C'est l'Afrique

C’EST L’AFRIQUE

Luigi Brandajs

AbelBooks

C’EST L’AFRIQUE

A TRIP

LUIGI BRANDAJS

Photos by Sergio SIBILLE

Cover by Eleni DORI

English translation by Dr. Nevia Ferrara

Proprietà letteraria riservata

© 2018 Abel Books

Tutti i diritti sono riservati. È vietata la riproduzione, anche parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo effettuata, compresa la fotocopia, anche ad uso interno o didattico.

ISBN 9788867522125

C’EST L’AFRIQUE (IT’S THE AFRICA)

Even if you have already enjoyed Africa as tourists, or presumed benefactors, you will never regret start reading this book. If you’ve never been there, much better. It is an episodic reconnaissance mission, not intending to explain anything, only to make you see a part with disillusioned eyes. It’s a truly unusual, not so explorative and even less socio-anthropological guide experience; it is an incident of work. However, a serious work, even though limited, carrying a symptomatic value; a micro highlighter of the black continent’s macro real and general problem.

The writer is a pragmatic architect sunk into the heart of Congo, thirty years ago. As an anatomy pathologist would do on an anatomical table, extracting from the subject (frozen, in memory) a few samples to analyse them calmly, then comparing them with other subsequent blood samples and obtaining always consistent, unfortunately unchanged diagnostic results. Africa expresses an illness of the human soul, which is engaged aggressively in an atavistic and vulgar organism of which it’s nourished and will kill it  by killing itself. It is the African sickness. Indeed, all this is stated without importance and sadness, with a pleasant and witty humour crossing the horror bouncing like a rock thrown with skill on a pond. C’est L’Afrique is the apparent lightness of a desired superficiality, necessary not to sink; it is the record of admirable absurdities.

E.M.

A note on photos

They are Sergio’s work, and they are a very small part of those taken. However, some of them which I would like to have and show them here are missing. But Sergio did not imagine (me neither), that the photos would then have not only a documentary interest in our mission. The result is a little episodic and fragmentary. It’s my fault, as I am unwilling to photos.

There are therefore undocumented, somewhat remarkable characters, such as Madame Ngo, Maurice, Henry and Pierre, the good friars of Impfondo and others who find their place in the narration.

L.B.

To my three women, Gabriella, Malvina and Fiammetta.

To always cherished memory of Roberta.

A scorpion on the bank of a swollen river asks

a hippopotamus to get it cross on its back.

The hippopotamus says: what if you bite me?

How could I? It says, while you are helping me?

They cross, but when they’re almost there, the scorpion bites its vehicle.

But why? It screams which can no longer swim from pain.

And the other, drowning in turn, answers:

C’est l’Afrique mon vieux (It’s the Africa, my old man)

African fairy tale

IMPFONDO

Naturally, the bikes’ wheels have sunk in the mud up to the hubs. Actually mine, since Sergio stayed carefully back. A neat  sink, as the bike stands up on its own, as a spoon in a well-developed mayonnaise. I lift it up, take a step and the left shoe stays twenty centimetres in the mud but, fortunately, I see it and pull it out.

A little further, half-hidden by the leaves, you can see the swamp and a small cable ferry boat, a sort of metal box with no ferryman and no rope, with only two useless platforms for the vehicles transfer, being left: on the other side the track is interrupted, the ferry is being added to the scrap iron which gets rusty on the streets of Congo.

On the sides there is the flooded forest, absolutely inscrutable and unusable. An itch to leave this place dominates me. We find ourselves in the filthiest part of a forest in the entire universe. Millions of plant years are rotten under our feet, for the joy of billions of flying insects inside where we move, the green hell, in short. And I do not want to think about those walking or crawling, hiding around my feet, imprisoned and vulnerable in a soft but certainly hostile environment.

I managed to come over again, without losing the other shoe and join Sergio, but whose fucking idea was this? I ask the forest. He takes advantage of the break to take his photos. He keeps quiet, while using a stick I remove most of the mud from the shoes. Then, with his Piedmontese accent, which, in my opinion, is out of place here, but unexpectedly reassuring he says, well, the Commissioner told us that we would never come to Epéna.

Once we found an almost solid land we pedal to Impfondo, we might have made about ten kilometres, it took us more than two hours, but we stopped a couple of times; in just over an hour we should try to avoid the night to surprise us in this damned forest.

We pedal silently while I am trying to swallow the frustration for the failure of the expedition. Not having reached Epéna is not really bad. Instead, it is extremely unpleasant that we, les experts, will look very bad with our presumption of being able to solve all the problems and overcome all the difficulties that stop them, the Africans. Fucking experts, damn.

Sergio is young, slim and athletic, he is pedalling with comfort while I am hiding the inceptive fatigue and the deep breath, keeping quiet, while he chit-chats making remarks that his exasperating common sense and his terre a terre view may seem commonplace at first sight, but they invariably include a certain aspect, that I have missed.

Say, Luis, did you see that the two engines have already gone?

So what? I ask just to say something.  

How, then, but shouldn’t we use them?

Sergio, the engines weigh seventy kilos each one, did you want to carry and put them in place?

Well, but they could at least warn us or tell us something, right?

I think it isn’t worth answering, and while pedalling I think about our business in this mess. Nothing is working, I haven’t the slightest idea what the fuck we are doing in this place forgotten by God. What hell of resources should we detect? There is damn nothing here and nothing works. And this is the city! The capital of the Likouala District! The Segregal put us in standby; I have to think about it, he says, and ask permission to Brazzaville; which means to allow us to hold or not a meeting with entrepreneurs of which I did not see any sign, and of which no one has ever heard talking; I mean, provided that there are really entrepreneurs out there.

Sergio, I say, what did you do with the analyses régionales, which we have stolen from the French team?

I always have them with me, he says placidly. Do you think it is safe to leave them at Hôtel du Parti? By the way, they know it was us who did it and they are very pissed, this morning Patric told me, vous avez vu les caiers regionales? I said no but he looked at me wickedly. It’s certain they will complain with Secretal. Segregal, Sergio, in Bolshevik ease means Secrétaire Général du Parti. Please, always call him Camarade le Secrétaire Général, whether you talk to him or you refer to him. I know it sucks how formal they are in this shithole but there’s no need to create further difficulties.

We pedal silently for a while, then I explode, listen Sergio, I can’t stay anymore in that dump hotel, the brown spots on the walls make me believe the worst, the sheets smell of urine, not to mention the toilet, with its four bowls of brown water on the floor. Let’s look for the mission.

But those of the party will get pissed off, don’t they? he says; when we asked for the Catholic mission the precol…- Precom, Sergio, président du comité du village, the mayor in short. - Yes just him, well, anyway his face was as if I had stepped on an aching callus. Then if the cahiers matter goes around…

O.k., let’s give up, can you stay at the hotel for the week left?

No, if we can help it.

Ok, when we are back, let’s go to someone to warn them we leave, Sergio says right away.

Not so fast, "camarade" first we should find the mission, find that it is not worse than the hotel, but it is difficult, ask the missionaries to host us and then move; this way, without any other formalities; let’s wait for them to send us the police, damn it!

The perspective of abandoning the abomination of the hotel revives us and we pedal with determination.

We are seeing the residential area we explore a little and then Sergio approaches a handsome lady walking towards the residential area, barefoot but decently wrapped in pagnes, I join them: vusaves la mission? Sergio is saying, and I, politely: Bonjour, Madame. Just in time as she was already moving away.

Vous êtes qui? She asks with the greatest mistrust on her face. Two white muddy men on a bike coming from the brousse, the outback. Ah oui, I say, and repeat, Bonjour Madame, excusez nous, est-ce que par hasard vous pouvez nous indiquer où est la mission des pères catholiques?

I point to our pants with a smile, pardonnez nous, madame, nous sommes des experts chargés par le ministère, ça c’est le résultat de nos explorations.

She smiles in the end, ah oui, la mission catholique, c’est pas loin, regardez, on voit le petit clocher. We actually see the tiny bell tower, we thank and start walking on a path that seems to go that way, but she stops us, messieurs, she says, pas par la, c’est pas transitable avec les velos, il faut faire le tour.

We thank her more warmly and we start the way round. We reach the mission in a few minutes. About thirty children are sitting in a fairly well-cut grassy area around a priest, or rather a monk, seeing the cord which ties his black robe. The buildings around are modest but decent and everything has a clean air. The mission is basic, but above all I see a rainwater collection tank extracted from a tanker: water is guaranteed.

We place the bikes and wait for the monk to pay attention to us. It is a choral catechism that children follow with an enthusiasm unknown to us; the monk says, ou est le Bon Dieu? And they respond cheerfully, all turned toward us, with eyes wide open in    curiosity.

Obviously we disturb, but now it has been done, in fact, the missionary considers the lesson as finished: ale, c’est fini, demain soir il y a la pellicule, ciao. That’s right, ciao, in Italian.

The monk is coming towards us, and even ourselves are approaching, looking at the bikes.

Pas de problèmes, personne va toucher. The bikes are safe, he says. I introduce