The Eternal Audience of One

by Rémy Ngamije

  These people are not extraordinary. They are not strange. They are immigrants. These are people who change the channel when a Hollywood lens attempts to capture what they have lost with poorly accented portrayals of a bygone life. They stockpile photographs of themselves posing on the banks of the Seine, in front of Versailles, and Sacré-Coeur, back when they were the brightest sparks of a hopeful generation. Nought but their collective recollections can comprehend what photographs of mass graves and long lines of fleeing families desperately try to articulate. They look upon the black and white photographic viscera of the past and rarely feel anything – the colours of their losses are more vivid in their minds. They are kings and queens without their kingdoms, stripped of their former finery; promising academics, businessmen, farmers, and budding politicians brought low, humbled, grateful to serve in any way they can in their new country of refuge as teachers, as lecturers, as entry-level and underpaid administrators who are preternaturally punctual at work each day, who never take leave, and accept extra work and the prejudices of their colleagues without any complaints. Their determined labour has been purchased at the low price of distant, displacing disaster and their futures have been auctioned to the wind.

  These are refugees.

  In their hearts they all know what they are even though a handful refuse the title. These are the citizens of the Republic of Hotel Rwanda and when they assemble it is a raucous affair in which men and women in their cups legislate the past and reminisce about the future.

  Guillome and Therése’s lounge is full of politicking, goading laughter, and the resurrection of oft-told stories and gossip. The early comers sit on the sofas while those who come later are offered hard, plastic garden chairs. In the dining room are bowls of isombe soup which will evaporate as soon as the call for supper is made; trays of samosas, which have already had their numbers reduced by marauding hands, and mandazi, brown and golden, fried to crisp perfection. There are salads of varying chlorophyll concentration and oven trays which hold sponge cakes. When each guest arrives they ring the front door bell, prompting Séraphin to go and open for them. He observes the code of greeting – right hand, clasped by his left for the parents – and allows himself to be pulled into bosom-squashing hugs by the women.

  “Séraphin, you have grown so big! Bite? Amakuru ki?”

  He replies in hesitant Kinyarwanda that all is well. His responses draw laughter from the guests who remark that his Kinyarwanda is good. Some complain that their children refuse to speak it.

  “Only English, can you believe it, Séraphin? These children of today are difficult, no?”

  “Please, come in,” he says after a few seconds of polite smiling.

  Some guests have children, most of them in their late teens or early twenties, who speak only English, barring the perfunctory Kinyarwanda greetings, dressed in fashions straight from the television. Snapback caps, tight jeans, and luminescent sneakers with garish colours for the boys and simple jeans accompanied by T-shirts or blouses for the girls which clearly reveal the fussing interference of mothers in the choosing of outfits for the night’s festivities. The children swagger behind their parents at a safe distance, afraid to contaminate their cool by close proximity to their chromosome connections. They greet Séraphin in a complex code of fist bumps, clasped hands, and finger clicking.

  “What up, Séra? All good?” Angelo asks, strolling with bow legs to prevent his jeans from falling off. His younger sister Nikita stares at her cellphone, throws Séraphin a disinterested greeting.

  “All good, man,” Séraphin replies. “But, Angelo, your pants are a problem. This place is too old for the new school. Best to pull them up.”

  Angelo shrugs. “Nah, I’m forced to be here. But I ain’t going to be forced to be here in the way they want, you feel me?”

  “For sure,” Séraphin replies, “but tonight’s not the best night for drama? So just pull up your pants. It’s only for a couple of hours. You know how these folks are.”

  “Ait, I feel you, fam.”

  Angelo’s family is followed by Credence, Clement, and Valentin’s. The three boys are a year apart. They are closer than twins and bristle with triple the deviousness. Credence, at twenty-three, is closest in age to Séraphin, the eldest child in the Rwandan community.

  “What up, Creed?” Séraphin says. The palm-smacking, shoulder-thumping greeting he gives Credence is reciprocated in its enthusiasm.

  “Yo,” Credence says, “you still ballin’?”

  “When I can.”

  “Yeah? A couple of us jam over at the university on Sundays. You should come through.”

  “When you start playing real basketball I might show up.”

  “Smart guy, huh?”

  “Creed, you know how it was with you guys in high school, man. You all played some half-rugby, half-basketball bullshit.”

  “Listen to this guy. You’re going to blame your numerous defeats at our hands on our determined and dogged defence?”

  “Determined and dogged defence? That’s one way of describing how you played.” Credence, Clement, Valentin and Séraphin share a laugh before Séraphin ushers them into the house along with their parents, Olivier and Marie Chantal.

  Next to knock at the door is Uwimana, a dainty and shy girl, who is flanked by her serious and frowning parents; then a family that pulls up to the house in a gigantic four-wheel drive, new and glossy and destined never to see a dirt road in its life. The impressive hulk of horsepower is greatly diminished by the short family who step out of it: a bald man with owlish glasses, a kindly woman whose hair is flecked with so much grey she has lost the desire to stop fighting the manifestations of her age, refusing to dye her hair or wear a wig any longer.

  The last family to arrive is a little late. A long, black Mercedes Benz pulls up to the gate. The family that climbs out of it is impressive, even if Séraphin would never admit as much under congressional interrogation. The father, Espoir, is tall, taller even than Séraphin, Yves and Guillome, who tower above most people, and his shoulders are strong. His face is smooth and clean shaven and his hair is regally streaked with grey. His wife Claudine is slim and endowed with feminine features which press into Séraphin’s psyche and rudely interrupt the grey, formless sexlessness he has painted over Windhoek’s female Rwandan community. Following them is their son Thierry, who is just a little bit taller than Séraphin, a tad more muscular, and at least five shades lighter, as though his sensitive skin had professed an allergy to the proffered melanin platter when it was passed around at his birth. When Séraphin opens the gate for them Espoir shakes his hand firmly.

  “It has been a long time, Séra, no?” Espoir says.

  “Yes, it has,” Séraphin replies softly.

  “How is the family?” Claudine asks. Séraphin notices the glances she throws at their house and their front yard, taking in the thirsty plants, and the corners where the paint has chipped.

  “They’re well,” he replies.

  “That is good to hear,” Claudine says. Séraphin nods politely. “You know Thierry? The last time you would have seen him the two of you would have been small.”

  “Yes,” Séraphin says, squaring to face the lighter version of himself. “I do.”

  The two young men shake hands more firmly than firm, hands squeezing in strength instead of friendship. They quickly scan each other in their peripheral vision while keeping their eyes locked. Séraphin notes the expensive white basketball shoes with the red silhouette of a man soaring towards an unseen hoop matched against his own generic swooshed sneakers and feels his footwear being dunked on. Thierry’s jeans are a dark blue only a certain kind of money can buy and his T-shirt hugs his figure. The squeezing hands separate.

  “Well, Séra, will you show us in?” Espoir asks in a voice which irritates Séraphin because of its power to make him jump to attend to its request.

  “Of course. Everyone’s inside except Pappa. He had to do something at work but he’ll be home soon,” Séra
phin says.

  “Working? On New Year’s Eve?” Claudine asks. Pencilled eyebrows raised in concern do a poor job of masking the pitying tone.

  “Yes,” Séraphin continues, “if there’s work to be done, he does it.”

  Quickly, to end the unpleasantness of the meeting and dilute this profusion of privilege at odds with the already assembled struggles and gripes, Séraphin leads them into the house and to the parliament of the past which has convened in the lounge.

  “Mais, but they do not want to learn, these children,” said Angelo’s father, Adrien. He used to work in a bank in Kigali. His wife Sonia was a nurse. Had life but plodded along in the way they expected it to they would have aged to raise a comfortable middle-class family which wanted for nothing. Instead, history hiccuped, a presidential plane was shot down just outside Kigali, killing the presidents of two neighbouring countries, and their slow and steady ascension through the strata of Rwandan life was permanently derailed. Adrien and Sonia found themselves fleeing the capital city with nothing but their infant son and a briefcase containing Adrien’s financial management degrees, some of Sonia’s nursing certificates, and a handful of Rwandan francs, just enough to allow them to cross over into Mobutu’s Zaïre and then, through crafty means, to board a flight from Kinshasa to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. For three years Angelo worked as a freelance bookkeeper to pay the rent, while Sonia kept the lights on and food on the table by working as an unregistered midwife. When Sonia fell pregnant with Nikita she swelled up with more than just the child; she felt as though she was carrying the seed of providence, growing heavy and expectant for some benevolent sequences of circumstances which would see her family finally flee the constrained life they lived in Dar es Salaam.

  Guillome had written to Adrien and told him of a place with a slow life, good schools, decent pay for anyone who had a college degree, and a sympathetic attitude towards foreigners if they could contribute. Adrien and Sonia had packed their life into four suitcases and migrated to the freshly liberated country in south-western Africa. Adrien found work as an accounting lecturer. Sonia was unable to secure work but contented herself with volunteering at Roman Catholic orphanages. Adrien’s once industrious and ambitious life slowed down to a life of marking and grading papers. He would shake his head sadly at the numbers of students who failed his subject, the vanguard of an incompetent and poorly qualified generation which would be responsible for the country’s overhyped economic future. “I do not understand why they do not study,” he would say to his wife after a few hours of scratching angry red crosses with his ballpoint pen on poorly answered scripts. “They take everything for granted, these students. But maybe this is what real peace looks like. It allows mediocrity to prosper.”

  In the lounge Séraphin had commenced his precarious dance with prodding questions.

  “So what is next, Séraphin? You are finishing next year, no?” Adrien asked.

  “Yes, I am. My last year,” he replied. One out of two, a decent rebuttal.

  “That is good. Your parents will be so happy.”

  “Yes, I am sure they will,” Séraphin said cheerily, pouring beer for Adrien.

  “And then you will come back to do your articles here?” Adrien asked. A direct question, but not sharp enough to pin Séraphin to a finite answer.

  “That is one of the options.”

  Adrien nodded as he reached for his beer. “What else would you like to do? Postgraduate studies are always good. And I am sure you could find scholarships. You have always been a bright boy, not like Angelo. That boy is lazy. You know what he wants to become? A music producer. The boy is not serious. He must be more like you, Séraphin.”

  Sonia threw Adrien a vicious look for airing family laundry on an unfamiliar washing line and as Adrien began to mollify his wife for his impropriety Séraphin knew he had dodged the first of many probing enquiries.

  As each family had arrived in the jumble of hugging and cheek-butting, children had nimbly hived off from parents and whisked themselves away from compliments that could swiftly sour into ill-concealed comparisons of academic diligence, cultural fidelity, or filial reverence of traditional familial power structures. They took shelter in the television room where they could engage in topics more to their tastes.

  Olivier and Marie Chantal watched their three boys flee the lounge after greetings had been exchanged and follow in Angelo and Nikita’s wake. They sat across from Adrien and Sonia.

  Séraphin excused himself and went to the kitchen to prepare a fresh tray of drinks.

  But for the accidental wind-letting of history Olivier and Marie Chantal would probably have owned their own house with a big yard in which their sons would romp. Olivier had studied chemistry in Paris, returning to Rwanda to take part in the empire-building days of his country. Marie Chantal had worked as a legal secretary. In the present day, Olivier’s life was as stable as the noble gases his university students could not identify. Marie Chantal, occasionally, would work as temporary office administrator for the Namibian branch of the United Nations Development Programme. When her family had first arrived in the country she had been called regularly to fill in for younger receptionists who vanished from their posts without notice. Marie Chantal expended the entirety of her expertise answering telephone calls, taking down meeting minutes in neat and extinct shorthand, and typing documents at a speed that had her colleagues awed and envious at her indefatigable professionalism. Despite her attempts to make herself an asset to the office it became clear after a while there was no forthcoming permanent appointment. Eventually the work dried up.

  “The last email from the director said: Unfortunately we cannot continue to engage you on a temporary basis. We have to give preference to local candidates otherwise we could wind up in trouble for hiring foreigners. I hope you can understand our delicate situation,” Marie Chantal quoted. “It is tough. I have given up on finding a job. I am told I am old, then I am told I am not Namibian. But then I read newspapers and people complain about young people not being dedicated to their jobs or not having the skills. But the rejection letters keep coming. What is that?”

  “It is how it is here,” Therése said. “The jobs are there, but these young Namibians are too proud to do them. They want to jump from the classroom to the chief executive’s desk. But if people like us work, then we are stealing jobs.”

  “But then what must happen? We can work, we want to work. So we must sit and do what?”

  “You must wait,” Therése said. “It is what we do. We are The Waiting.”

  Therése’s pronouncement was met with silence. Some of them were waiting for positive responses from universities in South Africa for their children’s acceptance. Some were waiting for contract extensions or renewals. Some were waiting for their refugee status to be reaffirmed. Others yet were waiting for news from Rwanda where uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, and cousins were still missing.

  Everyone sighed.

  “But what of the teaching, Olivier? Akazi karagenda?” Therése asked, pushing back the silence for a minute.

  “Ah,” Olivier began, wiping a froth moustache from his face after a satisfied sip of beer, “teaching here is a tragedy. Adrien will tell you the same. The students do not work at all and the teachers are blamed. If we mark fairly, the students fail; if we mark leniently, then we pass people who should not be passing. But we cannot fail anyone because there is no capacity for repetition anywhere. So we pass them. I do not know why these students fail so badly. They have everything here. Everything. Running water, electricity, transport.”

  “You know, we had to wake up and first get water and wood before we could even go to school. But here, they wake up to tea and cereal. With sugar, even,” said Sonia.

  “Things were different then,” said Adrien. “We knew the consequences of failure. We knew we had to leave the village.”

  “This is true,” said Olivier. “We knew we had to stand on our own.”

  “Namibia is a young cou
ntry,” said Therése. “Things are still going right. Most people are eating, so most people are not hungry. And because most people are not hungry, they are not angry. Things are calm. The country lives in South Africa’s shadow and in its favour. Have you seen Independence Avenue? Crowded with South African businesses. Do you think there are Namibian businesses in South Africa? Or in Botswana or in Zimbabwe? Not at all. There is a calmness in Namibia which is not of its own making. If things go bad in South Africa, then maybe we will see how the country responds.”

  “C’est ça,” said Olivier. “But there are too few Namibians to grow this country. All of this space, all of the land, and not enough people to work it. But what do they do? They want to scare away the foreigners.”

  “But they treat us so badly here. They say we are taking all of their jobs. But all of the Namibians are leaving for South Africa or not coming back from university,” said Sonia. Everyone nodded. “Have you seen the newspapers? They want to stop foreigners buying land now.”

  “That is funny because when they say foreigners they mean black Africans,” said Adrien. “But black Africans don’t own land here in Namibia. All of the land is owned by whites – South African whites. Do you know of a Rwandan, Congolese, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Zimbabwean who owns land of any consequence in this country? We barely own our own homes in poor suburbs but somehow we own all of the land in the country.”

  “Always blame the black foreigners,” said Therése. “That is how it is in Africa. If you are German or British or French or Portuguese, you are not a foreigner, you are an expat. Blacks are foreigners, or refugees, or aliens, but whites are expats.”

  “We should have moved to America,” said Sonia. “Everyone who fled there is a citizen now. They have jobs. Their children can even be the next Michael Jordan. But even getting the permanent residence papers is hard here.”

  The doorbell rang once more, taking Séraphin to the front door. A minute later he ushered Uwimana’s family into the lounge. Her parents, Eugene and Immaculée, took seats in the two remaining armchairs. As soon as the greetings were over Uwimana made a beeline for the television room and out of the superheated air of irate diaspora. Séraphin went back to the kitchen to prepare yet another tray of drinks.