TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Back to Bukavu, Fall, 1964

Fred Hunter had the unusual experience of opening a USIS cultural center in his first full overseas assignment and evacuating it less than a year later. Readers of this blog may wonder what became of him – and of Coq – after his evacuation. Here’s an update.

Shortly after my second evacuation from Coquilhatville, I flew to Europe for some long-planned vacation: Oktoberfest in Munich with American friends, a reunion with my parents in Greece. (As a parent now, I can imagine how relieved they must have been to see me.)

I returned to Léopoldville in late October, expecting that I might return to Coquilhatville. Mercenaries had prevented rebels from entering the town. They had occupied Ingende at the ferry crossing of the Ruki and had pushed far enough along the road to Boende to prevent further rebel advances. But the rebels were entrenched in Boende. The State Department could not be convinced that sending an officer back to Coq made sense.

I made a trip of several days to Coq. During it I arranged for Jules André to manage the Center, paying employees and keeping an eye on the place. Jules was surviving partly on these kinds of odd jobs and this one was welcome in that it paid in hard currency. He also agreed to sell my car.

I tried to rekindle staff morale and re-establish a regular schedule of film showings in the Coq cités. I also fired N’Djoku Pierre. A USIS projector turned up missing after the evacuation. Eventually the Catholic priest who bought it returned it to the Center; we reimbursed him. N’Djoku had stolen before. I “let him go” on the basis that we were reducing staff.

A letter about the trip reports: “Stayed at the house in Coq, but took my meals with Thérèse and Jules. How incredibly generous and hospitable they are! I’ve never seen them happier together. I think the marriage may have found a new sense of direction in their having decided at last to leave Coq, in their having at last again something to aim at together after these hard times of drifting along wondering if they could take it. They laugh together a great deal. Jules seemed relaxed, even touched her affectionately now and then. They called each other ‘chou’ a great deal; I’d never heard that before. Nice to be in this atmosphere.”

Other Belgians were also leaving Coq. Delinte and Boudart were pulling out. Maitre Herman had already begun looking for legal opportunities in Léo.

In late November I was reassigned as the temporary Branch Public Affairs Officer in Bukavu, where I had first served in the Congo. The Center there was running well. Another USIS officer Paul Polakoff was publishing a daily bulletin, taken from Voice of America newscasts, a real service to the community. Bukavu had seen its ups and downs during the rebellion, but was now safe. The American officers in the town – State, USIS, CIA and military – took their meals at the home of Dick Matheron, the consul, and lived nearby. The house became a club of sorts with a convivial cocktail hour before dinner, quite a lovely BOQ, in fact.

US government regarded the town as a war zone; American women could not be sent there. The house stood on a bluff overlooking Lake Kivu and off to the left, across the blue water, lay the peninsula on which the town itself stood. Across the driveway stood the CIA house where lived whatever men, moving in and out, worked for The Agency.

Outside of town some weeks earlier, trying to get info about rebel movements, vice-consul Lew MacFarlane had gone missing. Everyone assumed he had fallen into rebel hands and might be suffering unspeakable atrocities. Then one happy day he reappeared, hungry but unharmed. Roscoe, a young CIA operative, was certain that The Agency could do a better job of running the Congo than could the Congolese. He and I used to argue the point, I contending that, in fact, even The Agency hardly understood the tribal interweavings at play and could not possibly run the place.

The occupants of both houses used to gather for cocktails and dinner. The meal, prepared by Matheron’s cook, was often served around 8:30. A very cushy deal. Italian love songs would waft from the phonograph, exciting yearnings in men missing women. Occasionally guests of the consul would join us for dinner. Often with us was Père Angelo, a young Italian priest of amazing courage and of such virility that one could not help suspecting that the Italian adherence to priestly celibacy was of a different nature than most American adherence. A most unpriestly fellow, Angelo went up in American T-28 fighter planes, piloted by anti-Castro Cubans, and helped shoot up rebel strongholds to the south. He also waterskied.

If American women were not allowed in Bukavu, Belgian women were available to take up the slack. But even these were in short supply. Bukavu was a place where husbands seemed inured to their wives’ dallyings. Cuckolds and cuckolders socialized together. The Belgian woman, probably 35, who acted as the USIS secretary, was married to and living with one countryman, blind and disabled, and also the lover of another; he lived in their apartment.

One afternoon the US Army colonel and I paid a call on Mme Gaillard. She obligingly offered the colonel her opinions as to which women had adventures and which would satisfy the purposes he had in mind. (In fact, he did find une amie.) Mme Gaillard came to dinner at the consul’s house a few nights later, accompanied by her husband. As often happened in BOQs of that era Playboy magazines were strewn about the living room. Madame gave us a European woman’s opinions of American nudes. Of the Playboy offerings she opined, “Elles n’ont pas de belles poitrines” (“They do not have lovely breasts”).

The favorite at the consul’s house during the casual times before and after dinners was The Bush Baby. As I recall, it had no other name. A bush baby is a small, nocturnal primate with extraordinary jumping abilities. While this guy was small enough to hold in your palm, he was too jumpy to be petted. While you were sipping your drink, he could easily land on your shoulder, arriving from who knew where. Of course, he was an object of delight. Not only for his jumping and flying abilities, but also for his love of the bottle. He would hop to the drink cart and lick the top of any whiskey bottle inadvisably left open. Once this inclination was detected, bottles were often left open to entice him. When the night wore on, he would stumble over to the bottom of the floor-length curtains and fall asleep.

Next post: The crew at USIS Bukavu.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: The Crew at USIS Bukavu in the Congo, 1965

Perhaps it’s appropriate on our travels in Africa that we pause for a moment to meet some of the people. Here’s my crew at USIS Bukavu:

Jean Rusenyagugu spoke to me in smiles, in chuckles and laughter. That was because French was our common language, and neither of us spoke it well.

Jean was janitor-factotum at the USIS Cultural Center in Bukavu in the eastern Congo when I was the inexperienced, twentysomething bossman there. Soon after I arrived, he studied me with his broom. “Vous etes marié, Monsieur?” he asked at last.

No, I said, I was not married.

Jean scrutinized me, stunned. How could I not be married? Was I not an adult? Was not marriage a symbol of adulthood? How could foreigners be so strange?

Many months later, about to leave Bukavu, I bought a souvenir: a large cowhide drum, three feet tall and almost as wide. When I lugged it into the office, Jean smiled with delight. “A wedding drum!” he exulted. “You are going home to get married!” I’m sure he thought that my parents had finally found me a bride.

When I asked to take a photo of Jean, he cast his dustcloth aside and ran off, reappearing with a book in his hand. He posed for me in the sunny parking lot: stiff of stance, but grinning, nonetheless. He held the book before him, tenderly and proudly, and I photographed Jean Rusenyagugu, Bukavu janitor, fluent communicator with smiles, proud holder of a book he could not read.

Déogratias Mpunyu, librarian-driver, was a long sliver of a man, easily 6′ 8″. He was a Tutsi, a refugee from Rwanda, the neighboring country just across Lake Kivu where Tutsi rule, stretching back into unremembered time, had recently been overthrown.

Literate, educated, adept in French and even attempting English, “Déo” seemed an ideal librarian. But the passion of his life was to drive. He longed to fold his long frame behind the steering wheel of the Center’s truck and drive it around town, honking and waving and shouting at friends. Young ladies with bundles on their heads would stop and turn their bodies to watch him pass.

Reports came that Déo brought little more than jubilation to his driving. He had no license – not too surprising in the strife-torn, newly independent Congo – and he was vague about how he had learned to drive. I grew concerned that claims of damages might be brought against the Center – for why were Americans in the Congo if they were not rich enough to pay damages? It became clear that I myself must be the licensing authority.

I proposed a test drive. Déo seemed delighted, laughing gaily. Anything to get behind the wheel! But I detected some uncertainty, too. I remember, as we started out, hoping very much that Déo really knew how to drive.

Perhaps his legs and arms were too long. Perhaps his head sat so high on his long Tutsi neck that his eyes had no proper field of vision. Perhaps I unnerved him. Whatever the cause, at the end of the first block, Déo drove into a traffic sign. It was wood; it splintered in half. Déo graciously accepted the consequences of his mishap and contented himself in the library.

Paul Wemboyendja, projectionist, film truck operater, was tallish, stocky, charming. A suave wheeler-dealer, a great contact man. He knew everyone in town.

My first morning in Bukavu Paul entered my office with distressing news. His wife’s mother had just passed on. Could he have time off to attend her funeral in Usumbura, the nearby capital of Burundi?

Of course I was being tested. But I did not even know yet what I was supposed to accomplish as Center director. So why play martinet? I let Paul go. If he liked to travel, that was fine with me. If I had any goal in Bukavu, it was to see some country.

I never figured out exactly how many wives Paul had – serially or simultaneously – or how many mothers-in-law he could claim. But Paul and I did see country.

We traveled into northern Kivu Province, quickly on a weekend. I went to see wildlife. Paul managed to find a very comely companion at a local bar. When I had to disturb him for the key to the truck, he walked through the lobby of the Hotel des Grands Lacs in pink silk pajamas to demonstrate for all to see how I was disturbing his amours.

On another trip, this one to show USIS films, we returned to Bukavu via Kagera National Park in Rwanda. I waxed poetic about the sleekness and grace of gazelles. He said: “Beaucoup steaks, Monsieur.”

I thought: “How esthetically deprived this African.” He probably thought: “How foolish this American.”

Paul Wemboyendja. Jean Rusenyagugu. Déogratias Mpunyu. I think of them now and then. Sometimes I smile wondering what they thought of me. Did “Frederic Hunter” seem a strange music in their ears? (How can it be otherwise?) Did I seem over-diligent, time-worshipping, gauche and a fool? (What white bossman in black Africa does not seem so?)

Perhaps there are nights when talk turns to the strangeness of white people: how ill-odored they are, how vulnerable to the sun. And perhaps one of these men – Paul or Jean or Déo – will say: “I knew an American once, worked for him.” And he will laugh. “Too much book!” he will say, thinking of the library at USIS Bukavu. “Hundreds of books and no woman!”

A confession: I vividly remember the photo I took of Jean Rusenyagugu, proudly holding the book outside the Bukavu cultural center. In my mind’s eye right now I can see the image of Paul Wemboyendja, with his pillbox haircut, sitting atop the film truck in Parc Albert. I have looked high and low for the pictures. Alas! There have been many moves in the intervening years. The photos seem to have disappeared.

If I think occasionally of Paul, Jean and Déo, I actually see Paul Polakoff now and then. Paul was the American officer at USIS Bukavu who made truly important contributions to the work there. He had excellent French and good contacts with local Europeans through the Table Ronde, a men’s lunch group of which he was a member. Paul contributed continuity, both preceding me in my second tour in Bukavu and outlasting me. Paul also helped me get set up in an apartment overlooking Lake Kivu once it became clear that my stay would last until my Congo tour ended.

While it’s often difficult to judge if information work is having any positive effect, Paul took items from the nightly Voice of America broadcasts and used them to produce a daily news bulletin for the elite of the town, a real contribution.

After I left, Paul pulled off one of the great Congo coups! He enticed his college sweetheart to come out to the Kivu with her two children and marry him. Paul and Claire, whom I knew in Los Angeles, made a great foreign service couple. Paul had a terrific career for the agency, most of it involving Africa.

What was Donanne doing in the late spring of 1965? She was living in a dorm at UCLA, finishing her year-long graduate degree in Library Science. Her father Don Ralston was about to retire from the Foreign Service and follow his daughter’s lead by becoming a librarian (he worked for many years as the deputy senior librarian at UCSB). The Ralstons would shortly join Donanne in West Los Angeles and they would all live together for about a year during which Donanne began working at the Santa Monica public library. She reappears in these posts in two more weeks!

Next post: As he finishes his Congo tour, Fred lucks into supreme animal viewing during the annual migration on the Serengeti plains.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Serengeti Migration, Tanzania, 1965

At the end of his USIS tour in the Congo, Fred Hunter wangled vacation time to visit game parks in East Africa. Unexpectedly he found himself literally in the midst of the greatest wildlife viewing sight in East Africa: the wildebeest and zebra migration across the Serengeti plains. His report:

I drove south out of Nairobi in a rented VW bug. I had seen the flamingoes at Lake Nakuru and was determined to visit other parks I’d read about in Dr. Bernhard Grzimek’s The Serengeti Shall Not Die. I crossed the border from Kenya into Tanzania. I drove through Arusha and beside Lake Manyara where lions lay in the trees, their legs straddling branches as they looked down at me and yawned.

I had no trouble getting lodging at the edge of Ngorongoro Crater. There were only a couple of hotels then and very few visitors. To drive into the crater, however, required hiring a Land Rover and a guide. That cost $30, more than I could afford. But it was clearly folly to stand at the edge of the Crater, yet not go into it. I screwed up my courage and began asking strangers if I could hitch a ride with them into the crater. A couple from Florida were kind enough to take me along.

The immense crater was a perfect zoo. The animals were free in their natural habitat while zoo visitors were caged inside movable viewing stands, the Land Rovers. Thanks to the Hollingsworths’ generosity, I had a splendid day. Moreover, I learned from them that the migration had just begun in the Serengeti. I was uncertain what this meant. But clearly it was important. When the Hollingworths had heard the news – the Serengeti’s chief warden had telephoned it to them in Florida – they had dropped everything and flown immediately to see it. What an extravagant journey in May, 1965!

Coming down off the Ngorongoro Highlands about noon the next day, I drove across the flat, rain-greened plain. Gazelles and ostriches and hidden lions watched me pass. Time after time herds of zebra blocked the dusty track. I had to stop for them.

Off across the plain I watched thousands of animals on the move. Zebras shambled along in striped glory. Wildebeests marched with bobbing heads. They moved in hundreds of single-file lines, the calves trotting that gawky, humorous wildebeest trot to keep up with their mothers.

Later, when the African sky had filled with sunset-reddened clouds, I had to stop again. The animals were paralleling a watercourse and the road crossed their track. They surged over the road in a lowing, ever-onwardly-flowing swarm.

They moved before and behind the car, close enough for me to tug their stringy manes or swat their striped haunches, to smell their wildness and feel the cool currents of air set up by their movement. I tasted their dust and sensed myself adrift on the flood of their sound: the grunting, the swishing, the roar of thousands of hooves crossing a piece of ground.

Inching forward, I got the car through the moving animals. I drove to nearby Seronera Camp at the heart of the Serengeti. I got lodging in a rondavel with earthen walls and a thatched roof, picked up a guide and drove out. The plains were alive with animals, hundreds of thousands of them, all moving northward toward the fresh grass in what is now known as the Mara. I parked the car and sat on top of it, binoculars to my eyes, the waning sun hot on my skin, dust in my nostrils, watching the endless parade.

The animals passed close to Seronera Camp all that night. I watched them the next morning and the next afternoon and heard them again all the following night. They were still passing when I left the next morning to drive back to Ngorongoro. This was the end of my Congo tour for USIS. I went from there to Cannes, France, via Nairobi and took an ocean liner back to the United States.

What was Donanne doing in the late spring of 1965? She was living in a dorm at UCLA, finishing her year-long graduate degree in Library Science. Her father Don Ralston was about to retire from the Foreign Service and follow his daughter’s lead by becoming a librarian (he worked for many years as the deputy senior librarian at UCSB). The Ralstons would shortly join Donanne in West Los Angeles and they would all live together for about a year during which Donanne began working at the Santa Monica public library.

Next post: Fred has returned from Africa. Donanne has finished her library degree at UCLA. Finally… They meet.