Dying to Live

by Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga

  But there was another factor that disqualified me during the selection process. As we entered a village, the local chief would take a kind of census of the refugees, asking among other things what work they had done in Rwanda. Some said they were labourers, masons, merchants, etc., others that they had been teachers or civil servants. The manual labourers were the first to be chosen, and since I had said I was a teacher, I found myself with no takers. Realizing that my teaching experience was not the best prerequisite for working in the fields, I changed my approach and said that I had been a farmer in Rwanda.

  When we arrived at the village of Youmba, the villagers just about threw me in the water because I refused to take my family deep into the forest to catch fish, a practice corresponding to the seasonal receding of the waters called kopapa in Lingala. As we were probably going to be staying there for a while, I was concerned that my children, my wife (who suffered from chronic malaria) and my sister (seven months pregnant) wouldn’t survive in these swamps, infested with all kinds of germs and parasites. The village chief gave me twelve hours notice to leave. I was considered a troublemaker, discouraging others from going into the forest to work.

  The next day we were lucky to be picked up by the chief of a village further north who was looking for workers. In the village of Congo Makambo (Congo’s troubles), our new owner, a retired teacher, proposed to pay us half in kind, half in cash. My brother-in-law Joseph and I had to clear a one-hectare field, and in return, we were to be fed daily and receive a sum of ten thousand CFA francs (twenty dollars) payable at the end of the job, that is, once the corn produced on the land we had cleared was sold!

  The field was about three hundred meters away from the village and on the same side of the river. As there was no trail or road that went there, you could only access it by canoe on the Sangha River. The first three days, the boss’s wife paddled us there in the morning and then returned to the field to pick us up at the end of the day and take us back to the village. During the journey, she taught us how to handle a canoe. On the fourth day, we had to get to the field on our own. A small canoe and two paddles were placed at our disposal. There was no place to sit in the tiny craft. Not only were we completely inexperienced, but we also suffered from constant vertigo due to excessive weight loss. So as not to sink if we ever fell into the water, each of us was attached to a large empty container, tightly closed, which would serve as a flotation device. The first morning, the journey wasn’t too difficult, because we were travelling with the current. It wasn’t as easy later that night when we had to return to the village. Already worn out from our day’s labour, we now had to paddle against the current. Despite all our efforts to steer the boat and keep it moving forward, the current was stronger than us and we floated increasingly away from our destination. An elderly couple who were passing by noticed that we were drifting and offered to help us. The man got in our boat while his wife remained in theirs, and they escorted us to the village. I will never forget the words that they said to us that day in Lingala, “Bana, kuseka did you mayi” (Do not play in the water, children). The next night, once again unable to master the current, we decided to leave the boat in the grass along the river and find a path through the forest. We followed the banks of the Sangha, and before nightfall, reached the village. We wouldn’t dare to venture out on the river again during the four months it took to complete our contract.

  Joseph and I worked Monday through Saturday, with Sunday as our only day off. To clear the brush we had to first cut the vines and shrubs that formed the undergrowth, then fell the large trees and remove their branches. After that, we had to wait ten days, to let the leaves and branches dry before burning them. Finally, we had to clear the ground of everything that had not been consumed by fire. Once the field was ready to be cultivated, the owner’s wife, assisted by our wives, could sow the maize and cassava and plant the banana seedlings.

  Every morning, the boss’s very nice wife fed us our ration of food, consisting of fresh or dried fish with fermented cassava or cassava flour. Sometimes the food was already prepared, otherwise we had to cook it ourselves out in the field. And in the evening, she also fed our families.

  By the time we had reached the halfway point of our contract, the owner had already begun to harvest the corn, while we continued to cut down the trees like lumberjacks. As a result of working every day with a machete and an axe, our hands had assumed a curved shape and we could no longer bend or straighten our fingers. When the first crop had dried, our master began to brew a kind of vodka called lutoko, obtained by distilling fermented cornmeal, with cassava peelings sometimes mixed in. This is a particularly popular hard liquor in the jungle. After arriving home from work, he’d give us each a glass, which was enough to start the world spinning. Sometimes my brother-in-law and I would treat ourselves to a whole bottle, the cost of which came out of our wages.

  It is often said that alcohol has aphrodisiac qualities! It had been about a year—in fact, since the destruction of the Kivu camps—since I had thought to approach my wife to enjoy the warmth of her body! Then one night, after drinking two glasses of lutoko, I felt my desire rising gently while I lay in bed next to Françoise. At first I was afraid to tell her I wanted her and I didn’t know how to get things started. After a few minutes of hesitation, I found the courage to slide my hand between her emaciated thighs. She pushed me away forcefully, calling me crazy, and I realized she wasn’t ready to respond to my alcohol-induced advances.

  In October 1997, my younger sister’s pregnancy came to term. My wife was still suffering from malaria and was being treated by a traditional method that consisted of enveloping her for twenty minutes in steam produced from cooking extremely bitter medicinal herbs called Congo bololo (bitter Congo) in Lingala. I felt that in this environment, far from civilization, everyone’s health, especially that of the two women, was in jeopardy. The closest help was in the village of Pokola, to the northwest, where there was a clinic run by Europeans. While we weren’t sure how to get there, we had heard a motorboat on the Sangha just the day before that was carrying people fleeing the fighting in the capital. With the money we received at the end of our clearing contract, we were able to pay for space onboard and three days later we arrived in Pokola. My sister gave birth in the maternity clinic at CIB (Congolaise Industrielle des Bois) just two days after our arrival.

  Located on the left bank of the Sangha River, Pokola wasn’t a modest village of fishermen and hunters, but rather a small industrial city located deep in the middle of the forest in Likouala province, not far from the border with Cameroon. Life was dominated by the operations of the CIB, a company specializing in timber and owned by Hinrich Feldmeyer and tt Timber International, a European group.

  Pokola extends over a hundred hectares and is divided geographically into two distinct areas: the CIB site and the village, separated by a gravel road that leads to the area of forest exploitation. The company’s site contains both the plant infrastructure and housing for management personnel, both foreign and Congolese, all enclosed by a fence. The village has two living areas. The first is a working-class neighbourhood built by the CIB with water, sewers and electricity. The second was built further away on the other side of the road, and houses newly hired workers and ordinary people.

  A market in the city’s center consists of hundreds of small stalls where village women and West African traders sell fabric, garments, vegetables, bush meat and fish from the river. Here and there are shops run by Haoussa traders of Chadian origin, bars and even dance clubs. The village also has a landing strip for small planes and a soccer field. Near a hotel hosting mainly government functionaries on official business trips is a health center for workers and their families. Except for the police department, there are no functioning public institutions. No school, no court.

  We were to stay in this more or less modern village for over a year. Several factors led us to decide to stay in Pokola. To begin with, we were very tired, sick and malnourished. Fortunat
ely, we were now in a place where we could stop and take a break since we were no longer threatened with forced repatriation. In mid-October, in fact, after routing his adversary, Sassou-Nguesso declared an end to hostilities and then proclaimed himself president of the Republic. Lissouba, who had been our hunter, became the hunted in turn. In addition to the arrival of a measure of security, the size of the village and the activities taking place there made it possible to live a more or less normal life. Food was plentiful and varied, there was paid work, and there were services and facilities such as clinics. In short, there wasn’t reason enough to make us want to continue our journey through an unknown and immense forest. Lastly, Cameroon, only twenty kilometers away, had closed its borders to Rwandan refugees. Most of us no longer had any identification. But we were recognizable by our lack of personal hygiene, our extreme poverty, our torn and dirty clothes, our lice-infested bodies, but also by our bare feet.

  After moving my family into a two-room apartment I had rented with the little money I had left, I had to figure out how we were going to feed ourselves. A number of farmers offered us work in their fields clearing brush, harvesting cassava and bringing it to the village for a salary of two hundred CFA francs (the equivalent of forty cents) per day. That was enough for us to buy something to eat for dinner, the only meal of the day.

  Like many of the villages in the region, Pokola was populated by hunters and fishermen. People’s diets mainly consisted of meat and fish accompanied by a subtly-seasoned cassava recipe and a kind of bread called tchikouanga. They didn’t raise animals, except for chickens that were used in ancestral ceremonies, offerings and divination.

  All the meat sold in the market came from hunting. We had the opportunity to taste a variety of wildlife ranging from elephants to insects, including buffalo, antelope, leopard, wild boar, crocodile, porcupine, tortoise, pangolin and monkeys. My family and I ate everything except snake meat, which we shunned.

  I remember once when our son went to work for a Congolese man. At the end of the day, the man, very satisfied with the work done by Ange-Claude, gave him a precious gift: a piece of smoked snake meat to take home for his mother to cook. The frightened child came home to discuss whether or not to accept it with us. Despite our hunger, we declined and Ange-Claude had to content himself with the chimpanzee meat he was given instead.

  Our stay in these countries has taught us that the rainforest is full of an endless amount of food, but it takes a degree of prudence and knowledge to enjoy it without being poisoned or killed. For example, almost all the ripe fruits are edible when they are not bitter. But some species of leaves and mushrooms are poisonous, so you have to be careful.

  Pokola village was also inhabited by Pygmies who were completely marginalized by the rest of the population. The local people treated us the same and, as we were very dirty, we were not allowed to use the same things as the “civilized” people used. If we were served food on a plate or water in a cup, we were asked to take the utensils with us as they were considered now contaminated and unusable by anyone other than ourselves. An old peasant woman named Mupaya had hired me to work in her fields. As it was very hot during the day, I was required to bring a bottle filled with water to work each morning. When the woman was thirsty, she drank straight from the mouth of the bottle. And when I wanted to drink, she poured water onto some banana leaves so my mouth wouldn’t touch the bottle. It was the same for the food she brought to the field for lunch. She ate from the pan and served me on banana leaves. On the one hand, I suffered from the humiliation and degradation. But then again, I thanked heaven for having kept us alive, my family and I, and I still had hope that with the return of good health, our situation would ultimately change.

  Working in the forest exposed us to many dangers, including among other things, the risk of chancing upon some of the most venomous snakes in the world, including cobras, vipers and najas. Bites were frequent and often fatal. This is what happened to our friend Jean-Damascène Buhigiro, an electromechanical engineer who was fatally bitten by a viper while clearing the large field of a Congolese man. His death on January 21, 1998, caused a stir in our community. We couldn’t understand how he could have cheated death all the way from Rwanda to Congo-Brazzaville only to finally succumb to a snake bite.

  While Pokola gave the impression of a certain modernity, people strongly held on to their traditional beliefs, including the idea that behind every death there was necessarily a guilty person in the village. Thus, after our friend’s death, the village chief, who wanted to do something to honour the dead man at the time of his funeral, came to see me to tell me that he intended to punish the owner of the field who had not taken care to rid the field of “his snake” before sending an employee to work there. He was convinced that the viper that had bitten Jean-Damascène belonged to the unfortunate man who in any case had already fled, fearing reprisals from the refugees. With some difficulty, I convinced him that the owner of the field had nothing to do with the death of our comrade. Instead of punishing him, I said, we should thank him for having provided our friend a job, and that if he had the means, he could simply help us pay for the funeral. With heavy hearts, we buried the dead man in the village cemetery with the consolation of having honourably accompanied him in death, unlike all the other refugees who had ended up tossed into the bush or left by the roadside at the mercy of scavengers. Despite the loss of our friend and the ever-present dangers in the forest, we continued working in the fields as this was our only means of survival.

  By January 1998, the size of the Rwandan refugee population in Pokola had reached about two hundred people. In response to the growing number, we needed to become better organized in order to cope with the many challenges we were facing and to be given a voice. After holding elections, we established a committee with myself as president. We soon began negotiations with the village’s traditional chief to be given some land so we could grow the food we needed. Land was ample in the region. Three kilometers from the village, on the road to Cameroon, he showed us where we could start clearing and told us the only limitation would be our own capacity. But we still had to find our own tools. To try to solve this problem, I turned to the representative of CIB, a man named Glannaz, a Frenchman who seemed sympathetic to our plight. He was very generous and donated twenty machetes and an equal number of hoes. He filled out a purchase order for me to give to Moussa, a Haoussa trader in the village, who sold the tools we needed. As Moussa also dealt in fabric and Françoise had almost nothing to wear, I asked him if he would exchange a hoe for a loincloth, to which he graciously consented out of pity for my wife. With their own fields to work in, the refugees were able to enjoy the fruit of their labours after a few months, and the cassava and vegetables they grew began to flood the market, which caused some jealousy among the local people who couldn’t find enough cheap labour to work their own land.

  In Madiboungou, about two kilometers from the village, CIB expatriate workers had tried to set up a farm to produce meat and vegetables, but the project had failed due to the lack of skilled Congolese labour. Since we had people among us who were agronomists and veterinarians, we helped the farm get off the ground, and the CIB’s white population could now add freshly picked carrots, eggplant, cabbage, peppers and leeks to the food they imported from Europe that entered through the port of Douala, Cameroon.

  The problem of food seemed now resolved. But the refugees also had numerous ongoing medical needs. After gaining the CIB officials’ confidence, our committee proposed that a fund be established that would be managed and financed by the company, either through donations or as compensation for sawmill maintenance work that the refugees performed once or twice a week. Thus, if a refugee had a health problem, he could be treated at the CIB clinic, which would be remunerated from the fund.

  Because of these and other projects under development, I had frequent contact with white CIB personnel. It did not take long before jealousy set in among my fellow countrymen who thought I was receiving
favours or gifts from the Europeans. The situation deteriorated to the point where I began receiving death threats. At the end of 1998, I was forced to resign and organize the election of a new committee. Unfortunately, the good will we had built up as well as the projects underway or under consideration all went by the wayside, as the CIB representatives, frustrated by the intrigues within the refugee community, no longer wanted to work with the new committees.

  Besides farming, Rwandan refugees in Pokola undertook a number of other activities to improve their lives. Some became market vendors for the Haoussa traders, others worked as longshoremen at the port, still others as cart pushers. For my part, I began manufacturing charcoal. With the end of the war in Brazzaville in October 1997 and the restoration of river traffic, charcoal was in high demand in the capital. After obtaining CIB’s permission to use the mill’s wood scraps, I set to work. It was an arduous activity performed exclusively by men, but more profitable than working in the fields.

  The work consisted of cutting the wood into pieces, piling them and then building parallel walls around the pile out of planks of wood, filling the spaces with earth before lighting a fire in the improvised oven. The fire would burn for six to seven days depending on the size of the oven and had to be monitored day and night to guarantee it didn’t burst into flames, which meant sleeping in the forest. One’s physical and mental endurance was tested. When the oven was “cooked,” the coals had to be gathered and bagged. I would then carry the sacks on my head to sell in the village market or to store at home. The heat from the sun and the stoves made working conditions very difficult. In order to sustain the effort, you had to drink at least two liters of water per hour.