If you have been to the remote villages of Congo Kinshasa, you have seen her wild beauty and her abundant riches. Which, it seems, have made that country a femme fatale, and what a pity. The people who have lived in it have only known grief, and maybe those who still live in it should think seriously about exorcising it of the demons that continue to haunt it. Those who have ruled it, or have tried to, have always met a tricky end: from the colonialists who were eaten alive, to the emergent indigenous leaders like Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Désiré Mobutu (and whatever his other names), Laurent Désiré Kabila and many others before and in between them whose ends are known. I shudder when I think of anybody who still has any links with that country….
Anyway, my own experience is when we (as Rwandans who had sought refuge there) were hounded out of the country as sympathisers of Mulere in the early 1960s. We had to trek through the jungles for weeks in order to reach the Uganda border. I remember how we had practically become Tarzans, wild-animal companions, in Parc National de Bicumbi, near Rutshuru in eastern Congo Kinshasa, in late 1964. During the period we were immersed in that jungle, we had become friends with all animals, but one animal we could not trust: the hyena! The children could play hide-and-seek with lion and leopard cubs, but if any of them strayed into a pack of hyenas, that was the end. The beasts laughed all the way to their lunch-table, and it was grief for our bereaved community. So, all through, the old people kept a watchful eye when the kids were playing. But the hyenas, too, had their own grief. There was a meal that was always near, but which always proved illusive. When the women walked, the hyenas seemed to notice sacks of meat swinging up and down bellow their backs, meat that threatened to drop down any time. So the beasts walked expectantly close behind, hardly succeeding in hiding their salivating snouts. To their frustrated disappointment, however, nothing fell to the ground.
One particular lady really frustrated these poor animals. She happened to be my relative. Aunt Siteriya was endowed with a particularly oversized behind, and she would not have participated in a competition for the tallest persons either! Which meant that her behind was not very many centimetres from the ground. Even the people with her were unconvinced that one day her buttocks would not fall off! You can therefore imagine what a hungry hyena could expect, seeing meat so close to the ground. The animals were convinced that the ladies were just teasing them, playing yo-yo with their lunch, but would definitely, eventually release it. So the big, most hungry hyenas monitored my aunt very carefully, while the rest watched the other ladies equally seriously. As their appetite mounted, however, the animals noticed that their lunch was not dropping down. Until the ladies emerged out of the jungle and one by one clambered into UN lorries that stopped to give them lifts, taking the bags of meat with them. The beasts shrieked their curses and hid behind bushes, hoping against hope that one of the ladies’ rumps would drop off and land in the middle of the road, all the same.
All of us were thus out of the woods, save for the unfortunate souls who strayed to Goma, the main town of the area. We, the lucky ones, crossed the border to Kisoro in Bufumbira, southern Uganda. As for our fellow combatants of the jungle who slogged their way to Goma, they are still cursing the day they made that slight miscalculation. For to many, it proved to be fatal. Once in Goma, after an extremely exhaustive 70-kilometre walk, our worn-out comrades were packed in a concentration hall that was already filled beyond capacity. All in a hall without food, water, toilet facilities, etc. Somehow these conditions render you insane, as had been our experience in Gikuku, near Masisi. In their madness many tried to break out of this hell of a hall, but were gunned down by the armed guards. The sane ones also put up a fight to protect their friends, but they were badly overpowered and in all, only a few survived.
Roni, the UN Organisation, eventually came to the rescue of the survivors, but seemed to be in cahoots with Mobutu’s soldiers also. This international organisation arranged to transport the survivors to Mwese in Tanzania, but we all know the kind of transport that was arranged. Bananas from Latin America are transported in much more comfortable conditions, as I was telling you. These bananas are put in compact, wooden crates, in cargo planes. Which means they do not have to knock one another, while on their way to some lunch table in Europe. Not our brothers. They were given the comfort of flying, all right, which made them happy: they had never ‘tasted’ that experience. But how did they fly? As I was saying, they were put in cargo planes that lacked even the shreds of seats that you find in military cargo planes. So, when the plane took off, they were hurled in a pile to the bottom and only painfully sorted themselves out when it reached cruising level. Before they could settle, however, it made a wide berth in preparation for landing, and they were rolling all over inside the plane. Soon it nose-dived to land and again they were thrown forward in a heap. Those who survived the deadly flight reached Mwese badly bruised. And as sore as the remains of Evander Holyfield’s ear after Mike Tyson threatened to have it all for supper! I am told he might have another chance yet, bon appetit!
Meanwhile, we were having it none-too-easier in our lorries from Kisoro to Kabale, in Uganda. There is something called ‘malaise’ – or road sickness? — that you get when you travel on four wheels for the first time, as many of us were. This is especially so when you travel at heights, and you fail to stop yourself from looking down below. If you have been in that part of Uganda, then you know the Kanaba hills. If you have not been there, then imagine making a road for vehicles, in an almost upright wall. From the floor, you need to reach the ceiling, 40 kilometres up! In Kanaba, it has been made possible by making a horizontal road at the bottom that slants slightly upwards, turning and making another one on top that goes back the way you came, then continuing with the zigzags until you reach the top. Travelling on this road in a packed lorry, by the time you reach the top you will be as dizzy as chicken turning on that grilling machine, and you will have thrown up the last piece of your intestines!
In Kabale we stayed over for a few days in a transit camp, which we regretted despite the much-needed rest! I do not know if it was because of the time or the particular people, but those days UNHCR officials treated refugees as if they were charged with killing them off slowly. So, instead of giving you high-protein biscuits and rice, the way they do today, these officials gave you rotten maize flour and weevil-infested beans. If you have been to Kabale then you know that a forest is unknown to Baciga, except in Geography books! I have also intimated to you that we had never heard of a cooking stove. Yet those beans need to be cooked for at least a whole day, and the flour to be thoroughly boiled, if they are to be consumed by humans. However, whatever little fire we could put together only managed to half-cook and half-boil these beans and maize flour. Again if you have been to Kabale, you know that there is nothing to beat omuramba gw’Abaciga, sorghum brew, including its dregs. Consume all these things together, and what you have is a catastrophe at a scale that beats the Goma one of 1994! Which is what would have befallen us, if we had not chanced on a remedy.
Still, I shudder when I think of what is yet to befall me because of the Congo legacy!
