TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Kivu, Congo, 1963, Part One

When Fred Hunter arrived in the Congo as a young US Information Service officer, transferring from a training post in Brussels, Belgium, he expected to serve in Elisabethville in the copper-mining region of Katanga. He never got there.

This is what happened instead.

When I entered the Congo, the national collapse of the first days of independence three years earlier had set the country’s fate for the foreseeable future. I arrived in Léopoldville, the capital, assigned to Elisabethville in the Katanga, the country’s second city. There I would run an American Cultural Center. But my assignment had been changed. I was to go to Coquilhatville in the Equateur, the country’s northwest region, its remotest area, to set up a cultural center.

At the time the Congo’s reputation for danger, chaos and unpredictability was so great that USIS had difficulty finding officers to staff its operations anywhere in the country. The cultural center in Bukavu had been without an American director for five months. Since the Coq center was without equipment, USIS Léo shipped me off to the Kivu, to Bukavu, on the eastern frontier with Rwanda.

What a glorious place! Surely, Bukavu was then one of the beauty spots of the world. Sited on peninsulas stretching into Lake Kivu, green and surrounded by mountains that receded, one blue range after another, all the way to the Mountains of the Moon, it nestled on the backbone of Africa. My job was to direct the center’s work until a suitable and more senior officer could arrive. I was, in other words, to be the “American presence” at the center, the guy who made sure that the Congolese “locals” did their work.

I had been in Bukavu hardly six weeks when bureaucratic alarm bells sounded. It turned out that USIS’ parent, the Information Agency in Washington, had inadvertently misinformed Congress, reporting that a USIS officer was on the ground in Coquilhatville. That he had already established a cultural center, a tiny light in the Great Darkness of the jungle. That from this small outpost against Communist encroachment on the Dark Continent he was now providing information about freedom and democracy to black masses yearning to breathe free.

Alas! none of this was true. But what if an obscure Congressional staffer discovered this fact? The staffer might jump to the conclusion that USIA had intentionally misled the Congress. A crisis might erupt. Charges of bad faith might fly. So instructions went out from USIA: “Get a body into Coquilhatville.” The body was mine. USIS Léo instructed me to leave Bukavu ASAP.

I doubted that I would ever return to the Rift Valley. So I requested leave to see the animals of East Africa. But the bureaucratic need was so urgent that the request was denied. Still, the Consul had an idea. He and his family were taking a weekend trip to Usumbura (now Bujumbura), the capital of neighboring Burundi. They would be gone three days. Charley, the Consulate’s communications man, in whose apartment I lived, would have few duties that weekend.

“Charley needs to get out of town,” the Consul said.

Charley had been seeing Chantal, a blonde twenty-one-year-old Belgian girl whose mother was trying to find her a husband. The relationship had become passionate. The USIS film truck gave evidence of this fact. Late one evening while maneuvering Chantal into an accessible position, Charley had removed the knob on the truck’s gear shift. In his passion he threw it out the window. He told me: “I wouldn’t want my Mom to know what I do with that heifer.” Charley invariably referred to young ladies as “heifers.” The Consul’s wife worried about Charley’s susceptibility to Chantal’s wiles. Even Mlle Moutarde, the Consul’s Belgian secretary who lived with Bukavu’s Volkswagen dealer, had warned of the spider’s web being spun by Chantal’s mother, Mme DeTree.

“Why don’t you take the film truck to Goma?” the Consul suggested with a grin. “I’d like to know how that road is, but I sure don’t want to test it myself.”

Goma lay at the north end of Lake Kivu. From there we could dash up to Parc National Albert, the Congo’s premier game reserve. I could see elephants and hippos, maybe even lions. If the trip were questioned, I could claim to have been making contacts for program activities. Few tourists had visited the park since independence. “You’d have the place to yourselves,” the Consul said.

Next post: The trip to Goma/Parc Albert gets hatched.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Kivu, Congo, 1963, Part Two

Before leaving the eastern Congo to set up an American Cultural Center in Coquilhatville deep in the jungles of the northwest, Fred Hunter wanted very much to take a look at animals north of Bukavu. With the American Consul’s encouragement, he hatched a plot.

Doubtful that I would ever return to the Rift Valley, Bukavu’s American Consul had an idea. He and his family were taking a weekend trip to Usumbura (now Bujumbura), the capital of neighboring Burundi. They would be gone three days. Charley, the Consulate’s communications man, in whose apartment I lived, would have few duties that weekend.

“Charley needs to get out of town,” the Consul said. Charley had been seeing Chantal, a blonde twenty-one-year-old Belgian girl whose mother, a weaver of spider webs, was trying to find her a husband. The relationship had become passionate – and therefore possibly dangerous for our young American. “Why don’t you take the film truck to Goma?” the Consul suggested with a grin. “I’d like to know how that road is, but I sure don’t want to test it myself.”

Goma lay at the north end of Lake Kivu. From there we could dash up to Parc National Albert, the Congo’s premier game reserve, teeming with wildlife: elephants, hippos, lions. Few tourists had visited the park since independence. “You’d have the place to yourselves,” the Consul said.

That night I found Charley in the Bodega restaurant, sitting alone at a table. He was deeply pissed off. Chantal, who was supposed to meet him, had stood him up. Since he was on his third beer, drowsiness had begun to dissipate his anger.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” I suggested when he told me what was wrong. “Easier to escape the spider’s web.”

“I’m not in any spider’s web,” Charley said. “And I won’t be any time soon. That bitch.”

“Why don’t we go up to Goma this weekend?” I suggested. I laid out the plan for him.

“Bitch,” Charley grumbled. It was all he said. We ordered dinner.

Soon Chantal entered the Bodega. She joined us without being invited and sat beside Charley. “I’m mad at you,” he snarled. The beer-induced drowsiness had disappeared.

“I thought we were meeting at the Cercle Sportif,” Chantal pleaded. She rubbed her breast against his arm.

“Get lost,” Charley said. “I’ll see ya sometime.” Chantal brushed his hair away from his forehead and smiled. “Who brought you up here?” Charley asked. “Some guy?”

“Maman,” she said.

Then, as if on cue, Mme DeTree came into the restaurant to fetch Chantal. When she saw Charley, she mock-scolded him. “You Americans! You expect Chantal to hunt all over town for you?” Madame sashayed over and stood behind Charley, her hands on his shoulders. He was undeniably good-looking, black Irish, with the innocent American openness that baffled Europeans.

Mama DeTree possessed a roguish charm. She pretended to be an artist, while her husband, a bland bucket of incompetence, spent his time drinking at the sports club. In her studio she displayed nude studies of a succulent Chantal; any observant man knew what was on offer there. But was Mama DeTree consciously weaving a web? I doubted that. She was shrewd enough to see that even in the present uncertain times the blonde, buxom, compliant and rather pretty Chantal could do better than an American with that guilelessness Europeans mocked and distrusted. She just wanted her daughter to have some fun.

When our dinners arrived, Chantal nibbled off Charley’s plate. He fed her a bite or two with his fork. She smiled at him. He moved his jaw around, trying to suppress the answering smile that was on his lips. “I guess I’ve got to take you home, don’t I?” Charley said. He looked at me. “Can I borrow the film truck?”

Mama DeTree departed as I gave him the keys.

After a moment he told Chantal, “I can’t see you this weekend. We’re going to Goma.” He looked at me. “Paul has to go with us,” he said. “I’m not going on that road without Paul.”

Next post: The Congolese local employee Paul Wemboyendja is deeeelighted to take a trip to Goma (“Quelles filles!“) and Parc Albert.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Kivu, Congo, 1963, Part Three

Before leaving the eastern Congo to set up an American Cultural Center in Coquilhatville deep in the jungles of the northwest, Fred Hunter wanted very much to take a look at animals north of Bukavu. With the American Consul’s encouragement, he recruited Charley, the Consulate’s commo man. Charley was game, but only if Paul came along.

Wemboyendja, Paul. This was the Paul Charley meant. Wem-boy-end-ja. Not a hard name to pronounce once you struggled with it for a while. Paul was the center’s projectionist and film truck operator. Also a wheeler-dealer and a suave ladies’ man.

My colleagues in Léopoldville considered Paul a real find. They all claimed he had “great contacts,” not the least with Kivu Europeans, some of whom he’d helped escape across Lake Kivu during “les troubles” after independence. Before USIS Bukavu hired him away, Paul had worked for the Kivu Information Ministry. Before that he had served as a Lomani District delegate to the Congo’s first constituent assembly. He had also been sufficiently influential (whatever that meant) to get beaten and tossed into prison when Patrice Lumumba’s men and his Mouvement National Congolais took control in the Kivu six months after independence.

Paul was tallish, stocky, charming. He kept his hair clipped so close to his head that he always looked as if he were wearing a black pillbox hat. He had a roundish face, a ready sense of humor and sparkling eyes. When you looked at him, you understood that he was a rascal. Even so, you felt the good-hearted anticipation that fills the air when a comedian is telling jokes.

One of my first mornings in Bukavu Paul entered my office to announce: “Je dois aller à Usumbura pour dire bonjour au pere de ma femme.” He had to go to Usumbura to “say hello” to his father-in-law. I was skeptical. Paul added that his wife’s mother had just passed on. He needed time to attend her funeral. Hmmm.

This request required elaborate decoding. Fortunately the Consul could provide it. Step One: “Dire bonjour.” “Saying hello” was apparently an African custom. Step Two: His wife’s father. That did not seem difficult to understand – until I discovered that by African kinship reckoning this father was not necessarily the wife’s biological parent; he might be any number of men senior to the biological father in the father’s lineage. The same applied to his wife’s mother. Step Three: Why must he go? He was working at the Center. Couldn’t he “dire bonjour” on personal time?

Of course, Paul was testing me. Was I a stickler for discipline? It had grown sloppy in the months that the Center lacked an American officer. The Consul had placed Paul in charge of the center, but he was frequently gone – as he wanted to go now. He would roam around town in the USIS film truck, doing “contact work.” In the evenings the truck was often seen parked outside nightclubs where a man with a vehicle was always a magnet for women.

Yes, I was being tested. But why play martinet? I let Paul go. If he liked to travel, so much the better. If I had any goal in Bukavu, it was to see some country.

When I told the Consul that I had agreed to Paul’s trip, he grumbled at me. Paul’s wife had left him, he explained. She had returned to Usumbura with their four children. Paul’s trip was no doubt an attempt to straighten out this matter with her father; probably he was in arrears on bridewealth payments. Heaven knows, the Consul said, Paul owed money all over town. His landlord had dropped by the Consulate that very morning to complain that Paul had not paid his rent in five months. Did Americans not pay their employees? Another recent visitor was the father of an African girl (again that kinship ambiguity). He claimed that she was expecting Paul’s child. Hmmm. What was to be done about this fellow with “great contacts”?

I started to keep better track of the after-hours use of the film truck. I accompanied Paul when he showed films in the cités. One night we went to Bagira, high in the hills above Bukavu. The film truck’s appearance sent waves of excitement through the dusty streets. Children ran toward us, screaming “See-nay-ma! See-nay-ma!” and “Ay-tazz-oo-nee-dam-air-eeek!” (The legend “Etats-Unis d’Amerique” was painted on the film truck door.) Wild with anticipation, they danced in a frenzy, flinging their hips and flailing their arms, clouds of dust motes rising about them. Paul leaned out of the window to greet them.

When we reached the place, the cité square, Paul started the phonograph blaring cha-cha-chas from his personal collection. He quickly had young men carrying boxes here and there, helping him to set up. Soon women abandoned their cook fires. They tied babies to the smalls of their backs and approached the screen Paul had directed his acolytes to erect. When all was ready, he began the show – with a “Charlot,” a Charlie Chaplin film. Slapstick in the balmy evening. Our African audience loved it.

The Charlot was not in the center’s film collection – Paul had gotten it somewhere – and when USIS Léo learned that we were showing it, I received an instruction that Charlots were not to be exhibited. USIS film shows were designed to inform, I was told, not to entertain. (The instruction was best ignored.) After the Charlot Paul showed several USIS informational films, inducing the audience to stay by promising to end with a second Charlot. While Paul rewound the films, our audience sang and danced. I did a twist, then in vogue in the States, to show that white men could also dance.

Sometimes after a show Paul and I would eat dinner together at the Bodega. We even had serious conversations. When the subject was religion, Paul said that everyone should have one – and should be free to choose the one he wanted. Pre-independence practices at the Bukavu cathedral offended him, he told me. He resented the fact that the heads of black children were shaved prior to baptism, but those of white children were not.

“Le Bon Dieu will punish these priests on Judgment Day,” he said.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“They willfully refrain from marriage.”

“And that’s bad?” I myself have so far refrained from marriage.

Paul shrugged, but stated his conviction. “Marriage is the proper state of man,” he said. “Each man has a duty to augment the world. Le Bon Dieu will punish these priests for their arrogance.”

Paul and I learned how not to get in each other’s way. And he was canny enough to play for the big score. That was travel. There was per diem in that for him – and an even bigger plus. While I wanted to travel to see new country, Paul wanted to travel to meet new women.

So Paul could hardly contain his glee when he learned of the trip to Goma. With an air of great importance he made reservations for us at the luxurious colonial era hostelry, the Hotel des Grands Lacs, shouting into the phone, speaking on behalf of Monsieur l’Attaché du Consulat Américain.

Besides hoping to see animals and new country, I had another reason for visiting Goma. Shortly before going overseas, I had met Murielle, a Belgian girl raised on a plantation at Saké, only a few miles south of Goma. We had assumed any emotional attachment would be fleeting – after all, I was about to depart – but we had fallen in love. There were, however, issues between us: a difference in religion and questions about how children would be raised. These never got resolved; in fact, because the time was so short once we grew serious, they were never even discussed.

We stopped writing during my year-long tour in Brussels. However, the correspondence had recently resumed – with enough interest on both sides so that I felt I should probably dire bonjour to her parents.

We departed for Goma at noon Friday. It rained off and on all day. We left the paved road 35 kilometers out, drove past clusters of banana-frond huts, away from the lake and back beside it, climbed the escarpment. Almost at the top, we stopped to stretch. When we were ready to start again, the battery was dead. Ugh. We rolled the truck backwards and started in compression in reverse. We drove on, up the escarpment and down it. The motor kept cutting out. As long as we were on an incline, we had no problem restarting in compression. But the motor died as we moved along the water’s edge. We got out. We pushed the truck, but could not move it fast enough to restart it. The rain began again. We corralled a passing African, a banana frond over his head as a rain hat. He helped us push, again in vain. A European came along. Using bush ingenuity, we restarted the truck by putting the battery from his Land Rover onto our mount. Once the motor was running, we reinstalled our battery – all while the engine was turning.

We went on. The rain grew heavier. When we stalled again as light was fading from the sky, Paul went to find help. Charley and I waited, wondering if we’d spend the night in the truck.

What was Donanne doing while Fred was serving in the Kivu? After finishing her sophomore year at Principia College in 1962, Donanne flew to Bogota, Colombia, to join her parents. Her father, Don Ralston, was then a member of the State Department’s inspection corps looking at embassies and consulates in Latin Anerica. During that summer she visited Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. Needless to say, inspectors and their families are always treated well. The summer after her junior year at Principia Donanne stayed with her grandparents in Redlands, California.

Next post: Fred and his pals manage to reach Parc National Albert where they see elephants, baboons, Cape Buffalo and hippos and manage to get stuck fast in mud just as night is falling. Uh-oh.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Kivu, Congo, 1963, Part Four

When Fred Hunter arrived in the Congo as a young US Information Service officer, he was sent first to Bukavu on the eastern frontier. Then he was told he must go to the northwest to open a cultural center in Coquilhatville. Before leaving, he wanted to see some African animals. Defying instructions, he headed toward Parc National Albert with Charley, the commo man at Bukavu’s US Consulate, and Paul, a charming African wheeler-dealer who worked for USIS.

Charley, Paul and I left Bukavu for Goma at noon Friday. It rained off and on all day. We left the paved road 35 kilometers out, drove past clusters of banana-frond huts, away from the lake and back beside it, climbed the escarpment. Almost at the top, we stopped to stretch. When we were ready to start again, the battery was dead. Ugh. We rolled the truck backwards and started in compression in reverse. We drove on, up the escarpment and down it. The motor kept cutting out. As long as we were on an incline, we had no problem restarting in compression. But the motor died as we moved along the water’s edge. We got out. We pushed the truck, but could not move it fast enough to restart it. The rain began again. We corralled a passing African, a banana frond over his head as a rain hat. He helped us push, again in vain. A European came along. Using bush ingenuity, we restarted the truck by putting the battery from his Land Rover onto our mount. Once the motor was running, we reinstalled our battery – all while the engine was turning.

We went on. The rain grew heavier. When we stalled again as light was fading from the sky, ever-resourceful Paul went to find help. He returned shortly with two Europeans: a planter in a slicker, his trousers rolled-up, a woman’s plastic fold-up rain scarf on his head, and a Brit who worked at a Lipton Congo plantation near Goma. The Brit pushed us with his Land Rover; we got started again in compression. The Brit offered to follow us as far as his turn-off and we found that it was not difficult to keep the truck running in second gear.

We drove on through darkness and rain. At Saké we hit pavement again, but I could not make out a turn-off to the De Muncks’ plantation. [Murielle de Munck, a young woman I had dated seriously in Washington, had grown up on that plantation.] Approaching Goma, we could see the red glow atop Nyiragongo, the active volcano that sits behind the town. We lost the Brit’s headlights before entering the town and were unable to thank him for sparing us a night in the truck.

The hotel was splendid. But once we had showered and eaten, Paul could not wait to get to a nightclub. He led Charley and me to a brightly-lit room in a building on the main street. Of course, he made an entrance. The copain of white men, he shook hands with everyone, explaining to all that we came from Bukavu.

The bar was full of crudely-made wooden tables and chairs circling a dance floor. Stick-figure paintings adorned the walls. Congolese men sat stolidly with tall brown bottles of Primus beer before them. They eyed the predatory young women who sat across the room, eyeing them back, measuring their victims. The room was stuffy and smelled of beer. Music played, a steady cha-cha beat, but no one danced. Most women – girls really, some no older than middle teens – wore Congolese dress: elaborately tied headcloths, bodices of patterned material, cloths tied about the hips with second cloths draped to emphasize the size and succulence of those hips. Others wore European clothes.

The women knew why most men came to the bar: to find a companion for the night. But Charley and me? It was not clear to the women – nor was it probably to us – why we were there. Had we come for companions? Or merely to drink and gawk?

But it was obvious why Paul had come: to spend money, to make an impression, to carry off the best-looking girl in the place. Soon a candidate approached. She was very pretty with lustrous skin, flashing eyes and a bad case of the giggles. She was clad à la européenne: a white dress with large blue polka dots and a tight waist displaying a body that had not yet begun to thicken. In the light of the room her aureole of combed-out hair shined like a gray mist about her head. She slid onto Paul’s lap. She put an arm around his shoulder. She kissed his cheek. Paul smiled. He gave Charley and me a what-can-I-do? shrug and became as giggly as she was.

Charley watched Paul getting the Big Man treatment. I wondered if he wanted it, too. Charley had boasted to me that he and Paul had gone “girling” together before I arrived even though their friendship lacked a common language. Charley spoke no French, Paul no English. Their conversations were uncomplicated. Charley would mime holding a Primus bottle by its neck, bringing it to his mouth and tilting his head backwards as if to drink. “Primus. Mademoiselle,” he would say to Paul. Paul would answer: “Let’s go!”

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I came to see animals.”

“Not heifers,” Charley said. “At least not these heifers.”

We left Paul to be the Big Man in Goma and walked back to the hotel.

The battery repaired, we headed out of Goma through slowly rising countryside, watching three volcanoes jut into clouds. We traveled through country given over to tea, coffee, banana and quinine plantations. We reached Parc National Albert by early afternoon, coming off the Rift Valley escarpment from Rutshuru and moving out onto a long, wide, seemingly empty plain where grass in some places grew higher than our heads. We drove beside a flat-bottomed stream that cut across a rust- and dark orange-colored gulch through the plain. Paul claimed he sighted hippos in his binoculars. Oh, sure. We stopped. Damned if he wasn’t right. Hippos! Excitement overtook us, the elation of kids. We drove close to their pool, jumped out of the truck and gawked at them, creatures that seemed a cross between a rubberized pig and a Michelin-man horse. From the water in which they stood, they watched us, a mother nuzzling her young one. Sometimes one of them would arch back its neck and open a gigantic pink mouth. Each jaw had the shape of a huge guitar. “Ho, Mama!” Charley said. “Those jaws could take a fender off this truck!”

As we crossed a bridge into Ruindi Camp, a tree burst suddenly into life. Branches waved. Leaves rustled. Baboons! The road jumped alive with creatures scurrying in all directions. Hairy, suspicious faces turned around to observe us across hairy backs which ended in hairless rumps of shiny leather.

After settling in at camp, we went for a game run with a guide in the late afternoon. We saw a herd of about fifteen grazing elephants, females with young; then at the distance of about 25 yards we came upon a lone bull. I was sitting atop the cab of the truck and watched him with amazement. In the immensity of the plain with mountains rising on the horizon, the bull did not seem enormous. Still, he dwarfed the film truck. I felt an awe at being so close. The elephant observed us, uninterested, and moved on.

We noticed waves of motion in the grass, then made out pig snouts moving at the head of the waves and tall tails at the end of them. These were scampering wart hogs, their ears and their long tails erect in the air. Antelope watched us. Some, possibly elands, had tawny hides and spiraling horns. Others, topis, stood with their front legs seeming half again the length of their back ones, their hides red and black. When they ran from us, the difference in leg size produced a strange, yet graceful stride. We saw monkeys and more baboons, waterbuck and more hippos. And Cape buffalo with their wide boss of horns. “Ce sont très dangereux,” murmured the guide, eyeing them carefully.

Then with Charley driving, Paul and I suddenly spotted a huge shape in a mud hole from our position on cushions atop the cab. The mud hole was just large enough to contain this shape and it emerged, a huge hippo, freshly coated in mud. It glinted in the sun, a plodding blob of light, and moved away.

Finally we reached Lake Edward. We stopped, left the truck, stretched and watched waterbuck and pelicans, bathing hippos, monkeys on the beach and fish eagles perched in the tops of trees. Paul pointed off along the shore of the lake. “There’s a commercial fishery over there,” he said. “Vitshumbi. An interesting place to visit.” I did not see it; I did not want to see it. I had come to commune with animals and did not want to think about the works of man.

We were a mere handful of miles south of the Equator. Here sundown always fell promptly at 6:00 p.m. It was already well after 5:00. Starting back toward Ruindi, we moved slowly along a track that led beside Lake Edward. We were between the lake and, fifty yards off, a dozen hippos lolling in a wallow. Charley braked at the edge of an iffy section. It had rained the day before and there was mud everywhere. He hesitated, then started across a patch of mud. Five feet into it, the truck sunk. It settled to its axles in mud.

Charley insisted the guide had assured him we could get across.

“You think the guide drives a lot?” I asked.

“The truck has four-wheel drive,” he noted. “You know how to use it?”

“No.”

“Me either.”

We pushed. Impossible. Charley and I scurried about, uprooting marsh grass and breaking up a small tree, trying to find anything that would give the tires some purchase. Wearing a tie and office slacks, Paul kept his distance from the mud. He shouted suggestions. The guide feigned efforts to help us, but kept his eyes on the hippo wallow. “C’est très dangereux,” he said again. Nothing was supposed to block hippos’ access to water. We continued to push at the truck. But nothing worked. It was stuck fast.

The sun moved behind the mountains and light was disappearing from the sky. Our options were not attractive. We could not hike back to Ruindi Camp. It was too far; before long the night would be so black we could see nothing. Wild animals, however, could see us. It was unlikely that anyone from camp would come looking for us; the camp staffers had no vehicles. We could spend the night in the truck, hoping that curious hippos did not push it over. Or we could try reaching the fishery at Vitshumbi – if angry hippos did not come after us. Hmm…

Next post: Escape and an unexpected rescuer.

Parts One through Three can be found in the Archive under Kivu Safari.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Kivu, Congo, 1963, Part Five

When Fred Hunter arrived in the Congo as a young US Information Service officer, he was sent first to Bukavu on the eastern froniter, then was told he must go to the northwest to open a cultural center in Coquilhatville. Before leaving the Kivu, he wanted to see some African animals. Defying instructions, he headed toward Parc National Albert with Charley, the commo man at Bukavu’s US Consulate, and Paul, a charming African wheeler-dealer who worked for USIS. They saw animals and got stuck in mud, badly stuck…

Charley and I scurried about, uprooting marsh grass and breaking up a small tree, trying to find anything that would give the tires some purchase. Wearing a tie and office slacks, Paul kept his distance from the mud. He shouted suggestions. The guide feigned efforts to help us, but kept his eyes on the hippo wallow. “C’est très dangereux,” he said again. Nothing was supposed to block hippos’ access to water. We continued to push at the truck. But nothing worked. It was stuck fast.

The sun moved behind the mountains and light was disappearing from the sky. Our options were not attractive. We could not hike back to Ruindi Camp. It was too far; before long the night would be so black we could see nothing. Wild animals, however, could see us. It was unlikely that anyone from camp would come looking for us; the camp staffers had no vehicles. We could spend the night in the truck, hoping that curious hippos did not push it over. Or we could try reaching the fishery at Vitshumbi. With luck we might get there before nightfall – if angry hippos did not come after us.

We started for the fishing village. How far was it? Should we run? Could we? Suddenly hippos began to grunt. They surrounded us. There was no cover, no trees to climb. So we ran. And walked. Walked and ran. We hoped that hippos, which are said to have bad eyesight, would lose us in the twilight.

Darkness descended. Fortunately, lights came on in Vitshumbi. We hurried toward them, walking, running. Finally we came upon mud-and-wattle huts, then more permanent one-room structures. Villagers looked up from cookfires, surprised at four spooked figures stumbling out of the darkness. Paul asked for the director of the fishery. An African led us toward a lighted building with a porch overlooking the lake. On the peak of its roof perched half a dozen marabout storks.

On the porch sat a group of people having aperitifs: a Belgian of middle age and a family of East Indians. The Belgian stood squinting as we came out of the darkness onto the porch. An Indian woman, enough younger than the Belgian to be his daughter, rose to her feet, a quietly attractive girl, slender, but full-breasted. In the dim light and for smelly, deserted, end-of-the-world Vitshumbi she was very beautiful. I knew what Charley was thinking: “Heifer! Heifer!”

We all stared at one another. Then Paul laughed and exclaimed, “Ah! C’est toi!” The Belgian studied him, then grinned and stuck out his hand. “Tu habite ici, eh?” Paul asked, using the familiar form. “You live here, do you?”

“What’re you doing here?” the Belgian asked, responding in the familiar form. He and Paul shook hands.

It turned out that during “les troubles,” when the Kivu was in turmoil immediately after independence, the Belgian had fled and Paul had rowed him across Lake Kivu to safety in Rwanda. Now the Belgian introduced his wife, the beautiful young woman. Her family was visiting, she explained. She offered us drinks.

As we relaxed on the porch, chatty and relieved that we had escaped, we could hear the motor of an invisible boat fishing out in the lake, using the village lights to steer by. Wallowing hippos grunted nearby. A pair of them waddled ashore below the house. Villagers shooed them away like stray dogs. The Belgian had a large Volvo truck brought around for our use. We headed back into the park, accompanied by a dozen villagers. Certainly now we would extricate the film truck.

We took a dry route to reach it, Paul directing the expedition, drawing on experience gained in driving around Bukavu nightclubs. We passed indistinguishable animal shapes. A tree that moved turned out to be an elephant. We caught the glowing eyes of animals in our headlights and had to extinguish them when they charged us. As we neared the film truck, the Volvo got stuck in mud. I wondered if Paul were really the man to be in charge, but we dislodged the truck easily. Then we came close to getting stuck again.

“This is crazy!” I yelled to Charley. “Paul doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.” He agreed. “C’est fini pour ce soir!” I shouted at the top of my voice. We were finished for the night. I would not risk miring the Volvo truck. We returned to Ruindi camp.

We had locked our cabins well and had left the keys to them in the film truck. We bedded down in other quarters in muddy underwear. I did not sleep. I stared at the night. I said prayers and worried about what would happen if we could not get the film truck out of the mud. Would leaving it stuck in Parc Albert cost me my job? How would Léo react to learning that I’d gone dancing off to see animals when I had been specifically instructed not to? Would I be sent home from Africa in disgrace?

At dawn we were back out at the film truck. With men to help us and long planks for traction, we pushed it out in short order. We thanked our helpers and sent them back to Vitshumbi. I’d escaped again! Léo need never know I’d been to Parc Albert! I was so elated that I was ready for another game run, for the circuit where we could see lions. But Charley had had enough and Paul was anxious to return to the arms of his amie in Goma. We were back at the Hotel des Grands Lacs by noon.

Late that afternoon while the others relaxed in Goma, I drove out to Saké to see if I could find the parents of my friend Murielle de Munck.

What was Donanne doing while Fred was serving in the Kivu? After finishing her sophomore year at Principia College in 1962, Donanne flew to Bogota, Colombia, to join her parents. Her father, Don Ralston, was then a member of the State Department’s inspection corps looking at embassies and consulates in Latin America. During that summer she visited Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. Needless to say, inspectors and their families are always treated well. The summer after her junior year at Principia Donanne stayed with her grandparents in Redlands, California.

Next post: Fred calls at a plantation near Goma and happens on to the owners, parents of a girlfriend of his in Washington, D.C.

Parts One through Four of Kivu Safari and other previous TIA posts are available in the Archive. You can find it at the top left of the home page.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA: Kivu, Congo, 1963, Part Six

When Fred Hunter arrived in the Congo as a young US Information Service officer, transferring from a training post in Brussels, Belgium, he was sent first to Bukavu, then was told he must go to the northwest to open a cultural center in Coquilhatville. Before leaving the Kivu, he wanted to visit the parents of a young Belgian woman he had dated in Washington, DC.

Late in the afternoon while the others relaxed in Goma, I drove out to Saké, hoping to find the De Muncks’ plantation and, if I was lucky, to meet them. I passed the lava flow of Nyiragongo’s most recent eruption. I drove down the only turn-off I could find. I passed mud-and-wattle huts, asked directions of Congolese, received conflicting advice and persevered. I came upon a locked gate. There I left the film truck. I climbed around the gate and walked to a plantation house constructed of lava blocks and set on a tall headland overlooking Lake Kivu. It and the view were something out of movie versions of paradise. South Pacific’s Emile de Becque had a home like this and sang songs all day. How lucky the De Muncks were to live here! But no one was around. I circled the house, wanting to verify that it was, indeed, the place where Murielle grew up. I left a note.

Returning to the gate, I found a couple staring at the film truck. He wore khaki trousers and a shirt/jacket, belted, with pockets at the breast and below the belt. She looked very much like Murielle. I introduced myself, explaining that I was an American friend of their daughter, now living in Bukavu. I had no sense that either of them had ever heard of me. But why would Murielle have told them anything? What I did sense was that they were both enormously tired.

They invited me into the house. I felt uncomfortable at first, very aware that I was defying one of the litanies of my upbringing (“Never intrude!”) and conscious of the inadequacies of my French. But soon it was clear that the De Muncks saw me as a pair of virgin ears; they could tell me things that other people they talked to had grown tired of hearing. Moreover, as an American officer, I represented that irresistible force, American policy, which they held responsible for much of the calamity that had befallen them. We had tea and a light supper.

Independence and its aftermath had turned their lives upside down, they said. Eighty percent of the workers on their coffee and tea plantations were Tutsis, originally from Rwanda, though they had lived in Congolese territory for generations. Now members of the Congolese government were threatening to force all Tutsis back into Rwanda. When the De Muncks had talked to North Kivu’s provincial president – it clearly irked Madame to address him as “Monsieur le Ministre” – he had told them that if they supported the Tutsi work force, then they were “contre” the local government. “What can one do?” Madame asked.

She complained that local bandits were hired as police. These hoodlums terrorized the countryside, slitting the throats of plantation workers and beating pregnant women. I remembered Murielle telling me about plantation workers who had found the decapitated heads of fellow workers placed along footpaths. “We sent the children outside the country,” Madame said, “so they would be safe.”

“We did not want them to see these things,” Monsieur said.

“The children are safe,” Madame continued, “but we have nothing to send them.”

Monsieur explained that he had plowed all his money back into the plantation. He had put nothing away against a rainy day. “And why should I?” he asked. “In those days a Congolese franc was worth the same as a Belgian franc.” Now the Congolese franc was worthless; things kept breaking down; it was impossible to get spare parts and on a whim the government commandeered trucks.

Of course, they acknowledged, Belgium had lacked courage. To abandon the Congo in the manner it had! The Portuguese in Angola were right to hold on. And the Americans! Wasn’t it clear that they intended to exploit the Congo’s riches?

I listened as they let off steam. “Mais vous ne dites rien!” Madame kept saying. “You aren’t saying anything!” But what was there to say?

At dinner I asked about Madame’s photography; Murielle had told me about it. “There is no time anymore,” she said. She caressed the dog with affection and conversed with the parrot. Monsieur chuckled now and then; I liked him for that. After dinner Madame showed me a collection of her photos printed as postcards. She stood behind me as I sat thumbing through them; reminiscence warmed her voice.

When I said goodbye, they invited me to return. “Come spend a week,” they suggested. “Climb our volcanoes. Or perhaps we could all go to Uganda. We know a place in Elizabeth Park; it’s not usually open to tourists.”

Driving back to Goma, I realized that I had not asked to see photos of Murielle as a child. I wondered if I would see them again. I never did.

The next afternoon Charley drove us home – all too quickly. Paul’s night of passion had left him tired and speechless. His friend had so extracted the juices from him that halfway down the lake he insisted we stop at a plantation house. He ordered an African there to fetch him a glass of water. Charley was equally silent, thinking probably about the heifer he had seen at Vitshumbi and the one awaiting him in Bukavu. I mulled over my visit with the De Muncks. I wondered what would happen to them and to Murielle and if I would have a part in any of it.

We stayed in second gear until well within sight of Bukavu. The streets were deserted. A rumor had spread that the Mwami of Kabare, a local king, might stir up trouble, perhaps even send warriors to invade the town. Where usually the night was full of cha-cha rhythms from Congolese bars, this night there was only silence.

Parts One through Five can be viewed in the Archive located at the top of the Home Page.

Next post: On a flight to a bush town deep in the Congo jungle, Fred meets a modern-day Rip Van Winkle.

Want to meet the Mwami of Kabare? Want to see how he and Paul Wemboyendja interact? Take a look at “Waiting for the Mwami” in Fred’s AFRICA, AFRICA! Fifteen Stories. Check it out at www.Cune.com/Africa.