by James Steel
‘It needs a push.’
‘OK.’
The man gets on the bike and Gabriel puts his hands on the back of his denim jacket and pushes him down the road. The moped splutters and then coughs into life.
The man brakes and revs the engine. He twists around in the saddle and flashes a warm smile. He’s in his early twenties and has a kind, open face. ‘You want a lift? Where are you going?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’ Gabriel jumps onto the seat behind him. ‘I’m going to Lugushwa, to the gold mines.’ An uncle of his recommended it as the best place to earn good money. Gabriel has never thought much of the man’s opinion but he hasn’t got any better information.
‘No, don’t go there. Come to Mabala, it’s coltan and you get better rates because it’s underground not opencast. My cousin Vernon runs a tunnel and needs guys. Come on.’
That sounds like sense and Gabriel doesn’t need much persuading.
‘OK. I’m Gabriel.’
‘I’m Marcel.’
They shake hands over Marcel’s shoulder and then he revs up and the moped putters away slowly.
‘Why are you going to the mines?’ Gabriel shouts into his ear over the whine of the engine.
‘I’m a teacher but I haven’t been paid in six months.’ He shrugs. ‘You’ve got to eat and what other jobs are there? What about you?’
Gabriel is reluctant to talk about Eve and what happened to her. ‘Oh, I just need the money; like you say, what other jobs are there? Where’s Mabala?’
‘It’s in the mountains above Shabunda. It’s run by the FDLR.’
‘Is that OK?’
‘Yeah, it’s fine. They’re all the same, they all take pretty much the same cut.’
Chapter Twelve
Alex and his men walk up the hill towards their meeting with the politician who will lead their new country.
They cross a small stream at the foot of the hill and nod at an old man with a machete who stands guard outside a hut. He smiles uncertainly back at them.
They follow a muddy track as it curves up a large grassy hill. After winding around it comes out at the top into a farmyard of two large wooden barns and two cowsheds. A few farm workers stare at them, resting on their pitchforks. They cross over the muddy ground in the middle and walk towards the farmstead, a single-storey plank building with a wide veranda and lawn overlooking the valley they drove up. A hammock is slung between two trees on the lawn.
As they near the house Alex suddenly stops and listens. It is completely silent on the hilltop but he can hear the faint sound of a piano from inside; delicate, sparing notes that form a haunting tune.
‘That’s a Chopin nocturne?’ He looks at Arkady quizzically.
‘I don’t know, I’m Russian not Polish.’
Col shrugs. ‘I’ll take yer word for it.’
As they walk on towards the house, the music cuts off abruptly and a group of ten young children, scruffily-clad boys and girls, come scampering out of a door and run away, giggling and shouting ‘Muzungu!’ at them.
The men smile and Col calls back in Swahili, ‘Habari za mchana.’ They all know a little of the East African lingua franca and are used to having ‘Whiteman’ shouted at them in remote locations.
A tall, slim man in his mid-thirties comes out onto the veranda wearing traditional dress – a long white gown and white pointed leather slippers. He is smiling broadly and has a sensitive, fine-boned face.
‘I am sorry about the kids,’ he says in accented English. ‘I was just entertaining them a bit as we were waiting for you to arrive.’
He walks towards Alex with a dazzling white smile and shakes his hand firmly. Alex notes how his sharp facial features contrast with a shaved head and high forehead. He has long, fine fingers and his movements are neat and quick.
He shakes everyone’s hand warmly and says laughing, ‘Welcome to my humble abode. As you can see, I am just a simple farmer. Please come in.’
He shows them into a large low room with plank flooring and an old upright piano in one corner. They settle down around a white plastic garden table with white plastic chairs.
Rukuba sits at the head of the table and looks around at them, beaming. ‘Gentlemen, it is so exciting for me to meet you here today, I am so glad that you have come.’ There is an earnest pleasure in his voice and he sweeps his hand around as if he is speaking on behalf of the whole of Kivu.
‘Let me tell you about myself. Well, in the beginning I am a Kivuan, I am one of the people of Kivu. I am half Tutsi and half Nande, so I feel I represent both the Banyamulenge and the originaires.’ He presses his long-fingered hands to his chest and pauses for a moment.
His hands sweep outwards again and he continues with enthusiasm, ‘Our political organisation is the Kivu People’s Party. Unlike the militias and their political fronts we are deliberately non-ethnically aligned. We are a broad-based political group with a programme of pragmatic community activities, like building bridges or digging village fishponds, and we focus on raising awareness of issues such as sexual violence against women and livestock improvement. In so many ways we struggle to make the lives of the people of Kivu better.
‘But I am not judgemental; I talk to the leaders of all the main militias, I know the commanders of the FDLR very well. They are always giving me shopping tips for the best tailors in Paris – they tell me I should stop wearing these.’ He holds up his traditional robes and smiles at Alex’s surprised look. ‘The top commanders are very wealthy from their mines and they come and go to Europe a lot.
‘So, when I am not talking to them, I publicise our work through my radio broadcasts on UN Radio Okapi and through my music. I am so blessed by God to have a good voice and I love to play for the people in the churches – Catholic, Pentecostal, the bush cults, I don’t mind who. I play to bring the people of Kivu together, to try to heal our wounds and to bring peace at last to this land of such great beauty and yet such great pain.’
Alex finds himself being entranced by the man, his voice rising and falling, his hands sweeping back and forth like a magician’s and his face so sincere and expressive. He glances at the others and they are all staring at him.
He continues, ‘So, you will say, Dieudonné, all this sounds good, but you are not getting very far are you, my friend?’ He flashes his big smile at them. ‘Yes, I say, I regret that you are right. We have supporters throughout the country, I have good contacts with the charcoal traders, we know a lot of what is happening in Kivu, we have moral authority, we have soft power – but we have no real power, no hard power.’
He suddenly switches from a light tone to a fervent one and a vein begins to stand out on his temple. ‘So, as you can see, I live a simple life here in the heart of my country. Yet every day I feel its pain. When I travel around and I see the thugs manning the roadblocks, when I speak to so many women who tell me how they are dragged off and raped every day on the way to their fields, when I see the FDLR and the army brigades continue to grow rich on the mineral wealth of our land, oh my heart cries out! I long for something else … something else.’ A bright light of sincerity and conviction shines in his eyes as he looks round at them. ‘And that, gentlemen, is where you come in. That is why we are so grateful to you and my dear friend, Monsieur Wu, because together I believe that we have found a way at last, after long years of struggle, to solve the problems of Kivu.’
He looks at them with such searching honesty that Alex for the first time really understands the pain of the people of Kivu. Up to now it has been a challenge for him, a fascinating experiment in international relations, a reassertion of the Devereuxs’ role in the world, but he hasn’t really connected to the six million people who will be affected by what he is going to do.
Cousin Vernon is an intelligent, weary-looking man in his forties with a neat moustache, short hair and a chewed yellow Bic biro tucked behind his right ear. He’s wearing a mudstained tracksuit and anorak.
‘OK, I need two more guys! Come on, good
rates, I pay three dollars a kilo!’ he shouts to the crowd of men milling around. It’s 7 a.m. and he is recruiting for the morning shift in his tunnel, which he has named Versailles in a bid to attract labour.
The miners range in age from teens to thirties. They stand around dozily on the muddy track leading from the manoir, the village where they sleep, up the hillside to the Mabala mine. The manoir is at four thousand feet so it’s cold and misty.
Gabriel can feel a light rain begin to patter on the hood of his cheap nylon anorak. He shivers, wraps his arms tighter around himself and shuffles his feet in his Wellingtons. Next to him, Marcel does likewise; it’s their first day at work.
Other tunnel bosses are hawking for labour for the day, shouting rates and proclaiming the virtues of the different seams that they are chasing deeper into the mountainside.
On the edge of the crowd are some FDLR troops in dark green rain capes that reach down to their wellies at the front and back. They are part of the Gorilla Brigade under Colonel Etienne and several hundred of them live in a base on a hill overlooking the manoir.
One of the soldiers hears Vernon’s rate and discusses it quickly with a friend. They unhitch their rifles off their shoulders, hand them to another soldier and stroll down to Vernon. ‘OK, boss.’ Soldiers need extra cash like anyone else.
Vernon nods. ‘Names?’ He whips his biro out from behind his ear.
‘Robert.’
‘Patrice.’
‘OK.’ He scribbles down their names in a little pocket book that he pulls out of his anorak. ‘You got your own tools?’
They both nod and each pulls three bits of equipment out from under their rain slickers: a short-handled masonry hammer, chisel and torch with a rubber strap attached.
Vernon writes a symbol next to their names and points. ‘Over there.’
The soldiers come to stand with Gabriel and Marcel and the other six men. They grunt a greeting and then Vernon comes over and they follow him and trudge up the hillside.
The Mabala mine is a huge hill of red mud that looks like it has been attacked by an army of termites. The green forest all over it has been chopped down and the hillside is littered with tree trunks and uprooted stumps. In between the patches of mist and drifting rain Gabriel can see the small entrances to many tunnels: Fort Knox, ATM, Golden Goose. Outside each one is a cluster of men; the night shift is coming out and their produce is being weighed and bagged up.
Vernon leads his new team half a mile round the side of the hill to Versailles. His nightshift manager is wearily bagging up the produce and they talk briefly before Vernon takes tools and torches off some of the workers and gives them to Gabriel and Marcel. Two small portable pumps attached to hosepipes leading into the tunnel whirr noisily next to the entrance.
Gabriel eyes the men nervously. They are covered in mud that has dried to a light ochre colour. As one of them wipes his forehead with the back of his rain-wet hand, he cleans a streak of dark brown skin in it.
Vernon gives them new batteries for the torches – ‘I’ll charge you for those’ – and issues each of them with a plastic sack stained brown with mud. Gabriel pulls the strip of black tyre rubber attached to it round his head so that the torch sits above his left ear.
Clutching their sacks with their tools in them, the men duck down and follow Vernon into the narrow entrance. The tunnel is about four feet high so they have to stoop and proceed in an awkward slouching walk for fifty metres. It slopes down, water drips on Gabriel’s head and it gets very cold.
Vernon leads the way and the others follow the wobbling circle of his head torch as it illuminates the wet brown rock. He stops just as the tunnel turns a sharp right. ‘OK, this is the tricky bit. To get to the seam we have to go under this outcrop of hard rock.’ He thumps the rock with his hand. ‘The passage is very small but it’s worth it when you get to the other side, the ore is very high grade. OK, Pierre will lead the way, come up.’
They flatten themselves against the side and Pierre squeezes past to the front. Vernon then crabs along to the back, and checks his watch. ‘OK, I’ll see you at eight o’clock tonight. Bonne chance.’
Gabriel watches the white circle of light retreat back down the tunnel and glances at Marcel who has switched on his headlamp so that it silhouettes the side of his face. He sees him shrug.
‘OK, follow me. This is scary but it’s OK,’ Pierre says in an unreassuring way. He crawls over to a muddy hole in the floor just wide enough for a man to fit into. ‘You have to put your sack in front of you, push it forwards and then wriggle on a bit. It’s about six metres to the gallery and the tunnel bends a bit under the outcrop. There’s a kind of sump at the bottom where the water accumulates but don’t shit yourself – it’s fine. Just keep going.’
Chapter Thirteen
Rukuba finishes his speech to Team Devereux and a strange feeling like a spell hangs in the air for a moment.
Col shifts uncomfortably in his seat and eventually Alex breaks the silence. ‘What sort of system of government do you envisage for the new republic of Kivu?’
‘A democracy,’ Rukuba shoots back without hesitation. ‘You see, Mr Devereux – can I call you Alex?’ Alex nods. ‘You see, Alex, we have a lot of democracy in Africa anyway, but it is direct democracy, not representational democracy. Every village headman and tribal chief mediates a discussion about power. We are not as backwards as you might think in Africa …’ He flicks his cheeky smile on again and giggles with pleasure. ‘You see, my degree was in politics, I studied it at Kigali University in Rwanda.’ He nods at Zacheus, who looks back at him blank faced. ‘If you want to talk about politics, I can do it, ah …’ he remembers an idiom and is delighted with it ‘…until the cows come home!’ He claps his hands with laughter and points over at the cowsheds, rocking in his chair with laughter.
Everyone laughs and even Zacheus manages a smile now.
Rukuba continues. ‘But of course we must be realists. The FDLR and the other militia groups are not just going to stop killing people and give up their arms like that. I mean, the FDLR is supposed to be the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda but they have not shown much sign of being democratic yet!’
Alex nods in agreement, thinking hard. ‘Yes, I suppose “Genocidal Maniacs for the Promotion of Hutu Power” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?’
The two of them laugh heartily before Rukuba continues. ‘There will have to be more blood spilt on this precious land, but at least this will be a cleansing blood. At least from it a transitional administration will arise and then, after a period of stabilisation, democratic elections can be held.’
Alex wants to be sure on this. ‘Do you think you can persuade the UN and the US to back the new state? I don’t think they are going to like a Chinese-backed entity appearing in the middle of Africa – it will set a dangerous precedent.’
Rukuba looks at him straight. ‘You’re right, it is controversial, but I am sure that I can persuade the American Secretary of State to accept it on a pragmatic basis. It’s the only way out of this mess. She is a woman and I will charm her.’ He grins.
‘What about the Chinese, though?’
‘Well, Monsieur Wu has assured me that their interest is purely commercial. Obviously there will be a discussion to be had but I believe that I can steer a middle way between the conflicting interests.’
Alex nods, some of his fears assuaged.
Rukuba claps his hands. ‘Come on, I must show you my farm; we can talk more as we walk. My family has owned this land for hundreds of years, we have been here for many generations and I am very proud of my cows, we produce the best cheese! Come!’
He leads them out of the room along a passageway into the middle of the house and then down a flight of steps into a cellar. ‘Mind your heads.’
He lights a hurricane lamp and shows them a large room filled with shelves of round cheeses with a yellowy rind. Rukuba hauls one off a shelf, cuts slices and hands them out. The che
ese is medium hard and very tasty.
‘Hm, that’s good that,’ says Col appreciatively.
‘Lovely bit of cheese, Gromit,’ Yamba says quietly behind his back in a bad Yorkshire accent. He is a Wallace and Gromit fan and likes taking the mick out of Col for being Northern.
Rukuba hears him and laughs. ‘Ah, you like Gromit! I love him, so good.’
They troop up the stairs out of the cellar and the tall Kivuan leads them onto the veranda and then pauses, hitches up his flowing white robe to his knees and belts it tight so that he can change his slippers to a pair of black Wellington boots. He takes a staff leaning up against the doorframe and they set off around the farmyard.
At the cowshed he pauses and points out a large cow chewing the cud. ‘This is my prize heifer, Madeleine, and these are my two best bulls, Rousseau and Talleyrand.’ He points the staff at two huge animals in stalls, drooling gently and staring.
‘Rousseau is a hero of mine; I did my thesis on him. The father of liberalism. Have you read Rousseau, Alex?’
‘No, but I sort of know his ideas, I think.’
‘Well, he based his ideas of democracy on the direct democracy of small Swiss cantons. This landscape is often described as the Switzerland of Africa so why not try them here?’ he says, addressing the bull and scratching its massive forehead, ‘Heh?’ He pats it again and then heads off once more. ‘I will show you my dairy.’
They go into a large low shed, where women are busy churning milk and straining curds in big vats. They look up and smile nervously as he comes in with the strangers.
He smiles and waves and cracks a joke in Nande that has them all shrieking with embarrassed laughter and covering their faces with their hands.
They continue on around the farm. Rukuba shows them the cows in the fields and strides through the thick lush grass with his staff and robe like an Old Testament prophet. They stand on a knoll looking out over the meadow where the cars are parked. From there they can see the village of Mukungu further back down the brown mud road.