EXODUS 447
ages that are piled up somewhere in the great, crumbling postal edifice downtown. I expect the Minister of Post could build himself a second or third home out of undelivered boxes.
By some miracle, we did get a package at Easter time. The boys hooted and ran the length of our 17 Janvier lane brandishing their precious Mars bars. (Which, I heard Pascal boast to his friends, are manufactured on Mars.) I was tempted to do the same -with my own loot: five books in English! Also clothing, aspirin, antibiotics, hand lotion, thick cotton diapers, batteries for our radio, and long letters. I buried my face in the clothes for the scent of my mother, but of course they came from some American child who's no kin to us. Mother does volunteer work in African relief. We re her pet project, you could say.
In every package there's one oddball thing from Adah, a sort of secret message is how I think of it. This time it was an old Saturday Evening Post she'd found in the bottom of Mother's closet. I leafed through it, wondering, Did Adah want me to read about how Jimmy Stewart got his start, or to know that when a Philco moves in, your TV troubles move out? Then I found it, an article called "Will Africa Go Communist?"Adah retains her eagle eye for irony. It was all about how the U.S. ought to take better charge of the maverick Congo; the two photographs stopped my heart. In one, a young Joseph Mobutu looks out imploringly above a caption declaring his position in jeopardy. Next to him is a smiling, rather crafty-looking Patrice Lumumba, with a caption warning: "He may be on his way back!" The magazine is dated February 18, 1961. Lumumba was already a month dead, his body buried under a chicken coop in Shaba. And Mobutu, already well assured of his throne. I can picture the Georgia housewives shuddering at the Communist challenge, quickly turning the page on that black devil Lumumba with the pointed chin. But I was hardly my less in the dark, and I was in Bulungu, the very village where Lumumba had been captured. My sister married a man who may have assisted in his death-sentence transport to Shaba, though even Rachel will never know that for sure. We have in this story the ignorant, but no real innocents. ,-,... �. ,.,..,. , .
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Adah wrote at the bottom of the page, "Remember 'Devil One' and 'W I. Rogue?' Our secret secrets?" She says there's talk now of an investigation, that the Congress may look into past wrongdoing in the Congo or "any possible link between the CIA, Lumumba's death, and the army coup that brought Mobutu to power." Are they joking? Adah says no one is giving it any credence; here, no one has ever doubted it. It's as if history can be no more than a mirror tipped up to show each of us exactly what we already knew. Now everyone's pretending to set the record straight: they'll have their hearings, while Mobutu makes a show of changing all European-sounding place names to indigenous ones, to rid us of the sound of foreign domination. And what will change? He'll go on falling over his feet to make deals with the Americans, who still control all our cobalt and diamond mines. In return, every grant of foreign aid goes straight to Mobutu himself. We read he's building himself an actual castle with spires and a moat near Brussels, to provide a respite, I guess, from his villas in Paris and Spain and Italy. When I open my door and look out, I see a thousand little plank-and-cardboard houses floating at every conceivable tilt on an endless ocean of dust. We hardly have a functional hospital in our borders, or a passable road outside Kinshasa. How can this be, a castle with spires and a moat? Why doesn't the world just open its jaws like a whale and swallow this brazenness in one gulp? is the question I'd pose to Father these days. "Who gave him charge of the whole world? If you have insight, hear this: Can one who hates right govern?"Job 34:13, thank you very much.
The latest news from Mobutu is that he's bringing two great American boxers, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, to the stadium in Kinshasa. The announcement came on the radio this afternoon. I only listened with one ear because of a larger drama unfolding in our kitchen. I'd just put Martin down for a nap on his mat and was boiling the diapers while Elisabet crumbled a papery onion and hot pili-pili into a bowl. She fries this with mashed tomatoes into a thin red sauce for the manioc. That's the principal trick of Congolese cooking: rubbing two leaves together to give color and taste to another day's translucent, nutritionally blank ball of manioc.
EXODUS 449
The pot for boiling the/M/w was waiting in line for the stove, after the diapers, and after that would come the big laundry kettle with the boys' shirts and our household's three sheets and two towels. Here in Kinshasa we have a "city kitchen," with the stove right inside the house, but it's only a little bottle-gas burner, maddeningly sluggish after my years of cooking over roaring wood fires. A lot of people in la cite do cook with wood, which they have to nibble secretively from each other's houses at night, like termites.
This was supposed to be a payday for Anatole, and it the school there's been talk about the supplementaire, meaning the possibility of the government's starting back payments on the wages they've been stealing from all public schools for over a year. This "supplement" is supposed to be a sign of good faith, to forestall a nationwide strike of university students, but some students walked out anyway, and the signs of Mobutu's faith so far have been expressed with nightsticks. I worry constantly about Anatole. Although I know his capacity for self-restraint in a dangerous moment is uncanny.
Elisabet and I knew there would be no supplemenUm but were still greatly enjoying spending it at tomorrow's market. "A kilo of fresh eels and two dozen eggs!" I proposed, and she laughed at me. My craving for protein drives me to a singlemindedness she calls my monrfe/e-hungries.
"Better, ten kilos of rice and two bars of soap," she said, which we do need badly, but I despaired for an imaginary windfall that would bring nothing but more white starch into this house.
"Nothing white," I declared.
"Brown soap, then," she offered. "Oh! And some nice pink papier hygieniquel" she added fervently, and we both laughed at that pipe dream. The last roll of toilet paper we'd seen, in any color, came from Atlanta.
"At least some beans, Elisabet," I whined. "Fresh green ones. Mangwami, like we used to have in the country."
Pascal's best friend, a hearty girl named Elevee, had wandered in and sat down at the table opposite Elisabet, but was uncharacteristically quiet. . ..,.. , , ,, .. . , ,
THE POISONWOOD BIBLE 450
EXODUS 451
"What do you think?" Elisabet prodded her with the blunt end of her knife. "Tell Madarne Ngemba she needs a new pagne with some color left in it. Tell her she is disgracing her sons with the washing rag she wears to the market."
Elevee picked at the short sleeve of her school uniform, evidently not desiring to talk about fashion. Her very black skin looked ashy, and she had the tired slump to her shoulders I recognize in my boys when they're getting hookworm. I carried the boiled diapers outside, washed my hands carefully with our sliver of soap, and interrupted the afternoon's procession of cookpots to make Elevee a cup of tea. -,!
Suddenly she reported with a blank face that she was leaving school.
"Oh, Elevee, you can't," I said. She's a smart little girl, though this guarantees nothing, of course.
Elisabet simply asked her, "Why?"
"To work at night with Mother," she said flatly. Meaning, to work as a prostitute.
"How old are you?" I demanded angrily. "Eleven? Ten? This is a crime, Elevee, you're a childl There are laws to protect you from that kind of work. It's horrible, you don't know. You'll be scared and hurt and could get terribly sick."
Elisabet looked at me with dismay. "Mondele, don't frighten her. They have to have the money."
Of course that's true. And of course there are no laws to protect children from prostitution. Elisabet's daughter, Christiane, I'd guess to be seventeen, and I suspect she sometimes does night work in town, though we can't talk about it.Whenever we hit rock bottom, Elisabet somehow discovers a little cash in her purse. I wish she wouldn't. I just stared at Elevee, my son's little friend with skinned knees and her two braids sticking out l
ike handlebars: a prostitute. It dawned on me that her childishness would increase her value, for a while anyway. That made me want to scream. I shoved the manioc pot onto the stove, slopping water all over everywhere.
I survive here on outrage. Naturally I would. I grew up with my
teeth clamped on a faith in the big -white man in power�God, the President, I don't care who he is, he'd serve justice! Whereas no one here has ever had the faintest cause for such delusions. Sometimes I feel like the only person for miles around who hasn't given up. Other than Anatole, who expresses his outrage in more productive ways..'�� ...... ��:'�.
We sat without speaking awhile, after Elevee's announcement.The radio informed us the two American boxers would be paid five million American dollars each, from our treasury, for coming here. And it will cost that much again to provide high security and a festival air for the match. "All the world will respect the name of Zaire," Mobutu declared in a brief taped interview at the end of the broadcast.
"Respect!" I practically spat on the floor, which would have horrified Elisabet more than the ill-considered use of twenty million dollars.
"Do you know what's under the floor of that stadium?" I asked.
"No," Elisabet said firmly, though I'm sure she does know. Hundreds of political prisoners, shackled. It's one of Mobutu's most notorious dungeons, and we're all aware Anatole could end up there, any day. For what he teaches, for his belief in genuine independence, for his loyalty to the secret Parti Lumumbist Unifie, he could be brought down by one well-bribed informant.
"The prisoners might make a lot of noise during the boxing match," Elevee suggested.
"Not improving the general respectability of Zaire," I said.
"Likambo te" Elisabet shrugged. "Pascal and Patrice will be very excited. Mondele, just think, Muhammad Ali. He is a hero! Little boys in the streets will cheer for him."
"No doubt," I said. "People from the world over will come watch this great event, two black men knocking each other senseless for five million dollars apiece. And they'll go away never knowing that in all of goddamned Zaire not one public employee outside the goddamned army has been paid in two years."
For a woman to curse in Lingala is fairly abominable. Elisabet puts up with a lot from me. "Stanleyville," she commanded, to change the subject.
I
THE POISONWOOD BIBLE 452
"Kisangani," I responded without enthusiasm. Elevee ran off to play "with Pascal, rather than be trapped into this drear exercise.
"Pare National Albert?"
"Pare de la Maiko."
Neither of us knew or cared if I was right.
I'm learning that Elisabet's sudden conversational turns are always for a good reason�usually someone's safety, probably mine. I watch her in the marketplace, too, well aware that no schoolroom has ever taught me as much.The Congolese have an extra sense. A social sense, I would call it. It's a way of knowing people at a glance, adding up the possibilities for exchange, and it's as necessary as breathing. Survival is a continuous negotiation, as you have to barter covertly for every service the government pretends to provide, but actually doesn't. How can I begin to describe the complexities of life here in a country whose leadership sets the standard for absolute corruption? You can't even have a post office box in Kinshasa; the day after you rent it, the postmaster may sell your box to a higher bidder, who'll throw your mail in the street as he walks out the door. The postmaster would argue, reasonably, he's got no other way to support his family�his pay envelope arrives empty each week, with an official printed statement about emergency economic measures. The same argument is made by telephone operators, who'll place a call outside the country for you only after you specify the location in Kinshasa where you'll leave I'envdoppe containing your bribe. Same goes for the men who handle visas and passports. To an outsider it looks like chaos. It isn't. It's negotiation, infinitely ordered and endless.
As a white woman in Kinshasa I present possibilities, but even a black woman with my same purse and leather shoes would be approached on the street. It's taking me forever to get used to this. Last week a young man walked up and asked me outright for three thousand zaires, and once again my jaw dropped.
"Mondele, he wasn't asking for three thousand zaires," Elisabet said quietly when we'd moved on to coveting the pineapples. He was opening the door for a transaction, she explained. He has something to offer, maybe inside information on black-market goods or the
EXODUS 4.53
name of a telephone operator with unauthorized (therefore cheap) access to long distance. She's explained this to me a dozen times, but it only sinks in as I come to see for myself what it is, this life. Anybody who needs anything in Kinshasa�a kidney-stone operation or a postage stamp�has to bargain for it, shrewdly. The Congolese are used to it and have developed a thousand shortcuts. They sum up prospects by studying each other's clothing and disposition, and the bargaining process is well under way before they open their mouths to speak. If you're deaf to this subtle conversation, it comes as a shock when the opening bid seems to be, "Madame, 1 request from you three thousand zaires." I've heard foreign visitors complain that the Congolese are greedy, naive, and inefficient. They have no idea. The Congolese are skilled at survival and perceptive beyond belief, or else dead at an early age.Those are the choices.
I got some inkling of this from Anatole long ago, I suppose, when he explained why he translated Father's sermons. It wasn't evange-lism.just full disclosure. Opening up the bargaining table to a would-be congregation. I multiplied my perception of Anatole's intelligence by ten that day, and now looking back I have to do the same for everyone we knew. The children who hounded us daily for money and food weren't dim-witted beggars; they were accustomed to the distribution of excess, and couldn't fathom why we held ourselves apart. The chief who proposed to marry my sister surely didn't dream Father would actually hand over his whining termite! I think Tata Ndu was gently suggesting we'd become a burden to Ms village in a time of near famine; that people here accommodate such burdens by rearranging families; and that if we found such an idea impossible we were perhaps better off somewhere else. Tata Ndu certainly had his arrogance in the ways of command, even calling down a vote in church to humiliate my father, but in matters of life and death, I can see now, he was almost incomprehensibly polite.
It's a grief to see the best of Zairean genius and diplomacy spent on bare survival, while fortunes in diamonds and cobalt are slipped daily out from under our feet. "This is not a poor nation," I remind my sons till they hear it in their sleep. "It is only a nation of poor."
THE POISONWOOD BIBLE 454
No paycheck tonight, of course, let alone the supplementaire. But Anatole came home excited about the general strike and spoke of it quietly through dinner, careful as always to use code words and false names. Any such knowledge could endanger the boys. Though I believe Pearl Harbor itself would have passed by them tonight, intent as they were on devouring the manioc. To make it last longer I pinched up little bites with my left hand while I nursed Martin on the right. With every gulp he drew, I felt more ravenous.
"One of these days," I announced, "I am going to take my bow and sneak through the bars of the Residence" Mobutu's Kinshasa mansion is surrounded by a park, where some zebras and one pitiful elephant paw at the grass.
Pascal was all for it. "Oh, Mama! Abattons I'elephant!"
Patrice soberly informed us he didn't think an arrow could pierce an elephant's hide.
Pascal was unconcerned. "Have you seen that thing? Mama's arrow will knock it over,plaf! Kufwa!"
Elisabet asked thoughtfully, "Mondele, how would you cook an elephant?"
What we eat is manioc, manioc, manioc. Whether it's tinted pink with a tomato skin or green with a leaf of cress, it's still manioc. Rice and soy meal help when we can get them, to balance our amino acids and keep our muscle tissue from digesting itself in the process known picturesquely as kwashiorkor. When we first moved to Kilanga, I remember t
hinking the children must get plenty to eat because their bellies all bulged out. Now I know their abdominal muscles were too weak to hold their livers and intestines in place. I see signs of it in Patrice. Any food that reaches us in Kinshasa has to come over impossible roads in dilapidated trucks from the interior, so it costs too much even if you can find it. Sometimes Anatole reminds me of our long-ago conversation when I tried to explain how we grew food back home, in huge fields far from the people who eat it. Now I understand his dismay. It's a bad idea, at least for Africa. This city is a foreigner's premise of efficiency planted on this
,EXODUS 455
soil, and it's a very bad idea. Living in it, no one could think otherwise. It's a vast congregation of hunger, infectious disease, and desperation, masquerading as opportunity.
We can't even grow any food of our own. I did try it, right at the metal flank of our back door, under the clothesline. Pascal and Patrice helped me scratch up a little plot that eventually produced a few bleak, dusty bouquets of spinach and beans, which were gobbled up one night by our neighbor's goat. The children of that household looked so starved (as did the goat), I couldn't regret this donation.
We, at least, have the option of leaving. In the back of my mind I think this�we could try again in Atlanta. And while we stay here for Anatole's teaching and organizing, and live on the next-to-noth-ing that work earns, we still have a measure of privilege incomprehensible to our neighbors. I've taken my sons to the States for vaccinations that aren't available anywhere in Zaire. I've seen them all born alive, and not one lost to smallpox or tuberculosis. We're luckier than most. That's what's hardest to bear: the view out the window. La cite is a grim, dust-colored homeland, and I suffer nostalgia for our life in the interior. In Bikoki and Kilanga we could always pick something off a tree, at least. We never passed a day without seeing flowers. Epidemics sometimes devastated the village, but they always ended, not far from where they began.
I can have a good laugh at my former self, remembering how my sisters and I nervously made our list of prospects: oranges, flour, even eggs! At our low point as missionaries, we were still fabulously �wealthy by the standards of Kilanga. No wonder any household item we carelessly left on our porch quietly found a new home in the night. No wonder the neighbor women frowned in our doorway when we pulled out the linings of our pockets as evidence of our poverty. Not another soul in town even had pockets. They must have felt exactly as I do now glaring at Mobutu on the doorstep of his fairy-tale palaces, shrugging, with his two hands thrust deep into the glittering loot of his mines.
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