by David Yeadon
Was it all for the pure delight of a cosmic mind? The Creator rejoicing in the details of his own creation? “God in the details?”
I’ve used that Mies van der Rohe phrase so often, particularly in my one-time career as urban planner and architect-collaborator. We knew all too well what it meant in those days. We knew how the grand design of a hotel lobby or an office tower boardroom could be compromised by inappropriate door handles or even something as apparently insignificant as the precise shade and texture of the grouting on a vast tile floor.
But the phrase has developed other meanings in my travels. As I see and touch unfamiliar leaves, animals, tree barks, insects—yes, and butterflies—I am amazed not only by the rampant variations of such creations (more than twenty thousand different species of beetles, for example, on earth today!) but how each one is a complete and whole design solution in itself, right down to the juxtaposition of cells and ultimately, I suppose, molecules. Each infinitely small hair on the leg of a pepper-grain-sized flea has more construction specifications than the most sophisticated of automobile engines.
“You like them?” Jan asked as I stroked the soft-textured brilliant blue wing of the dead butterfly.
“Yes—they’re beautiful. I was just thinking—”
“Too many. Make mess!” he snapped and turned on the windshield wipers to scrape off the residue of their broken bodies.
It would be too difficult to explain what I was thinking. So I drank my breakfast beer and celebrated silently, amazed once again by the incredible wholeness and wonder of each smidgen of life around us.
We passed through small ragtag roadside villages consisting mainly of mud and thatch huts. Descendants of the Bantu tribe, dressed in an odd assortment of logo T-shirts and bright kanga cloth wraps, sat in the shade of mango trees, pounding and cooking manioc, the staple diet of rural areas. They were friendly and so were we. Lots of mutual waving as we bounced by.
After about fifty miles the track began to show signs of severe wear. Sections of it had collapsed and slid off into valleys that appeared between the forest scrub. We passed occasional remnants of overturned trucks that had tumbled off the road and into the trees below.
“In rains. Very bad. Sometimes two, three weeks to Beni,” Jan said, puffing on a never-ending chain of cigarettes.
“Three weeks to cover four hundred miles!”
“Sometimes never arrive!” He laughed and pointed to yet another scavenged truck in the half-light of our tunnel-like track. “Holes in road big…” he tried to think of a suitable simile in English, “like elephant. Big like elephant! Truck go in. Splash. No truck. Go right under. Bye-bye.”
Once again I thanked my instincts for leading me here in December, supposedly one of Zaire’s dry seasons (although fierce rainstorms on the river had left me suspicious of such predictions).
“You think now is a good time for travel?”
He shrugged a big French shrug and opened another bottle of beer with his teeth.
I was getting used to French-style shrugs in Zaire. It was almost a national expression—silent but oh so full of meaning. In a country where few things work as they should, where petty anarchy seems to have replaced centralized bureaucracy, where nothing is what or where you expect it to be, a shrug is often the only answer to important questions and the only solution to most problems.
“When Belgium here, many good roads. One hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. All good.” Jan imitated the sound of a racing car and waved his hand to suggest the speed and evenness of the colonial highway system. “Now—” he jumped up and down in his seat to simulate the impact of the bumps and gashes in the roads (he didn’t need to. We were jumping up and down quite enough as it was. Involuntarily), “terrible!’
Another long silence, interrupted by the squeaks and bangs of the bouncing truck. I wondered how long it would be before our cargo of beer became a frothy chaos of broken bottles shooting their contents into the air like a grand fireworks extravaganza.
Jan eventually leaned over and whispered “Mobutu take all!” He’d obviously been waiting to tell me his secrets about this strange country, but why the whisper? Surely he didn’t think the truck was bugged! Nothing much else works here. Bugs certainly wouldn’t. But then again, almost everyone else I’d met who had something critical to say about the country or its much-feared leader tended to transform into a whispering, look-over-the-shoulder informant.
“He take everything. 1974. Belgian farms, shops, houses, cars—everything. Take and give to his family and friends. He say “This is for my people!” but people not get rich. Mobutu get rich. Big! All copper—all diamonds. All for Mobutu. He is very powerful. He say, ‘All people change names to native names. No more French or Belgian names.’ He say Zairois all part of ‘popular revolution movement.’ ‘We must all sacrifice things,’ he says, and then he takes all money and builds big palaces for him—for himself! Rich friends ride around in big cars—very fat and fancy—but no roads, nowhere to go! That’s Zaire—nowhere to go!”
I vaguely remembered testimony given to a congressional committee in the United States some time back in the early eighties by an exiled prime minister of Zaire. His tales of corruption made the antics of such masters of the art as Idi Amin, Noriega, and Marcos seem amateurish and unambitious by comparison. Hundreds of millions—some say as much as ten billion—of U.S. aid dollars, plus hefty slices of off-the-top loot from nationalized mining and import-export companies poured into Mobutu’s secret bank accounts and made him—unofficially, of course (that is, not to be found in the Fortune list)—one of the richest men on earth, outflanked only by the Sultan of Brunei and maybe America’s Sam Walton (late owner of Wal-Mart stores).
“Yes, Jan, I’ve heard some pretty frightening stuff about Mobutu. Sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s all true.”
Jan laughed loudly and the truck swung alarmingly as he took both hands off the wheel and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “It’s all true! I live here since thirty years. From Independence. I will tell you many things.”
And he did. In his slow, hesitating English I was given a bookload of boondoggling schemes, tales of murders and political purges, tales of sexual goings-on in the Mobutu clan that even the Marquis de Sade might have found unpublishable. Worst of all were the stories of the poor Zairois themselves living in this huge, fertile, mineral-rich basin of 1.5 million square miles, who seem to have been given the mere scraps of unsatiated greed and left to glean their meager cadeaux gifts and pitiful incomes based on mutual bribery as best they may.
It was a long diatribe of half whispers and violent curses. Jan seemed to really care for the people of this battered, dysfunctional country. It was the “clan” members and the hangers-on of the Mobutu court and the politicians he couldn’t abide.
He left his biggest broadside until last.
“And you are American?”
“No, not exactly. I’m British, but I live most of the time in America. In New York.”
“Well—who is to blame?”
“I don’t know, Jan.”
“The Americans! The CIA! The politicians. Your President Reagan, your Bush. They meet—met—with Mobutu. Twice they met with Mobutu. In the American big house….”
“The White House.”
“Yes, the White House. And they did nothing. They said nothing. They gave him more money!”
I nodded. I remembered tales of Mobutu taking over two floors of the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan for his state visit retinue of wives, mistresses, and hangers-on. But most American voters didn’t know Zaire from Zanzibar and hardly noticed the irony of all that U.S. generosity and genuflecting. One wonders if even Reagan himself was aware of the idiosyncrasies.
But I was tired of all the tirades.
“Jan, you may be right. I have met many people here in Zaire who think like you do. From what I’ve seen, this is a country that needs a lot of help. What do you think can be done? You’ve lived here a long time. What ideas do you have?”<
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(Please, Jan—don’t say “Give it back to Belgium” or I’ll start blasting at you about what Leopold and the Belgians did to this place when they had a chance to make it work.)
He shrugged and went back to puffing his cigarettes and drinking his beer. Another long silence.
“Have you seen pygmies?”
“Where. Here in Zaire?”
“Yes. We have many small people who live in this forest. You will see them. They do not have cars and refrigerators and televisions and money. They hunt animals to eat. They know how to live. Simple. Not greedy. All the others—pouf!”
Was that his solution? A back-to-basics regimen for the populace? It seemed that many Zairois were doing that anyway. Going back to the old life—the small gardens, the ancient communities of rural villages deep in the vast hinterlands of the Zaire basin. Leaving the worn-out colonial towns behind and reinventing themselves in the deep shadows of the forests and the broad grasslands. Zaire is still a work in progress, even though concepts of both “work” and “progress” seem very different here.
We drove a long way that day and on into the night over the chronically bad road. Jan seemed to have an innate knack for avoiding potholes and mud holes long before I even saw them. Finally he suggested it was time for some sleep after a casual dinner of fruit, salami, and bread we’d brought from Kisangani, and we curled up on our cab seats.
His snoring was not conducive to my rest.
The next day we hit a muddy stretch about two hundred miles into the forest. We skidded a little on a steep drop into a valley, banged over the last remnants of a rusty Belgian pontoon bridge across a ferocious earth-colored river, and set off at a rattling pace up the other side. Around a bend we came almost bumper to bumper with another truck splayed across the gooey road, effectively blocking it.
We skidded to a halt on the steep slope. Jan looked unconcerned.
“Is nothing,” he said, and stepped out of the cab to greet two blacks who were sitting on the running board of their truck looking equally unconcerned. It was a long conversation and by the look of their hand gestures and belly laughs it had more to do with sexual exploits and conquests than moving a stuck truck.
I was about to join them when Jan returned to the cab.
“Is okay. We push them.”
As he rolled back to line up our vehicle with theirs, two figures suddenly emerged from the deep forest at the roadside. They were tiny men, far less than five feet tall, and dressed in nothing except loincloths held by vine ropes around their waists. The deep coffee-colored skin of their arms and faces was covered in painted black markings, lines, crescents, and circles, similar in some ways to the markings I’d seen on the Choco tribes people in Panama’s Darien region. They carried three-foot-long bows and a few metal-tipped arrows stuck in their vine belts.
“Jan. Pygmies. Are those pygmies?”
“Ah.” He smiled. “Efe people. The old people of Africa. Pygmies.”
“Where did they come from? Is there a village around here?”
“No, no. No village. They come from forest.”
I didn’t have much time to stare. Jan was revving hard on the engine and pushing the rear bumper of the splayed truck. Wheels spun, globs of mud flew everywhere. The spray from the other truck’s rear wheels smothered our windshield. Jan flicked the wipers on and we peered out through a miasma of smeared ocher earth.
Slowly, very slowly, the truck ahead began to move and straighten out on the track. One of the blacks standing on the running board by the open passenger door of the truck was yelling and gyrating like a cheerleader. More gratings of gears, groans from transmissions, mud flying everywhere. But we were all moving slowly uphill in a slithery zigzag pattern. The yells and cheers got louder as we finally reached a level patch, where Jan paused to make sure the truck could pull itself, and then roared past it with great blasts on his horn. I looked for the pygmies, but they’d vanished, back into the forest.
A half mile or so farther on, Jan stopped briefly to clean off the windshield; he stared down the track until the other truck finally came into view, and then roared off again.
“Great stuff, Jan! You were kind to do that.”
He gave me a surprised look. “Why? It is what we do. If we do not, nobody moves. All get stuck!”
Well—okay—that’s true. There’s no emergency tow-truck system on this or any other rural highway in Zaire. It was obviously in everybody’s interest to help everybody. The thought left a pleasant, confident feeling in my gut—we’d get through. No matter what condition the roads, we’d get through because everyone else had to get through.
“Do you know much about the pygmies, Jan?” I asked later.
“Oh—a little.” He puffed happily on his cigarette for a while and then began a long, disjointed monologue about the people he called “Efe.”
“In this place—in the Ituri Forest here—are old Bantu people. Different names now—BaBira, BaLese, other names. They live in villages near roads. They don’t like the forest. Too dark. But they like forest meats—monkeys, porcupine, hyrax—you see them. And duikers too—they like duikers—little deer, like small dogs. Very nice. Also small buffalo—red buffalo—smaller than pygmies. Very angry. You must hunt buffalo with much caring. And pygmy elephant—people say they live in high grasses, but I have never seen. So, pygmy—BaMbuti people—like forest. They wander about….”
“They’re nomadic?”
He seemed annoyed by the question.
“I don’t know your word.”
“Never mind.”
“Okay. So pygmies wander about. Make huts like round hats with mangungu leaves and grass. Very quick. Two hours to make. And they get meat with arrows. Very good shots. And they find bee honey. Big pieces. Then they bring to BaLese villages and sell for other food—manioc, maize, other things which BaLese grow in gardens. So—everybody happy.”
He paused to pry off another beer-bottle cap with his teeth.
“Many pygmies live here in Ituri—maybe twenty thousand. No one can count. They always moving. But much—most—around Mount Hoyo near Beni. Very happy people. Always singing, dancing. Lots of smoke. Lots of eat. Food. Lots of food. Big mushrooms. Sometimes kill okapi—giraffe of the forest—but him is very difficult to shoot with arrows. Has big ears and walks very quiet. And now if they shoot they have trouble with government. Special animal now, the okapi.”
He paused and seemed to be listening to the engine. Then he began again, “I like pygmy people very much. Like I say before—no televisions, no big houses, no…”
He was listening again and this time he looked worried. We drove in silence for a few more rutted miles. He kept changing gears and testing his acceleration until finally the engine gave a horrendous gasp, followed by a low whine and then a gurgle. And stopped.
Now, breakdowns are different from stuck-in-the-mud antics. Breakdowns mean nuts and bolts and grease and wrenches and pinched fingers and long hours of cursing and not much in the way of extraneous activity. Except constant beer swilling and cigarette smoking. And a breakdown is what we had, along a particularly dark stretch of forest, miles from anywhere, according to my map.
Jan didn’t have a spare whatever it was he needed and apparently neither did the only other truck that passed us in our two-hour wait at the side of the track.
“Shall I walk to the next village and see if I can find what you need?”
“No. Mambasa is only place,” he said, followed by a long string of invectives, only a few of which I recognized as Anglo-Saxon.
“But Mambasa’s a long way east from here.”
He finally gave up cursing and shrugged.
“Okay. Listen, please. You stay. I go to the next village and send man to stay with truck—and the beer. After he come, you get ride with someone and I see you in Beni. Okay? If no ride come, you wait too.”
Seemed to make sense—so with another shrug and a wave he set off down the track, turning once.
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�Beer in back. Enjoy!” he shouted, then laughed and vanished around a bend almost as quickly as the pygmies.
It was suddenly very quiet. The first time in two days I’d been aware of silence. Even as we’d slept in the cab the previous night the air had been filled with screeches, clicks, rasps, and crackles (and Jan’s snoring). A mosquito coil had kept out the biters, but the noises were so intense and so close that I hadn’t enjoyed much in the way of rest.
But now it was all silence. Unnerving at first, then strangely calming. Everything felt to be at peace in the heat of the day. I opened another beer and sat in the shade, thinking about nothing in particular.
I must have dozed off. When I opened my eyes three little men were sitting beside me. They were all coffee-skinned and thin-boned with wide noses, big eyes, bulging cheekbones, and broad smiles. They were smoking strange cigarettes wrapped in what looked like very old yellow parchment. More pygmies. Where the hell do they come from?
I smiled and offered them each a beer. They accepted and drank daintily from their bottles, giggling softly.
One of the men passed me his cigarette. It seemed impolite to refuse it, so I took it and pretended to puff on it. They all giggled again and the man indicated that I should inhale the tobacco or whatever it was. I examined the cigarette more carefully. The paper was actually a leaf—a very thin and delicate leaf, not unlike paper. I took a longer drag, carefully. Untreated tobacco can be strong stuff. This wasn’t. Not at all. It went down smoothly—no burning, no irritation, no gagging.
“Very nice,” I said, and handed it back. But he wouldn’t accept it. In fact, he’d already lit another using some smoldering ashes wrapped tightly in a wad of green leaves. A unique form of portable lighter. He indicated that I should continue smoking. So I did and we sat in silence for a while watching butterflies in the light shafts.
It really was a very pleasant tobacco, earthily aromatic with a rich blue smoke that wafted up into the trees in lovely curlicues, changing into golden patterns when it passed through patches of sunlight. Like coiling serpents. The curves began to fascinate me. Some were pure rococo—rich, fat, and pompous. Shapes full of the sureness and certainty of themselves. Others became longer and more tenuous with a finely tensed art nouveau line. Almost erotic. As they slowly broke apart they resembled Klee patterns of happy bouncing curves and circles, and then eventually hung suspended in the soft light, a series of perfectly balanced Miró mobiles.