Drums Along the Congo Read online

  “What’s to say? I vote no,” one man guzzling brandy slurs, then rambles on for five minutes. Innocent deciphers the speech as best he can.

  “He’s telling everyone how tiring white men are, how they always want the guides to go faster… He says white men are crazy, and anyone who comes with us is just as crazy. Not enough money and too much work.”

  I pour the complainer another brandy and tell him that my gear weighs only twenty kilos; if the council wants, I’ll carry it all myself. Ange tells me to shut up and sit down. This is a council meeting; outsiders speak only when spoken to.

  “And no one is talking to you, mundélé. Comprenez-vous?”

  “Oui, Monsieur President.”

  A general discussion follows about the lack of food, especially meat, in Boha. While the hunting was good during the British expedition, the men returned home with very little surplus food.

  “How many shotgun shells did you bring?” someone asks.

  “More than a hundred,” Innocent answers. “All of them are yours if we go.”

  The councilors seem pleased to hear this. A few tip their glasses my way. “Boom-boom … boom,” Gabriel thunders. One person starts speaking in Bomitaba, and the others follow suit. We watch hand gestures and facial expressions for clues to their conversation. Ange does most of the talking and pauses occasionally to stare at me while shaking either his finger or his head.

  “Enough talk. We vote,” Ange announces in French.

  The yeas outnumber the nays five to two. Ange is the first person to speak after the vote, saying that he will accompany us to Lake Télé. I swallow another scotch.

  “Très bien,” says everyone but me.

  Ange leans toward me and whispers, “I go to keep an eye on you.” In a stentorian voice he asks who else will join us on the trail. Previous expeditions to Lake Télé have always had at least a half-dozen guides, but in my case, the first white man to come alone, the council has agreed to change the rule.

  “Two more, please,” Ange urges.

  “I go,” Gabriel speaks. He flashes me a smile as he draws a circle in the dirt floor with the jagged tip of a monkey bone, then a circle inside that circle, and so on, until he’s made what looks like a target. He jabs the bull’s-eye.

  “Me,” grunts Raymond, a quiet giant who sits in a corner picking at a half-formed scab on his leg. The wound is the size of a medallion of beef and needs to be cleaned and dressed.

  “Let’s drink,” Theo proposes, uncapping a bottle of Johnny Walker.

  Innocent, Ange, and I eventually stagger outside and head toward our room in Teacher’s house, leaving Theo behind. We walk three abreast, sucking in the humid air, trying to clear our lungs of tobacco smoke. Overhead the sky is obscured by a thick layer of clouds. Lightning bugs flash, and hordes of mosquitoes buzz around us. The river murmurs as it licks its banks, and a soft breeze is coaxing a whisper from the tree spirits.

  “Bonne nuit,” a voice calls out of nowhere.

  “Bonne nuit,” we respond, each of us speaking in a different direction.

  CHAPTER 18

  “FUFU?” THE YOUNG WOMAN ASKS as I down the last of my scrambled eggs.

  “Fufu?… Qu’est-ce que c’est, fufu?”

  Ange told her to serve us breakfast. She’s wearing a brown skirt and a brassiere made for a much larger woman. She has told me her name, but I can neither pronounce nor remember it. Innocent is at the river taking a bath, and Theo is still conked out on our bed of coconut hair.

  “Fufu, oui, fufu,” she repeats, gesturing to her stomach.

  “Me montrez-vous cet fufu?” It might help if I can see what she’s talking about.

  She nods and motions for me to follow. We snake along a narrow path behind the school, pausing for a moment beside the louvered shutters to listen to the voices of the children reciting their multiplication tables. Near a narrow field planted with pineapple, I spot a camwood tree. Its bark is used to make rouge, and its extract is a sweet-smelling additive for coconut oil. I detour to peel off a piece.

  “Arrêtez! Diables!” the woman shouts, dashing toward me and yanking my arm.

  “Pardon?”

  “Diables!”

  “Camwood?”

  “Regardez!” she snaps, pointing to a row of young saplings stuck in the ground inches from my feet; another step toward the tree and I’d be brushing up against them. “Ça sont taboo! Taboo!”

  Later I learn that shoots like these are put in place after a devil has been chased from the village. The spirits of the newly planted trees stand vigil, blocking the devil’s return. To trample or damage them would allow the evil spirit back into the village. The devil would have taken residence inside me, looked out at the world through my eyes and attacked any unfortunate soul who looked back. The village witch doctor can cleanse the possessed, but normally the stricken individual runs howling into the jungle before the holy man can perform an exorcism.

  My guide holds my hand as we continue down the path, tugging me onward whenever I stop to inspect a hibiscus or try to pinch a flower from a sky vine. Eventually we wend our way to a field that has been carved out of the jungle, its perimeter marked by the now familiar scorched corridor.

  Women are working rows of breadfruit and cassava plants, pulling weeds, hoeing and planting shoots. Off to the side, a few women pound roots with massive pestles in a steady and unrelenting cadence. Beads of sweat pop off their ebony bodies.

  According to Bantu myth, the women of the Congo are to be thanked for the continued separation of earth and sky.

  Once, long ago, the sky god became envious of the earth god’s bounty and pressed close to the land. As the heavens descended, drawing the sun dangerously near the earth, the world began to overheat and oceans boiled. The sky god prepared to touch the land, but the women poked its eyes with their pestles and forced the god to retreat. As long as Bantu women continue to use pestles, the myth promises, the sky will keep its distance.

  There’s not another man to be seen; most likely the males are nursing hangovers or gabbing in the shade of a cottonwood, though a few might be out fishing. Aside from bringing home game and sometimes gathering fruit in the jungle, they do little work. The women tend the fields, raise the children, and maintain the homestead, from fixing the roof to building animal pens. They cook, clean, and serve, as they have for centuries. The future, however, may bring dramatic changes, as the first Boha women travel beyond the district to continue their education. Earlier in the morning, over coffee, Teacher spoke excitedly about two college-bound female students, predicting they would bring home the message of the “people’s revolution and free the other women from this forest and snap the chains of the past.”

  One of the younger women working the fields sees me and whistles exactly like a red-billed shrike. Her coworkers stop what they’re doing to gather around me. Those who were hoeing bring their tools, called guindras, with them. Guindras were once a form of currency, and it seems that they’re still highly valued. They have short handles and postcard-sized iron blades, often decorated with intricate reliefs of cassava leaves.

  “I have come to show him fufu,” my guide explains.

  “Ah, fufu,” they say in unison, tittering.

  An elder of the group steps forward. She’s wearing a busbus made from yellow cotton with horizontal black stripes. Speaking slowly in French, she explains that cassava (or manioc, as it’s commonly called here) roots are left in the ground for up to six months, then soaked in water and eaten as a vegetable.

  “L’eau, c’est très important,” someone in the group interjects.

  “Oui,” my instructor confirms, explaining how the bitter manioc must be soaked for at least twenty-four hours to wash out a virulent poison.

  Manioc roots left in the ground longer than six months lose their flavor. When these old roots are eventually dug up, the women soak them in water and pound them into an oily pulp, which is then allowed to ferment.

  “Ecoutez,” my i
nstructor says, picking up a calabash with a cork plugged into its end. She shakes it and holds the gourd next to my ear so I can hear the fizzing.

  Several days from now, the foamy liquid will be poured out and allowed to dry in the sun. The solids will be sifted and pounded again. The result is fufu, a flour used in making bread and dumplings. Often, yeast concocted from coconut water is added to the flour for baking pastry like treats.

  There’s a cooked loaf of fufu in the shade, near five babies sleeping in a nursery made of freshly cut ferns. Fufu, I soon discover, expands with water, and even a small bite swells to a mouthful. Someone puts a chunk into my pocket and mutters, “Tokay.” The women turn on their heels and resume work.

  My guide leads me to the path, issuing a warning to avoid the saplings, calling them orunda, Lingala for off-limits. She decides to stay behind, and my thanks and good-byes to the other women are lost in the thumping of six-foot-long pestles. I wander back, wondering what vegetables supplemented the local diet of fish and game before the seventeenth century, when the slave traders took human cargo one way and returned from Brazil with plants like cassava, pineapple, potatoes, peanuts, and corn. Arab slavers working the east coast of Africa introduced breadfruit, mangoes, oranges, and rice. Many of these plants have become staples in the Congo; indeed, the only indigenous vegetables I’ve seen in Epena or Boha are pulses, the generic name for peas and beans, and the spinachlike leaves of certain lianas.

  Raymond and Gabriel are outside Teacher’s house, caught up in animated discussion with Innocent. Theo is looking on groggy-eyed. The men from Boha, Innocent tells me, are recounting stories of the jungle. For my benefit, Raymond repeats one tale he entitles “The Big Snake.” He grabs hold of his spear, which was leaning against the house, and crouches with feet apart, arm cocked, muscles tensed. The incident, he says, took place on the trail to Lake Télé years ago.

  “I could hear hisses, but what could I see?”

  “Nothing,” Gabriel offers in response. Audience participation, I learn, is an integral part of the storyteller’s technique.

  “There were no branches close to the ground. The birds were singing and something was…?”

  “Hissing,” Gabriel rasps, and we all hiss.

  “I stepped on a log that moved. My feet slid. It was no log. It was a snake that said…?”

  We provide the sound effects as Raymond acts out his battle with the giant python, as thick as his thigh and twenty-five feet long. It took six thrusts of his spear blade to sever the serpent’s head; even so, he says, the body kept moving, curling around his leg and lashing the ground for several treacherous minutes. He sold the skin to a trader and kept the eyes.

  “I ate one and…” He pauses to open his juju bag and pulls out a shriveled object. “And with this, I see as well as a python.”

  Giant pythons have been observed performing mating dances in shallow water, somehow rising on the tips of their tails to undulate high in the air for up to half a minute before flopping back into the water. Could such a lover’s ballet have been mistaken for the head and neck of a sauropod like Mokele-Mbembe?

  “No, no … no!” Raymond and Gabriel say emphatically.

  “Mokele-Mbembe is big, big,” Gabriel insists, pointing to a plane tree.

  “Have either of you seen Mokele-Mbembe?”

  They shake their heads. When I ask if anyone from Boha has encountered the god-beast, Raymond shoves a spear into my hand and tells me it’s time for some practice.

  My only experience with spears occurred long ago in high school, when my roommate tried to show me how to throw a javelin. It soon becomes obvious that my skills haven’t improved with age. Innocent isn’t much better, missing the target—the trunk of a wild nutmeg tree, Pycnanthus kombo, four feet in diameter—again and again. Raymond corrects our stances and shows how and when to shift our weight from one leg to another; Gabriel guides our arms through the proper motion, instructing us to keep our muscles loose as we cock the spear, the shaft brushing our ears and parallel to our feet.

  “When you tense and get ready to throw, keep the spear steady… Eyes and ears… everything at the level of eyes and ears.”

  The moment of release is most crucial; it’s something that can be learned only through practice. The effective range of a spear is only fifteen yards, but Raymond insists that a good spearsman can wound an animal up to fifty yards away. After an hour of practice, Innocent and I start hitting the target once in a while.

  The drums start thundering, issuing notice that there will be a village assembly after lunch to hear our petition to visit Lake Télé. Wanting to look my best, I excuse myself to take a bath. Raymond advises me to wash upstream of any villager just standing in the water without soap because “they’re taking a shit.”

  As I trot to the river, a young boy races in front of me and disappears inside the community kiln, which looks like an igloo covered in mud. The boy squats just inside the firebox and stares intently at something in his hand. I bend down, and the youngster inches back into the light, holding open his palm to exhibit a praying mantis. Ange soon joins us. He pats the youngster on the head and says something privately. The boy’s eyes light up and he takes off. This is the first time a child under the age of four hasn’t cried or fled at the sight of my shiny face and head.

  “That was my son,” Ange says proudly. “Like me, he doesn’t fear white men, but unlike me, he trusts everyone… Hurry with your bath. We meet soon.”

  By the time I return to Teacher’s house, children have been let out of school and the women are walking in from the fields. Men are emerging from their houses with chairs above their heads, marching single file down the path like giant two-legged leaf-cutting ants. The furniture is set up in a semicircle in front of the chief’s hut, a somewhat inglorious palace of mud, sticks, and woven grasses set close to the jungle wall, separate from the rest of the village. Half the roof is missing, and much of the facade has washed away, exposing its plaited stick construction. A reddish curtain hangs limp in the doorway. The sun is nearing its zenith, piping hot and glaring in the palest blue sky.

  When the drums quiet, Ange beckons us to join the conclave. Three chairs have been reserved for us. The village elders are already seated, each at the head of his family. Strung out behind them are their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and, in a few cases, great-great-grandchildren. In Boha it’s not unusual to be a grandparent before reaching one’s thirtieth birthday, but it’s highly unusual to live beyond sixty. The average life expectancy is fifty, with the toughest stretch being the first five years, before the body has developed a resistance to malaria, jungle viruses and parasitic worms. Last night Gabriel told me that he had fathered five children, only one of whom is still alive. Ange has one son and one daughter, his other two children having died within a year of their birth.

  The ceremony opens with a prayer led by the village witch doctor, a man named Raymond—no relation to our Raymond—who wears chinos and a short-sleeved shirt with tails that refuse to stay tucked in. At six-foot-four, he’s the tallest man in Boha. He has particularly large hands and is endowed with a rich, sonorous voice. Sometimes he speaks in Lingala and sometimes in Bomitaba, rarely using French during the invocation. Innocent translates.

  “He’s praying for peace and asking the spirits to bless the village.”

  The witch doctor throws back his head and raises his arms high above his head. His hands claw at the sky.

  “He’s warning the devils to go away. This is a holy place, and all devils must leave at once.”

  Taking a shotgun shell and a penknife out of his pocket, Raymond slices into the green plastic casing and empties the powder onto the ground. The elders lean forward in their chairs. The holy man nods to a young boy, who brings out a stick with a wad of cotton stuck to the tip. The witch doctor lights the torch and his voice booms out.

  “He’s yelling at the evil spirits some more.”

  The witch doctor holds the torch ove
r the gunpowder and ignites it, sending up a cloud of smoke. The holy man hands off the torch and resumes speaking, his voice mellower.

  “The devils have been frightened off… Now he speaks about life.”

  The witch doctor walks toward the chief’s hut and seizes a ten-foot-long ceremonial spear with an oversized black iron tip. One fluke is longer than the other, as on a whaler’s harpoon. He moves in a slow circle, acknowledging each elder with a short bow.

  “He’s blessing them and wants them to live as long as baobab trees.”

  Completing the circle, the witch doctor strikes the ground three times with the butt of his spear. The elders grunt, “Humph!” and snap their fingers.

  The witch doctor thrusts the tip of his spear partially into the ground and steps backward. The top-heavy weapon falls in the direction of one elder, who picks up the shaft and returns it to the witch doctor.

  The elders snap their fingers.

  “The spear has chosen the spokesman. When the time is right, he will ask the questions.”

  The witch doctor holds the spear in front of him and moves from elder to elder, inviting them to put one hand over his on the wooden shaft. As he moves, he drags the spear tip through the dirt. The moment the circle is completed, he shouts, thumps the earth three times with the spear, and extends one arm toward the chief’s hut.

  “Humph! Humph!” the elders grunt, and this time everyone but me and Innocent snaps his fingers. The elder next to Theo quiets him with a kick to the shin.

  “The circle of life is complete,” Innocent explains.

  Moments later the chief emerges from his hut dressed in a loincloth and leopard belt. Across his face and chest are vivid slashes of red paint. His lips and neck have been dusted in a white powder. A young boy hurries to his side with a quiver of broom cuttings, the symbol of a chief, and a crudely fashioned crossbow. The chief accepts them, and the boy rushes off to retrieve a spear, which he presents like an acolyte, head bowed and one knee bent. The chief seats himself on a goat-milking stool, surveys the assembly, mutters something, and pounds the ground three times with the spear and twice with his foot.