“See what life should look like!” Isookanga cried out, pointing to a calendar of the Ekanga Kutu Enterprises showing a nighttime view of the Boulevard du 30-Juin in Kinshasa. “Look at all those cars. And yet it’s not even what they call a traffic jam; you should see that—it’s fabulous. There would be far more red lights than what you see here, and far brighter! I can’t stand the darkness or the dogmatism here anymore. Did you notice the power of that helicopter the other day? And that man with the dark hair and creased eyes, did you see how expertly he put that metal tower down? That’s the sort of world I want to advance in, speaking the language of the technicians, approaching the vernaculars of tomorrow. Look, even this game I’m bringing for your uncle in Kin’.16 By delivering that to you I’m today nothing but a common poacher. In the past they would have nicknamed me ‘Isookanga the greatest of hunters.’ Don’t you see that going from the noun ‘hunter’ to the term ‘poacher’ is something like a disintegration? It’s not for me, Bwale, this forest life. I have other ambitions; I want to have a vision of things.”
After a moment of reflection Isookanga asked, “How do you call it again, with that period?”
“Dot com.”
“And the other one?”
“World Wide Web,” Bwale stated for the nth time.
While Isookanga’s battery was being charged, Bwale gave his friend all the information he could to help him fit in perfectly with the digital world and to probe the ether thanks to waves being moved by the tip of a person’s finger, from one tab to another, from satellite to satellite, throughout the vast interstellar space.
During the training Isookanga listened carefully, but, like a well-formatted integrated circuit, his brain could easily jump from one subject to another and even to both at the same time. Apart from the proliferation of headlight beams and rear lights on the calendar’s photograph, the email address [email protected] had prompted an idea to quietly germinate in the young man’s head. Isookanga knew how hesitant Bwale was to go to Kinshasa. His uncle had invited him repeatedly to join him there, but it still didn’t appeal to him. Isookanga didn’t intend to let this situation go on. Family was sacred—essential, actually, for someone who wants to move up in the world. He would take Bwale’s place and put an end to this separation between an uncle and his nephew.
After creating a fictitious address, Isookanga sent the uncle a first email, which read as follows:
Dear Uncle,
I am your nephew Bwale Iselenge. I send you greetings and beg you to forgive me for not having written you for so long, but I needed to think about your proposal to join you in Kinshasa. I have given it a lot of thought and believe that an uncle and his nephew should not remain separated. It is now my wish to be near you. I will write more soon. Your older brother, my father, sends you his regards.
Please accept my respectful greetings.
Your nephew,
Bwale Iselenge in Wafania
PS: Did you receive the wild game I sent you a while ago?
A month later he sent a second email:
Dear Uncle,
I will be in Kinshasa soon. I will entrust the management of Ekanga Kutu to a friend. I am paying for the trip myself, so please don’t worry about that.
Did you receive the monkey and the pangolin?
Your nephew,
Bwale Iselenge à Wafania
And so Isookanga embarked on a whaling boat for Mbandaka-la-Douce, the administrative center of Équateur Province, on the banks of the Congo River. From there his adventure could begin—Kin’ would be the next stage. The young man took a tugboat coming down from Kisangani, pulling barges with a surface of more than a hundred meters, a floating city but congested like a subway train at rush hour. There were thousands of people covering every inch of the deck. Merchandise of all kinds to supply the capital was strewn about and dangling from parts of the vessel: bunches of plantains, stocks of dried fish, live goats, various sorts of game, sacks of coal and manioc, exotic birds, palm oil in PVC barrels, and near the bow a captive monkey with a cord around his neck. People were milling about: shopkeeping mothers, rural emigrants, Mongo streetwalkers from the Mongando clan, hair stylists, aspiring law and math professors, talisman vendors, runaway minors, discharged intellectuals, two Maï-Maï who had broken with their group,17 men and women of the cloth, war refugees, and more.
In an indescribable scramble, families were piling up, terrified of a fatal accident if the barges were to crash, invoking divine mercy to avert disease and plans by the devil, who never thinks of throwing in the towel. Under such conditions it’s important to know how to flaunt your eloquence to find an opening and negotiate a space. Voices permanently raised mingled with the ruckus that resounded on this local habitat. People were holding forth in every language the river siphoned off along its course, and even beyond. One shouldn’t merely use a lot of verbiage on the boat: there shouldn’t be a lack of ingenuity either, among other qualities, for that will assure daily sustenance or, for some, will offer the possibility of a free beer near a steaming pot, to make one feel a little like a millionaire on a catamaran.
“Fuck, this whole fleet, it isn’t for real!”
More than 80,800 cubic meters per second spreading out across 4,700 kilometers—and humanity slogging away. Night was beginning to fall. Stretched out on deck wrapped up in his blanket, rocked by the antediluvian racket of the diesel motor, Isookanga was thinking: “In 1990 individual water consumption on earth consisted of some 12,300 cubic meters. For now, the average amount of water available is no more than a little over 6,500 cubic meters. In 2025 there will be no more than 5,000 cubic meters per inhabitant. Everyone will have a problem, except Congo. Soon there won’t be a single drop of water to be found on the planet. They should privatize it all. It would be entrusted to multinationals, taxes would come in like a waterfall, and the Congolese wouldn’t even need to cooperate,18 carrying on as they should like the Emirates. The demand is there and, left to its own devices, the supply steadily flows on … and not a soul who gives a damn.”
The hydraulic scandal surrounded Isookanga on every side; he could go on preparing his forecasts, but the river had a date with the ocean, and what the Pygmy internationalist was thinking was of no concern to it at all. It was already flowing when the world was created. It had quite naturally seen one or two Ramses come by, the candace19 Amanishakheto, Manikongo Afonso I, Shaka Zulu, Leopold II, Hitler, Nkumu20 Botuli In Koli, Ben Bella, Lumumba, Nasser, Che Guevara, JFK, Mao, Mobutu, as well as the valiant M’zee Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who knew that he was only passing through. In the distance a sinking floating island, set off against the dusk’s orange and dark red light, outstripped the line of barges and vanished around a bend like a ghost: the same one that the steamer of Captain Teodor Korzeniowski, who later took the name Joseph Conrad, had rounded as he plunged into the heart of darkness.
1. The representatives of the Ekonda clan, who are part of the Mongo people, are small in stature and sometimes called Pygmies.
2. Bitter Congo. This term comes from the name of a very bitter medicinal plant, said to cure numerous pathologies, which must be mixed with water and drunk in large quantities.
3. The dawa is a fetish, a gris-gris or talisman.
4. “Old Lomama is calling you.”
5. “Come in!”
6. A Mongo greeting to which the response is a personal saying.
7. The response here is “Everything depends on God.”
8. A proverb that means “The ears are never more important than the head.” Said of the young when they believe themselves to be smarter than the adults.
9. The nation or people (some say tribe) of the Équateur Province (Congo RDC).
10. Pygmy.
11. “Look at that guy, tall as I don’t know what.”
12. The plural form of “Pygmy.”
13. “Get away from there!”
14. Parents-in-law.
15. “How are you, my friend?”
17. Congolese resistance fighters active in the Kivu region.
18. In the Congolese sense of “doing business.”
19. Title of the queens of Meroe, an ancient kingdom in Nubia in what is now Sudan, slightly north of Congo.
20. Customary chief.
WHO ARE YOU?
你是谁？
Isookanga was holding a young smoke-dried python, rolled up in a circle. He turned to a mother dressed in a pagne that said, “My husband is capable.”1 He needed to be done with it: “Give me thirty dollars.”
“Twenty.”
“All right, I’ll take it.”
After weeks on the water, the boat finally moored in Kingabwa, Kinshasa’s commercial port. Dockworkers were busy unloading and there was a general crush because, all at once, part of the crowd had come from the city to do their shopping while others, loaded down with their countless packages, wanted to disembark. For his part, Isookanga had no interest in lingering. He pocketed the money from the game he had just sold, stuffed some smoked antelope and a porcupine in the canvas bag he was carrying, then laboriously made his way to the gangway that would take him to solid ground.
Stepping out of a taxi-bus in front of the central train station, Isookanga couldn’t get over it. In the village, when he’d typed “Kinshasa” in Google’s long rectangle, he had seen many marvels, but what was displayed before him surpassed everything. Seeing the Boulevard du 30-Juin stretching out in front of his eyes, Isookanga was sure it could incorporate all of Wafania, Monkoto, and Basankusu combined, and perhaps even Boende. The buildings lining it were even more stately than the trees of the forest. A huge throng was scurrying along, and the young Ekonda fell in with them, checking the uncle’s address: Avenue Boyota in the Lingwala district. Someone told him it was near the Fine Arts Academy and showed him which public transportation to take.
“Avenue de la Libération! Libération!” A taxi-bus came charging down. Hanging on to the open door and thumping it with his fist, the conductor shouted, “Avenue de la Libération! Libération!”
Isookanga rushed forward to find a spot, but that wasn’t easy for someone with no experience in the sport. Faced with the swarm of passengers that pounced on the vehicle, he didn’t get very far because of his small stature; still he managed to squeeze between a muscular soldier and the impressive décolleté of a mother who, judging by the dust that covered her from head to toe, was probably selling manioc flour at the market.
“And who are you?”
“Bwale Iselenge. The oldest son of your husband’s big brother.”
“Oldest? Why are you so short then?”
Isookanga didn’t know what to say.
Ten minutes earlier, he had knocked on the gate of the uncle’s house. At first the guard turned him away, taking him for a peddler with his canvas bag. When he introduced himself as Bwale Iselenge, the boss’s nephew, the guard had to let him in. He showed him a bench under a mango tree and asked him to wait as he announced his presence to the lady of the house.
Now she stood there before him, towering over him at her full height, a barely concealed disdainful pout on her face. Her unrelenting gaze traveled from Isookanga’s eyes to the T-shirt printed with Snoop Dogg’s smirk. “Go back over there and sit down. Anyway, Ambroise isn’t here yet.”
A long time later the guard opened the gate for a Mercedes, its motor rumbling. The uncle came out of the car and after a quick glance toward the bench went into the house. Immediately thereafter, Isookanga clearly heard the woman screaming. Among the words he could make out were “parasite,” “take advantage,” “what will my family say,” “he’s too short.” The tone gave him to understand that his pseudo-relative was trying to vindicate himself for something that wasn’t his responsibility, but in the shrew’s eyes he was certainly at fault. The woman flung another two or three commands at him and then it was silent.
Instantly the uncle appeared on the terrace. “Come here.”
Isookanga moved forward.
“My wife says that you are my brother’s son. Are you actually Bwale Iselenge?”
“Absolutely.”
“And how old are you?” he asked, a bit alarmed by his interlocutor’s stature.
“Twenty-five, almost twenty-six, Uncle. I’m the one who wrote you not long ago and who sent you the anteater. You suggested that I come to Kinshasa, and here I am,” Isookanga added with the most radiant smile he could muster.
“I know, I know, but I didn’t expect that my big brother’s son would be so … that he wouldn’t have the family’s build.”
Isookanga continued to watch Ambroise Iselenge without saying another word, his smile now bigger than ever.
“Well, then, so be it,” the uncle said, resigned. “Do you have any plans?”
“I have to register somewhere. At an academic department.”
“It’s a little late, but what is it exactly that you want to do?”
“Globalization, computer technology, Uncle.” Nothing could temper the joy on Isookanga’s face. He leaned down to his canvas bag. “I couldn’t come here without bringing you some game.” He stuck one arm into the bag. “I’ve brought you smoked antelope feet and a porcupine. And a little bieya.2 You’re crazy about that, it seems, and it’s in season now.”
“Oh, thank you.”
The uncle was looking Isookanga over. His wishes notwithstanding, he couldn’t bring himself to trust the individual before him more than halfway, in view of his height. The little guy claimed to be his nephew, no one could assert the contrary yet, one had to stay open to the possibility. For now, at least, the most important thing was to reassure his wife, in the hope she would understand that he couldn’t just send this guy away who allegedly was his relative. No matter how small this Ekonda was, he would have to check things out before making any kind of decision. For most of the people from the village who promised to come to the city, the plan often remained only a pipedream to be trotted out year after year. Meeting no resistance, this one had actually come to Kinshasa in just a few months. Ambroise Iselenge sensed the level of the young man’s motivation. But how could so much impetus be contained in such a minuscule body? Besides, as far as he knew, in his family they were all tall. They even called him Engambe Ambroise.3 Why was this nephew’s build so paltry? Ambroise Iselenge’s gaze went down a notch.
“Fine, we’ll get you settled. My wife will take care of you … Darling?”
And the man disappeared. Disdain imparted through each of her gestures, Madame put him up in one of the bedrooms. She showed him the bathroom, showed him the toilet bowl, asked whether he was familiar with its purpose, and, looking as if she weren’t touching it, handed him the only towel he was allowed to use.
After having dinner with the family in desolate silence—across from the two kids who wouldn’t stop laughing whenever they looked at him—Isookanga excused himself and went to his room. That night the young man couldn’t fall asleep right away, not because of the euphoria he felt being in the city surrounded by a loving family but because hearing Mr. and Mrs. Iselenge arguing at length, he vaguely sensed that somehow he was at the heart of the issue. He told himself that a session of video games would take his mind off it. Half lying on the bed, he switched on the laptop.
When the lands of Gondavanaland appeared on the screen, Isookanga forgot everything else, focusing on carefully moving surface-to-surface missile launch pads around. To clear the terrain where he expected to make progress, he began by engaging his Katyusha batteries. It looked like fireworks. The troops of Mass Graves Petroleum, cells of Skulls and Bones Mining Fields, and members of the security services recruited by American Diggers were falling, brought down by the storms of shrapnel Congo Bololo was hurling.
Congo Bololo was a raider of the worst kind. By seizing all the raw materials of the lands he’d managed to capture, thanks to his talent for dividing the forces, he’d succeeded in weakening other riv
als as cunning as Uranium and Security, which could no longer procure supplies of either munitions or fuel, its supply lines stretching out progressively from east to west on Gondavanaland’s terrain. Because once he’d helped himself not only to the minerals but also to lands where there was nothing, Congo Bololo was able to ban all flights over his aerial space by putting up surface-to-air missile launch pads. According to the blogosphere, he was also one of the few to own stealth weapons, but obviously no one had seen them yet, since the planes only went out at night to strike and then disappear.
The Goldberg & Gils Atomic Project was still holding on, for its cobalt and depleted uranium shells were causing damage, notably on Hiroshima-Naga’s armored vehicles, which to the intrepid Isookanga suddenly seemed even more timorous. After conquering lands through the use of white phosphorous bombs, Congo Bololo could exploit gold. More sought after than ever in these times of rapidly depreciating currencies at the Stock Exchange, the precious metal additionally earned a significant number of points.
After adding up his gains, Isookanga turned off the computer and tried to sleep, but still overheated from the battle he’d just waged, his mind kept drifting to the music playing outside. At one point he couldn’t help but think of the village he’d left behind and the safety it ensured. The afternoon of his departure he had gone to say good-bye to Uncle Lomama, but, sitting in front of his hut, the old man hadn’t even turned around. Glasses on his nose, pen in hand, he was pretending to be studying a notebook. He was sullen with his nephew, but what did he blame Isookanga’s mother for, who for years had been spending her time running up and down river to ply her trade, worrying as much about her son as she had about the first safou she’d ever picked?4 Abandoned and forsaken, Isookanga preferred to follow his destiny alone. From a nearby bar he could hear “Orgasy,” Fally Ipupa’s song:
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