ZAMBAKARI - CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN    Bangui and the Boat 

M’boki to Bangui – Winter 2000

“NO!” 

Arketa stood her ground. For the first time in hours she was out of the lorry, her feet firmly planted on muddy ground somewhere between the villages of Zamou and Bangasu. Before her was a wide, swift river and at its edge was a raft—of sorts—a rattle of logs bound together and barely wider than the lorry itself. The attached motor hummed like helicopter blades sputtering under water. Raft workers raced around yelling to one another, hoisting and hauling ropes thick as their bare thighs and heavy as sin. Arketa studied the situation as she was told to climb back into the lorry. It was time to load the lorry on the raft. Time to cross the river. Time enough for Arketa to set her mind. 

“No. I don’t want. Not with my kids,” she said. Arketa swatted against small biting insects as she protested. She knew the dangers of armed insurrectionists in the area but better shot than drowned she reasoned. Her sister, Angelina died in a lorry accident in a river. Arketa thought about that. She was not climbing into a lorry about to be driven onto a skinny raft sputtering exhaust and twisting in the downstream tug of river current. She would wait on this road for some sort of vehicle headed back toward M’boki. 

She was not about to get back on that lorry.

For two days before reaching this river, Arketa and her children endured the lorry slipping and tilting every which way in the mire and debris as they traveled the road. She appreciated more than any outsider might imagine the occasional stop in a village to drop off passengers, or to enjoy the peanut butter and sweet 

potatoes purchased by others for her family. Otherwise, since M’boki, she had left the lorry only for a toilet run into the bush, to refill a water container, to help push the lorry out of trouble, or to watch as a bridge was tested. At night, everyone slept on layers of plastic bags in the lorry bed.  Opportunity brought her this far, but this was far enough. “No.” She was not climbing into a lorry perched on a raft. It’s hard to over-estimate an iron will forged through adversity. 

The Haitian UN worker and his wife reasoned, urged, assisted, and then with their strong Pentecostal prayer, coaxed her back into the lorry. Arketa resigned with her mother’s words, “Hold your heart; let us see what God will do.” 

What God did was to have the Haitian couple move to the lorry bed where Arketa held her kids and her heart. She kept her eyes shut and her head down as the lorry jerked and settled on the raft. 

“Ah,” the Haitian man said comfortingly, “we are safely on the water now, in the hands of capable men of the river. These men cross the river many times a day, Arketa. Ah!We are more than half way. The water is quiet for you. Now we are approaching the shore.”

“Bump!” She felt it. 

“We are there now,” she was told. Arketa heard the lorry motor start. She felt the drop from the raft to the ruts of the road. She opened her eyes and gave God the glory.

“If God don’t sign your time, you will not go,” she told me authoritatively.    

 ° °  °

The United Nations compound was situated on one of the many hills in Bangui, the capital city of the Central African Republic. The physical situation was nothing to write home about, if only one could write home. The one UN building was small, house-like, and staffed by no more than ten people, both local and foreign.

The lorry honked. A guard ran to the gate with the key, opened it and secured it again behind the exhaust-belching vehicle. Arketa and her children alighted, and after initial introductions, they were ushered to a small, half-walled porch at the back of the building where workers rested and cooked meals. There they would stay until travel documents for Kinshasa were drawn up. A day. Maybe two. The compound’s water pipe and pit latrine were a short hop away, down by the guard-shack and near the main gate. 

From the porch Arketa and her kids looked down on the parliament building, across the rutted roads and open stalls of local sellers. They looked out over the massive Oubangui River, captivated by harbor activity: pirogues carrying people and goods, large ferries, small barges, and fishing vessels. People, people everywhere, filling the city. They couldn’t get enough of watching. This was not the jungle. It was good that they came, they agreed. It was good that they endured the road, and the rivers with bridges, even the dreaded raft. 

A UN official said, “Take the tin which is by the water pipe there, on the guard shack wall, next to the pit latrine. Fill it and wash yourselves at the back of the house by the porch. No one will see you there.” Everything they needed during their brief stay would be provided: meals, the tin, water, rice sacks to sleep on, and a light blanket for cover. That first night in Bangui, the Zambakaris slept well. They lay together in the darkness and spoke softly of the adventure, tenderly of the family in M’boki, and finally they yielded to sleep.

On the morning of their first full day in the capital, they rejoiced in the provision of rice, bread, and fresh fruit. Sitting safely in real chairs, eating food from a kitchen, wearing underwear and clothes the UN provided, having access to a pit latrine—“Ohhh! Dis was good.” 

Before moving on, Arketa needed a letter of introduction for the pastor of the Evangelical church in Kinshasa. The church had guestrooms and had agreed to provide one for Arketa and her children. She needed a change of clothes for everyone, and money for food on the upcoming boat trip. With the help of UN staff, one full day in the capital of Central African Republic should suffice to gather it all.

After breakfast, UN workers joined Arketa on the porch and described the boat trip to Kinshasa. Arketa listened “good.” After a polite enough time, she suggested that she had seen enough of rivers. She offered an alternative. “A lorry would be fine,” she said. She preferred a lorry, thank you. She knew herself. The boat frightened her. 

“I will take dah lorry to Kinshasa,” she said.

“Ah—the lorry,” came the response. The Haitian couple and a man from Congo overseeing transportation looked to each other for help. They began—lorry transportation was impossible. The barely-existing road toward Kinshasa was in sore condition. “The jungle is heavy, and insurgents many,” they said.

“The lorry would be fine,” Arketa said. “We could do it, me and my children.” 

But even if a lorry could make it, the great river would still have to be crossed. UN workers would not be with her, they warned. What if something happened? She didn’t know the language or the way of the people of Congo.  What if there was a breakdown? What then? What about the rain that had begun to fall?No. The only solution for Arketa and her children was the boat. 

She didn’t like it. She didn’t sleep well that night. In the afternoon of the second full day the Zambakaris sat on the small porch savoring barbequed chicken and “talking in our language.” Then, mid-day. Mid-bite . . .

“POP!  Zing!”  Gunfire!

°  °  °

 Only Arketa can reproduce the sounds of what she heard—the swift zing of bullets, the bursts of automatic fire, the thud of impact, the “Pow! POW! Pow!” that plowed through the air. Far too many times during her years in Africa she had heard those sounds—as a child in Bazia and Yambio, as a young wife in Nagero, as a refugee running between countries, in M’boki when armed marauders swung through the camp, and now in Bangui.

The city exploded. Riots—not the first in recent years—erupted against the president who, year after year, failed to keep promises, who failed to pay civil servants and the military, and promised relief from the general suffering of his people while he added rooms to his estates and jewels to the fingers of his family. General Lamine Cisse, representative of the UN secretary general in Bangui once said, 

            "If civil servants are not paid, it's easy to bring them out on the streets. If people don't have enough to live on then you've got a security concern."  The word flying through the UN compound as workers fled was: “Coup!”

Into the streets poured angry armed men. Into the streets marched the president’s troops. Onto the porch rushed a guard with instructions for Arketa.

“Trust the fence! The compound is safe! Use the pit latrine only at nighttime,” he yelled as he rounded up his own belongings. “Run now, Arketa! Get water! Hurry! Keep down.” 

Pow! Ratta-taa-taa!Oh, God!

 “Sit there!” the guard said, pointing to the porch floor as he fled. 

They sat. If they sat upright they could watch the warring factions in the city below—if the sat upright. The guard returned shortly. “Stay down!” he shouted. He handed Arketa two small bags, one of uncooked rice and the other, uncooked beans. “The compound gates are locked. The fighting is not about us; it is down in central city. You should be safe here,” he said. “Should” did not go unnoticed. The man was gone. Everyone of any importance fled the scene.

“Even dah Haitian guy who brought us from M’boki and his wife, dey run away,” Arketa said. “But, what I find out later was dat dah UN took dem out of Bangui because dey are dah foreigner and when something happen like dat, the UN don’t let dem stay. Dey are out, quick. I didn’t ask where. To Congo, Cameroon, I don’t know—until after three days when dey brought dem back.”

For three days, Arketa held on to bags of raw beans and rice and a great measure of fear. She wasn’t about to build a fire. She still had some hard cassava bread she carried from M’boki that she divided between the children. “But Sarai? She was too small. She had not strong teeth to bite it.”

Arketa allowed the children to slip out after dark to stretch, to use the pit latrine, to splash water on their faces and hands. Arketa had water from the pipe in the large tin and in her calabash. The rule? No standing up during the day. 

“God is great, Barbara. God can do things. With dah noise of dah guns we hear from dat place, even if food would be dehr? Dah children would not like to eat. Dah gun was like for three nights, non-stop. In dah night you see big light—it is dah bullet. All dah electricity in Bangui was down. No one wants to eat. We chew on dah cassava bread from my mom. Put it in dah water for Sarai. Dat’s it.

“What can you do? You give yourself to God and say, ‘If God say dis was dah time, I will be finished.’ But, even then, I blame myself. Why not to be in M’boki?”

°  °  °

Once the city calmed—as nearly as Bangui ever calmed—once UN workers returned, Arketa’s thoughts turned to her mother. “Please, please,” she pled with UN staff, “inform dah UN office in M’boki to let my mom know I am still alive with dah kids.”  

The two-way radio was at the police station across the path from Lucia’s tukul and everything the police heard was announced to the camp. Day by day the news came—fighting in Bangui. Fires in Bangui. Deaths in Bangui. Finally, after three days of handwringing and prayers, the word that Arketa begged be sent to M’boki arrived. “Your daughter and the kids of your daughter are safe. The fighting has ended. Arketa knew her mother would worry and would wish she hadn’t sent her daughter and grandchildren away. 

An official explained to Arketa how sorry he was about what happened, sorry that all the UN employees ran. “These things happen,” he said. And when they do, “We don’t take anything with us from the office. We just quick, like that, are told to leave.”

 “Because dey call dem dah ‘diplomat,’ when something happens, dey just leave stuff and go,” Arketa explained to her children. “Dah coup in Bangui? Was like dah snake in M’boki—everywhere.” Everyone agreed.

After days in a lorry, after one peaceful night, one morning’s quick bite of chicken, and days with bullets buzzing overhead, it was finally time to move on. With three pieces of clothing each, with a letter for the Congolese pastor in Kinshasa, with a bit of dried rice, corn and beans from the UN, and after sitting for a casual photo and with the feet of her children shod in flip-flops that slapped against the ground as they walked, the Zambakaris hopped into the back of a pick-up truck for a ride to the harbor. In spite of all her suggested options, for Arketa and her children, the boat was the only way Kinshasa.

Before they left, Arketa had bathed. The kind Haitian woman braided her hair and gave her a red dress. For the first time in years, “I felt like dah human being.” 

At the UN office she listened to people with an awareness of the world at large, people who ate adequately and worked with clean hands, who spoke to her respectfully, and answered the sometimes working phones in rooms with wooden floors rather than pressed dirt. Then, with her children she was being whisked through a city—of sorts—with ample opportunities to look around. 

She studied buildings and the people coming and going, people who surely had tasks on their minds other than building fires or searching for snakes. She had instructions swirling in her head, money and a letter in her hand, and resting at her feet was a parcel containing toothbrushes, a comb, one change of clothing for everyone, and a bit of food. She mustn’t forget the parcel. 

The pickup stopped on the Bangui side of the Oubangui River. Wooden pirogues of assorted sizes battled for space along the muddy bank. Small ferry motors purred as people piled into passenger space. Arketa saw the river as a hungry thing snapping at the hulls, wishing to satisfy its appetite. She didn’t like it. Her party climbed into a sizable pirogue, a floating tree trunk, a conveyance like those crossing the M’bomou River when she searched for yams. She didn’t like it. She was not in favor of the boat.

Under the care of the Haitian couple, and before she had the chance to complain much at all, the pirogue bounced Arketa’s party across the Oubangui River to Zongo, Democratic Republic of Congo. From the first thrust of the noisy motor, Arketa held Sarai securely against herself, saw her other two children in the care of her sponsors, closed her eyes, and gave herself to God. 

Giving over to God didn’t last long. Coming up with a new suggestion for travel filled most of the ten or so minutes it took to walk to the big boat. Maybe,she thought—dis boat to Kinshasa will go on dah raft, like dah lorry before it. Maybe, she thought, she was not meant to go to Kinshasa at all. That was it. Or, maybe it was only that she was not meant to go on a boat to Democratic Republic of Congo.She began re-pleading her case the minute her feet touched Zongo ground. 

She was willing to go to Kinshasa, yes. “Dey cross me to Zongo. From dehr, I will like it very much, if I can take my kids to Kinshasa in dah back of dah big lorry. I’m afraid to go by boat.” She didn’t care how many days, how many weeks. She didn’t care that lorries didn’t have complete access to Kinshasa from Bangui. 

“It’s okay,” she said.

Her walk from the little boat to the big boat took no longer than the Oubangui river crossing. She did not look “much up” as she walked. She did look once, and was sorry. The boat they approached was big. The “ladder to it,” stretched from the shore to the boat across water. This is what Arketa knew: the water was too far down, the river too wide, the bridge onto the boat—precarious. 

She didn't like it.

The UN people boarded with her. They settled the family in “dah middle of dah first floor on dah boat.” They pointed to where the toilets were located, where water could be gotten, gave instructions on how to identify workers and who would bring food, food she was given money for. The UN workers wished the Zambakaris well and reminded the children to stay close to their mom. 

Passengers—Africans mostly but people of various countries, colors, sizes, languages, and spice preferences—filled the middle, the back, and the front of three decks. They sat on benches, settled on floors or stood in clusters, chatting. The boat moved. Arketa did not.

“Did you have rooms?” I asked one very warm Phoenix afternoon as we sat chatting. 

“Rooms? No,” came the answer, nearly in the form of a question, like, “You would expect rooms?”

“Some people are walking, taking steps while dah boat is moving,” Arketa said. “I’m afraid, like I can break into pieces. People who know I am scared try to talk to me but I don't want.

“’How are you?’ dey say. I say, ‘Okay.’”

“’How are dah children?’ dey are asking. 

I only say, ‘Thank you. Dey are okay, too.’”

“Dis is dah time when I am not looking to dah left or right or back. It’s just like I’m dead. I don’t want to talk. I don’t go to dah window, no. Not until dah boat stops in Brazzaville, Congo, across from Kinshasa, I don’t go out of dah middle. I don’t want to talk to no one. I never make a friend of dat boat.”

When Arketa wanted something, she reached out as a worker walked by her, tugged on a shirt or skirt and, for example, asked for sho-pan—bread made from corn flour and wrapped in a leaf. Or, she simply said, “banana.” The playful child of professionals, the granddaughter of chiefs, the bossy jungle camp midwife and leader, the designated Mayor of M’boki—sat still and tugged on a shirt or skirt of workers.

The bananas available on the boat were very small. Arketa had not seen that sort before but she and the children readily ate them—in fact, the children ate the whole things, peel and all. 

One day, Christopher said “Mom, see that white guy?” Arketa had listened to conversations around her. She knew that man was from some place called Bul, bul-garia. She scolded, “Christopher, don’t look at dah person when dey are eating.”

“Mom, dat man take dah peel off dah banana. He can throw it. Watch,” Christopher said. When the white man walked away from the trash barrel, Christopher retrieved the peel. “See,” he said to his mom. “I told you.” 

Arketa sniffed. She said again, “Never look at someone when dey are eating. If you look, it is like you want.” Arketa could hardly breathe. In M’boki they peeled the big bananas. But the small, small banana on the boat? No. That one was soft, yellow and “nice, nice.” Even the peel was sweet.

From her place of stability, Arketa noticed a white couple she assumed were missionaries, because, she reasoned, “dah boat was a place with everyone from dah world. She didn’t wonder long. The couple noticed her. 

With the help of Arabic, French and English, the white woman asked, ‘How are you?”

“I am fine,” said Arketa, depending on similar language skills, mostly broken British English.

“Are you from here?” the woman asked.

“No.” 

“Where are you from?” the woman asked. “Nigeria?” 

“No. Sudan. That woman was, ‘What?  Sudan? Oh!’ 

“When dat white lady hear dat, she open her eyes, wide. ‘Sudan? Dah capital Khartoum? That Sudan?’ At that time Sudan was only one. She knows about it. 

“How did you make it here, all the way across Africa?” she asked. 

Arketa told her the story of coming as a refugee. She explained that before long she would be sent either to Australia, America, London, Norway or Denmark. At dah UN in Kinshasa, she said, people will select where she and her children are going.

°  °  °

Arketa’s acute anticipation of danger held her captive to her boat bench as surely as the river held the boat itself. Never was a cruise down the Oubangui and Congo rivers easy, but for a refugee woman with three small children, filled with fear, and separated from all that was familiar, it was torturous. 

“On dat boat?” Arketa said. “When dah children want to go to dah toilet? We all go together, like dah lion carries her baby in dah mouth. Only, I keep dah kids on my hands. We was dah line, moving to dat place. ‘Everyone go now,’ I said. Ohhh,I thought, dis boat will be dah end of me.”

“People ask if dah children want to go upstairs? Dah men who work on it tell dah children to come with dem, dey will show dah whole boat. I tell dem, in my own language, ‘No-no.’ I was very afraid in dis time. Dah children was, like most African children, very obedient to dah parent. During dis boat time, dey was very quiet with me.”

 °  °  °

In March 2015, Arketa and I were working together on this chapter. I wanted to get her to Kinshasa quickly because that city held a pivotal story. I meant to move her from Bangui to Kinshasa directly down the Oubangui and Congo rivers, but my attempt met resistance.  

.

“First, it was Chad, den to Douala, to Brazzaville, and Kinshasa. Yeah.” Arketa’s explanation was final.

I didn’t argue. I obviously needed to learn more about river traffic. But, on the large map of Africa spread out before me, I saw clearly how the Oubangui River connects to the Congo River. South. Down. Straight shot—Bangui to Kinshasa. I read up on West African river passages. It was never easy, no. It regularly required two weeks or more. But, it was direct. 

“No,” said Arketa. “Dis is dah place I tell you, I hear dah many languages. First? Dah people say, ‘Chad!’ Dat was first. After dat, Douala, which is in Cameroon.”

I resumed my limited research. This book is a memoir, after all, not a geography lesson. Nevertheless, I protested.

“To reach Chad,” I said in call after phone call, “the boat had to go north.” I borrowed her voice, “a-l-lthe way through the country of Central African Republic, up. The wrong direction, Arketa.”

“I’m not looking out. Just dah people on dah boat is saying, ‘Oh dis stop is Chad. Some people get off, some get on. Dis is where I hear dah language dat is new to me.”  

I yielded. Rivers were plentiful but running my finger along maps, never could I create a route from Bangui to Douala, let alone on to Brazzaville in Congo. I took a look at a map of rivers without any possible ah-ha’smoving me the direction of Arketa’s memory.

“Did I tell you?” she asked during one of my many, many calls, “Dis boat stops like dah city bus. And? If dah river water is not good, dah boat sleeps. Dah river is rushing? Stop by dah village, sleep dah boat. Dah rain is too heavy? Sleep dah boat. If dah river is running too fast, too little for dah boat to move good? Dah boat pulls off to sleep. Oh, dat trip was too long. Dah driver want more people? Sleep dah boat till he is happy and ready to go.” 

She was right. In all the reading I did about rivers in western Africa was this: always expect a journey to be uncomfortable and long. Never expect a reliable schedule and always expect change without any warning. 

“From dah place dey say was in Chad? We went step by step to Douala, which was in Cameroon where dah big, big boats was.”

She was also right about the big boats in Douala. That city is the commercial capital of Cameroon and home of that country’s largest port, situated on the Wouri River. The Wouri held promise for me as I searched out Arketa’s route. It led me up to Yabassi and down to the estuary connecting to the Gulf of Guinea in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. But I couldn’t move her along the Wouri, not if I wished to reach Congo. 

I had to admit that while Arketa was sure of being on the boat for two weeks or more, I managed to shake her confidence concerning where the boat carried her. She hadn’t checked places. She didn’t look out windows. She only heard people talk about where they were. At least, she thought they named where they were.

I was no help. I took the big map to her house. I ran my finger up, up, up from Bangui,a-l-l-l-lthe way through the entire country of Central African Republic, showing her how far north Chad was, how wrong the direction was; how the rivers would have to turn her 180-degrees down through Cameroon and Congo, to reach Brazzaville where she was sure she was, because there, she did look out the window, across the Congo river, all the way to the lights of Kinshasa. 

I was ‘deprogramming’ Arketa, to say the least. I was trying to write a chapter on a straightforward two-week boat ride into her future. I wanted to convince her that she probably went directly from Bangui to Kinshasa directly down the Oubangui and Congo rivers. But, then, what in her life’s story presented the idea that anything was direct?

“I didn’t really focus on it,” she said, politely yielding to my persuasion. “If you were on dat boat, you will know it,” she said seconds before breaking into laughter that silenced my protest. 

“I was like ‘I’m going to arrive today in Kinshasa. Today. Not today? No.’ Like dat. Because dah boat stop in different, different places. People was saying, “Douala, Douala. In dat place was dah big boats even from Europe. When dah boat stopped dehr, I looked out dah window. I saw dah big, very noisy boat. Dat was how I knew I was in Douala.”

Arketa stated her case casually but certainly: from Bangui, Central African Republic to Chad to Camaroon on to Brazzaville, Congo. There, the boat “slept for a day” before moving on across the river to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. I resigned. 

“You know what?” she asked. “From dah boat, when it stopped in Brazzaville, we can look across dah water and see Kinshasa where we want to be but we aren’t yet going. Not until we hear, ‘Brazzaville.’ Den? I’m looking, waiting to cross dah big-g-gCongo River into Kinshasa where dah pastor will meet us.” 

A pastor—yes. A pastor, and a terrifying turn of events.

°  °  °

QUICK PEEK: CHAPTER TWELVE -KINSHASA—2000 (author has supporting footnotes for this chapter)

Brazzaville!” 

Workers raced about the boat shouting, Arrival! Brazzaville!Republic of Congo!  

When the boat bumped into its berth, Arketa seized the edge of the bench where she sat. Thanking God for yet another day of surviving, she drew her children close and lifted her toes as passengers surged by. Swarms of people—both those crowding aboard and those disembarking—shouted hellos and farewells in West African languages: French, English, Kituba, Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili, Mboshi. 

Elbows clashed as some hefted parcels to their heads and others swung children to their hips. The English-speaking missionary woman was leaving but before she did, she brought the Zambakaris two bananas.

“Oh. No thank you,” said Arketa. “We have eaten.” 

They hadn’t eaten, at least not much, but this was the African way to say ‘No thank you.’

SCROLL DOWN TO MAKE COMMENTS