Authors: Ryszard Kapuscinski
A sleepless night.
The rain began falling during the night. At first light the rain was still falling; it was cloudy and damp and fog lay on the lake. At dawn an airplane emerged from out of the mist and parked on the side runway, not far from us. This was unusual: every other airplane (the few that had landed here) parked on the other side of the airport, far away; but this one—perhaps because of the poor landing conditions?—was sitting right there on our side, where there was less fog (this part was the farthest from the lake). Two white pilots got out and went straight to the main terminal, but a few black stewards remained behind, hanging around the airplane. We called out to them, waving our hands. The honest paratrooper with the hippopotamus teeth had taken the night watch—our man, a man who just wanted to make a little money and survive, in other words an ordinary man (I became convinced that the ones who want to pick up a few pennies are often more human than the formal, incorruptible ones)—and when he saw that we wanted to talk with the stewards he moved around to the other side of the building. A steward came over, and Jarda asked him where they were flying to.
Leopoldville, he replied.
Jarda told him briefly about our situation, that our hours were numbered, and then begged the steward (a white begging a black) to go to the local United Nations headquarters as soon as he arrived in Leopoldville and tell the people there that we were in prison, that they should inform the world about us because then the paratroopers would not dare kill us and that they should send the army to rescue us.
Looking at us, the black man would have seen the frame of the window, and in that frame he would have seen bars, and behind those bars three white faces, horribly dirty, unshaven, exhausted: Jarda’s face, round and full, and Duszan’s and mine, thin. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
The hours of torture began. The steward had tossed a crumb of hope into our cell and it jolted us out of our state of paralysis and overpowering depression, a kind of self-deafening that I now see was a defence against insanity. For those awaiting death as we were, passive and apathetic, on the verge of collapse, ready to hit bottom, it takes only one flash of light in the darkness, one lucky break, and suddenly you rise up again and return to the living. What you leave behind, however, is an empty territory that you cannot even describe: it has no points of reference or shape or signposts, and its existence—like the sound barrier—is something you feel only once you have approached it. One step out of that emptiness and it disappears. No one, however, who has entered this emptiness can ever be the same person he was before. Something remains—a psychological scar, hardened, gangrened flesh—a fact, finally more apparent to others than to himself, that something has burned out, that
something is missing. You pay for every meeting with death.
We watched the airplane take off and then began pacing feverishly among the chairs, talking and arguing, although, for all of the previous afternoon and evening and night, the cell had been silent. Would the steward really inform the United Nations? And if he did, who would he talk to? To someone who will take him seriously? To someone who will wave his arms around and do nothing? And even if he is taken seriously, will anyone be able to free us? And if everything worked in our favour, it would take at least half a day for the steward to fly to Leopoldville and talk with headquarters, and then for Leopoldville to notify the Usumbura headquarters. Before anything happened, the paratroopers could take us out and finish us off a hundred times or turn us over to Muller’s hirelings. Thus came the nerves, the war of nerves, fever and agitation, but all of it inside, in us, because outside beyond the window it was always the same: the helmet and shoulder of the paratrooper and, further off, the plain, the lake (Tanganyika), the mountains. And today, in addition, the rain.
In the afternoon we heard a car motor under the window, and a screech of brakes, and then voices speaking in a language I did not recognize. We clung to the bars. Near the building stood a jeep flying the United Nations flag; four black soldiers in blue helmets climbed out. They were Ethiopians from the Imperial Guard of Haile Selassie, who formed part of the United Nations military contingent in the Congo. They posted their own guard alongside the paratrooper.
I have no idea what the Congolese who saved our lives was called. I never saw him again. He was a human being: that’s all I know about him.
And not only do I also not know the name of whoever it was at the UN headquarters in Leopoldville who saved our lives, but I never even saw him. There is so much crap in this world, and then, suddenly, there is honesty and humanity.
I can’t say if there was actually any bartering between the Ethiopians and the paratroopers over our fates. I can say that they didn’t like each other, and they treated each other spitefully. They were competing for the prestige of controlling the Congo.
The next morning we took a Sabair flight out through Fort Lamy and on to Malta and then to Rome. In the great glass block of Fumicino airport, we watched the splendid and—to us, at that moment—exotic world of contented, calm, satiated Europeans on parade: fashionably dressed girls, elegant men on their way to international conferences, excited tourists who had flown in to see the Forum, meticulously preserved women, newlyweds flying off to the beaches of Majorca and Las Palmas; and, as the members of this unimaginable world passed by us (we were a
disreputable-looking trio, three dirty, smelly, unshaven men in horrible shirts and homespun trousers on a chilly spring day when everyone else was in jackets, sweaters and warm clothing), I suddenly felt—the thought horrified me—that, sad truth or grotesque paradox that it might be, I had been more at home back there in Stanleyville or in Usumbura than here now.
Or perhaps I simply felt lonely.
The police looked us over suspiciously and I couldn’t blame them. We could not go into the city because we had no visas. The police phoned our embassies, which had been looking for us all over the world. The ambassadors came out to the airport, but it was already late in the evening and we had to sleep there because we would not have visas arranged for us until the next day.
I returned to Warsaw. I had to prepare a note on what I had seen in the Congo. I described the battles, the collapse, the defeat. Then I was summoned by a certain comrade from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘What have you been writing, you?’ he stormed at me. ‘You call the revolution anarchy! You think that Gizenga is on the way out and Kobutu is winning! These are pernicious theories!’
‘Go there yourself,’ I answered in a tired voice, because I still felt Stanleyville and Usumbura in my bones. ‘Go ahead and see for yourself. And I hope you make it back alive.’
‘It’s regrettable,’ this comrade said, concluding our discussion, ‘but you can’t return overseas as a correspondent because you do not understand the Marxist-Leninist processes that are at work in the world.’
‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve got some things to write about here, too.’
I went back to work at
Polityka
, travelling around the country, writing up what I saw. In the Congo things turned out the way they had to, which in the end had been obvious to everyone who was there. A few months later I received an offer to travel to Africa for several years. I was to be the first Polish correspondent in black Africa and was to open a bureau office for PAP, the Polish Press Agency. At the beginning of 1962 I was sent to Dar es Salaam.
What follows is the complete and exact text of a letter sent to me by Millinga Millinga, an activist in the
Frente de Libertaçao de Moçambique
, the Mozambique Liberation Front. Millinga Millinga is a close friend: influential, serious, a figure at political rallies and diplomatic receptions.
L. Millinga Millinga
P.O. Box 20197
Dar es Salaam
Tanganyika
Dear Friend,
PERSONAL MATTER
At this critical moment in my life, compelled by an immense and unsolvable DILEMMA, I feel no shame in revealing deeply concealed problems that I have incurred in the preparation of my future, nor do I feel any shame in revealing them to you especially, a friend whose kindness and assistance have never been wanting on occasions of this kind in the past.
As you know, I am one of the Freedom Fighters who has devoted all his time to the struggle and receives no compensation. But in view of the fact that a human being cannot escape from his natural needs, I have for two years been plunged in heavenly love for Miss Veronica Njige (district secretary of TANU, the Tanganyika African National Union) of the Morogoro district, whom I have promised to marry. However, as I have been so deeply engaged in the struggle, and, moreover, given the particular circumstances in which FREEDOM FIGHTERS live, I have been unable to
fill our treasure chest with funds sufficient for the preparation of a festive wedding. In addition, the parents of the Lady of my Heart are demanding fifty pounds as a dowry, plus, in lieu of cows and goats, another twenty-five pounds as a gift for the cousins. After calculating precisely all the necessary expenditures incurred from the preparations and the wedding day ceremony, the total sum of money required to meet my aims amounts to not less than 200 pounds, including the items mentioned above.
In the opinion of my Beloved the date for the wedding has been delayed too many times already and so she has taken to writing to me three times a week, demanding that a wedding be held before November 1962. In these letters there is nothing more than one simple and clear statement: ‘FREEDOM AND MARRIAGE BEFORE NOVEMBER 1962.’ Despite my relentless declarations on the theme of my present financial situation, with which she has no sympathy whatsoever, the Lady of my Heart insists resolutely on a wedding IMMEDIATELY because, a Freedom Fighter herself, she states categorically that she would prefer to suffer with me in our own home than remain in her parents’ care. To a certain extent, I feel sorry for her. She is a grown woman, ready for marriage, and is always telling me, passionately, that she has, at present, strong desires, unprecedented desires, to become a wife without delay, and, acceding to her many requests, I have been compelled to agree that by 3 October I will pay her parents and relatives the seventy-five pounds and that the wedding will take place on 1 November 1962.
Dear friend, I would like you to turn over in your mind the true meaning of the sentence: ‘LOVE IS THE
MISTRESS OF THE WISEST MEN AND THE MOTHER OF EVERYTHING.’ If you think about this sentence in relation to the matters presented here, you will certainly adopt an attitude sympathetic to my present situation. Under these conditions I have nothing more to say, except to ask you to give me as much financial help as you can afford. I should stress here that this support is to be treated as private aid to me, MILLINGA, and not as aid to the Mozambique Liberation Party or to me in the role of its General Secretary. For this same reason, all payments should be addressed to my private post office box: Millinga Millinga, P.O. Box 20197, Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika. Payments sent in connection with the matter presented above will be confirmed by myself personally or by my cousin W. L. Mbunga, whom I have appointed to the post of Personal Secretary in Charge of Fundraising for my Wedding. His signature is to be found below.
In hopes of hearing from you before the deadline,
With fraternal greetings,
[Two illegible signatures]
I gave Millinga as much as I could afford, but it was obvious that some of the embassies must have given Millinga as much as he needed for the wedding took place (Millinga had mimeographed his letter and sent out many copies). I met both of them several days ago at a reception at the Soviet Embassy. Millinga, small, delicately built, permanently unshaven, stood silent and musing beside a stout, big-busted, gloomy girl, the Lady of his Heart.
The
Tanganyika Standard
of 21 December 1963 reported that ‘the discussion over the child-support bill that erupted in the last session of parliament was the stormiest debate in the nearly two years’ history of independent Tanganyika’s Legislative Chamber.’
Delegate Lucy Lameck, the Vice-Minister of Cooperatives, an activist known for her emancipationist stance and a proponent of European examples and models of behaviour for African women, introduced the government-sponsored bill on child support (the Affiliation Ordinance Amendment Bill of 1963). She began by saying that in a country like Tanganyika, which has embarked on the path of modern development, ‘newer and newer problems’ will continue to arise. ‘In earlier African society,’ said the delegate, ‘moral principles were not exposed to such great external pressures as today, and for this reason there was no need to create laws to protect the fate and upbringing of children born out of wedlock.’ Now, however, it is imperative to find ‘new remedies for the new problems affecting the population of urban centres.’
‘The child-support bill,’ Delegate Lameck stressed, ‘arose as a result of research into the situation of African women in the cities. It turned out that, in Dar es Salaam, 155 out of 340 working girls had from one to six illegitimate children. The average monthly income of these single mothers was only 168 shillings a month, and no more than eight of them received any help from the fathers of their children.’ The delegate also cited testimony from a school principal in Dar es Salaam, who stated that each month three or four girls dropped out of school as a result of pregnancy. This school taught girls between the ages of
eleven and fifteen. The principal knew nothing about the ultimate fortunes of the drop-outs. ‘In this situation,’ concluded Delegate Lucy Lameck, ‘it is necessary to introduce a statute requiring the payment of child-support by the fathers of illegitimate children.’