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In 1986 I travelled through sub-Sahara Africa, and when I got to Zaire there were two places that I particularly wanted to visit.Near to Bukavu I wanted to visit the national park and see the gorillas.
And, further north, in Beni, I hoped to meet with the pygmies.
I ended up spending a fortnight living in a banana-leaf hut with the Beni pygmies in the eastern forests. I have always been a bit of an amateur anthropologist and I was particularly curious about these people who, like their Efe cousins, are considered to be the oldest living pure ethnic group in the world. The Beni have maintained their way of life for tens of thousands of years because of their isolation from so-called civilization.
But, even before I got there, the situation was starting to change. The pygmies were starting to reap some benefits from satiating the curiosity of young backpackers like myself.
The chiefs usually asked for nothing more than tobacco, matches and liquor, but before I left Beni, the village chief asked me for my Sony Walkman.
It seemed that during my stay he had become a fan of Blondie and was particularly fond of her 1978 hit “Hanging on the Telephone.”
Because he had never seen a telephone before,
the chief could not grasp the concept of one person speaking to another over great distances with a piece of apparatus, but he had developed a soft spot for a piece of Japanese technology that had kept me company while I journeyed alone through the Dark Continent.
I decided to part with my Walkman, as well as a Sex Pistols badge that he had also taken a fancy to.
“Blondie has a problem with devil spirits” was the message the chief conveyed to me after plugging in the earphones.
The tape sounded like it was warped because the batteries were dying, which I tried to explain, but, unfortunately, like the concept of telephones, it would be yet another technological point that I would fail to convey to him.
“Blondie needs medicine man” was what he seemed to be saying to me and the half-naked women and children that had gathered to see me off.
The chief ’s wife handed me a sack of marijuana leaves in exchange for the Walkman.
She then escorted me out of the forests to a dirt road from where I intended to hitchhike to Mount Nyiragongo.
On the dusty road, I was joined by a jolly African woman who had a bowl of baby red bananas balance on her head.The chief ’s wife handed me a sack of marijuana leaves in exchange for the Walkman.
She then escorted me out of the forests to a dirt road from where I intended to hitchhike to Mount Nyiragongo.
She impatiently kept wiping the dust and sweat from her face with a colourful shawl while we waited and waited and waited. She laughed when I showed her the huge bag of hemp and then agreed to exchange her bananas for the pygmies’ narcotic. I really didn’t want to get caught with drugs in Zaire. I also didn’t want to just toss it, in case the pygmies found it later and thought me ungrateful or rude. To be honest, I doubt they would have cared; my English sensibilities were simply playing havoc at the time, but I couldn’t be sure. The sun scowled down on the two of us as we continued to wait for a ride, with Mama becoming considerably less jolly when, after a two-hour wait, there was still no sign of a truck.“Allez! Allez!” she waved her huge arms at me, beckoning me to walk down the road with her. I scurried up behind her, believing that she must know best. I struggled to keep up as Mama’s generous hips sashayed in rhythm to Zairian songs.
This woman had one hell of a singing voice. Clapping her hands and snapping her fingers, Mama howled with laughter at my attempts to keep pace with her, as well as at my appalling French. She strolled on barefoot, proud and beautiful, heading south along a scorched reddish-brown road. It was lined with banana groves, mango trees and gorgeous pink and purple jacaranda blossoms. I understood little of her patois, and could only gather that due to the rainy season, many trucks were probably stranded and wading like hippopotamuses in mud out west. We walked together for three days en route to Goma. During that time, only a handful of trucks lurched past us, crammed with people, pigs, goats and chickens. Not even my shopping bag stuffed full with Zairois bills could persuade the driver to squeeze us in. Nestling down on Mama’ s kanga robes that first night, I was unable to sleep due to the orchestra of every creature imaginable. I also seriously feared we were going to be mauled to death by lions, and that we would never make it to the shores of Lake Kivu. But by the time I staggered into the market in Goma, with the sole of one sneaker flapping in the dust, I had made up my mind about one thing: “I will never ever, for as long as I live, walk anywhere ever again.” Although Mama didn’t understand English, I think she got the gist of my jive. She cradled her head in her hands and broke into a fit of hysterical laughter. Others around us started laughing too. She shook hands with the daft mazungu, and on that note, we parted ways.
