Toundi Ondoua is a young man from the Cameroons who initially dreams of leaving his rural life and entering the world of the whites. He leaves his village after having a fight with his father. He asks Father Gilbert to take him on, and from that moment, Toundi becomes bound to the lives of the whites in the Cameroons. He is given the name Joseph, and goes away with Father Gilbert to Saint Peter’s Catholic Mission. After Father Gilbert dies, Toundi becomes houseboy to the Commandant. Toundi watches the lives of whites like the Commandant and is relatively at peace, despite the colonization and violence around him, until the Commandant’s wife, Madame, arrives. Toundi is drawn into Madame’s affair and, after the Commandant finds out about it, is used as a scapegoat for the whites and their feelings. He is beaten and tortured, and though he escapes to Spanish Guinea, dies there not long after.

Father Vandermayer works alongside Father Gilbert in the Mission. He is stricter, meaner, and more distrustful than Father Gilbert, and is feared by all the natives. When Father Gilbert dies, Toundi is forced to obey Father Vandermayer until he is sent to work for the Commandant.