Search, based on apartheid in South Africa, Ngunga's Adventures, set in war time Angola and Tindo's Quest, based in crisis ridden Zimbabwe are good examples of quest literature.
Mpho's Search, by Sandra Braude, is a young people's novel based on a quest by a 12-year-old boy, Mpho. He moves from Witbank, Transvaal, to Johannesburg, in search of his long lost father, Paulus Mapanga who is thought to be working in the mines.
As the story begins, Mpho is being fired from baas du Toit's farm for failing to look after the white owner's sheep. The grandmother who Mpho has been staying with died just six months back. Grandmother had cared for Mpho, fed him and looked after him when he had been ill.
She had talked to Mpho and told him about his own mother and father whom he had never known, related stories to him and read to him from her tattered Bible. Mpho's mother had died when Mpho was a baby. Mpho's father had left when Mpho was very young, to go and work in the mines.
That was the only way Paulus Mapanga could earn money and send it home. Mpho could hardly remember his father. Armed with five hundred rands, Mpho sets off to look for his father in Johannesburg, not really knowing the hazards in front of him and the near impossible task of finding a man in the mines.
Mpho rides to Johannesburg and puts up in a squatter camp in a space owned by an elderly woman. He is caught up in the violence that goes on between various violent groups of people in the squatter camp, until he runs away in the middle of the night. He runs into Hillbrow, where a Good Samaritan shelters him for the night, giving him a free lift into central Joburg the following morning.
Soon Mpho realises that it was not easy to find a man whose address you don't know in a place like Johannesburg. He becomes a street dweller, learning from other city children how to beg pilfer from supermarkets. He meets sex perverts, who take him home and try to abuse him. He runs away and one day, he meets another Zulu boy called Themba, who teaches him about making money through offloading goods from trucks for shops and shining shoes for passers' by.
Eventually, Mpho and Themba, now a formidable pair, get to a Catholic-run shelter house where they put up during the night and with the option to return to school. They also team up with a notorious boy called Stephen who intoxicates them with drugs and teaches them to break into shops in search of guns, knives and other things until Mpho is arrested when he has not committed the crime yet.
The Catholic safe house secures a lawyer for Mpho and as soon as he is discharged, he bumps into his father's long time friend, a Dr Nkosi. Nkosi indicates that Mpho's father is apparently abroad, studying and has sent him to search for Mpho!
In quest stories, the initial environment or something in it, keeps the hero from changing, from growing — in short, from living. All heroes in quest stories must recognise their worlds for what they are; must realise the need for change; must have the courage to try.
Meanwhile, in Ngunga's Adventures: A Story of Angola, written by well known war writer, Pepetela, there is an orphaned teenager, Ngunga who feels that he has lost everyone around him during the war of liberation of Angola and that he must just travel across Angola and become part of the war. Ngunga's quest is very unique.
Ngunga is a thirteen-year-old orphan. One day, when they were working in the fields, his parents were taken by surprise by the enemy. The colonialists opened fire. His father, already an old man, was killed immediately. His mother tried to run away, but a bullet went through her chest. Only Mussango was left, and she was caught and taken to the army post. Four years had passed through that sad day.
Ngunga had remained in the village and he becomes enamored in the mores and life of the MPLA structures and its guerillas who work from among the people as they fight against the Portuguese settlers.
However, one day Ngunga looks around himself and makes a very critical evaluation;“it was so good here sitting on the sand, his feet in the water. Why should he leave this place? Nobody was waiting for him in the kimbo, nobody would be worried if he was late or even if he didn't come back. He could sleep in the bush…Nobody would ask the question, 'but where is Ngunga?''
Ngunga continues with his sad reflections; Who would leave guarding their cassava to look for Ngunga? Who, on seeing him naked, would even find him the bark of a tree?
Ngunga had become close to an MPLA guerilla called Our Struggle. Sadly, Cde Our Struggle is transferred to Cangamba region. Ngunga felt very lonely and vulnerable that he feels that he must search for his own soul and find another anchor. So Ngunga went to the house built by Our Struggle and put his things into a small old sack. These were a skin blanket, an empty flask, a tooth stick, a spear and a knife and started to travel on through society embarking on a multi-faceted quest. What Ngunga discovers or learns on that journey, we also learn in return.
Ngunga goes to the home of Kafuxi, the President of the MPLA Sector where he often stayed and worked during the previous four years. Ngunga realises the apparent fact that old Kafuxi is mean and does not provide the guerillas with food from his lands. He is not the patriot that he is supposed to be.
Ngunga immediately decides to move on as a result. He crosses the Cuando until he reaches the Quembo, receiving food from the many kimbos. At Quembo, he learns that his hero, Cde Our Struggle had died during an enemy ambush. He learns that this section is full of people with love and unity and that there are many good people in the world other than Our Struggle.
Soon Ngunga hears about a great guerilla called Commander Mavinga. On seeing him, Ngunga realises that Mavinga is actually young, short and thin. Mavinga does not even have formal school education. Mavinga likes Ngunga immediately and insists that the boy has to go to school. Mavimga states that Ngunga can be more useful to the revolution with a bit of education. He advises Ngunga to stop wandering about the war-torn country.
Mavinga moves on with Ngunga and leaves him at an MPLA Bush school with Cde Union, the teacher. The school is composed of just a grass hut for the teacher and some wooden benches and a table in the shade. The teacher is a young man, even younger than the commander! There is another boy of Ngunga's age called Chivuala. He is from Cuando and the two are going to be classmates. They learn a lot in the school and a few days after the disappearance of Chivuala after a misunderstanding, the camp is attacked.
In that attack by the Portuguese, Ngunga and the teacher return fire for hours until they run out of ammunition. They are overrun and are captured and taken to a post at Cangemba.
Ngunga is considered under age by the Portuguese and is released to work on the camp. Meanwhile, the guerilla teacher is heavily tortured and is airlifted to tighter PIDE custody. As he is being dragged away, he only has opportunity to shout at Ngunga,“Never forget that you are a pioneer of the MPLA! Struggle wherever you are, Ngunga!” those words inspire Ngunga. Soon Ngunga stealthily gets close to the PIDE chief's room and shoots him before escaping with three guns, back to MPLA.
Ngunga starts to search for the MPLA guerillas to show them his exploits. He runs for days and instead of going west, he goes east and ends up in Commander Advance's Section. Two tremendous things happen; Ngunga sees what he thinks is the most beautiful girl in the world, called Uassamba. Advance does not allow Ngunga to leave with the guns that he has captured from the PIDE. They disagree bitterly. Ngunga is eventually helped to reconnect with Mavinga after suffering many losses on the way.
In the end, Ngunga learns that Uassamba loves him too. However, the girl is already betrothed to an elderly man in her village and lobola has already been paid. Ngunga learns that he has to move on, go to school, grow up in the revolution and become a modern guerilla. This realisation is the ultimate result of his quest.
In stories of“the quest,” heroes are on the brink of a great change. Some heroes are desperately unhappy and experience their lives as a stultifying world, one that, in its very orderliness and familiarity, comes to seem sterile and confining: a kind of wasteland.
In the third novel, Tindo's Quest, written by famous Zimbabwean writer, Shimmer Chinodya, a twelve-year-old Harare boy slowly realises that perhaps the woman whom he calls mother is not his real mother!
Sadly, nobody in the family is prepared to tell him the truth. He pieces together scanty information and sets out on a solo and unauthorised search for his real mother. He cannot wait to meet his real mother.
The journey takes this gangly boy across Zimbabwe, going for a thousand kilometers, backward and forward, falling in and out of danger and sometimes running into wrong people.
First, Tindo goes to Chegutu, a town west of Harare, to pick very vital information. In Chegutu he meets Uncle Siziba from whom he learns that his (Tindo's) mother was educated at a girls' school in Manicaland, either at Kriste Mambo School or Bonda High School. Tindo rushes back to Harare in the east.
He does not go back home because he is now very inspired. He then hitchhikes to Kriste Mambo then after realising that his mother did not attend that school, Tindo goes further afield to Bonda High School in another district, where his mysterious mother could have attended. At Bonda, Tindo finally learns that her mother was indeed a student there. He learns that she had fallen pregnant with him when she was a school girl. At the school, Tindo learns from a matron that his mother came from either Mzilikazi or Njube in Bulawayo, a city on the other half of the country.
Tindo then sets on the long journey south westwards to Bulawayo past various towns by lift, bus and train. The hazards are uncountable for such a boy. When he gets to Bulawayo, he goes to Mzilikazi where he is assisted by an officer at the superintendent's office to get to the Mhlanga home. There he meets a female diviner who tells him that the person he is looking for is in Njube Township. Tindo gets to Njube after a struggle.
Finally he finds his mother, Maybe Mhlanga.
Meanwhile, back in Harare, Tindo's father, Shingi and his wife, Dorothy, Tindo's foster mother, struggle to find Tindo. They get to the police but to no avail. Uncle Siziba phones them from Chegutu and tells them that Tindo has been in Chegutu and that Uncle has given Tindo the information about his real mother that he wanted.
Through a telephone call from a stranger, Shingi and Dorothy also learn that Tindo has gone to Bulawayo. They then proceed to Bulawayo where they meet Tindo who has just met his real mother, Maybe Mhlanga.
Tindo learns that having been impregnated by Shingi while still in school, Maybe Mhlanga had been unable to keep the child. Maybe had decided to leave Shingi with the baby. Shingi had indicated that having Maybe as a second wife was out because he had already been married to Dorothy.
When Maybe Mhlanga left baby Tindo at Shingi's doorstep, it had sparked off a series of hostile relations between Shingi and his wife, Dorothy. That Dorothy herself had not been able to conceive had made things worse.
But because all this happen during the period of Zimbabwe's recent economic meltdown, Tindo's quest takes him to the depths of a society torn apart and characterised by deep ironies. Once in a while one's luck runs low and sometimes one is helped out, ironically by street people, shebeen queens and women of the night. In this story, suffering unites people and, strangely, love separates people.
This book is typical quest literature. Sometimes you are taken to the wrong woman. Then you begin to meet people who tell you that your description fits a certain woman across the road but her name is not Maybe Mhlanga! You come across people who say they saw the woman you are talking about a few days ago, but when you meet her, you discover that this is not Maybe Mhlanga!
So the search continues and people in the Bulawayo townships get to know you 'as the boy who is searching for his mother' and your story touches all the gamblers, pimps and police and the whole community joins in the search with you.
Indeed these stories confirm that Quest Literature is based on a journey, a road of trials in which a hero hears a call and leaves his home—alone or in the company of others – to search for a treasure or a hidden truth or a new reality. Along the way, he undergoes trials, receives aid, fights enemies and may even die, and, if he succeeds in attaining the treasure sought, he may change who and what he is.
Memory Chirere
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