“It’ll be a good distraction for you, Francis. You need a little change of scene and it’ll be fun,” Judith reassured me. Within a couple of days we were climbing onto motorbikes for a ride through the forest.
Bokakata, 70 km from Basankusu, was a loose community of small but quite separate settlements, which were ravaged by elephants in the 1970s. During that time, most people had moved towards the river. Judith’s dad returned to the original Bokakata and built a house there. Originally a simple structure, he built it up over time with fired bricks. He established a primary school, with himself as the head teacher. He planted crops and became self-sufficient. Although he later became head teacher, and then schools inspector, in Basankusu, he’s always kept one foot in his village.
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| Judith Bondjembo overtaking me on a motorbike |
The roads in the Congo are in a poor condition. Made from earth, they are badly eroded in many places. Our drivers, however, had a death wish and transported us, with all the spine breaking shocks imaginable until – fortunately – my bike got a puncture. We spent a good hour, if not two, repairing the puncture in a small village along the way. The glue they used was from a rubber creeper – the type that the infamous first rubber industry collected rubber from, in Congo’s early colonial days. Once the puncture had been repaired, we set off at a more comfortable speed. We passed Bokakata’s Catholic church and convent. The Daughters of Jesus had finally withdrawn from their convent here and have since been replaced by the local Theresian Sisters. The grass in the mission compound stood chest high – during the coronavirus confinement there were no schoolchildren to wield the machetes that slash the grass.
Half an hour later, we started to pass little houses made from mud and sticks. People ran out and waved their arms to greet us as we passed. Eventually, we came to the single road which makes up the village. We dismounted in front of Judith’s dad’s house. Children emerged to give a well rehearsed welcome in parroted French. Women from the neighbouring houses lay down pieces of brightly coloured cloth, the ones they use as wrap-around skirts, to make a welcoming carpet for us. The children arrived again to repeat their performance and to present a bunch of plastic flowers in an ancient looking aluminium vase.
We’d sent a bottle of the finest Indian whisky ahead of us with our provisions and this was opened to begin the festivities of welcoming us. Just about everybody from the tiny community took their place along the perimeter of the enclosure, while a young man passed along the ranks selling tots of foul-smelling moonshine gin and single cigarettes. We were invited to the house, where a meal had been prepared for us in what was to be my bedroom. I sat on the edge of my bed while balancing my plate on a wooden straight-backed chair. Once I’d finished eating, the party continued. A children’s choir sang and danced for us – a wise man from the village stood like a town crier, regaling how the village had been founded by a white man, in 1930, and that one day a white man would return to establish development projects (did he mean me?)
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| Francis perched on the edge of his bed to eat |
As the evening wore on, I decided that the moonshine gin wasn’t as foul-smelling as I’d first thought and so I tried a little – and then a little more.
The first day ended and we went to sleep.
For the few days we spent there, Judith was in her element. She would often leave me for a few hours to sit among her family and chat to them in Lomongo, the tribal language, which is as clear to me as Chinese. It’s a running saga; everybody agrees that she should invite me to sit with her wherever she is and that she should speak Lingala. I’m fluent in Lingala. She says she will and starts off in Lingala, only to change back to Lomongo after a few sentences.
Fortunately, I had brought my trusty Kindle e-reader. I plunged back into My Family and Other Animals – The Corfu Trilogy, by Gerald Durrel and left Judith to chat with her relatives.
The visit was very pleasant; it was relaxing. We’d left the very capable volunteers back in Basankusu to keep the malnutrition centre running and it felt good to leave our worries behind. Throughout each day, various visitors arrived – mostly Judith’s relatives, quite a few of them asking if we could help them in some way.
We had three little trips out. One day, we followed the road to the left – we called in at each house, mostly spread out some distance from the next. A small cluster of houses was further away, on the other side of a thirty minute walk along a well-kept forest path. Everybody welcomed us warmly. We collected eggs, pineapples and sugarcane, as gifts, along the way.
The following day we took the road to the right – the distance wasn’t as great, but we were received just as warmly at each house.
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| Francis Hannaway and Judith Bondjembo were welcomed everywhere in Bokakata |
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| Meeting people in their homes |
Judith’s dad, Jef, had the only fired-brick house in the village. There was a small medical centre in the grounds. Next door was the primary school that he’d founded. We set out one morning to visit his huge forest garden behind the house. To the uninitiated, it appeared as rough forested land with a lot of felled trees. We climbed over the trees to see the whole extent of it. He wanted to make an appeal for a petrol-driven chainsaw. Until now, each tree had to be cut down with a machete, then cut and removed by manpower alone. A powered saw would make things a lot easier. I filmed an interview with him on my phone.
The day before we returned to Basankusu, Judith received a visitor. A young, quite thin woman, called Momba, crouched in front of Judith’s chair telling her, in a quiet voice, of her problems. As she turned towards me, I noticed a huge mass on the side of her jaw and neck. “Francis,” whispered Judith. “What do you think it could be? Cancer?”
It certainly could have been cancer. We’d often talked about our work and how we should concentrate only on malnutrition and not get drawn into other activities, no matter how deserving. We’d been stung a few times, most recently with an old friend’s brother, who’d suffered crush injuries when a house collapsed on him. He’d been bedridden for almost 3 years when they finally decided to amputate his leg. We were asked for some help towards the costs, by the relative who was looking after him. The money was never passed on to the hospital. We said we’d pay for the medicines post-op – it couldn’t be that much. Later, without asking us, they did another operation on his hand because of pressure sores. To cut a long story short, he died. Badly managed pressure sores finished him off – and not the amputation as we thought at the time. We ended up being embarrassed with a bill for $400, and had no option but to pay it.
So, Momba probably had cancer. She’d no doubt spend a lot of time in hospital at our expense, they’d prescribe all sorts of cures, and even attempt an operation on the lump – and eventually she would die. Perhaps we should politely decline to help her; she would die in her village and we would be able to use our money to help malnourished children. Hmmmm … a difficult decision.
Judith and I sat looking at each other. “Well,” I ventured, “if we make it clear that we’ll pay for a visit to the doctor and he can give a diagnosis, but we won’t promise anything else. We’ll have to be clear.” Judith agreed.
The next day, we climbed back aboard the motorbikes for the homeward journey. This time, the drivers didn’t need to be restrained. The speed they covered the hard dirt tracks, flying recklessly around blind corners – meant that I spent more time in the air than in my seat. Nobody could enjoy such an experience – but they did it to show their expertise. In any other country they’d be arrested. But eventually, we arrived back in Basankusu.
The following day, Mama Momba arrived by riverboat, together with her baby boy and 8 year-old daughter. She slept that night at my house and the next day I took her to the Catholic hospital next door.
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| Mama Mômba on her arrival in Basankusu |
Dr Eric, recently arrived from Mbandaka, was all smiles. “No, Francis, don’t worry. Cancer is quite different. It’s probably an infected tooth. She said she’s suffered with it for almost a year, so it’s quite possible there’s been a blockage which has caused the swelling over time. However,” he paused, looking more serious, “it could be TB - I think I can see ganglions in the swelling.”
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“Oh, yes,” I exclaimed, “we’ve had cases of that at the centre before. Scrofula.”
“Yes,” Dr Eric agreed, “Scrofula – that’s another name for it! Don’t worry, Francis, we will give an eight week course of a combination of antibiotics designed just for TB. Then she should be fine.”
What a relief. After a couple of days sleeping in the hospital, we installed Momba in our house – she very soon found her feet, cooking and cleaning and slowly growing in confidence.
Over the next two weeks, the swelling, although it didn’t disappear completely, reduced considerably. She started to put on weight. Then, one day, we saw her doing a little dance. “I’m getting better! I’m getting better!” she sang – and danced again!
One day I was at Fr. Christiantus’ house. I told him the story of Mama Momba. “Do you remember that I invited you to go to Djombo with me at that time – but you chose to go to Bokakata instead?”
“Yes,” I replied, “Momba was very lucky that we happened to be there at the time. If I’d gone to Djombo she would have missed her chance and probably died from her illness.”
“Luck has little to do with it,” Fr. Christiantus smiled with a knowing look. “I think you were sent.”
