Authors: Ryszard Kapuscinski
I ask Rakowski to send me to the Congo. I’m already caught up in it. I’ve already got the fever.
The trip turns out to be impossible. Everyone from the socialist countries is being thrown out of the Congo. On a
Polish passport there would be no way of getting there. As a consolation, the travel committee allots me some hard currency and a ticket for a trip to Nigeria. But what’s Nigeria to me? Nothing’s going on there (at the moment).
I walk around depressed and heart-broken. Suddenly a glimmer of hope—somebody claims that in Cairo there’s a Czech journalist who wants to force his way into the Congo by the jungle route. Officially, I leave for Nigeria, but secretly have the airline ticket rewritten for Cairo and fly out of Warsaw. Only a few colleagues are in on my plan.
In Cairo I find the Czech, who is named Jarda Boucek. We sit in his apartment, which reminds me of a minor museum of Arabic art. Beyond the window roars the gigantic hot city, a stone oasis cut in half by the navy-blue Nile. Jarda wants to get to the Congo by way of Sudan, which means by air to Khartoum, and then by air to Juba, and in Juba we will have to buy a car, and everything that will happen after that is a big question mark. The goal of the expedition is Stanleyville, the capital of the eastern province of the Congo, in which the Lumumba government has taken refuge (Lumumba himself has already been arrested and his friend Antoine Gizenga is leading the government). I watch as Jarda’s index finger journeys up the Nile, stops briefly for a little tourism (here there is nothing but crocodiles; here the jungle begins), turns to the south-west, and arrives on the banks of the Congo river where the name ‘Stanleyville’ appears beside a little circle with a dot in it. I tell Jarda that I want to take part in this expedition and
that I even have official instructions to go to Stanleyville (which is a lie). He agrees, but warns me that I might pay for this journey with my life (which later turns out to be close to the truth). He shows me a copy of his will, which he has deposited with his embassy. I am to do the same.
After a thousand problems getting a Sudanese visa, I change my Warsaw–Cairo–Lagos ticket for a Warsaw–Khartoum–Juba ticket at the United Arab Airlines office and fly to the Sudan. Jarda stays behind in Cairo to wait for another Czech. They will catch up with me in Khartoum and we will fly on together. Khartoum is provincial and nightmarishly hot—I am dying of boredom and the heat.
Jarda arrives with his colleague, Duszan Prowaznik, another journalist. We wait a few days for the plane, and finally fly to the southern Sudan, to Juba—a small garrison-settlement in the midst of an incredible wasteland. Nobody wants to sell us a car, but in the end we find a daredevil (in Juba, too, the opinion prevails that anyone who travels to the Congo is as good as dead) who agrees, for a large sum of money, to drive us to the border, more than 200 kilometres away.
The next afternoon we reach the border, guarded by a half-naked policeman with a half-naked girl and a little boy. They don’t give us any trouble and everything starts to
look enjoyable and idyllic until, a dozen or so kilometres on, in the village of Aba, we are stopped by a patrol of Congolese
gendarmes
. I forgot to add that back in Cairo the minister of Lumumba’s government, Pierre Mulele (later the leader of the Simba uprising, murdered) had written out a visa to the Congo for us—by hand, on an ordinary sheet of paper. But who cares about that visa? The name Mulele means nothing to the
gendarmes
. Their grim, closed faces, half-hidden in the depths of their helmets, are unfriendly. They order us to return to the Sudan. Go back, they say, because beyond here it’s dangerous and the further you go the worse it gets. As if they were the sentries of a hell that began behind them. We can’t go back to the Sudan, Jarda tells them, because we don’t have return visas (which is true). The bargaining starts. For purposes of corrupting I have brought along several cartons of cigarettes, and the Czechs have a box of costume jewellery. We bribe the
gendarmes
with a few trinkets (beads, clip-on ear-rings), and they permit us to go on, appointing a sergeant named Seraphim to escort us. In Aba we also rent a car with a local driver. It is an old, enormous, entirely decrepit Ford. But old, enormous, entirely decrepit Fords are by nature unfailing and in them you can drive across the whole continent of Africa and a bit more.
At daybreak we start towards Stanleyville: a thousand kilometres of muddy dirt road, driving the whole time through a sombre green tunnel, in a stench of decomposing leaves, entangled branches and roots, because we are travelling deeper and deeper into the greatest jungle in Africa, into an eerie world of rotting, proliferating, monstrously exaggerated botany. We are driving through
a tropical wilderness that fills you with awe and delight, and every so often we have to pull the Ford out of the rust-coloured clay or out of a bog overgrown with brownish-grey duckweed. Along the road we are stopped by
gendarmerie
patrols, drunk or hungry, indifferent or aggressive—the rebellious, undisciplined army that, gone wild, has taken over the country, robbing and raping. When stopped, we push our driver Seraphim out of the car and watch what happens. If he falls into an embrace with the
gendarmes
we breathe easy, because that means Seraphim has come across his tribal kinsmen. But if they start punching his head and then beat him with the butts of their rifles, our skin crawls, because the same thing—or worse, perhaps—awaits us. I do not know what made us want to keep going along that road (on which it was so easy to die)—was it stupidity and a lack of imagination, or passion and ambition, or mania and honour, or our folly and our belief that we were obliged now to do it even though we had imposed an obligation upon ourselves?—and as we drive on I feel that with each kilometre another barrier has come down behind us, another gate has been slammed shut, and turning back becomes more and more impossible. After two days we roll into Stanleyville.
That man was here yesterday. They came in a muddy car, four of them. The car stopped in front of the bar. That man went in to drink beer. The other three wandered into town. The bar was empty; that man sat alone drinking beer. The bartender put on a record. Bill Haley sang ‘See you later, alligator.’
‘We don’t need that,’ said the one at the table. The bartender took the record off. The other three came in. ‘Ready?’ the one who was drinking beer asked. They answered ‘Ready,’ and the four of them left. There were people standing in the square, watching the four approach: the tall, slender man in front and behind him the three stout ones, with long arms.
Two girls started nudging each other because they liked that thin one. The thin one smiled at them, then at everyone, and began speaking. We didn’t know who he was. We usually knew everybody who came to speak, but we were seeing this one for the first time. Before, the white used to come. He would swab at his forehead with a handkerchief, muttering various things. The ones standing in the front had to listen carefully and then repeat what was said to the ones standing further away. In the muttering there was always something about taxes and public works. He was an administrator, so he couldn’t talk about anything else. Sometimes Mami came, our king, the king of the Bangs. Mami had a lot of beads and bracelets that gave off a hollow sound. Mami didn’t have any power but used to say that power would return to the Bangs. Then the Bangs would take revenge on the Angra, who had pushed all of them away from the banks of the fish-filled Aruwimi River. Mami would shake his fist, and you could hear that hollow jangling.
But this man spoke differently. He told us that our tribe was not alone. There was a whole family of tribes and that family was called
la nation congolaise
. All must be brothers; there lay strength. He spoke for a long time, until night fell and the darkness came. The darkness took away all the faces. You couldn’t see anything except this man’s words. Those words were bright. We could see them distinctly.
He asked, ‘Any questions?’
Everybody was quiet.
The speeches used to end this way, and whoever asked a question was beaten up afterwards. So it was quiet. Finally somebody cried out, ‘You! What’s your name?’
‘Me?’ That man laughed. ‘My name’s Lumumba, Patrice Lumumba.’
There he was: tall, lithe, rubbing his forehead with long nervous fingers. He had a face that they find attractive here because it’s dark, but the features were European. Patrice was strolling the streets of Leopoldville. He stopped, turned around and started walking again. He was alone, composing his great monologue in his mind.
We are sitting in the room one evening when Kambi comes in. The look on his face is one I would prefer not to see again.
In a hollow voice, he says, ‘Patrice Lumumba is dead.’
I think: the floor is going to cave in and we will crash two storeys to the ground. I look at Kambi. He isn’t crying; he isn’t shaking his fist; he isn’t cursing. He is standing there helplessly. That is a common sight in this country: standing there helplessly. Because you’ve become a minister and you don’t know what to do. Because your party has been shattered, and you don’t know how to put it back together. Because you are waiting for help,
and help isn’t coming.
Kambi sits down and begins repeating over and over, mechanically like a rosary: ‘It was the Belgians, it was the Belgians, it was the Belgians …’
I listened for the sounds of the city. To hear if they have started shooting. If the revenge has begun. But Stanleyville is dark, dead and mute. Nobody is lighting fires under stakes. Nobody is unsheathing the knives.
‘Kambi, did you ever see Lumumba?’
No. Kambi never saw him. But he can listen to him. He and his friend Ngoy bring in a tape recorder which they plug in and start playing.
It is a speech of Lumumba’s in parliament.
Kambi turns up the volume. Patrice is in full swing. The windows are open, and his words spill out into the street. But the street is empty. Patrice is speaking to an empty street but he can’t see that: he can’t know that: there is only his voice.
Kambi listens to the tape constantly. Like music. He leans his forehead on his arm and closes his eyes. The tape turns slowly, making a slight rustling sound. Patrice is calm, begins without emotion, even drily. At first he informs, presenting the situation. He speaks clearly, with a strong accent, enunciating each syllable diligently, like an actor mindful of the cheap seats. Suddenly his voice soars, vibrates, becomes piercing, tense, almost hysterical. Patrice attacks the forces of intervention. You can hear a light pounding—he is pounding his hand against the lectern to reinforce that he knows he is right. The attack is violent, but brief.
The tape falls silent except for the wavy rhythm of the machine. Kambi, who has been holding his breath, now gasps for air.
Again Patrice. His voice quiet, slow, with pauses between
the words. A bitter tone, disillusioned, the words catching in his throat. He is speaking to a quarrelsome hall, like a Renaissance congress of nobles. In a moment they will be shouting.
They don’t shout.
The hall falls quiet. Patrice has them in his hand again. He explains, persuades. His voice drops to a whisper. Kambi leans over the reels. He can hear the confidence of the leader. Whisper, whisper, the rustle of the tape and whisper. The sound of breathing. You cannot hear the hall. The hall is silent, the street empty, the Congo invisible. Lumumba is gone; the tape keeps running. Kambi is listening. The voice regains its tone, strength, energy. The agitator is standing on the platform now. His last chance: to convince them, to win them over, to sweep them away. He stakes everything on that last chance. The tape spins: a maddening invasion of words,
l’unité, l’unité
, a crush of arguments, stunning phrases, no turning back, we have to go there, there where our Uhuru is, our straight spine, hope, and the Congo, victory,
l’indépendence
.
Now the flame is burning.
The tape flies off the reel.
I have heard how Nasser speaks. How Nkrumah speaks. And Sekou Touré. And now Lumumba. It is worth seeing how Africa listens to them. You have to see the crowd on the way to a rally, festive, excited, with fever in their eyes. And you need strong nerves to endure the moment of ecstatic screaming that greets the appearance of one of these speakers. It’s good to stand in the crowd. To applaud together with them, laugh and get angry. Then you can feel their patience and strength, their devotion and their power. A rally in Africa is always a people’s holiday, joyous and full of dignity, like a harvest festival. The witch-doctors
cast spells; the imams read the Koran; the orchestras play jazz. The wind snaps the colourful crêpe, women vendors sell rattles, and the great ones talk politics from the rostrum. Nasser speaks tough, forceful, always dynamically, impulsively, imperiously. Touré banters with the crowd, winning it over with his good cheer, his constant smile, his subtle nonchalance. Nkrumah is turgid, intent, with the manner retained from his days preaching in the American black churches. And then that crowd, carried away by the words of its leaders, throws itself in exultation under the wheels of Gamal’s car, lifts Sekou’s car off the ground, breaks ribs trying to touch Kwame’s car.
Meteoric careers, great names. The awakened Africa needs great names. As symbols, as cement, as compensation. For centuries the history of the continent has been anonymous. In the course of 300 years traders shipped millions of slaves out of here. Who can name even one of the victims? For centuries they fought the white invasions. Who can name one of the warriors? Whose names recall the suffering of the black generations, whose names speak of the bravery of exterminated tribes? Asia had Confucius and Buddha, Europe Shakespeare and Napoleon. No name that the world would know emerges from the African past. More: no name that Africa itself would know.
And now almost every year of the great march of Africa, as if making up for the irreversible delay, new names are inscribed in history: 1956, Gamal Nasser; 1957, Kwame Nkrumah; 1958, Sekou Touré; 1960, Patrice Lumumba.