Through my acquaintance with Craig Butler, I was, in a sense, meeting another Africa, so very different from the one my Belgian peers experienced. Craig was born in Rhodesia and considered himself a white African. England was an abstraction to which he felt indebted only culturally, and it wouldn’t have dawned on him that one day he might go and live there. The notion of mother country was alien to him. The chasm separating Craig from Tshikapa or Mama Malkia was as wide as an ocean.
VII. THE SEEDS OF M’SIRI
Of my rare journeys into the Interior, one stands out as a true revelation.
On my way to the village of Bunkeya, where I was to visit a missionary, my car got stuck. A chip of stone had perforated the radiator, causing the engine to overheat. It was early in the afternoon and thirty kilometers of dirt road separated me from my destination. An hour and a half passed and there was still no vehicle in sight. The sun was pounding viciously, but in spite of the heat I decided I would walk, for certainly I would come across a hamlet.
Throat parched, head unprotected, I began to stagger, feeling dizzy, a speck of humanity in the Katangese wilderness. Fear gripped me, but only for a brief moment as I soon slithered into an hallucinatory state. The sea of high grass dotted with anthills reeled before my eyes, hues of ochre alternating with sweeping flashes of light. At a certain point I had the impression of touching the sky with my fingertips; it was set ablaze, then obsessively I sought after the sun’s disc, but it was nowhere to be seen. I heard myself whine at its disappearance as if some vital organ was slowly being wrenched from me.
There followed a harrowing confusion of the senses. The silence of an instant ago hummed in my ears till it boomed into a ceaseless, bloody clang. My limbs were subjected to an inner flagellation, and I must have fallen face down, for the last thing I can recall is the floury taste of laterite dust.
Temples throbbing, I awoke in dimly lit surroundings. A few inches above me two round, eager eyes met my dulled gaze. They were flickering at me, and when I began to focus, I realized they belonged to a splendid black cherub. Those inquiring eyes had a message.
“Where do you come from, you strange man with such funny color skin and strands of hair like silk? This is my home, you know.”
I felt the raffia mat over which my body was stretched and the hard earth around it. Some sort of cataplasm covered my forehead, pricking the flesh. I heard the shuffling of feet and a “hush-hush” order to which the child promptly responded. He ran to the corner of the hut, but didn’t cease to stare in my direction.
An elderly woman — her cheeks crinkled like parchment — approached me, stooped by my side, then took my hand in hers and bid me welcome in Kiswahili. She must have been quite old. I noticed it in her manner of speech as she addressed me in the third person.
“The fair bwana was in a bad shape. He may now be reassured, for the evil spirits have been discarded and soon he will be able to get up,” she said with the half-smile of a sage . She nodded her head, murmuring what were, I believe, incantations.
She rose, went to the source of light opposite the hut’s entrance — gentle crackling of a log fire — and brought me a calabash filled with a whitish brew.
“Swallow this,” she commanded, pressing her free hand against my neck so that I could drink. “It’s warm and will do you good.”
It was thick and sour, a sort of porridge with an aftertaste of…blood. I suddenly remember that it is customary among certain tribes to prepare beverages with fresh oxen blood. Milk and blood. It was pretty awful, but Mheshimiwa (the venerable woman) wouldn’t leave me until I downed the entire content of her potion.
Still squatting at the other end of the hut — a bronze-hued glow licking his profile — the boy hadn’t missed a moment of the scene. He had evidently never seen a white man before. He might have been wondering whether I was in my normal state. Was I perhaps a reincarnation of one of those spirits his elders sometimes mentioned?
He looked more intrigued than frightened, though. In spite of his tender age, I felt a power in his glance, a kind of challenge.
The fog gradually cleared in my mind, yet I continued to float in a limbo. I had been thrust into another age, into a place so remote, I let myself be immersed in it. The sensation was one of mystery and solace at once. The arms of my wristwatch showed a quarter to three. Even time had stopped.
“M’siri,” the old woman called, pointing her chin towards the cherub, “go fetch your father!”
“M’siri”, where, when had I heard that name? “M’siri,” I whispered to myself, letting the syllables roll over my lips like air bubbles.
It went back far, very far. Yes, to Baltimore. John had once read me something about a famous Congolese chief. As I was trying to reminisce, the child reappeared, accompanied by a bare-chested man wearing a loincloth and an amulet round his neck. The man came near me. He sported a mustache with a shaggy beard. I could also notice the deep scarifications on the centerline of his forehead and along the jaws in collar-like fashion. He could have been anywhere between thirty and forty-five.
“Greetings, bwana,” he said, after having respectfully bowed to Mheshimiwa. “It is I, Kalassa, who have found you on the roadside and carried you here. I see my venerable grandmother is taking good care of you. We’ve notified Bunkeya of your presence here and asked them to send a mechanic. In the meantime our mganga is preparing some new medicine for you. He suggests that you remain here this evening as well as tomorrow night before you take to the road again.”
I was already feeling better and, secretly relishing the idea of being pampered in such an unfamiliar setting, I accepted the invitation without feigning protest.
“May the spirits be gentle to you,” he enunciated and left the hut.
Little M’Siri stayed next to me while Mheshimiwa was talking with someone at the entrance. It must have been the mganga, for an instant later she forced me to gulp down one of his ill-flavored concoctions.
“Here, the Bwana will suck this,” she conceded, taking pity.
With a grimace I licked the honey stick she held to me.
“Now the Bwana must rest, at least till cockcrow,” she stated, motioning little M’Siri to go to sleep. She put out the fire, and I heard her softly sing the child a lullaby. Its monotonous refrain helped me switch from one dream world to another. Was I not in the hands of kindly spirits?
The next morning, though still somewhat weak, I no longer had fever. After a breakfast of bukari, hashed leaves, and white honey, Mheshimiwa presented me with the mganga’s inescapable home-brewed goodies.
With the daylight filtering through the hut’s thatched dome, I was able to better appreciate the objects that kept me company. Little M’Siri, whose features were lighter than I had initially thought, gratified me with his first broad smile.
“If you’re almost cured, it’s also thanks to me,” he beamed.
He had a frizzy, toffee-colored crown of hair and pupils so large they shone like embers amid two gleaming circles of mother-of-pearl. He was indeed arresting in his calm, angelic beauty.
Changing the cataplasm and dabbing my forehead with a moist cloth, Mheshimiwa remarked, “The Bwana has taken a liking to young M’Siri. Yes, I’m proud of him and I’m sure the spirit of our ancestor, the great Chief M’Siri after whom he’s been named is watching over him. How many children has the Bwana fathered?”
To my negative answer, she responded sternly. “What is the Bwana waiting for? He needs sons to carry his seed.”
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