TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Equateur Province, 1963

Fred Hunter went alone to establish an American Cultural Center in the northwest Congo’s Equateur Province. Here’s how it was:

Some say that entering the Equateur is like traveling back to the beginnings of time.

Driving into it you see little: only the track before you, the rutted, orange-colored road rising and falling, descending to a watercourse bridged by logs and rising again to the top of the next low ridge. Beside you flashes the jungle. It grows thick and dark and does not entice you. Above is the sky, brilliantly blue. It winds like a river through the leafy overhang of trees. And you go up and down, up and down on the orange laterite road.

When you fly into the Equateur, the land spreads below you with unrelieved flatness. It extends beyond the range of your eyes, beyond the haze lying across it in the dry season, beyond the reaches of binoculars during the rains when the air itself is as clear as a lens. It stretches to the Atlantic; it reaches to the backbone of Africa: the Rift Valley Escarpment and the Mountains of the Moon. Below lies the jungle, a green sponge of vegetation surging outward. It lies dense and endless over a space whose walls are the sky. Looking down you may spot a mud pond fringed by trampled grasses where elephants dance and bathe in the evenings. Or a river. Or an occasional plantation or mission, perhaps a cluster of huts. Generally, though, you see only the greenness of vegetation.

Plantations untangle and order this verdure; they do not interrupt it. From the air you suddenly notice that the patternless intertwine of plant life has given away to textured design, to rubber trees or oil palms set out and tended in neat rows. A referee has stopped the struggle among the trees for space. Along one edge of the textured design plantation buildings hug the river’s edge; corrugated roofs glint in the sun. The pattern of trees continues; then abruptly it ends. The chaos of jungle resumes.

Missions disappear even more quickly. A Protestant station is nothing more than a clearing and some buildings: a church, a school, a hospital, a home for the evangelist, and one for the doctor. A Catholic station usually has a cathedral in the Italian style and priests in white soutanes moving slowly across its lawns. But before you can think it incongruously ordered, the raw tangle of jungle has returned.

Villages line the roadways, eight or ten huts to a side. They stand at the regular intervals where colonial administrators of yesteryear resettled their residents to provide a maintenance force. They cluster close to plantations, too, and to missions and trading towns. And they cling to the shorelines of rivers and swamps where the fishing is good.

Only rivers interrupt the jungle. From the air they have the appearance – and much of the mystery – of snakes. A jungle river is a silt-covered living force; it twists through primeval growth and sleeps in the sun.

In the Equateur the greatest of these river-serpents is the Congo. It is a broad flat boa with an island-dotted hide, curling out of Africa’s heart. It travels north from the Katanga highlands, turns west sliding over the rapids at Kisangani and at Mbandaka is moving south. Running broad and flecked with islands, its waters seep back into swamps. It swallows the Ruki; it absorbs the Ubangi and Kasai, sweeps past Kinshasa, plunges through a gorge and surges into the Atlantic. It meets the ocean with such force that it discolors the water for miles out into the sea.

For the Equateur the river is the central fact of life.

Sailing into the region you realize this. Going by sternwheeler the passage from Kinshasa takes four-and-a-half days. During that time you are part of the river. Watching the shoreline you feel that nature has held itself unchanged for centuries. You pass fishing villages, some of them abandoned. Beached pirogues mark the inhabited ones. Men weaving nets wave to the boat. You slip by short rises of ground where the trees thrust upward, yearning toward the sky. Profusions of lianas hang from their branches. You see the shoreless expanses of swamp: grass simply growing into the river. Soon the variations lose significance. You realize that only the constants have meaning: the sky, the water, the land.

Your white sternwheeler is pushing several motored barges. You climb forward to observe them. Having built squatters villages on them out of mats, the steerage passengers are loving the breeze and the leisure, the change from daily routine. Gaiety enlivens their movements. Cha-cha music fills the air. Nursing and bathing their infants, the women laugh and yak; their inflections are like a song. Men crowd the rails to bargain for food from fishermen who have pulled out to the paddlewheeler and lashed their pirogues alongside.

The hours pass. You return to the deck outside your cabin to read. The sun is hot. It glares off the river and has already reddened your skin. You are reading Joseph Conrad: “Heart of Darkness.” The story is slow, the sentences as tangled as the jungle’s vegetation. You put the book down. You watch the sky, the water, the land. You understand what is really here: space without time. And silence. Silence. A great silence hangs over the river.

At night you hear it. You stand on the deck in darkness. The stars seem within reach. The air has at last turned cool. The water whispers below, sliding away from the boat. Do you see the shoreline or only imagine it? You cannot tell. Then you hear the silence. It is vast and heavy; it presses down on the Equateur.

The next day you try to read again. But again the sun is hot. You do not wait so long to close your book. You watch the sky, the water, the land, and now and then you doze. You begin to understand Africa’s sense of time.

Time is like the river: vast and silent and ever onwardly flowing. You ride its currents. Time, like the river, is there: before you came, after you go. It, like the river, is bigger than you. And with or without you it flows.

What was Donanne doing at this time? In the autumn of 1963 she began her senior year at Principia College, taking a four-month Prin Abroad study trip to Europe, visiting Greece, Italy, France and Britain.

Next post: Fred gets to know some of the “Coquins” of Coquilhatville and learns about the post-independence problems they face.

• A version of this post appears in Fred’s collection of Africa writings AFRICA,AFRICA! Check it out at www.cunepress.com.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Settling into Coq, Part One

Fred Hunter’s first months in Coquilhatville were dicey. But very gradually things got better. His account:

Coquilhatville, capital of the remote Belgian colonial province of the Equateur, was a river port located where the great Congo River crossed the Equator. Named after a Belgian explorer-administrator, it was not an inconsiderable place by bush standards. Even so, it struck me as a tiny toehold of civilization at the edge of jungle. At the time American policy was to thwart Communist penetration of central Africa. One means of doing that was to extend the American presence in the Congo. The Cultural Center I would open was one implementation of that. I was – God help us! – the official American presence in the Equateur.

The USIS branch post coordinator had rented an abandoned house near the town center to serve as the Cultural Center building. I was supposed to live there, ugh! Fortunately, the American UN man who fetched me at the airport drove me past the house and then out to the Ancion Hotel; he invited me to bunk in his room. A Congolese girl in her early teens was idling at the reception, ready to be of service. When the American UN man quit Coq a few days later, I took over his room. In the photo, it’s the curved room jutting out at the far end of the building.

There was no place to eat in the hotel. The Oasis, the town’s only restaurant, was near the center building. Small tables filled its dining room – at least that’s how I remember it – and I ate there, always by myself, lunch and dinner every day but Sunday when it was closed. Since I carried my upbringing with me, I did not drink. So it did not occur to me to hang around the Oasis bar, playing dice or darts. I got rolls and coffee for breakfast at a bakery. The walk from hotel to Oasis, possibly half a mile, gave me exercise.

I spent my first weeks awaiting the arrival of supplies from Léopoldville, the Congo’s capital. I made some contacts, introducing myself, hanging around the UN Club a bit, and looked in vain for a place to live. I did begin slowly to become acquainted with some of the townspeople. A few, though not many, were Congolese. Fellow Americans from the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission (DCCM) befriended me and I was immensely grateful, particularly to Ron Sallade, the mission’s young treasurer from Des Moines, for their supplying me with boiled water and feeding me on Sundays when the Oasis Restaurant was closed.

I had been writing a play about two people living clandestinely in one of the history rooms at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, and I worked on it. I wrote long letters. These were two ways of removing myself from Coquilhatville.

I seemed unable to connect with members of the UN contingent. In fact, I never got to know any of them well. A good number of former Belgian colons remained in Coq, but they were clannish. They referred to themselves with pride as “coquins,” a French expression for “rascal.” Most of them were suspicious of what the Americans were really up to in establishing a presence in Coq. It was no secret that American policy was obsessed with thwarting Communist penetration of central Africa. It was a time when the gloved hand of the CIA was suspected everywhere and, laughable as it seemed to me, Belgians did assume that my role was not truly to dispense information, but to gather it. Maybe this was why no one ever invited me into the Oasis Bar.

M. and Mme. André, however, were two Belgians willing to accept me for what I seemed to be, a rather confused American trying to get established. Mme. André especially was hospitable to non-Belgians; she seemed interested in knowing people who came from different backgrounds. M. André, the town’s only electrician, was less forthcoming. In his early- to mid-thirties, short and wiry, he had been in the Congo for a dozen years. Once he’d established himself, he returned to Namur, his home town, to find a wife and found a good one. She had dark, flashing eyes and a ready ironic sense of humor. Like other single men in the town, I rather fell for her, found her attractive, womanly and caring, a truly good woman who would never be less than that.

André had stayed in Coq throughout the independence period although he had sent his wife and four children back to Belgium to keep them out of danger. André had an idealistic sense of what he was trying to achieve in the Congo and of the potentialities of “ce petit coin du pays” (this little corner). Maybe that was partly why he’d stayed after independence was declared and some of the first of “les troubles” happened in Coq. That and, of course, his desire not to lose everything he’d put into the town. In some ways the Andrés rescued me from isolation. Even so, for months we observed the politesse of French usage and referred to one another always as Madame and Monsieur. I was Monsieur Oontaire. It took me a long time to become Fret.

André was an enormous help to me in transforming the house the USIS branch post coordinator had rented from Mâitre Herman, the local attorney, into a workable physical plant. It was he who had shown me how to convert two bedrooms on the south side of the house into a theater for film shows (his men knocked out a non-structural wall) and build a projection booth outside that showed films through a window. We also climbed up above the center’s ceiling one day – hot up there and rat-infested – to see what the space offered.

Mme André invited me to dinner on several occasions. Once I was a guest of hers with Ron Sallade who spoke no French. Her hospitality was tangible even to those who did not speak her language. She played Edith Piaf songs on a tape recorder and sang along with the Sparrow. It was the first time I heard “Milord.”

André introduced me to the firm of Delinte & Boudart, local builders whose men actually constructed the small theater. The partners worked six-month stints in Coq. Boudart returned just a bit before Christmas and Delinte soon departed. Boudart was probably ten years older than André, considered himself to have a much more realistic approach to surviving the ups and downs of the post-independence Congo and spoke a gravelly, guttural Belgian French that I often had trouble understanding. The contrast between André and Boudart would fascinate me for months.

Next post: Early days in Coq: some apercus from letters.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Early Days in Coq, 1963

Fred Hunter arrived in Coquilhatville to set-up an American Cultural Center. While awaiting shipments of equipment, he wrote letters. Here are edited versions of several.

Second day in Coq:
Yesterday after arriving I took a look at the center. It boasts the dirtiest toilet bowl you ever saw. The floors were paint-spotted, the rooms stuffy from being locked up. Old Edouard, the sentinel has done some useful gardening. His wife was cooking bare-breasted outside behind the center; his toddlers, wearing only genital wrappers, were scrambling over things. I carried over a carton of books from the post office. Edouard and two kids came to watch me. Just watched me.

Met a Congolese journalist yesterday while at the center. He puts out a two-page mimeoed sheet every day, one of three such local newspapers, the only ones in Coq. Full of joy at being Rene Thy Essolomwa, he had on a knitted visored cap of about fifty colors and took delight in being told I liked it.

He’d just been down in Léo shopping for financial backing for his own political party – from West Germans, Americans and Portuguese. Of course, no dice. He showed me a noncommittal telegram from a Portuguese vice-consul. His babbling makes you wonder what he could possibly bring this country in the way of leadership or administrative talent. He sees an opportunity and is trying to grab it. But do any of these guys know what it means to run a country? I bought a subscription and sent him away with some brochures.

Seventh day in Coq:
I’ve been here not quite a week, done almost nothing but make contacts at the UN and with the American missionaries. Everything on foot. I have this Puritan feeling that I ought to be doing something for the pay I’m earning. I just don’t feel comfortable sitting around waiting for equipment to arrive – even if that’s what the job demands.

Using the mission’s phone I was able to contact Mutien-Marie Bokele, Chef de Protocole, and arrange to meet Léon Engulu, the President (governor) of the province. Called yesterday and twice this morning. Bokele suggested I sort of come out and sit around until Engulu could see me. That didn’t appeal much; I felt near-diplomatic representatives should hold out for definitely scheduled interviews. But I went.

I put on a suit to see Engulu, the first time I’ve had a coat on since I arrived here. Fortunately for me, Ron Sallade was running an errand in town and drove me to the mansion. The Présidence (former mansion of the Belgian governor) looks as if it had been plucked out of Pasadena and set down beside the Congo River. I’d have hated to appear sweaty after a long walk.

When I arrived, I was sneaked in to say hello before waiting people. The interview proved to be an easy, congenial saying hello. Engulu is young, 29/30, with no more than a primary school education. He seemed poised and capable and sat in the middle of a long conference table in a long conference room, looking out at the mansion’s lawns and flowers. He wore a business suit and had a pad of paper before him. After one says: “For the Congo,” he can add that Engulu seems a great deal more than averagely intelligent. It’s difficult to tell much about a man in a five minute discussion, but he seemed likable and I hope that we see each other from time to time.

In some ways I felt rather sorry for Engulu. Here was this – what? – kid almost by US standards sitting in a long, empty room somewhat at the mercy of an endless line of visitors. I wouldn’t want to be running this province – even with Belgian administrators I could count on to do the job. How can Engulu move it forward? I don’t know. Perhaps he doesn’t either. It’s going to be a long haul for the Congo.

Bokele got a driver to bring me back here to the hotel. I’m finding my legs a bit tired of all this walking. I’ll be glad to have some other kind of transportation.

Tenth day in Coq:
A journalist I met here was arrested last week, later released, but the case has yet to be settled. I gave this fellow some info on US journalism and an item appeared in his stenciled paper the next day, quoting President Kennedy on the values of the free press.

(Note: Essolomwa was obviously thumbing his nose at Engulu who acted as his own Information chief. Like a lot of editors, he chased readers by provoking controversy. Rather quickly, he accused me and the Cultural Center of being a CIA operation. I was wary after that and understood the urge to arrest him.)

Next post: Fred learns more about Coq when the ex-colons’ stores are “pillaged.”

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Settling into Coq, 1963, Part Two

Fred Hunter’s first months in Coquilhatville were dicey. Gradually things got better. Then they got worse – for some.

Something happened just before Christmas that tested the ex-colon merchants. The Léopoldville government devalued the Congolese franc. Suddenly soldiers and police appeared outside all the stores in town. Then they entered the stores and searched them to detect any hidden goods the merchants were holding off the market, ostensibly either to sell later at higher prices or to sell on the black market. The mastermind of the searches was the local interior minister Gaston LeBaud, pronounced LeBeau, “qui est le contraire de son nom,” as Mme André with her ironic sense of humor observed. I was not involved in this business. In fact, it was never entirely clear to me what was going on. Some of the Belgians referred to it as “le pillage.” It seemed entirely possible that police were simply plundering some of the merchants’ stores and demanding fines without any sort of judicial procedure. The stores were closed for a week.

André came to see me late one afternoon. We sat in the office of the center with late afternoon sunlight slanting into the room. I had never seen him drink heavily, but now I could smell liquor on his breath. I was still living at the Ancion Hotel overlooking the river and he knew I’d had trouble finding a place to live. He suggested that I rent the André home.

“Your home?”

“It would be perfect for you. It’s in the center of town. On the main square.”

“But it’s your home.”

“I will continue to work there. The office and the work area and all my stores are right there.”

“But where will your family live? You’ve got four children.”

Obviously the liquor had fortified him to make this offer. He explained that he had charge of a house out by the river, a bit north of town, that actually had more room than their present house. He was taking care of it for a friend who had left the country. In fact, he said, months ago he had talked with Hank Clifford (as I shall call him) about the center’s renting the André house for its office. “It would have been much better than Herman’s house.” I nodded in agreement. But Hank had wanted a decision before the Andrés had hardly been able to discuss the matter and so he had gone with Herman.

I didn’t know what to say. I very much wanted to leave the hotel, to stop living out of a suitcase. And I understood, of course, that the American Embassy would pay hard currency for the rental and that that would be of real benefit to the Andrés. But I would be forcing the children out of the only home they knew in the Congo.

“We have decided to leave the Congo,” André said. I could hardly believe his words. Madame and the children had only been back a year. Everyone had thought things were getting better, that Coq had hit bottom and was coming back. “This is not a place to raise children,” André said. “This is not a place to do business. My children watch police come onto our property, demand to search our stores.” He stared at the floor, hardly able to speak so deep was his anger at the African pillagers and at his own impotence to counter. “They held a gun to my head,” he said. “They demanded that I write a check for CF 200,000. Made out not to the government, but to a member of the so-called ‘comité de vigilance.’ It went right into his pocket. It was robbery.”

I nodded, stunned by the courage and the despair that lay behind the decision to start over. With a wife and four children.

“This is not a place to bring up children,” he said again. “In un petit an we’ll be gone.”

I said I would be grateful to live in the house. It held pleasant memories for me. I would be glad to have him working every day in the office attached to the house. Maybe I should take a look at it.

When I went to the house, tiny Martine, maybe six years old, showed me her bedroom with innocence and delight. She had no idea that she would be leaving it. Once again I said that I would be grateful to live there. I’d have to make arrangements with the embassy.

As it turned out, André had suddenly to fly to Belgium. His father was dying. He was gone three weeks.

I moved into the house shortly after he returned. And so the year 1963 ended for me.

What was Donanne doing at this time? She returned to the United States from the Prin Abroad trip to Europe and spent Christmas with family in Redlands, California.

Next post: Fred meets a true “coquin” and gets a different perspective on how to deal with the Congolese.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Christmas in Coquilhatville 1963

On Christmas Eve day I borrowed a truck from the DCCM Mission, hired four Africans, drove to the Otraco warehouses on the docks and picked up the American Cultural Center’s office supplies. For two months they had been chugging up the Congo River from Léopoldville and I had been waiting for them. Now we got them into the center.

All day I worked hard with Tata Edouard, the sentinel or watchman who lived behind the center. He was a series of interlocking circles: his nearly bald head, his eyes behind the round glasses, the cheeks that smiled shyly when we greeted one another, the two globes of his buttocks, his stomach hanging over the waistband of his trousers. Tata was a term of respect for a man of years. But I had no real sense of Tata Edouard’s age. He was certainly 40, perhaps 60. His hair was gray. His unhurried pace seemed to connote a serenity that comes with age.

Whatever his age, Tata Edouard still possessed sexual vigor. He and his wife had filled the two-room stucco house in which they lived at the rear of the property with small children. These children ran about the yard, wearing mostly nothing except thongs tied with charms.

At first Edouard’s unhurried pace had disconcerted me. The first time I brought mail from the post office, he and two naked children hurried to the door of my office. Without self-consciousness, they silently watched me open the mail. Just stood there. I was very disconcerted. But I exerted on myself iron control. “You will not break,” I kept assuring myself. “You will not shout. You will not tell this old man to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!!!” And I didn’t.

On this Christmas Eve day the Tata and I had muscled desks, chairs and books into the building. I had a sense of having worked well and a desire to share that sense with someone.

But there was no one. Ron Sallade, the town’s other single young American, had gone to Bosobele Station. The Andrés sought the solace of the bush, Madame explaining that they had to get away from the hubbub of Coq. Hubbub, I thought. This slow place? But nothing of mine had been “pillaged.”

Now Tata Edouard stuck his head into the office. He entered slowly with a stalk of yellow bananas and laid it on my desk. “Bon Noel, patron,” he said.

“Tiens, Edouard!” I replied, rising. “C’est vraiment Noel!” Good heavens! I thought. A present. “Je vous remercie beaucoup!” I had not thought of presents. I realized I must give Edouard something. But what?

Then I remembered the four precious bars of chocolate. As I was leaving the Ancion Hotel that morning a Belgian fellow-lodger confided excitedly, “There’s chocolate at Sedec. It’s available only once or twice a year. So hurry.”

I hurried. I had not missed chocolate, but if it came into town only once or twice a year…

At Sedec I found a jostling crowd of colons’ wives, fighting for space at the cashier’s counter. They flirted shamelessly with the Congolese cashier and elbowed me roughly when I joined their queue.  This atmosphere gave the quest for chocolate an aura of great importance. By the time I left the store, clutching my ration, four small bars, I sensed that chocolate had an abstract value of its own. For all I knew, currencies were quoted in it. Eventually at the center I placed them in the pencil tray of the new desk.

Edouard watched me expectantly, ready to receive. In French I said, “C’est Noel! And I have something for you, Edouard.  And for your children!” He brightened. I took the chocolate bars from the desk. “Voila! Bon Noel!”

Edouard stared at the chocolate bars, so small beside the bulk and number of bananas, so few for all those children. I suddenly realized that, of course, money would have been more welcome.

Finally he smiled, thoroughly perplexed. He put the gift into his trouser pocket. “Merci, patron,” he said. He shuffled slowly from the office.

Money, I thought. Money, you jerk! You’d have liked the chocolate and he’d have liked the money.

Troubling news came at the end of January. I wrote these notes to myself:

At the end of last week press and radio reported the murder of three Catholic (Flemish) priests in Kwilu province, east of Leopoldville. After burying the priests a “dizaine” of nuns made their way to safety in Kikwit, provincial capital. Two groups of American missionaries were helicopter-rescued by the UN from the same part of the province – after their mission stations had been burned. Ron Sallade told me yesterday that the death toll in Kwilu is said to have reached eight or nine, all Catholic missionaries, a possible exception being one Protestant. He says a number of Protestant missionary stations have been evacuated.

Trouble seems to have a political base. A Gizenga lieutenant named Mulele, I believe, has been terrorizing the area as a means of bringing some kind of leverage against provincial regimes. It’s difficult to understand this taking an anti-missionary outlet, but perhaps the Catholics are still associated (in the Gizengist mind) with the Belgian colonial rule and the Americans with the present regime of GOC.

Reports also come that Europeans have been killed in the last day or two at Lisala, just a day and a half or two days’ boat-travel up the river from us. Some dissident group has taken control of the airport radio tower, Lisala’s only outside communication link, and no news is coming from the town.

Killings in Lisala strike much closer to our own feelings of security than do those in Kwilu. I presume that problems in Lisala have a tribal base since the Budja and Ngombe tribes have carried on a long rivalry within Moyen Congo province since its creation.

Ron and I drove out to the airport (just for a drive) and he told me about the Lisala business. He felt Europeans here have to rely on the good will of their African contacts since the police are incapable of offering protection. We both wondered what will happen when the UN troops pull out of this place as they’re scheduled to do in March.

Next post: More bad news about unrest in the country.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, More Bad News, 1964

For Fred Hunter 1964 began with more bad news.

On January 30, I made more notes of what I heard:

“From all reports the situation continues to worsen in Kwilu. Bands of young men are said to be wandering around the countryside spreading an as yet unchecked reign of political terror. Death toll is said to stand at 150 persons. According to Roger Raeys, at least one American missionary, a woman, has been killed, shot in the “face” with an arrow. Her roommate, another missionary woman, was wounded in the arm. He reported this as having happened at 2:00 a.m.

“Another report of a US missionary woman maimed, her hands cut off.

“Many of the dead in Kwilu are said to have been government workers. Political opposition is attempting to incapacitate provincial government by exterminating those who make it function.

“LISALA
“For several days rumors have circulated around Coq that there have been troubles of an unknown nature in Lisala. Today at breakfast I got two conflicting versions. Raeys, passing on a report of a fellow (Griffon) who returned from Lisala yesterday, says that an ANC soldier ran off with a woman from a village near Lisala. When another ANC soldier came to the village to investigate(?), his throat was slashed, presumably as a reprisal against the soldier who stole off with the woman. ANC took revenge on the village in force, according to Raeys, and the death toll is said to be 19.

“M. Gerard, co-owner of the hotel, gives another version. According to him, two important Lisala politicians of conflicting tribal origins undertook some sort of political discussions. Army attempted to intervene, was thwarted and as a result shot up the place. “Pas grave, alors,” I said. “Pas dans ce pays,” answered Gerard with a laugh. (“Not serious then.” “Not in this country.”)

“WEMA
“Last night at a get-together to celebrate Betty Erlewine’s birthday chez Denton there was talk of tribal warfare near the Wema mission station, east of Boende. Eunice Goodall was reported to have said over the radio that she was ready to be evacuated if the Embassy thought they should leave. Problems seem to be tribal. A woman from one tribe slapped a sick woman from another tribe. The sick woman later died, calling into effect reprisals against the tribe of the other woman.

“BIKORO
“Rumors floating, too, that there have been killings at Bikoro (a couple of hours drive south of Coq). These started circulating yesterday. Mme Andre mentioned them to Ron Sallade, M. Pennequin to Betty Denton. This morning neither Raeys nor Gerard had heard anything of them.

“RUANDA
“In Ruanda mass killings of Watutsis by the Bahutus, a tribe long subjugated to Watutsi rule. Bahutus overthrew this rule only within the last couple of years and fierce tribal warfare has raged on and off ever since. Bahutus way outnumber the Watutsi. (Wonder if “free elections” imposed by outside powers changed this balance of power situation in Ruanda.) In any case Tutsi refugees have flooded into North Kivu and Uganda. In January (or around Christmas time) Tutsis made reprisal raids into Ruanda against Bahutus. Now Bahutus are on the rampage against the Tutsis. There are estimated, I believe, to be 350,000 Watutsi. It is said that 8,000 have been killed in the past month, possibly 14,000.

“CONCLUSIONS
“These outbreaks of violence seem indicative of widespread unrest throughout the country, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Betty Erlewine suggested that this unrest grows as the time for the promised elections approaches, but neither Gary Farmer nor I feel certain that the elections will come to pass. If they do, it’s been rumored that there will be troubles around Coq.

“My personal feeling is that these troubles, if they come at all, can probably be controlled. The govt seems strongly in the saddle, backed by a political organization that has no effective opposition. Tribal problems in the immediate area of Coq seem minimal.

“As for personal safety, the rumors about Bikoro are somewhat unsettling. Bikoro is linked to Coq by the only decent road leading out of Coq. News (and trouble) can spread from Bikoro to Coq in the matter of hours it takes to drive or walk the road. But most troubles seem to have local causes and local results.

“Still, would the ANC [Armee Nationale Congolaise] or police provide effective protection for Coq’s inhabitants? Real danger for Europeans lies in the troubles taking an anti-European turn, which is always a possibility. In addition, the problem of danger is increased by the ineffectiveness of our communication facilities – and evacuation facilities. The possibilities of incidents are not effected by this, but our ability to cope with them is. So is escape.

Next Post: Fred meets a true “coquin” and gets a different perspective on how to deal with Congolese.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Adjusting to Coq, 1964, Part One

As Fred Hunter labored to open an American Cultural Center in Coquilhatville, government-directed searches and fining of merchants shattered the town’s tranquility. The aftermath reverberated for weeks.

As building projects at the center engaged particularly the electrician André and the contractor Boudart, I gradually gained access to their social circle. Mme André often presided over dinners of expatriates. These usually included Boudart and the Polish UN doctor Janusz Michejda and his wife Barbara. Madame even hosted a dinner when her husband was called away to Belgium to visit his dying father.

From a letter in mid-February:

Thursday evening a moambe chez Boudart. Other guests included the Andrés (he’s back now from 3 weeks in Belgium), the Michejdas and a M. Guillaume, the regional secretary of an organization of Congo and Belgian business firms. The moambe (chicken, rice, manioc greens, palm nut sauce, all garnished with HOT pili-pili sauce) was very good and on leaving Boudart asked me to finish it off with him yesterday at lunch. Which I did.

Thursday evening after dinner we sat around a kidney-shaped coffee table and talked late into the night as the table became more and more weighted with coffee cups, water, liquor and fruit juice glasses, an orange juice maker and ash trays burdened with cigarette butts. Boudart and Michejda are great talkers. All one has to do is sit back and ask the proper questions. Off they go. Boudart put on some 45s of music popular last year in Belgium and Mme André would lean back and occasionally sing.

M. André is having a particularly bad time of it just now, what with his father’s death, being fined at gunpoint and deciding to leave Coq. The contrast between him and Boudart couldn’t be more pronounced. André’s nervous, restless, yet unable to focus his energies. He’s idealistic to a fault, and the realities of Congolese life now (the disintegration, the lack of law and order, the exploitation) are making it more and more impossible for him to stay here. Something is eating away inside the man, and it’s difficult for his friends and acquaintances to watch. After he and his wife left the other night (around 10:30 which was quite early for a bunch that chatted non-stop till 12:30) Michejda and Guillaume commented on André. Michejda mentioned his forthrightness, his honesty, his inability to act in any manner except the direct one.

Boudart and I talked about André after lunch yesterday. Boudart feels that this is no longer a country where one can act directly. He’s basically too kind (in a rather tough, cruel way) to scorn André for his failure to adapt to the now-reality of Congo living, but feels that direct action is something one can indulge only from a position of power which Belgian colons no longer possess.

I find myself trying to understand all this from a privileged position. I suspect André has not told even these, his closest friends remaining in Coq, that he has made up his mind to pull out. They think he’s suffering only from the strain on his bruised idealism whereas I know that he’s facing the worries of how to extricate himself and his investment, where and how to start over again, wondering probably if he can start again. The people who came down here and carved something out of nothing worked HARD. Is he going to do it again? Most people here seem to feel that his investment in the place chains him to Coq. But I know he’s decided it doesn’t. I think André has a bourgeois mind, not that there’s anything wrong with that in itself, but it’s not the sort of thing that goes here anymore.

Boudart’s a contrast. In reference to a Clark Gable Western shown at the UN Club, he said that was the sort of life he had always wanted to live. To be where a man was truly free, surviving as a result of his mind and his muscle. Ah, the times of the bandits and the sheriffs! I asked him which he would have chosen to be. He said it was a relevant question, but he never answered it. I suspect Boudart would have been a bandit.

It takes a bit of explaining Boudart’s racial theories to demonstrate how he approaches trying to get along now. He explained them at lunch yesterday in terms of geometry. Axiom 1: There is a difference between the Congolese and the European. Therefore, Axiom 2: One must be stronger than the other. And, therefore, Axiom 3: One must be more intelligent than the other. Boudart considers himself more intelligent because he’s been to school, has learned how to think and knows some basic psychology.

Before independence he was stronger because the country was being ruled by whites by white law (if not necessarily for whites). Now he considers himself less strong than the Congolese who is running his own government with enough disregard of white law to render the law of no protection to a white man. Thus, feels Boudart, the question is: Can I be stronger in my weakness through the use of my intelligence than the Congolese is strong through the use of his strength? This is how Boudart approaches getting along now in the Congo. When the Belgians had both strength and intelligence over the Congolese, it was possible to be direct, idealistic, moral. Now that’s indulgence. So says Boudart.

Next post: Boudart’s account of how he handled Congolese officials when they tried to search his store of goods.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Adjusting to Coq, 1964, Part Two-A

As Fred Hunter readied an American Cultural Center for Coquilhatville, government-directed searches and fining of merchants shattered the town’s tranquility. A further account of the aftermath of “le pillage.”

Boudart, who had returned to Coq to direct the work of the construction firm Delinte & Boudart, releasing Delinte to return to Belgium, outlined for Fred his racial theories. Over lunch. This was to show the American newcomer how Boudart approached getting along in the Congo. It had now been independent for three years.

Boudart explained his relationship to Congolese in this fashion. Before independence the colons had been both stronger than the Congolese (because the colony was under colonial law) and more intelligent (because they had been to school). The intelligence could be straight-forward, moral, even idealistic. After independence Boudart saw himself as weaker than Congolese because Congolese now administered the law. So the question for Boudart became: Can I be stronger in my weakness through the use of my intelligence than the Congolese is strong through the use of his strength?

Boudart felt the weak man now had to use his intelligence craftily. Provincial Interior Minister Gaston LeBaud, who was also crafty – le pillage was an expression of that craftiness – knew how to play Boudart’s game. When the Belgians had both strength and intelligence over the Congolese, it was possible to be direct, idealistic, moral, as André was. Now that was indulgence.

Boudart laid it all out over lunch. And Fred laid it all out in a letter, writing: “Here is how Boudart works:

“The morning the provincial authorities closed all the stores in town at 7:30, Boudart went to see Interior Minister LeBaud at 9:00. ‘Monsieur le Ministre,’ he said, ’I know there is going to be a systematic search of all the stores and warehouses. I’m wondering if you could come to my stores and warehouses first since I have a great deal of work to do and would like to take advantage of the time when the stores will be closed.’

“He did this, he explained to me, because if they were going to come anyway, they would find what he had. Taking the initiative gave him room to maneuver. LeBaud did not visit Delinte & Boudart that morning. Boudart saw him again that afternoon and repeated his request. Then LeBaud asked him, ‘Don’t you have things hidden?’ ‘Oh, yes, I have things hidden,’ admitted Boudart. He listed a number of scarce materials that LeBaud wanted for a couple of houses he is either building or remodeling. LeBaud thought for a moment and then suggested, ‘Cachez les bien‘ (Hide them well). As it worked out, the Vigilance Committee never visited D&B.

“That, at least, is the way that Boudart tells the story. André thinks that D&B bought off LeBaud. He hinted that to me very broadly one day. He seemed to consider Boudart a betrayer of the other European merchants and acted coldly to him when he came around to the André house while I was there, discussing for the first time the apartment possibility. I personally doubt that he tried to bribe LeBaud because LeBaud didn’t need the money. He needed Boudart’s goods and his know-how in using them. Boudart feels only that his intelligence and knowledge of psychology have enabled him to manipulate a situation so that LeBaud himself makes a decision that benefits Boudart. Nothing dishonest in that, he feels.

“Boudart, as you’ve probably guessed, is a fairly crafty and amoral type. Capable in his own way, I feel, of a cruelty that his Africans understand. And yet he is just. The rules in relation to his Africans are well-defined. He won’t ask them to work in the sun without standing in the sun himself. (He claimed that D&B had sent men home for standing in the shade while Africans worked in the sun.) But if you steal from him, he is liable to feel, as African tribal elders are said to have done, that your hand ought to come off. He’s a hard-working guy, described his pre-independence hours as 6:00-12:00, 2:00-6:00; 8:00-12;00.

“He’s robust, crafty, thoroughly vulgar. Strode into his house yesterday noon (I had arrived before him), wearing shirt, shorts, undershorts and sandals. Ripped off his shirt and didn’t put it on again till he got back in his car. Ate holding his fork in his clenched fist as if it were a stick, thumbing clumps of food onto it. He’s an atheist, but figures (possibly in deference to me) that he’d been a believer if he’d been raised one. His sense of right and wrong is personal and flexible. He’s one of the fittest that survives situations like the present one in the Congo.”

What was Donanne doing at this time? Having Christmased in Redlands, California, with her mother’s family, she returned to Principia College for the winter quarter of her senior year, majoring in history.

Next post: Fred tried to make sense of the conflicting approaches to living in the Congo espoused by his friend Jules André and the seeming rascal Boudart.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA, CONGO, Adjusting to Coq, 1964, Part Three-A

As Fred Hunter labored to open an American Cultural Center in Coquilhatville, his contacts with former colons revealed different approaches to dealing with Congolese.

A letter in mid-February mulled the differences between my friend Jules André and the seeming rascal Boudart. André assumed that Boudart had escaped le pillage by buying off provincial Interior Minister Gaston LeBaud. But Boudart told me that by using his intelligence and knowledge of psychology he had manipulated LeBaud to decide that he best served his own interests by letting Boudart off the hook. Nothing dishonest in that, Boudart felt.

Boudart was something of a buccaneer, colorful and vivid. Both he and LeBaud were crafty, cunning. (But LeBaud was gone in a matter of months because Provincial President Léon Engulu was no fool.) I appreciated Boudart’s apparent decision to pay me the respect of clueing me in. At the least I appreciated being told a survivalist way of operating. But was it truly survivalist? Boudart and the André’s great friends the Polish UN doctor Janusz Michejda and his wife Barbara and I were all transients. We made our contribution to the town, but we weren’t trying to survive here. The UN was already pulling out of Coq and so the Michejdas would be leaving. Boudart came for six-month stints.

André was different. He had been living in Coq for a dozen years, had stayed after the turmoil of independence although his family had taken refuge in Belgium. André and Thérèse and their four children were the brick and mortar from which a society could be built. They were not transients. But the future was so uncertain that they kept wrestling with this decision: stay or leave? But how could they stay? The kids would soon need an education that could not be found in Coq. If they left the Congo, they would need hard currency. That was why renting their house to me (the American Embassy) made sense.

I supposed that Boudart was one of the fittest that survives. Still, I sympathized with André. I wrote in a letter: “What’s strange is that for all the flexibility of Boudart’s honesty, he may in the long run be the more honest of the two men. Because, even to try to survive, André is having to change his sense of honesty. That is, his is so rigid, so exact and so dependent on the support of law and order that it can’t stand up under the strains of this place at this time.”

The letter continued: “I remember André’s first coming to me during the warehouse inspections to offer me the apartment. There was liquor on his breath. That struck me forcefully then, perhaps as a dishonest path to a decision. I remember the look in his eyes as his charmingly innocent daughter showed me where she slept, which bed was hers. And I remember the time I went over to André’s office, knocked and was mysteriously allowed to enter. A Bolenge missionary was inside buying four portable radios. It must have been a clandestine transaction – though I don’t see how it could have been; he was charging so little. Still, there was something compromised in this clandestineness. The other night at Boudart’s André is said to have eaten no dinner. I didn’t notice. Boudart claims André couldn’t eat because a cop had stopped him. Cops were stopping everyone that day. It must have been more than that – he’s dealing with a lot – but that may have been enough to trigger depression. The poor guy.

I had the non-rascals’ fascination with the rascality of Boudart. It was easy to suppose that he had everything figured out. Take history, for example. “History,” he told me, “is a meat grinder. One turn of the handle the Belgians grind up the Congolese.” That was colonialism. “Next turn of the handle, the Congolese grind up the Belgians.” That was national independence where the Congo was now. At the next turn of the handle – Mobutu – Congolese would grind up Congolese, but that was still to come.

My letter continued: “Boudart claims that Congolese can make love throughout the night, but not Europeans. He and Michejda have had a fine time kidding me about Anne-Marie, a presumably mythical young Congolese of prodigious sexual appetite who would be happy to visit me. She was very accomplished, they assured me; they had availed themselves of her services themselves; she was happy to take Congolese francs rather than demanding hard currency and on and on. I found these recommendations a little disconcerting when made in the presence of Mmes André and Michejda, especially when Boudart went on to elaborate about her prowess at love à la cossaque. My being disconcerted only increased their pleasure in kidding me.

“At first I thought they were setting me up; now I suspect that Anne-Marie is a fantasy. Boudart may, in fact, have a friend of this sort, but my strong sense is that a man with a Congolese companion would not be welcome at these dinners.”

It turned out that Boudart did not have everything figured out. Weeks later when the Andrés and I had ventured onto a first name basis – more of a bonding with French-speakers than with Americans – I asked Thérèse if Boudart were married. There was a Mme Boudart, she said; Madame lived in Belgium. She had been the victim of a disfiguring accident. Plastic surgery had restored her face, but it was not the face that Boudart loved and now they were rarely together. What a fix! Poor Boudart.

What was Donanne doing at this time? Having Christmased in Redlands, California, with her mother’s family, she returned to Principia College for the winter quarter of her senior year, majoring in history.

Next post: Mme André takes Fred to an art show.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: CONGO, Adjusting to Coq, 1964, Part Four

As Fred Hunter labored to open an American Cultural Center in Coquilhatville in the remote northwestern Congo, he had an unusual experience at an art show.

From a letter written early in 1964:

“Madame André, who does some painting, and I went Thursday afternoon to see an exposition of paintings by an Italian UN doctor. They were representational, though highly abstracted, depictions of the Congo and its life, done generally in somber colors. One could not help being struck by the violence of the paintings. They seemed a very true portrayal of what is here now, and I was interested in how thoroughly my mind rejected all of it. The violence is everywhere here, and yet you live with it so closely every day that you no longer consider it until something like these paintings throws it at you. The curious thing about the exhibit is that the doctor couldn’t be a milder, kinder person. The color, movement, rhythm, even the application of the paint is violent. You look at the fellow and wonder where it all comes from – or marvel at the control he has over it and his channel for getting rid of it. Mme André says he sometimes breaks brushes, sometimes even applies the paint with his hands. Hmm. Such a meek fellow.”

What was Donanne doing at this time? Having Christmased in Redlands, California, with her mother’s family, she returned to Principia College for the winter quarter of her senior year, majoring in history.

Next post: Fred travels by paddlewheeler from Coq to Léopoldville for consultation.