Drums Along the Congo Read online

  “It’s all craft. Art is nowhere.” Marcel complains. He wants to return to Paris, where he studied painting on a grant from the Communist Workers Party. He takes another cigarette, tips his beret, and trots off.

  “Sir! Sir! Beautiful pagodas on sale… Memories of home! Right here,” he calls, linking arms with a passing Chinese diplomat. “Come with me, the great Marcel…”

  After lunch the forklifts and the lumpers return to their drudgery, and the artists retreat to a cafe several blocks from the riverfront. The dock area hums until six o’clock, quitting time. Come dark, an eerie silence pervades the area, dogging anyone walking its shadowy alleys and empty streets.

  Refreshed by a triple espresso at a local cafe, I set off down a narrow street festooned with clotheslines. If there are zoning laws in Brazzaville, they’re not enforced in this neighborhood. Warehouses bash up against tenements, which lean upon garages, which abut small shops, all the structures slanting one way or another. The street bleeds into the staging area for the Kinshasa ferry, and I wade through a crush of people jockeying for a place in line. The sloping macadam before me is clogged with taxis, trucks, and pedestrians. Off to my left, sitting in the shade of a eucalyptus tree, is a lone soldier, his body slumped in defeat. Two or three women are yelling at him, demanding that he “do something about this mess.” Pushcart operators elbow and curse their way to the boats. Taxi drivers play cards or hustle customers; all of them have left their engines idling, filling the air with exhaust fumes. Tea vendors compete with coffee sellers, and a shaved-ice salesman accuses a lemonade dealer of selling diuretics. Cigarette vendors hawk individual smokes from opened Marlboro packs; a young boy carrying a pocket lighter follows each tobacco peddler, yelling out, “Two francs … two francs a light.”

  Down the street, across from Ho Garden, a North Vietnamese restaurant, money changers bark exchange rates that fluctuate from breath to breath. People line up to convert their Congolese francs into makutas and zaires. In the shade of cardboard awnings, fishmongers fillet atop jury-rigged tables made from plastic milk boxes.

  “Mister American, buy?” a boy entreats, holding out a smelly perch covered in flies.

  An army truck lumbers into the area and disgorges a platoon of soldiers. Armed with automatic rifles, they march grinning through the crowd, scattering people like chickens. Lookouts for the illegal money changers whistle the warning: “Whirl-a-who … whirl-a-who.”

  I move on to the railway station north of here, at the edge of Poto-Poto, aptly named after the Nigerian pidgin for mud. The entire district sits on swampland, and whenever the rain comes, the area becomes a slough. The first French colonists gave this land to the Senegalese mercenaries they lured away from the English in Nigeria. Over the years Poto-Poto has grown into a sprawl of hovels, but the government is now replacing many of the shanties with small brick houses. A sign on one construction site announces “the birth of a splendid Poto-Poto.”

  As I stroll its muddy streets, I hear people chattering around me, trying to determine whether I’m lost (perdu); daffy (toqué); or an international relief worker (homme avec francs). When a gaggle of youngsters rolling a moped tire spot me, they let the tire flop to the ground. Jaws drop, eyes pop open. After a few seconds, one boy manages to speak.

  “Na-na-n’wambi,” he stutters, naming a spirit known for its pale complexion, and the gang bolts.

  N’wambis aren’t considered evil, but folklore advises having as little contact with them as possible. They’re displaced spirits, forced out into the open whenever a building is demolished, burned, or refurbished. They wander about their old neighborhoods searching for a comfortable corner or doorway to inhabit.

  I jump aboard the first bus heading out of Poto-Poto toward the opposite end of town, the Bacongo district. It’s the most populous section of Brazzaville and my favorite. The fourth bus I board drops me off in front of the Bacongo peanut market, which spreads out over an entire city block. Each stall is roofed with long sheets of colored plastic that billow in the slightest breeze, and under the plastic, vendors hunch over skillets the size of manhole covers, roasting nuts, adding honey and spices according to family recipes. Apollinaire, the owner of City Nuts, asks me to taste peanuts glazed in pineapple and lemon juice. We both agree the recipe needs some fine tuning.

  Nearby is a shoe market offering a wide array of footwear, from Italian high heels to sandals made from old tires. Cobblers spit tacks while they talk, and treadle sewing machines thump-a-thump as soles are stitched into place.

  Most of the stands in the vegetable market sell a single product: one stand sells only coconuts, another only mangoes. Today I buy a few slices of pineapple from Claude and Marie. Only European-style supermarkets with refrigerators can offer a variety of produce, Claude explains. In this heat, and with the clouds of insects, green pineapples ripen overnight and rot within days. He checks with the other dealers on his block before he goes to the wholesale market, making sure that whatever he buys isn’t already on somebody else’s shelf.

  “If we had to compete with each other, we’d go broke in a couple of days,” he adds. I pass up Claude’s offer of a mashed-banana lunch and wander down the street to the People’s Diner, run by Marie-Joseph, whom Ambroise introduced to me weeks ago. A large woman who describes herself as “a hundred kilos of love,” she cooks under the raised hood of a truck, bending over a kerosene stove balanced on the engine. The menu is painted on the door of the truck, and I order the Congo stew.

  “We must fatten you up,” Marie-Joseph purrs, ladling a hefty portion into a wooden salad bowl. The next customer is served his meal in an institution-size mayonnaise jar.

  The stew meat is stringy but sweet. “What’s this?” I ask, spooning a chunk of the meat.

  “It’s good, that’s what it is.” Marie-Joseph scoops seconds into my bowl.

  “It’s delicious, but what kind of meat?”

  “Rabbit or crow… I ran out of rabbit when this good-looking boy came by selling crows.”

  Several blocks closer to the river are several streets of clothing stores, a few with the latest fashions from Paris and New York. A theater marquee advertises noon to midnight showings of a Bruce Lee movie. Future ninja stars practice their kicks as they stand in line for tickets. A little farther on is a cluster of beauty salons, and freshly coiffured women pause conspicuously as they pass store windows to check their reflection.

  Ambroise has showed me a shortcut to the rapids through backyards and empty lots. As I walk along the footpath I nod to women tending cookfires in kitchen areas set up in lean-tos behind their homes. They nod back, a welcome reception in contrast to the baleful stares they gave me when I first passed through here. Toddlers still run for cover, however. A gang of teenagers playing soccer in an empty lot always exacts a toll from me. Several days ago they demanded a thousand francs but settled for a Polaroid group shot.

  “Again, mister, again,” they shout, wanting another photo graph. I’m happy to oblige.

  A few minutes later, as I approach the rapids, my body relaxes, and I exhale contentedly as I take a seat atop “my” rock, a granite boulder polished by eons of swift-running water. There’s no telling when a wave will leap up and smack me, so I’ve left my camera bag behind, hooked to an African oak.

  In India or Tibet it’s not unusual to see a lama meditating beside a stream, the sound of water his mantra. The lessons I have learned from Himalayan mystics come into play as I stare into the swirl of the rapids. I reach out to make contact with Mokele-Mbembe through the river. The water relieves my mind of nagging thoughts of bureaucratic hassles and of my ever-flattening wallet. It’s just Mokele-Mbembe and me, the water delivering my messages into the jungle.

  Most Congolese believe in one supreme deity, the Creator, but even the most powerful witch doctors don’t pray directly to the god of gods. The Creator is far removed from earthly happenings and beyond human comprehension. Instead, the appeals are directed toward lesser gods, such as the s
pirits of the water, air, and forest. These gods, who interact on the same plane as mankind, are accessible, I’m told, and respond to the same enticements people do: prostration, persistence, and bribery.

  “Promise the gods something in return for your permit,” Ambroise once advised. “If you want something, give something… Make offerings.”

  I’m willing to try anything. Before leaving the rapids, I always toss a piece of fruit into the river. Today it’s pineapple.

  CHAPTER 5

  “COME BACK TOMORROW,” the ministry official says in farewell, ending a fifty-second meeting that was scheduled to begin four hours and twelve minutes ago.

  My dour mood brightens outside the office building as a West African river eagle glides over me, its wings fully extended. Blue-naped mousebirds scurry along the limbs of a tulip tree, and a pair of mustached scrub warblers frolic in a hedge. I decide to cancel lunch with the American consul and spend the rest of the day birding.

  The best birding spots, far from downtown, are in the hills beyond the Chad district and north of the cemetery. Recently I’ve been tracking a pair of hammerkops, Scopus umbretta, which live on the right bank of the Foa, a small stream that eventually empties into Stanley Pool. Standing nearly two feet high, these birds derive their name from a crest that projects in opposition to their long, curved bills, giving them the profile of a claw hammer. They are dull brown in color, and their call is an unsatisfying shrill piping, but their nests are the mansions of the avian world. Relentless builders, they spend hours each day gathering suitable debris to expand their homes. The nest I’ve been observing could accommodate an entire flock of swallows. A massive weave of twigs and grass, it has a thick floor, rounded corners, a sloping roof, and a small, ovate entrance.

  Among the items I brought with me from America are a gross of psychedelic-colored pencils with rainbow leads. Children will love these, I thought back in New York, but I was wrong; they pester me instead for money or cigarettes. Perhaps the hammerkops will like them. I place four pencils on a castor oil bush and conceal myself. Within an hour, each pencil has been carried aloft and become part of the hammerkop’s roof.

  Come dusk the birds leave their manse to prowl the stream. I trail the female as she stalks frogs, cockeyed and bending into the wind. As the sun dips below the treetops, the bird takes off, flapping her wings madly, raising a gust of air that carries her scent of mildewed towel to me. In flight, the hammerkop bobs and dips awkwardly. I chase after her, keeping a safe distance and stopping when she lands near a small pool of stagnant water far from the stream.

  “Rivet … rivet,” a bold frog calls, sounding its own death knell.

  Above me the fiery sky is rapidly burning out. Mosquitoes have begun to swarm, and cicadas loose their monotonous mating calls. To the north I can hear the chatter of monkeys. They sound excited, as if they’ve seen a snake. Snake! The thought chills me, and I scout the ground nearby. All clear.

  “Rivet … rivet.”

  The frog has yet to notice the tiptoeing predator and continues to call. The bird moves noiselessly.

  Twack! The hammerkop strikes, her bill neatly skewering the frog.

  At the other end of the pool there’s another “rivet… rivet,” and the hammerkop swings her head toward dessert. She walks cautiously, stopping every few steps to scrutinize the area. I’m on my belly, flat to the ground and inching backward, away from her path. The bird keeps coming. Only twenty feet separate us.

  Crunch … snap … crunch. Dozens of seedpods crackle as I back under a tree. The hammerkop flies away, whistling derisively.

  Angry at having disturbed her, I slap the tree trunk, smearing my hand with a sticky resin. I look up, and towering over me is the broad umbrella crown of a flame tree (Delonix regia). Most of its scarlet flowers have passed, though a few stubborn survivors remain, dangling like small red bells in the flush of new leaves. The tiny leaflets have twisted their stems, searching for what light remains. As it darkens, the leaves seem to droop; but then, beginning at the base of each limb and radiating outward, in quick succession each of the thousands of leaflets curls up for the night, awaiting dawn reveille before opening again.

  In no time it’s pitch black and I head back to my rendezvous with Ambroise at the Palm Club. Downtown is to the southeast, four to six miles away, I guess; my flair for disorientation rules out certainty. Having learned how to navigate aboard a boat, where abstraction (such as lowering the heavens to gain an earthly fix) is an integral part of plotting, I find it easy to become lost on land.

  Not sure about the correct path to Ambroise and a cold beer, I tramp off in the direction of the Fly, a busy cluster of stars on the southern horizon. This far from the city, I’ve got company every step of the way. Wild dogs shadow my movements, yelping as they rustle through the tall grass. Night is when most predators and scavengers emerge, and I check the slingshot in my camera bag. My first line of defense, though, will be a lively rendition of George Thorogood’s hit, “Bad to the Bone.”

  I’ve walked for a half-hour when I see the flickering of a campfire ahead. Keeping my flashlight pointed down, away from my face, I stage a noisy approach.

  “Hello? Bonsoir?…” I shout.

  “Fiche-moi le camp!” someone shouts. I discern the silhouette of a tall man standing and another person sitting.

  “I’m lost and…”

  “Beat it!” the man repeats. I turn, ready to chase the Fly again.

  “Aidez-lui, Jean,” a soft voice intercedes.

  The man grumbles loudly and jabs a stick into the fire. Orange cinders swirl, and the breeze lifts a few tiny fireballs toward Hydra.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “The city … Bacongo district.”

  “Tokay,” he yells, bounding off.

  “Tokay” is Lingala for “let’s go,” and I chug after him. He stays five yards ahead of me, moving swiftly through the knee-high savanna grass. The moon isn’t up yet, and my flashlight is useless at such a pace. The terrain becomes hilly, yet my guide lopes along with graceful strides, at ease with the night and the land. He moves instinctively, shifting this way and that in some unwavering connection to the earth. We weave onward, never slackening the pace, and I begin to wonder if he’s pouring on the steam to test me. Somehow I keep up, and despite myself I lock into his rhythm.

  I got my first lessons in tropical navigation nearly ten years ago in Nicaragua. My teacher was a man named Nando, whom most people called the Jaguar in honor of his fighting skills. Somoza’s army offered a large reward for his capture, but he escaped every trap. Nando showed me how to find the best route by lying down and sighting along animal paths. At the eye level of a pangolin it became clear that zigzag routes are purposeful, each turn and shift a reflection of a topographical nuance. To avoid tiring, animals keep angling this way and that, compensating for rises and dips in the landscape.

  “People may be dumb or smart, practical or not,” Nando observed. “Animals, my Yankee friend, are rarely smart, but they are always practical.”

  My guide tonight offers no such comforting insights, maintaining a stony silence until we reach the railroad tracks. He hasn’t looked straight at me once.

  “Suivez le chemin de fer.”

  “Merci.”

  “You are quite welcome,” he replies in perfect English and disappears silently into the bush.

  The tracks run from Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire, the Congo’s ocean port and second largest city, 318 miles away. The Congo-Ocean Railroad, completed in 1934 by the French, incorporates ninety bridges and twelve tunnels, including one, Africa’s longest, through Mount Bamba. While rummaging through the records of the project in the National Archives, I found one brochure that called the railroad “a miracle in railroad history … French genius at work.” Another extolled the tracks as a conduit that “would bring civilization into the heart of savage Africa.”

  Last week, hearing that the minister was going to Pointe-Noire for a few days, I,
too, planned an outing to the coast, booking a room in the same hotel as the minister. He took a plane, but I decided on the train. When I arrived at the depot, however, the platform was empty, although the train was due to leave in a few minutes. The old iron horse just sat there.

  “Excuse me,” I asked a railway employee. “Is there a delay?”

  “A day or two, possibly three.”

  Pierre, the stationmaster, introduced himself and offered me coffee. “Come to my office.”

  He led me behind stacks of burlap-wrapped bundles, old suitcases, and wooden crates to a small mahogany-paneled room with the initials of two generations of railway workers carved in the dark wood. Pictures of trains were tacked on the walls, and the floor was covered with piles of yellow paper. The three clocks on the wall each displayed a different time.

  “This climate is hell on machines… The military has priority on parts. It may be three days before passengers ride again,” he explained, scooping five teaspoons of sugar into his cup.

  With my trip scrubbed and his day unburdened by any schedule, I settled in for a morning of stories from a man who had three loves: “God. Family. Railroads.” He was genuinely pleased to answer my questions, as his children and grandchildren had tired of his tales. “How can an old man compete with television?” he asked.

  I listened spellbound to grim anecdotes about the construction of the railroad that were omitted from the records in the National Archives. Laborers were collected by French Legionnaires and mercenaries who roamed the countryside, rounding up all males over the age of fifteen. The natives were, by law, commanded to render one week of free service to the state each year, so a twenty-year-old was indentured for twenty weeks of labor at wages that never covered the cost of food at the company stores. Those who tried to escape were whipped or hanged.

  In the archives, the reports of the chief medical officer stated that in 1927, the worst year, 60 percent of the black work force died on the job. Malaria was listed as the most common cause of death. Over the course of the project, from 1920 to 1934, the official records listed 17,000 deaths.