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Authors: Richard Hoskins
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wore for clothes, my bare feet. I thought about how much had changed for me. Within the space of two years I had married and become a father, had a daughter and lost a daughter, learnt a new language with such fluency that I had trouble remembering English, and immersed myself so fully in an alien culture that I wondered if I would ever be able to find my way back to my own. I sometimes wondered if I would ever want to.
I returned down the Sangassi with a few Congolese fellow travellers. We had been paddling for hours through trees that arched over the waterway forming a solid canopy overhead. I had reached the stage of near-anaesthetic weariness I sought when, out of nowhere, a tropical storm blew up. The frail canoe was gripped by the wind and the current and in a few seconds we were swept right out into the main Congo River – a vast sweep of shining water all around and towering cloud above.
We were all awed at the sight, struck dumb by it. We stopped our ineffectual paddling and let the river whirl us on. We were impotent before its power. A man in the bow sat back on his haunches and spread his arms wide to the torrential rain. ‘Behold!’ he cried. ‘Look upon the greatness of God!’
I found myself envying his certainty. For if I had gained some comfort during these turbulent months of wandering, I had begun to lose something too: the belief that all this toil was supposed to bolster. I had encountered suffering on a scale that had not even featured in my worst nightmares. Children, wives, fathers, husbands, grandparents, brothers and sisters: no one was beyond death’s grasp. It was a perpetual echo of my own loss, but the full import of what I had seen was not fully driven home to me until I stumbled upon a tiny village called Ntandembelo, on the very edge of the rainforest.
I got there long after dark and the villagers greeted me with their usual hospitality. They sat me by the fire, brought me a bowl of cold water so that I could wash and then gave me a meal of tough chikwanga and tiny fish from the local streams. We then moved under the tin roof of the church, where I was told a number of local people would like to speak to me. I sat there all evening, chatting to one villager after another in the glow of a couple of oil lamps – people asking for news, complaining of illness, looking for advice on how to deal with a troublesome mother-in-law.
Then came a woman of perhaps thirty-five, although she looked older, burdened with the weight of care and grief. I never discovered her name. She came quietly into the open mud-brick church. It was close to midnight. The others had drifted away and I found myself alone with her in the darkness.
‘May I speak with you, Moteyi ?’ she asked.
She addressed me as ‘teacher’. I usually tried to insist on ‘Richard’, but by now I was too tired to bother; so tired in fact that I had hoped to be left in peace. The church was no more than a tin shelter on poles with low walls open to the night and my ankles were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. But I knew she had probably been waiting in the shadows for her moment, and I didn’t have the heart to turn her away.
I said, ‘Of course.’
She sat beside me on the wooden bench.
‘I have come to you for help,’ she said.
‘In what way can I help you?’
‘You are from the Church.’
‘I only work for them, you know. I’m not an actual priest.’
I had meant the response to be self-effacing, but her silence told me she had no interest in such distinctions. In the light of the lantern I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. I pulled myself upright and listened.
‘I have brought nine children into the world,’ she said, wiping her face with the corner of her shawl. ‘Five of them are already in the ground.’
I said nothing. My own sadness illuminated her greater one with a stark clarity I had never experienced before. The endlessly repeated tragedy of Africa became, in that instant, personal to me.
‘I
I returned down the Sangassi with a few Congolese fellow travellers. We had been paddling for hours through trees that arched over the waterway forming a solid canopy overhead. I had reached the stage of near-anaesthetic weariness I sought when, out of nowhere, a tropical storm blew up. The frail canoe was gripped by the wind and the current and in a few seconds we were swept right out into the main Congo River – a vast sweep of shining water all around and towering cloud above.
We were all awed at the sight, struck dumb by it. We stopped our ineffectual paddling and let the river whirl us on. We were impotent before its power. A man in the bow sat back on his haunches and spread his arms wide to the torrential rain. ‘Behold!’ he cried. ‘Look upon the greatness of God!’
I found myself envying his certainty. For if I had gained some comfort during these turbulent months of wandering, I had begun to lose something too: the belief that all this toil was supposed to bolster. I had encountered suffering on a scale that had not even featured in my worst nightmares. Children, wives, fathers, husbands, grandparents, brothers and sisters: no one was beyond death’s grasp. It was a perpetual echo of my own loss, but the full import of what I had seen was not fully driven home to me until I stumbled upon a tiny village called Ntandembelo, on the very edge of the rainforest.
I got there long after dark and the villagers greeted me with their usual hospitality. They sat me by the fire, brought me a bowl of cold water so that I could wash and then gave me a meal of tough chikwanga and tiny fish from the local streams. We then moved under the tin roof of the church, where I was told a number of local people would like to speak to me. I sat there all evening, chatting to one villager after another in the glow of a couple of oil lamps – people asking for news, complaining of illness, looking for advice on how to deal with a troublesome mother-in-law.
Then came a woman of perhaps thirty-five, although she looked older, burdened with the weight of care and grief. I never discovered her name. She came quietly into the open mud-brick church. It was close to midnight. The others had drifted away and I found myself alone with her in the darkness.
‘May I speak with you, Moteyi ?’ she asked.
She addressed me as ‘teacher’. I usually tried to insist on ‘Richard’, but by now I was too tired to bother; so tired in fact that I had hoped to be left in peace. The church was no more than a tin shelter on poles with low walls open to the night and my ankles were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. But I knew she had probably been waiting in the shadows for her moment, and I didn’t have the heart to turn her away.
I said, ‘Of course.’
She sat beside me on the wooden bench.
‘I have come to you for help,’ she said.
‘In what way can I help you?’
‘You are from the Church.’
‘I only work for them, you know. I’m not an actual priest.’
I had meant the response to be self-effacing, but her silence told me she had no interest in such distinctions. In the light of the lantern I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. I pulled myself upright and listened.
‘I have brought nine children into the world,’ she said, wiping her face with the corner of her shawl. ‘Five of them are already in the ground.’
I said nothing. My own sadness illuminated her greater one with a stark clarity I had never experienced before. The endlessly repeated tragedy of Africa became, in that instant, personal to me.
‘I
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