Thursday, August 18, 2016

Kwaheri List of Comoros Posts

Compared to a rather extensive Madagascar summary list, looking back I've written a measly five whole posts specific to Comoros.  I have a couple drafts posts--one on the Comorian tradition of "love shacks"--I need to finish before we depart this November.

I probably only traveled in Comoros about ten times the last three years so I didn't have as much experience there but it was a fascinating country with amazingly warm and kind people.

Now that the Peace Corps has returned to Comoros--I'd definitely recommend doing a search for some of the PCV blogs--that's my favorite place to start to learn about a new country.  Additionally, the Peace Corps staff there has put together some great youtube videos here on the language.

Homesick reminisces for my daughters while flying high above the Indian Ocean

What it's like to drive in Comoros: A Matador, A Bull, or the Cape

Voyage Aux Comores: Comoros Has Grown On Me

The Kafir of Khartala- (Comoros) -The Only Comorian Novel Ever Published?

 'A movie in the making in Comoros' or 'Marooned in Moroni'

 Till Bacteria Do Us Part (FAO Pro-Tip #4)

Ode to VapoRub (FAO Pro-Tip #1)

 You're Only a Handshake Away (FAO Pro-Tip #2)

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Sunday, August 14, 2016

Veloma List of All of Our Madagascar Posts


We will miss all of our Malagasy Helpers!
















































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Saturday, August 13, 2016

'Veloma' List of Poems/Notable Prose Written While In Madagascar

Looking back, I've written a fair amount of poetry/notable prose these past three years.  As I contemplate the approaching end of our tour here, I wanted to organize all the links for them in one place:


Homesick Reminisces a Mile Above the Indian Ocean
Some thoughts written during one of my trips to Comoros.

I Want You To Know--A Poem On the Passing of Madiba
Something for my daughters.

 The Road from Tana to Andasibe
Written after a road trip out the countryside.

From Fonte Hill to Capitol Hill: Lou Wilson, Tide Laundry Detergent and Why I Ended Up in the Navy
My 2015 Marine Corps Ball speech.

How Does One Measure Sadness
Philosophical poem on sadness and dealing with loss and awfulness.

Ode to VapoRub
On the highs and lows of traveling as a Foreign Area Officer.

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Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Our 'Veloma' Restaurant List

After almost three years in Mada, I realize that we've been a bit negligent in sharing some of our favorite spots so I've decided to start with a list of restaurants that we've enjoyed here in Tana.  I will flesh out this list as I have time--hopefully before we wrap up our tour here in the next few months (I'd started a fledgling list here a few years ago).

A word of caution for the newcomers--take TripAdvisor rankings with a grain of salt--most of them are written by Europeans who have much different standards and expectations for restaurant experience than your (above) average Yelp-loving American.  Don't believe me, go eat out in Paris.  Generally speaking, customer service-wise you can expect about 20% less attentiveness than in a typical Paris cafe.  95% of time your check will never be brought unless you ask for l'addition.  All that said, this is a pretty excellent place to eat out with kids--you won't get dirty looks from anyone (except tourists) when your kiddos are running rampant throughout the restaurant grounds.  Particularly strong kid-friendly restaurants will be marked with a *.  Oh, and don't assume all these places will take a credit card.  I always bring cash just in case.

Downtown Places

Villa Isaroka:  Groovy little spot owned by a french-malagasy family with whom we are friends.  The restaurant is housed in an old grand maison with several indoor and outdoor dining areas.  The sisters who manage the restaurant also make some great purses and bags that they sell abroad and at the restauarant.  

313: Three hundred thirteen is the height of the Eiffel Tower in meters.  Housed inside the Louvre hotel, I've written about the restaurant and Gustave Eiffel 'legend' here.  The only detractor from this restaurant is the ambiance and bright lighting--everything other aspect is superb.  We had easily the best customer service that we've experienced in Madagascar while there.   I recommend the ribeye steak of Madagascar--aka their sublime magret de canard--a point.  

*Cafe de la Gare: A favorite Saturday/Sunday brunch spot.  When it's nice out call ahead and make a reservation.  There's a grassy area for the kids and the restrooms are housed in an old caboose.  The menu is huge but if want attentive service you will need to chase down your server.  A few local beers on draft which is always a plus.

Hediard:  My favorite fancy place in Tana.  Yes, everyone's go-to is La Varangue but I prefer the modernity and clean lines of Hediard.  The older (1854 old) sister restaurant is in Paris.  Always good service and I've had some incredible salmon there (which is tres dificile a trouver in Madagascar).   

Le Be:  Probably my favorite "scene" restaurant in Tana.  it's always packed with locals and expats--either at the bar or at the tables.  The dining room is wide open so you can see everyone.  Their 'thing' is that they offer menus on IPADs--why not right?  Perfect place to go with a group of 6-8--call for reservations on the weekend.

Kudeta:  This popular euroexpat hotspot is pronounced like what happened here in 2009--get it?  If you are a foie gras person, this is a good place to start.  You can grab drinks down the hill at Old Jack Daniels No. 7 Bar.

Porquoi Pas:  This is a great small initmate shop owned by a french dude and his Malagasy wife/girlfriend. Not the easiest place to park but good food.  We went here for Valentines Day one year.

Le Carre: This is one of the few places serves sushi--sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's not.  My bride had great salmon nigiri once and disgusting tuna nigiri a different time.  Overall, though, great ambiance--especially if you sit outside.  Good service.  Receipts there do NOT break out the 20% VAT (for diplomats)

Tables des Haute Terraces (Palisandre Hotel):  This is a place you go for the view.  With an expansive outdoor terrace perched up in hauteville (high town), it's the perfect place for a que romantico date for lunch or dinner.  It also has a spa for massages and other spa services.  

La Varangue:  Personally I think this place is overrated.  It's the 'it' fancy place of choice for groups looking for a night on the town.  I just think it tries a little too hard and even then I've found the service to be pretty lackluster for a place that purports to be the best place in town.  All that said, I know tons of people who love it so you have to try it if you live here.  For me, though, I go to Le Be or Hediard instead.  

Le Carnivore:  This is the place that I always suggest for visitors.  It's a Brazilian-style steak house where they cut the roasted meats off large skewers right onto your plate.  Among the usual offerings (e.g. pork, chicken, steak) they also have steak and crocodile (no lemur though).  One time I came here and ate so many chicken wings and lamb that I woke up at three in the morning drenched in sweat and reeking of...meats.  Yes, the dreaded 'meat sweats'.  It's hit or miss trying to make a reservation here for a large group...once they tried to shake me down for a deposit just to make a reservation.  Here's a tip for life in Mada--never pay for anything up front.

Nerone: We really like the ambiance and decor of this place--clean, polished and modern.  Le Jardin Secret did all the aluminum pieces here.  The food, bread and pizza here were superb.

Le Petit Verdot:  Multi-level, cozy.  Classic French bistro joint.  It's a staple lunch place for work.

Il Rossini: Restaurant on the corner.  We bad the great fortune to be seated next to an old creepy french dude and his prostitute date.  Made for a really special evening to share the space with them.  Other than that, it's a great place with excellent food and a cool ambiance.  

Ozone Thai:  They don't take credit cards.  Good Thai food and they usually have live music on the weekends.  Some people have complained it smells like gasoline but we've never smelt it.

 Korean Place down the street from Ozone (right next to Mansoon place with a bunch of vines on the front): Super delicious.

Sakamanga:  Very popular spot downtown.  Great for lunch.

L'Orion:  Nice seafood restaurant.  You can also do a cool chinese fondue/hotpot thing there.


Ivandry-ish places

*Emma Planque: My dated review is here.  This is a great spot for weekend lunch spot for families with their outdoor playgournd.

Le Grand Orient:  Their steak au trois poivres is the best in town.  They told me they cook it sous vide and I believe it--consistently tender and cooked perfectly.  We've probably been here close to 20 times over the past two years since it opened.  When the weather is nice they have an outdoor seating area with some corner tables that have a back, cushioned seat that's great for cuddling.  We also do take out from here quite often.

*Infinithe: Saturday morning staple--been here at least 60 times.  This is our Cheers--where everyone knows your name and order.  Huge garden area for kids to run rampant.  Their over-easy eggs (les oeufs au plat turner) are out of this world bad for you delicious.  I'd also argue that this place has the best ice cream in town.  They price it by the scoop and you can bring your own container if you'd like.

 Tamboho: Yes, the hotel has a good restaurant inside.  An interesting difference between the US and much of Africa is that the hotels usually have the best restaurants.  Whenever I send officers to study in the US, I always encourage them to leave their hotels to eat and have to explain to them that in the United States, hotel restaurants aren't usually the best choice.  Anyway, Tamboho has great food and also has cold THB on tap.

 La Plantation:   This is a date night staple--especially during the rainy season.  It's classic french cuisine for the most part but the ambiance is kind of a Havana vibe.  My favorite item--when they have it--is the wild boar (sanglier) stew which they make in a red wine sauce.  They also make a good gazpacho...although they've changed the recipe for it a few times so we're never sure what we are going to get.  This is also a great spot for lunch.  It's not exactly kid friendly but if you sit outside there's tons of little geckos your kiddos can chase after.  

*L'Orientale:  Cool little Lebanese spot that also has a (pricey) Sunday brunch.  There's a small playground here as well.  Some people stop by their just to pick up an order of the pita bread.  It never hurts to bring some bug spray with you if you are going to dine on the patio.  

Palladios (Jumbo Score location):  I've never been that impressed by the Palladio near to Dzamas.  But grabbing a meal inside at the Palladios in the Jumbo Score complex is excellent.  They put together a delicious magret de canard au miel  and have several of the local beers on tap.  

Dzama:  The national purveyor of Malagasy rum (which they sell in the boutique to the right when you enter) also has a great restaurant and little bar.

The bar could be even cooler if they made the drinks faster...but that's a national problem here.  There's nowhere in Madagascar where you will find the snappy, quick bar service like you would in the states.  Order a cuba libre and it could literally take your barkeep 3-5 minutes as he tongs in the ice cubes one by one, slowly opens a bottle of coke, carefully measures out a small shot of rum, finds a lime, walks to the back to get a cutting board, finds a knife, slowly cuts a slice or two of the lime, and then finally completes the cocktail.  It would probably blow their mind to see a bartender at a crowded spot in the US put together a rum and coke in literally 10 seconds.  Again, though, not a Dzama problem...just how things are in these here parts:)

A quick note on the Dzama rum, the best bottle to get is in the shape of a squat rectangle with a black label--I wanna say its only 40,000MGA.  This is the one that I always advise visitors to take home--it's a rich, full flavored rum with hints of vanilla that you can drink neat or with a diet coke.  They also have some great aged rums that drink more like a scotch--you can taste them all at the bar as well.

*Chez Lorenzo:  Good weekend lunch spot for pizza and more--I wrote about it here.

Other Parts of Town

*Jardin Secret: Not the easiest place to find--I wrote about it here.  Good spots for a girls lunch/tea.  The artist owner also makes all the aluminum stuff you see in town.

Combava:  Close-ish to the US Embassy this hotel restaurant is a nice little spot for lunch.  They also do a good magret de canard when it's not overcooked.  When ordering the delicious duck breast you should treat it like a good steak--if you like it cooked anymore than a point (medium rare)--then you should probably order something else because you will lose most of the taste.

 SRP (Snack Restaurant Pizzeria):  So this place doesn't have a formal name that I know of.  There's a small sign that says "Snack Restaurant Pizzeria" but that's about it.  It's tucked back almost directly across the street from the Mormon church that's next to the US Embassy (NOT in the Leader Price parking lot complex).  During lunch hours it has a small blackboard sign out front.  This place caters mainly to locals or expats (*clears throat) in the know.  There's a multitude of Malagasy dishes as well as french bistro items and simple dishes like grilled chicken.  Of all the places on this post--it's easily the cheapest because it's priced for locals.  You can have a delicious lunch here for 7000 MGA ($2.30).

Leader Price Restaurant:  This is the restaurant connected to the Leader Price across from the US Embassy. From 1130 to 1400 it's always packed with locals and expats alike.  They have daily specials but I always stick with the steak-frites.  The cut of steak is surprisingly tender but requires a few shakes of salt. The roll they give with your meal is also yummy.

Chinese Place towards the airport:



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Sunday, August 7, 2016

A Bend in the River: Loved it Because this is one of those novels that immerses you into the life of a person and place (DRC, 1979)

A Bend in the River (DRC)
 























Loved it Because: This is one of those novels that immerses you into the life of a person and place--in this case an Indian Muslim transplant named Salim who wanders from his 'home' on the east coast (of Africa) to the DRC river town of Kisangani during the colonial independence era. As the week passed and I waded deeper into this tale, I found myself thinking about the characters during idle moments--worried about the fate of Salim and Metty as they rode the ups and downs of Mobuto's rule in the growing town.  It's one of those rare books that spreads its tentacles around you, the reader, and refuses to release you.

 I came across this novel through a recommendation from a Foreign Area Officer colleague.  I am on a two-year quest to read a work of English fiction on every country in Africa (preferably by an author native to that country--although the 'native' requirement wasn't met in this case).  Naipaul never identifies the town, country, or 'Big Man' ruler by their names but his detailed narrative makes it blatantly apparent as to their identities.  

 I am sure that critics like Africa is a Country were not happy to have another foreigner writing about Africa with such a detailed eye but with an author as gifted as Naipaul you'd hope they'd cut him some slack. Positing that only authors native to a country can write about it effectively comes across as not only arrogant but also as selfish.  Case in point, Adichie's recent short story on the Trump family was one of the best pieces of satire on the American political system that I've read in a long time.  

 My favorite part of this book, is when Salim discovers how shallow the writing is of Raymond's, the much revered white africanist-turned-presidential confidant-turned visiting lecturer-turned pariah.  As Salim's pores through the academic's articles he sees that his analysis rests almost entirely on reporting from local newspaper articles.  He's a bit flabbergasted as he observes: 

 Raymond seemed to have taken them very seriously. I couldn’t get over that, because from my experience on the coast I knew that newspapers in small colonial places told a special kind of truth. They didn’t lie, but they were formal. They handled big people—businessmen, high officials, members of our legislative and executive councils—with respect. They left out a lot of important things—often essential things—that local people would know and gossip about.

 The merit and accuracy of local newspapers is a notion that rings incredibly true for anyone who has lived overseas.  Really, what Naipaul is getting at is the difference between perceived and actual/true knowledge.  

 He knew so much, had researched so much. He must have spent weeks on each article. But he had less true knowledge of Africa, less feel for it, than Indar or Nazruddin or even Mahesh; he had nothing like Father Huismans’s instinct for the strangeness and wonder of the place. Yet he had made Africa his subject. He had devoted years to those boxes of documents in his study that I had heard about from Indar. Perhaps he had made Africa his subject because he had come to Africa and because he was a scholar, used to working with papers, and had found this place full of new papers.
For any former graduate student this is an especially sweet section as one finds oneself deluged with a shower of reports and studies on tiny segments of people, tribes or times during grad school.  For the reader, this section should be read perhaps as a jab by Naipaul at the academic establishment with which his 'travel writing' no doubt at odds.  Ultimately, the most satisfying part of finishing this story was that it left me with so many questions about the DRC, Mobutu and the ideas of insiders/outsiders within the context of colonization, independence and freedom.  
*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
**See our 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.


For further reading:
A New King for the Congo

 For further research:
- DRC and the Big Man (Mobutu)
- Slavery inside Africa
- The Europeanization of African worth/Colonialization influence on African self-worth (stamp of dhow example)
- Differing notions of the past/history and its importance
- Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi: He approves of the mingling of the people and their bonds of union (motto of Trinidad and Tobago)
- Comparisons with Heart of Darkness
- Treatment of women in Naipaul novels
- Naipaul's other African novels: A Bend in the River, The Masques of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief; In A Free State; Half a Life;  Magic Seeds; 
- Disturbing beating and violence towards Yvette--what's the purpose of this action in the novel?  To make Salim less likable?  Is it emblematic of the author's own attitude toward the fairer sex?





















A Bend in the River (Vintage International) by V.S. Naipaul
You have 78 highlighted passages
Last annotated on August 5, 2016
I had treated Zabeth so far as a marchande and a good customer. Now that I knew that in our region she was a person of power, a prophetess, I could never forget it. So the charm worked on me as well.
east coast, and that made the difference. The coast was not truly African. It was an Arab-Indian-Persian-Portuguese place, and we who lived there were really people of the Indian Ocean. True
All that I know of our history and the history of the Indian Ocean I have got from books written by Europeans.


Without Europeans, I feel, all our past would have been washed away, like the scuff marks of fishermen on the beach outside our town.


The slavery of the east coast was not like the slavery of the west coast. No one was shipped off to plantations. Most of the people who left our coast went to Arabian homes as domestic servants. Some became members of the family they had joined; a few became powerful in their own right. To
This was one reason why the trade went on long after it had been outlawed by the European powers; and why, at the time when the Europeans were dealing in one kind of rubber, my grandfather could still occasionally deal in another. This was also the reason why a secret slavery continued on the coast until the other day. The slaves, or the people who might be considered slaves, wanted to remain as they were.


Soon, therefore, the Arabs, or the people who called themselves Arabs, had become indistinguishable from Africans. They barely had an idea of their original civilization. They had the Koran and its laws; they stuck to certain fashions in dress, wore a certain kind of cap, had a special cut of beard; and that was all.


Without that stamp of the dhow I might have taken the dhows for granted. As it was, I learned to look at them.
Note: interesting observation Edit
But the Europeans could do one thing and say something quite different; and they could act in this way because they had an idea of what they owed to their civilization. It was their great advantage over us. 
To be in Africa you have to be strong. We’re not strong. We don’t even have a flag.”


the Arabian energy that had pushed them into Africa had died down at its source, and their power was like the light of a star that travels on after the star itself has become dead.


“Do you know Uganda? A lovely country. Cool, three to four thousand feet up, and people say it’s like Scotland, with the hills.


Rough boards carried the new, roughly lettered names. No one used the new names, because no one particularly cared about them. The wish had only been to get rid of the old, to wipe out the memory of the intruder. It was unnerving, the depth of that African rage, the wish to destroy, regardless of the consequences.


What I had feared would happen on the coast came to pass. There was an uprising; and the Arabs—men almost as African as their servants—had been finally laid low.


father could always claim his child; there were any number of folk sayings that expressed this almost universal African law. 
Yet there was the idea of his importance. It unsettled me—there wasn’t going to be security for anyone in the country—and it unsettled Metty. When you get away from the chiefs and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa: everyone is a villager.


But Africa was big. The bush muffled the sound of murder, and the muddy rivers and lakes washed the blood away.


that they are malins” He had used the French word, because the English words he might have used—“wicked,” “mischievous,” “bad-minded”—were not right. The people here were malins the way a dog chasing a lizard was malin, or a cat chasing a bird. The people were malins because they lived with the knowledge of men as prey.


He had the “unfinished” face which I have noticed that certain Europeans—but never Arabs or Persians or Indians—have. In these faces there is a baby-like quality about the cut of the lips and the jut of the forehead. It might be that these people were born prematurely; they seem to have passed through some very early disturbance, way back.


An ancient Roman writer had written that out of Africa there was “always something new”—semper aliquid novi. And when it came to masks and carvings, the words were still literally true. 
He explained the second motto of the town for me—the Latin words carved on the ruined monument near the dock gates: Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi. “He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union”:


At independence the people of our region had gone mad with anger and fear—all the accumulated anger of the colonial period, and every kind of reawakened tribal fear. The people of our region had been much abused, not only by Europeans and Arabs, but also by other Africans; and at independence they had refused to be ruled by the new government in the capital.


Add a note
Officials and governments right across the continent were engaged in this ivory trade which they themselves had declared illegal. It made smuggling easy; but I was nervous of getting involved, because a government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you.


The farm didn’t materialize. The Chinese or the Taiwanese didn’t turn up to till the land of the new model African farm; the six tractors that some foreign government had given remained in a neat line in the open and rusted, and the grass grew high about them.


He liked being reminded of this, being remembered from so far back. He said, almost smiling, “I cried a lot? I made a lot of noise?”


was homesick, had been homesick for months. But home was hardly a place I could return to. Home was something in my head. It was something I had lost. 


“It will last as long as your President wants it to last. And no one can tell how long that will be. He’s a strange man. He seems to be doing nothing at all, and then he can act like a surgeon. Cutting away some part he doesn’t like.”


And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn’t exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here.” He touched his heart. “It isn’t there.” And he pointed at the dusty road. 

The Domain had been created by the President; for reasons of his own he had called certain foreigners to live there. For us that was enough; it wasn’t for us to question or look too closely.
But now, being with them in the Domain, which in every way was their resort, and being admitted so easily to their life, their world of bungalows and air conditioners and holiday ease, catching in their educated talk the names of famous cities, I swung the other way and began to see how shut in and shabby and stagnant we in the town would have seemed to them. I began to get some sense of the social excitements of life on the Domain, of people associating in a new way, being more open, less concerned with enemies and danger, more ready to be interested and entertained, looking for the human worth of the other man. On the Domain they had their own way of talking about people and events; they were in touch with the world. To be with them was to have a sense of adventure. I thought of my own life and Metty’s;


foreigners and Africans acted and reacted on one another, and everyone became locked in an idea of glory and newness. Everywhere the President’s photograph looked down at us. In the town, in our shops and in government buildings, it was just the photograph of the President, the ruler, something that had to be there. In the Domain the glory of the President brushed off onto all his new Africans.


Add a note
but they didn’t ask the really difficult question. Do you know what that is? Whether Africans are peasants. It’s a nonsense question, but big battles are fought about that one.


Add a note
There was a ritual I went through whenever I had to clear a difficult consignment through the customs. I filled in the declaration form, folded it over five hundred francs, and handed it to the official in charge. He would—as soon as he had got his subordinates out of the room (and they of course knew why they had been asked to leave the room)—check the notes with his eyes alone. The notes would then be taken; the entries on the form would be studied with exaggerated care; and soon he would say, “C’est bien, Mis’ Salim. Vous êtes en ordre.” Neither he nor I would refer to the bank notes. We would talk only about the details on the declaration form, which, correctly filled, correctly approved, would remain as proof of both our correctness. Yet what had lain at the heart of the transaction would be passed over in silence, and would leave no trace in the records.


Add a note
So, in my talks with Indar about Africa—the purpose of his outfit, the Domain, his anxieties about imported doctrines, the danger to Africa of its very newness, first ideas being caught most securely by new minds as sticky as adhesive tape—I felt


Add a note
that between us lay some dishonesty, or just an omission, some blank, around which we both had to walk carefully. That omission was our own past, the smashed life of our community. Indar had referred to that at our first meeting that morning in the shop. He said that he had learned to trample on the past. In the beginning it had been like trampling on a garden; later it had become like walking on ground.


The Domain was a hoax. But at the same time it was real, because it was full of serious men (and a few women). Was there a truth outside men? Didn’t men make the truth for themselves? Everything men did or made became real.

Raymond, keeps a low profile, but he runs the whole show here. The President, or the Big Man, as you call him, sent him down here to keep an eye on things. He’s the Big Man’s white man. In all these places there’s someone like that. Raymond’s a historian. They say the President reads everything he writes. That’s the story anyway. Raymond knows more about the country than anyone on earth.”


Add a note
said to Indar, “Who is the singer?” He said, “Joan Baez. She’s very famous in the States.” “And a millionaire,” Yvette said.



You couldn’t listen to sweet songs about injustice unless you expected justice and received it much of the time.


Do you think we will ever get to know the truth about what has happened in Africa in the last hundred or even fifty years? All the wars, all the rebellions, all the leaders, all the defeats?”



“It was long ago,” Raymond said. “In colonial times. I was teaching at a college in the capital. I was doing my historical work. But of course in those days there was no question of publishing.


Add a note
What made him unusual—I would even say extraordinary—was the quality of his despair. It wasn’t just a matter of poverty and the lack of opportunity. It went much deeper. And, indeed, to try to look at the world from his point of view was to begin to get a headache yourself.


 ‘I’ve listened to you, and I know that one day the mood of despair will go and you will want to act. What you mustn’t do then is to become involved in politics as they exist. Those clubs and associations are talking shops, debating societies, where Africans posture for Europeans and hope to pass as evolved. They will eat up your passion and destroy your gifts. What I am going to tell you now will sound strange, coming from me. You must join the Defence Force. You won’t rise high, but you will learn a real skill. You will learn about weapons and transport, and you will also learn about men. Once you understand what holds the Defence Force together, you will understand what holds the country together.


Add a note
That’s the amazing thing about this man of Africa—this flair, this knowledge of what the people need, and when. 


takes an African to rule Africa—the colonial powers never truly understood that. However much the rest of us study Africa, however deep our sympathy, we will remain outsiders.” The young man, sitting now on a mat with his girl, asked,


said to Indar, “What do you think of what Raymond said?” “Raymond tells a story well. But a lot of what he says is true. What he says about the President and ideas is certainly true. The President uses them all and somehow makes them work together. He is the great African chief, and he is also the man of the people. He is the modernizer and he is also the African who has rediscovered his African soul. He’s conservative, revolutionary,


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everything. He’s going back to the old ways, and he’s also the man who’s going ahead, the man who’s going to make the country a world power by the year 2000. I don’t know whether he’s done it accidentally or because someone’s been telling him what to do. But the mish-mash works because he keeps on changing, unlike the other guys. He is the soldier who decided to become an old-fashioned chief, and he’s the chief whose mother was a hotel maid. That makes him everything, and he plays up everything. There isn’t anyone in the country who hasn’t heard of that hotel maid mother.”


They did what they could to make room for me, and that is more than any outsider can say for us. It’s a difference in civilization.


There are times when I feel that Africa will simply have its own way—hungry men are hungry men. And that is when I can get very low.


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Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi. I had long since ceased to reflect on the vainglory of the words. The monument had only become part of the market scene on steamer days. Through that crowd we now began to make our way, accompanied by an old man, feebler than either of us, who had taken possession of Ferdinand’s suitcases.


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In the name of his dead mother, the hotel maid, “the woman of Africa,” as he called her in his speeches, the President had decided to honour as many women as possible; and he had done so by making them government servants, not always with clear duties.


they don’t reply to your letters, it’s because they don’t want to reply. They’re not going to say yes or no. They’re going to say nothing. But


Women make up half the world; and I thought I had reached the stage where there was nothing in a woman’s nakedness to surprise me. But I felt now as if I was experiencing anew, and seeing a woman for the first time. I was amazed that, obsessed with Yvette as I had been, I had taken so much for granted.


The earlier articles, in the foreign magazines, seemed easier. “Riot at a Football Match,” in an American magazine, was about a race riot in the capital in the 1930s that had led to the formation of the first African political club. “Lost Liberties,” in a Belgian magazine, was about the failure of a missionary scheme, in the late nineteenth century, to buy picked slaves from the Arab slave caravans and resettle them in “liberty villages.”


Raymond seemed to have taken them very seriously. I couldn’t get over that, because from my experience on the coast I knew that newspapers in small colonial places told a special kind of truth. They didn’t lie, but they were formal. They handled big people—businessmen, high officials, members of our legislative and executive councils—with respect. They left out a lot of important things—often essential things—that local people would know and gossip about.


History was something dead and gone, part of the world of our grandfathers, and we didn’t pay too much attention to it; even though, among trading families like ours, there were still vague stories—so vague that they didn’t feel real—of European priests buying slaves cheap from the caravans before they got to the depots on the coast. The Africans (and this was the point of the stories) had been scared out of their skins: they thought the missionaries were buying them in order to eat them.
He knew so much, had researched so much. He must have spent weeks on each article. But he had less true knowledge of Africa, less feel for it, than Indar or Nazruddin or even Mahesh; he had nothing like Father Huismans’s instinct for the strangeness and wonder of the place. Yet he had made Africa his subject. He had devoted years to those boxes of documents in his study that I had heard about from Indar. Perhaps he had made Africa his subject because he had come to Africa and because he was a scholar, used to working with papers, and had found this place full of new papers.


But if women weren’t stupid the world wouldn’t go round.


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Our visitors were becoming increasingly critical. They had a lot to say about the cult of the African madonna. Shrines had been set up—and were being set up—in various places connected with the President’s mother, and pilgrimages to these places had been decreed for certain days. We knew about the cult, but in our region we hadn’t seen too much of


So Maximes failed with us. And it must have been so in other parts of the country as well, because shortly after reporting the great demand for the book, the newspapers dropped the subject.


In events around me—like the publication of the President’s book, and the book march—I looked only to see whether the life I had with Yvette was threatened or was going to go on. And the narrower my world became, the more obsessively I lived in it.


Was I possessed by Yvette? Or was I—like Mahesh with his new idea of what he was—possessed by myself, the man I thought I was with Yvette?


In time it would all go; we would both return to our interrupted lives. That was no tragedy. That certainty of the end—even while the boom slackened and my fifteen dropped to fourteen, and Nazruddin and his uprooted family tried to establish themselves in Canada—was my security.


The African language the President had chosen for his speeches was a mixed and simple language, and he simplified it further, making it the language of the drinking booth and the street brawl, converting himself, while he spoke, this man who kept everybody dangling and imitated the etiquette of royalty and the graces of de Gaulle, into the lowest of the low. And that was the attraction of the African language in the President’s mouth. That regal and musical use of the lowest language and the coarsest expressions was what was holding Metty.


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them.” It was one of his sayings; it meant that stable relationships were not possible here, that there could only be day-to-day contracts between men, that in a crisis peace was something you had to buy afresh every day. His


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She said, “You make me look so good. What will I do without you?” That was a standard courtesy.
Opposites: again this communication by opposites. That woman in the cupboard: that other person outside. That journey out from the Domain: that other journey back. Affection, just before betrayal. And I had been in tears.



said, “Oh, Ali, Ali. Terrible things happened tonight. I spat on her. She made me spit on her.” “People quarrel. After three years a thing doesn’t just end like this.” “Ali, it isn’t that. I couldn’t do anything with her. I didn’t want her, I didn’t want her. That is what I can’t bear. It’s all gone.”


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But it was Europe that gave us the descriptive postage stamps that gave us our ideas of what was picturesque about ourselves. It also gave us a new language. Europe no longer


You would say that he felt that money had made him holy. All rich people are like that, I suppose.
understood now why so many of our later visitors at the Domain found our country, and our awe of the President, comic. What I saw on the road from the airport didn’t seem comic, though. I felt it more as a shriek. I had just come from Europe; I had seen the real competition.


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They take away your shop. They give it to Citizen Théotime. The President made a speech a fortnight back. He said he was radicalizing and taking away everything from everybody. All foreigners.



Radicalization: two days before, in the capital, I had seen the word in a newspaper headline, but I hadn’t paid attention. I had thought of it as just another word; we had so many. Now I understood that radicalization was the big new event.

The revolution had become”—he fumbled for the word—“un pé pourrie. A little rotten. 


This piece of earth—how many changes had come to it! Forest at a bend in the river, a meeting place, an Arab settlement, a European outpost, a European suburb, a ruin like the ruin of a dead civilization, the glittering Domain of new Africa, and now this.
It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning. That is why everyone is so frantic. Everyone wants to make his money and run away. But where? That is what is driving people mad. They feel they’re losing the place they can run back to. I began to feel the same thing when I was a cadet in the capital. I felt I had been used. I felt I had given myself an education for nothing. I felt I had been fooled. Everything that was given to me was given to me to destroy me. I began to think I wanted to be a child again, to forget books and everything connected with books. The bush runs itself. But there is no place to go to. I’ve been on tour in the villages. It’s a nightmare. All these airfields the man has built, the foreign companies have built—nowhere is safe now.”

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