Drums Along the Congo Page 3

  CHAPTER 3

  THE DAWN SKY is a dull terra cotta, threatening rain. The meteorologist on TV Zaire appears at irregular intervals and makes broad, vague predictions: nice, not so nice, not nice at all. The Congo’s largest newspaper, Mweti, publishes an almanac and a star guide, but the most recent “Night Sky” column mapped the heavens only above 50 degrees north latitude. While this might be useful for travelers flying to Paris, it’s hardly practical for those of us grounded in Brazzaville. Paris, once the center of the colonial universe, still casts a long shadow.

  Since the Congo straddles the equator, Brazzaville is never far from the sun’s zenith; and twice a year it is directly overhead. This makes predicting the temperature a snap. During the day it’s usually in the high eighties, and it rarely drops more than eighteen degrees at night. The humidity hovers constantly between 80 and 100 percent. Most people carry an umbrella all the time.

  Today, with my scheduled appointment with the minister, I’m full of optimism. Finally I’ll be able to shove off for Lake Télé.

  “A thousand francs says it will rain before you get to the Ministry of Forests,” Robert wagers from across the table. He’s ostensibly the hotel manager, but there’s no mistaking that it’s his mother who is in charge. He dangles a bank note in the air.

  Every morning we drink coffee together in the hotel garden, smoking Gauloises and reading yesterday’s news from Paris. Sensing that this is my lucky day and sure that it won’t rain before noon, I up the ante.

  “Make that two thousand, and you’re on.”

  Robert drops the bills into the Limoges sugar pot. “Safe as a bank,” he assures me, replacing the lid.

  The staff has strict orders not to touch the porcelain his parents brought to the Congo from France after World War II. His mother cherishes every cup, saucer, and plate; it was all she managed to salvage from their bombed-out home. Hoping to start a new life far from the aching reminders of war, his parents were part of a wave of French émigrés, many of whom first visited the Congo when Brazzaville was de Gaulle’s headquarters. Today some 35,000 French citizens live in the Congo; they represent less than two percent of the population, but they control most of the economy.

  The Ministry of Forests is several miles from the hotel, and Robert offers to show me a shortcut. He draws a map on a napkin. The confusing hatch marks that look to be slips of his pen are actually bus routes. There’s no direct bus, and I’m instructed to make two transfers. Brazzaville’s roads and transit system, Robert says, were designed years ago by colonial engineers fond of curves.

  “We French savor the indirect approach, but you know, it’s usually the quickest way to get what you want.”

  In the past I’ve walked to the ministry, but I don’t want to arrive sweaty for this morning’s rendezvous. In theory I could take a taxi, but in practice I can’t afford one. There are no meters, so haggling determines the fare. Unable to speak fluent French or Lingala, I’m fair game when not traveling with Ambroise. My Berlitz phrase book is woefully inadequate for such situations: “I don’t want to dance anymore” has yet to help my bargaining position.

  I arrive at the Congo Pharmacy depot just as the bus pulls in, and I hop aboard. The lemon-yellow plastic seats are all occupied, so I stand facing a political placard that reads: “You are special! You are the Congo! Celebrate, after work of course!” The Renault bus, with its untuned engine belching smoke, rumbles around the rotary and heads up Rue de Docteur Jannot.

  The bus driver hands me a transfer ticket and drops me off at an unmarked street corner. Just as I step from the bus a thunderclap explodes, and rain starts pouring down. Lightning streaks the horizon with a speed matched only by that of Robert’s fingers dipping into the sugar pot for his winnings. One of the other commuters, an older man with blackened teeth, offers me a spot under his umbrella.

  “Are you thirsty, young man?” He thumps his briefcase. “My spirits can cure your problems.”

  My confused look speaks for me. I know that witch doctors make house calls to banish lurking devils, but hawking remedies on the street is a new one.

  “Come closer,” he invites, glancing about and making sure none of the other commuters can see.

  “Ah,” I exclaim, looking at his cache. The briefcase is filled with an array of corked liquor bottles. He snaps the case shut as my hand reaches out.

  “You are embassy staff, yes?”

  “No, a tourist—American.”

  “Merde. I should have known … the shoes, the shoes…”

  I’m wearing my best outfit for the meeting with the deputy minister. My pants are a bit wrinkled, but they’re clean; my shirt is pressed; my green clip-on tie is perfectly knotted; my shoes have new laces and a fresh shine.

  “What’s wrong with my shoes?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” he says forlornly. “But I should have known that you weren’t Russian… The toe is too pointy.”

  Marin, the moonshiner, is headed to a conference of Eastern Bloc engineers to peddle his hooch. Last year the Russian embassy began to curb the number of bottles its staff could officially procure each month, so Marin seized the opportunity to profit.

  “I sell the briefcase. What’s inside is free,” he says with a smirk.

  The rain continues as we huddle under the umbrella. Puddles have grown into pools, and the gutter has been transformed into a sluiceway, cluttered with the flotsam and jetsam of everyday city life.

  “Where does it all go?” I wonder aloud.

  “Zaire,” Marin pipes so all can hear. “All the shit goes to Zaire, oui?”

  The other people at the bus stop nod their heads in agreement. Zaire bashing is common among the Congolese, but it doesn’t seem particularly malicious. Both sides of the river are steeped in a common heritage of language, music, dance, religion, and tribal traditions. Both were once part of the Kongo Kingdom, a Bantu nation that stretched northward to Gabon and south as far as Angola. Internecine wars had already fragmented the kingdom before the Europeans arrived and started underwriting the conflicts in order to consolidate their own power and ensure a steady supply of slaves. Come independence in the 1960s, the two countries went in opposite political directions, but the cultural ties have remained unbroken. From what I’ve observed, Zairese and Congolese regard each other as cousins, and like cousins, they poke fun at each other as often as they express sympathy.

  “We don’t have much,” one woman says, casting a rueful glance toward Kinshasa, “but they have less.”

  The bus screeches to a halt and we climb aboard. Marin grabs the seat next to me, tilting his umbrella in such a way that one of my cuffs fills with water. Apologizing profusely, he offers to make amends with some black-market bargains. As we slow to a stop at the transfer station, the bus to the ministry pulls up right behind us. “Quelle chance!” he exclaims.

  “You’re right,” I reply, taking this as another good omen. In just a few days, I think, I’ll be slashing my way down jungle trails tracking a dinosaur.

  The Ministry of Forests is housed in a five-story building as solid and uninspired as a military bunker. The windows are stark vertical slots in the cement facade, which, wet from rain, is the color of coal ash. Piles of concrete blocks lie helter-skelter about the grounds, suggesting that a perimeter wall may have been part of the original design. Turning a corner of the building, I steer around a thick copper wire running off the roof and into a puddle. When the sky crackles, I bolt for the door.

  In the lobby neither guards nor receptionists are in sight. The official directory indicates a high turnover rate: one column lists job titles in a neat sign painter’s hand, the other has names and office numbers written in chalk. An eraser hangs by a string at the bottom of the directory.

  I find the deputy minister’s office number and head up the stairs.

  “Hey, wait for me,” a familiar voice echoes up the stairway.

  Ambroise climbs slowly, leaning heavily on the handrail. His eyelids droop, his s
houlders slump. Yes, he stayed at the nightclub until it closed.

  Like every other office I’ve visited in the Congo, the deputy minister’s is chock-a-block with well-worn furniture. The guiding principle seems to be the more of everything the better. The ceiling is layered with swatches of batik fabric, and the walls are covered with photographs, blowups from ministry pamphlets. In one a colossal log skidder drags a bundle of trees up a steep incline; in another two men wearing hardhats wield chain saws at the base of an ancient djave nut tree; along the far wall is a sequence of photographs documenting the various stages of lumbering, from cutting to loading milled planks aboard ships. Obviously, international concerns about the rain forest have yet to affect this office. Only petroleum generates more export revenue for the Congo than timber, and the government, operating under a Russian model, has developed an ambitious five-year plan to cut and sell its natural wealth.

  I swallow my personal suggestions on conservation and resource management.

  “Please, sit,” the secretary tells me. My pacing seems to make him nervous.

  I ease into a club chair with brown horsehair poking through the crazed Naugahyde. Across the aisle, stretched out on a three-cushion sofa, Ambroise wrestles with Morpheus. At ten o’clock I remind the secretary of my nine o’clock appointment.

  “I know. The minister knows… Soon, monsieur, soon,” he says, continuing to clean his typewriter.

  Two more hours crawl by, and I ask whether I should return tomorrow.

  “Stay,” he advises, working a toothbrush in under the platen. “I know. The minister knows.”

  Past experience has taught me to carry a thick book when visiting government offices; I return to my book as Ambroise attempts to read an issue of Timber Industry with his eyes closed. The secretary’s typewriter is now the cleanest Olivetti in the Congo. Another hour passes.

  “Is the minister here today?” No one, I realize, has gone in or out of the private office. “Oh, he is not away.”

  “Is he in the building?”

  “Soon, monsieur, soon,” chirps the loyal liege.

  “Soon?”

  “Soon means soon, oui?”

  “Certainement,” I concede.

  Thirty minutes later Ambroise rousts himself. His escort duty comes on top of his normal work load, and he must visit his own office. “Writing a proposal for toilets in Lengoué village might actually wake me up,” he says, shuffling out the door. I promise to call him before leaving the building.

  By now I’m positive that the minister isn’t in, but it’s important to stick it out just in case he returns today. No one is going to hand over a permit simply because I’ve emptied my bank account to visit Mokele-Mbembe. Securing a travel permit is my job at the moment, and waiting is part of the workday.

  Of course, the fact that I’m looking for a dinosaur probably doesn’t help. Somehow I have to convince the skeptics that my proposal is a worthy venture. I need to remind those in power of an earlier, simpler time in their lives when they, too, spent afternoons imagining themselves plunging into the jungle after some legendary beast.

  I finish my book and kill the remaining hours helping the secretary fix another old typewriter. We manage to make the F key work again with a paper clip bent just the right way. The secretary tests our repair by writing a memo to his boss, suggesting that my appointment be rescheduled within a few days.

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he replies, adding, “There are three more typewriters that need work. We’ll fix them all when you return.”

  As he locks the door, he shrugs his shoulders and checks his watch. “You waited nine hours. C’est la vie, eh?”

  “Oui, c’est la vie,” I concur and lead him to the cafe across the street. The espressos are on me.

  The deputy minister is in no hurry to reschedule our meeting but, undeterred, I maintain my routine, visiting various government offices Monday through Friday. Simple persistence earns me a modicum of respect and, more important, several friendships among the office workers. They greet me warmly now, and occasionally one will ask me to join them for lunch.

  My embroidered knowledge of American heroes, fictive and real, is a primary asset. What happens to J. R. Ewing and Hoss in upcoming shows is valuable information. And there can never be enough talk about Muhammad Ali. His 1974 bout with George Foreman, the “Rumble in the Jungle” held in Kinshasa, is still a frequent topic. It’s not unusual to meet someone who has memorized the radio broadcast and will, without prompting, reenact every feint, jab, and rope-a-dope maneuver. Since I once shook hands with Ali on a New York street corner, I’m accorded undeserved respect. My description of the meeting has been embellished as it circulates through the bureaucracy, and if people believe that I’ve sparred with Ali, as Ambroise now suggests, that’s fine by me.

  CHAPTER 4

  “REMEMBER THE MARTYRS of the revolution,” a red sign on the side of a store admonishes. Directly below it are dozens of fliers advertising a sale on Levi’s: “All sizes! All colors!” Several blocks away the ambiguities of a socialist state fed by a free market economy are even more evident. The hammer and sickle flutters above the ultramodern, privately owned Score Supermarket. In its windows the advertisements for the daily specials are suffixed with cautionary notes from the government: “Freedom is never on sale” and “Every day we step closer to the ideal, comrades.”

  “Party officials ask us to do it,” the owner of a Mercedes dealership tells me, nodding to a Maoist aphorism on the wall of his showroom. “I’m a capitalist,” he said unapologetically. “And my best customers are generals and politicians… They’re always trading up.”

  On the front page of this morning’s newspaper is an article about the government’s latest enticement to French multinational companies. Next to it is a lengthy story about the erection of another statue dedicated to those who died battling imperialism. I show the paper to Robert, the hotelier, as we drink coffee.

  “The real question is where are they going to put the statue?” he says. “I don’t think there’s any room left.”

  Heroic sculptures stand in the center of most city rotaries and on the busier street corners. During the twenty-minute walk from the hotel to Ambroise’s office, I pass nine monuments to the revolution.

  Ambroise is standing outside his office building and once again bars me from seeing his office. Today, he says, it’s too nice to go indoors; yesterday it was too muggy. I wonder if he has something to hide, a dart board, perhaps, with my picture on it.

  “How did you know?” he quips. He asks for a cigarette, takes several long drags, and says, “Well, it’s over. New orders came today, and we’re free of each other… This shadow disappears.”

  “Comment?”

  “I’m no longer your escort.” He declines to explain why, and I don’t press the issue, but both of us are delighted with this new development. We make plans for a celebratory drink later at the Palm Club, and as we go our separate ways for the first time in three weeks, I feel a sense of relief.

  The escort detail disrupted life for both of us, as Ambroise mentioned at least twice a day. Ambroise loathed my afternoon constitutional, cursing the birds I watched, tapping his foot impatiently as I gathered seeds and cuttings. Now that he’s gone, I can go wherever I want.

  Downtown has little that interests me, so I head east across the Plateau district, the city center, which spreads out over the high, flat ground facing the river. I trudge past numerous government offices, hotels, embassies, and tall bank towers that wouldn’t be out of place in Zurich.

  In the Chad district the streets become shady avenues lined with spacious houses built for the colonial gentry in the early 1900s. Along every street, construction crews are at work building walls around the houses. Brazzaville has one of the lowest crime rates of any city in Africa, but still the walls are going up.

  “When you have more than you need, I guess you scare easy,” one mason tells me as he cements jagged glass
atop an eight-foot wall. He pauses for a moment, eyes a hunk of broken green glass, and says, “When I get rich, I’m going to have dogs and electric fences. Anyone can climb over these stupid walls.”

  I pick up the pace when I spot smokestacks, the spires of industry, that prod the sky above the Plaine district, a lowland area jammed with one-story factories, warehouses, and docks. On windless days like today, the factories are veiled by a sooty fog and appear pressed to the ground. Even so, the Plaine appeals to me; it’s the heart of the black market and has a dark seam running through it that I find attractive.

  This industrial district manufactures a dizzying array of sounds, from the dull rhythmic thumping of hydraulic presses to the high, quick music of spinning ball bearings. Forklifts race along the streets, and cranes swing their arms overhead. Near the water, human chains snake up and around corners, loading and unloading the river barges. Six hundred thousand tons of goods pass through the port yearly. There’s always work, but the pay, I’m told by one weary longshoreman, is “just enough to keep me from returning to my village.”

  A whistle sounds lunch break, and the Plaine grows quiet. I sit on the tong of a forklift, eating an orange, and watch painters and sculptors set up their artwork along warehouse walls.

  “Cheap. Good and cheap,” one artist shouts, pointing to a large canvas.

  “Is that a…” I flip through my Bantam French/English dictionary. “Found it… Is that a pagoda?”

  “Oui. It is very Chinese, don’t you agree?”

  I certainly won’t argue; there are plenty of swirls before pines and several pagodas.

  The artist introduces himself, “Marcel Cedan.”

  He asks for a slice of my orange and then for a cigarette.

  “Only you foreigners buy; Congolese don’t look twice… This painting is for embassy people.”

  Art for art’s sake is all but unknown in the Congo. The traditional culture subordinates beauty to practicality and relegates all creative work to religious contexts, particularly the spiritual imagery used by witch doctors.