Morocco to South Africa on a Shoestring (A brother and sister… 40 years ago): 48. Zaire: Kalemie

Lake Tanganyika is of course on of the oblong lakes formed by the separation of the African tectonic plates, also known as the Great Rift system.


Our travel in Zaire: Orange - rail, yellow - road, pink - air and green - lake steamer.

Lake Tanganyika seen from the Kalemie airport. The far mountains belong to Tanzania.

In our previous post we had flown from Lubumbashi in Southern Zaire. We were nearing the limit on our visa, and the 4 day train trip was considered to be suspect, and cost virtually the same as flying. We spent our first night at the Catholic Mission.

Kalemie, Zaire, Thursday, May 5^th, 1983

(DAN) About 2:00 a. m. we woke up to the sound of rain and thunder. When we pitched the tent, all the stars were out and neither of us thought “rain,” and the tent was not well prepared. Even so, we were pretty dry when we woke up at 0530. It continued to rain, and by 0700 the water was closing in on all fronts.We made a dash to our corner room and had breakfast. The water was off, so we had to catch rain water in our pan to make café con leche. Tasted mighty nice.

It continued to rain steadily until 1230, but fortunately there is a wide porch, and we sat on our packs reading and writing. A few kids came by and reported there was no school due to the rain. Soeur Claude came by for a chat. She explained that at the end of the rainy season (which we are) it likes to rain every night for a week; however such a long rain is uncommon. Our Michelin map includes rain charts for each of the major towns, and it appears that we shall be hitting the “end of the rainy season” until we get to Tanzania. We may be sorry we gave our rain pants away in Kolwezi.

The sun came out at 1300, and it did not take much more than an hour to dry all our stuff completely. Nothing like solar power. Two new excellent features have been discovered with our tent. If you turn it over on its side without removing the fiberglass rods, you can point a wet side into the sun, and air circulates inside as well. The other feature is that we just pick it up, frame and all, and put it inside the room we can lock. You may ask “Why don’t they just sleep in the room?” The monastery is very large and old, and at least the ground floor is damp through and through. All does not smell too swell. Besides, picky Dan sleeps the best in the tent.

After we got that stowed away, we went for a promenade. We needed to buy food, and we have yet to check in with the authorities here. This place is absolutely crawling with military blokes! But they are of the staring, friendly order and have no guns, unlike the Joes in Kolwezi. There was always a very uneasy feeling in that town. Two actually stopped to chat. The first, though he spoke in French, had studied for nine months in the U. S.; in fact it was at the United States Coast Guard Officers’ Candidate School!!! The second did not divulge his credentials but spoke fluent English. We were waiting for the secretary, Mademoiselle Nagond at the time. She is Belgian, by the way.

We headed out to the other end of town in search of the C. N. R. I. Whatever that means, it is the place where we got our papers in order to go to Burundi. It was closed, of course, at the late hour of 1600, so we just did a little more exploring.

Kalemie, like Victoria (Limbé), Cameroon, is one of the truly unique towns we have visited. It is mainly one street wide with Lake Tanganyika on one side and fairly steep, grassy hills right behind. The main street has a lot of the palm trees that lean away from the wind, and the architecture is colonial. One building is dated 1936 which may be pretty representative. There are a couple of streets that head up between the hills, but they are mainly for the European type neighborhoods. Architecture in Zaire has been colonial in general, but here it is kept up better than any other place.

Hills backing Kalemie, Zaire.

There is a drainage problem with all the rain water. At the lowest place along the main street the water is standing in store porches and up to a foot deep in some of the stores themselves. There are a lot of boards and stepping stones, and it is all pretty muddy.

There has been an abrupt change in the people. In Kolwezi, especially at Gecamines or the hospital there were a few mulattoes. In Lubumbashi there was a good bit of black-white mixture. But here in Kalemie we are really getting back into the Arab sphere of influence. There are men in flowing robes again. Most of the store keepers have lighter skin and wavy hair. Noses are now more aquiline. There is even evidence of Indian blood. The stores are more prosperous and boast a wide variety for the size of town.

Lake Tanganyika has a very interesting history (at least what I know of it). The first “white men” to see it were Richard Burton and John Speke (1858). They were on an expedition out of Zanzibar looking for the source of the Nile. Burton decided that Lake Tanganyika was the source, so they started back without checking anything. Burton liked Arabs, so he decided to stay a while at Tabora. Speke could not speak Arabic, so he made an expedition north and found Lake Victoria. Burton and Speke did not get along at all by now, so Speke (who was right) arbitrarily declared Lake Victoria as the source. The issue became a national debate in England, and finally after a few years the two men were scheduled to debate the matter (a la “theory of evolution”) in front of the Royal Geographic Society. That very afternoon Speke killed himself while out hunting, either by chance or on purpose -- nobody knows. They had each made another trip out, but did not bother to circle the lakes to prove it. Enter Stanley, obnoxious U. S. journalist, 1874, and breaks in on the polite British business of exploration. In one trip from Zanzibar, towing the boat, “Lady Jane”, he circumnavigates Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika, finds the Upper Congo river and floats out to the Atlantic. Subject closed. Of course the Arabs have known these regions for years, but that does not count; they did not write a book about it.

The kids came and stood around after school again. Helena neglected to mention that yesterday as they were crowding around, one kid made an astounding discovery, “She’s got pants on!” Another kid, unbelieving. “Cest vrai?’ (Something on the par of “You’re kidding!” or “well, carry me back!”)

Helena in her revolutionary trousers by the mission wall.

It is apparently part of the culture here (and a lot of places we have visited) that they are not shy about asking for things. “Do you have something to eat?” “Can I have an orange?” Actually it is “Give me that map” or “Give me any magazine or romance you have!” It gets old rather quickly.

One young man, Crispin, came by to talk a while. He had been to Burundi, so we talked about that. He wanted to know where we had been, etc. Then he started saying that he would really like to go with us if he had the money. No, actually all he needs is Z300. Yes, with Z300 he would be perfectly happy, and so on. It is discouraging to try conversation. He came by again today, and it somehow became understood that we would promenade at two o’clock on Saturday. One of the really disturbing things about traveling is that you rarely meet people who are not deliberately seeking out westerners’ company and the things that it might lead to.

We have been enjoying the fruit here --oranges, bananas, papayas (us$.06 each).

Kalemie, Zaire, Friday, May 6, 1983

(HELENA) After we had packed up our things to store them away in our room and picked up the tent to put it inside, we set off for town. We bought a few things (including our first replacement batteries for the flashlight) and discovered what we already suspected; there are no CAMPINGAZ gas canisters for sale here.We ran out of our first bottle this morning (we were able to use it 18 times to make tea or coffee) so now we shall have to be more choosy about when we use it and can only hope that they exist farther along our route.

We stopped by the port to reserve officially our places for Monday, and went to the CNRI to get permission to leave Zaire. According to them, we can get our Burundi visas on the spot. By that time it had started raining, but we just put on our trusty rain jackets and walked up a hill into a nice residential area. As Dan has already mentioned, it is a beautiful town, and this particular part has tree-lined streets winding from house to house. From the top of the hill we could see grass-covered hills with a few houses nestled in the bottoms of the valleys. Almost every house on “our” hill had a spectacular view of Lake Tanganyika.

Lake Tanganyika near dusk.

While we were at the top, it started raining in earnest, so we sat under the eaves of a house to wait it out. We spent the afternoon back at the mission, Dan reading The White Nile, and I The Washing of the Spears (about the 1879 Zulu war in South Africa and the birth of the Zulu nation) and both of us looking up frequently to greet little (and not-so-little) boys who would come to greet and/or bother. Today we tried to be more patient and good-humored about the whole thing. We waited until after dark to set our tent out again so as to attract as little attention as possible. Pretty nice to be able to pick up the tent and only fool with four stakes.Once again we were in bed by 19:40.

Kalemie, Zaire, Saturday, 7 May, 1983

(DAN) Today was a TRYING day. First thing on the agenda was to buy our boat tickets. We already had our reservations but had been told to come pay for them this morning between 0700 and 0800. When I got there at 0730 there were long double lines at each of the four windows, but none of the windows was opened yet. It turned out that three lines were for train tickets, so I settled into “my” line for a wait. The window itself did not open until 0930, and then the rush began. I was maybe # 20 in line, but I did not worry about being there long until all the people started coming in from the sides.

It is incomprehensible to me, but as 21 of us stood calmly in line, a greater number of others went to the front, leaned over the railing, and pushed in to buy their tickets. The people in the line would smile sheepishly and shrug their shoulders. When I would object vocally, the line busters would also smile and shrug their shoulders and say, “We’re in a hurry.” We all HAD reservations!!

To say the least I was in a foul mood on the way home, so I was not too polite when a young Canadian boy on a moped stopped to talk. His parents are Pentecostal missionaries, and he said they have a policy of inviting all the tourists they see to a meal and to stay if they want. He was about 13 years old and quite a talker and informed me on the spot that he was in the fishing business and could make up to Z3.00 per day. He cannot speak French but can speak Swahili fluently. We finally agreed that if everything worked out well, we would go out to his house the next day, and we could all go swimming. He knows a place that does not have bilharzia. His name is William Willner.

When I got back to Helena at the mission, it was to find that a group of children had been hanging around her all morning. When we would be writing or reading, they would say “good morning”, “hello”, “bonjour”, etc. until she would look up and acknowledge them. When we would look at them, then they would not say anything. We would ask them if they wanted to talk, and they would answer, “Yes, give us some money,” or “Give us some bread!” And on and on.

They disappeared long enough for us to eat but returned when we were trying to get a nap in the room. I had agreed to go walking with Crispin at 1400. When I left, they were really gathering along with some older children. One young man about 16 or 17 had been hanging around off and on since we had arrived. Well, Crispin did not show, so after a half hour, I headed back up to the mission. All the children were gone except the young man; he was hanging on the window to the room looking in. Helena was absolutely burning! He had been pestering her all the time I was gone with obscene gestures and propositions. I chased him off, but it was the last straw. We figured the priests (whom we still had not seen) could hear all this noise going on and were fed up as well.

Helena suggested I go to see if the Willners might have room for us to pitch a tent. I set off right away. Their house turned out to be 3 kms away and well out of town. Two of their children were on the porch and pounced on me as I appeared. “Do you know how to make dogs from balloons?” “Do you like our pet monkey?” Mr. Willner appeared tired but said they indeed had a private place in their back yard and an outhouse, and we were welcome to use it.

William accompanied me part way back into towns and I got part of their story. They are Pentecostal faith missionaries. They have been here two years, but he said his mother and two sisters have been seeing signs in their Bible reading saying that they should go home soon. They first came out because his mother had two dreams: in the first the Lord told her to take the pictures off the wall and be prepared to go to Africa. She did not take heed, and soon after their car was set on fire and their father burned his hand badly. That night Mrs. Willner had the second dream in which their house burned down. When she asked the Lord the reason, he said it was because she had not taken the pictures down. So within a week $1000 had come in for their fares and they were off[1].

There is much more to the story because as we found out, they had 6 children, the oldest 14 at the time, and Mrs. W. was 8 months pregnant with the seventh when they finally got here to Kalemie. They went first to Kenya for language school, but it was closed, so they came straight on. They all speak pretty fluent Swahili now. The house they are living in now is on a Garanganze compound, but the church people were so glad to have missionaries that they are living in the place “free of rent”. Even so, it is pretty close quarters because aside from the 7 children, they have a young woman from Canada living with them and helping in the work.

I returned to Helena, and we quickly got our stuff together and walked back out. Before we left, I went to pay and thank the priests. Though there were 12 cars parked up there, I could not raise anybody and finally settled with the cook. It was certainly one of our more uneasy living arrangements.

The Willners, especially the children, really welcomed us and insisted we eat supper with them. Mr. Willner said several times that they were starved for “American” company. Sure enough, the kids took turns bending our ears right to the time we got into our sleeping bags. It appears that we were really spoiled by our quiet, private visit with the Frenches.

I am not sure that at this time the Willners are convinced that we REALLY ARE brother and sister.

Kalemie, Sunday, 8 May, 1983

(HELENA) Happy Mothers’ Day, Mother, Grandmother, Aunt Ruth Ann, Aunt Helen, etc. We would not have remembered that it was Mothers’ Day in the U. S. A. except that the Willners make a big deal of it. Yesterday a couple of the girls had shown us the gifts they had bought, and they had told us that they were going to fix a special breakfast for her. (Ed: that amused me because on that Sunday morning about half of the comics were about mothers who had been recipients of special breakfasts and then gone in to clean up a kitchen in shambles with every pan and dish dirty.) This morning Dan and I decided to let them celebrate as a family, so we had our granola with milk and listened to their balloon-popping, etc. At about 9:00 the two boys hopped on their moped and the ten of us popped (hardly) into their Russian-made Lada-Niva; two parents in the front with 16 year-old Deborah between the two seats and 2-year-old Christine on her mother’s (Fern) lap. I sat in the back seat with Ruth (12) and Mina (10) and Darlene, the co-worker, while Dan scrunched up in the luggage space with 5-year-old Bethanie. Dan and I offered several times to walk, but they insisted that there was plenty of room.

As we drove up to the church (the service had already begun) Bethanie pronounced that she liked that church because “they sing a little, preach a little, and out ya go.” She was right, the service only lasted two hours. This time we got to hear an excellent children’s choir and a very different women’s choir. The women used some instruments that we had never seen, but that we are told are common here. They puncture a rectangular oil can all over, put tiny rocks inside and put a tight cap over the opening. They use these to rattle some rather intricate rhythms by holding them in both hands and, I think, somehow making use of the short and long sides of the can. After the service Deborah and Ruth demonstrated for me.It looks simple, but they have trouble doing the easier rhythms and have yet to learn the more complicated ones.

Mr. Willner (Charles) gave the sermon in Swahili, and we heard a testimony and a couple of special musical numbers. Deborah had brought her guitar (it was relegated to the rack on top of the car) so she talked to the congregation and sang a couple of gospel songs in Swahili. The parents do fairly well, but of course the children all do very well after two years of speaking Swahili. Deborah is a junior (so far they are all doing correspondence courses through the Canadian government system) very attractive, and the most convinced of all of the need to save souls.

Of all the U. Methodist church services we have been in here in Zaire, we have really only understood the one that was in French, but this time Dan sat with Jeffrey and William and I with Deborah, thus allowing us to get a running translation of EVERYTHING that went on and more.

We all went back to the house for a special Mothers’ Day dinner and after a good siesta some of us went almost as far as the aerodrome to swim in the lake. The parents were busy, so Deborah drove us (the girls, Dan and me) out there. They told us that they drive that far in order to escape the bilharzia that there is near the city, but frankly, I could not help but think that if one part of the lake was contaminated, the rest must be, too. Even so, it was mighty nice swimming --sandy floor, fair waves, and the only other people were clear down the beach. They are rather short of water at the house (they get water pumped into their cistern a couple of times a week, but they are not the only ones to draw water from it) so we took along soap and shampoo. A definite first for me to try to wash my hair in a lake with the waves breaking against me. A bit difficult, but I ended up being helped by Deborah and Ruth. Quite a production.

The great hair washing Lake Tanganyika.

As we were leaving to return home, we saw some Belgian acquaintances of theirs (employees of the cotton factory, FILTISAF) so we stopped to greet them. Willners do not speak French, so they communicate in English with their Belgian friends and one Greek, and in Swahili with the rest of the Greek community. As Deborah hopped out of the car, she asked if we minded waiting. She particularly wanted to speak to this young woman because “she is open, and I really want her to be saved!” They chatted for a minute, and as Deborah got back into the car, Bethanie innocently and seriously asked “Is she saved yet?”

Last night we discovered that the Willners always gather before going to bed to sing and listen to a couple of chapters of a book or devotions. They all are musical and Deborah plays and sings very well, so we really enjoyed it. Tonight some of us sat on the porch, and I played and Dan and I sang some Latin American songs, and then Dan and Deborah worked on Mina’s sores. Sounds simple, but at suppertime Mina had been complaining about the sores. At first everyone ignored it, but finally Mr. Willner asked Deborah to work on them. Only when Dan started to cleanse them, did we realize why everyone avoided the whole thing. Before Dan could even touch her with any substance, she would begin to scream as though in great pain. For some reason she just has not learned to control her fear of pain, so it made for a long drawn-out session of coaxing, soothing, and screaming. Afterward she was fine, but….

Once again the whole family got together to sing. Ruth sings contralto and there are usually some other voices provided by Mrs. W. and maybe Darlene. Then we listened to Mr. W. read two chapters from a book written by a South African Pentecostal faith healer, etc. I cannot say that I agreed with the author’s admiration for riches or his belief that these material riches will be provided, but Dan and I really like the idea of reading together that way.

Kalemie, Zaire, Monday, 9 May, 1983

(DAN) Getting up time is a real production here, lasting close to two hours, so Helena and I again fixed our breakfast. Actually, it is amazing that we never once had to wait to use the outhouse. At times there were 16 people in and about the household. It is, as some people say, “unreal” how much clothes washing and cleaning a family of ten generates. The Willners have two clothes washers and a cook (all female) and a man who does the ironing in the afternoon. Then there is the woman who washes the dishes at night and on the weekend. This is the first household we have been in since Upper Volta that uses female labor instead of “boys”.

Mr. Willner and Darlene left early to go teach at the Bible School, and with all the kids studying, you would think we would have a quiet morning. However with six kids on correspondence, somebody is always in recess.

There were as well several well-attended spectacles. First was the treatment of Mina’s sores. She has four “tropical abscesses”, two on each side of her left ankle. The more she screamed as I tried to clean, the more people gathered. All the help, neighbors’ children, etc. gathered (we were in the back yard) and she got more and more frightened. Wow! Then when it looked as if it were about to rain, the same crowd assembled to watch us take down the tent, roll sleeping bags, etc. Actually, we had a very pleasant place to pass the time. Deborah and Ruth set up two reclining chairs in the shade by our tent, and it was here that we killed time waiting for the boat.

Dan writing in the diary in the Willmer back yard. Kalemie.

The boat was scheduled to leave at 1600, and we were ready to leave. We were willing to walk the 6 kms to the dock, but Mr. Willner insisted on taking us. We preferred to go down well in advance, but he assured us that it would leave several hours late and that there was no hurry. We repeated our intention of walking, and he would say, “I’ll be ready in a little while.” Finally at 1530, he was ready, and we were nervous.

He was only too right; when we got to the dock, there was no crowd of people, and it turned out that the departure had been postponed for a day. Now we really got to feeling uncomfortable. We had been at the Willners now for two days, so we told him that we would find someplace else to stay. He insisted that we stay on. We accepted but decided to walk home to buy some things for the trip. When we got back to the house, we said “Hi” as if we belonged there, and come to find out, Mr. Willner, long back, had not even mentioned that the boat failed to leave. There are just so many strings winding in the household that we almost felt as if we had to negotiate our stay with each member. Oh yes, and back up went the tent.

I had a long conversation with Mr. Willner in the evening and found that on one point at least my book on the Nile is wrong. It said that Stanley had made two trips to Lake Tanganyika at Ujiji (where he connected with Livingston) and the second time the water was at least two feet higher than his last visit. Therefore he deduced (the book said “correctly”) that the lake had no outlets and therefore could not be the source of the Nile. Well, the lake does have one outlet, and that is the river right here at Kalemie near Kongolo. Therefore it is actually one of the sources of the Congo (Zaire, that is). We had noticed that the water seemed to flow in the wrong direction (away from the lake), but figured it was some sort of tide.

We also got a full report on a book the family had recently read together in the evening. It is a three generational biography written by a Zairois. It started with his grandfather and his first contact with Belgian colonizers through the colonial period and continued at least through the Simba rebellion in the sixties (that was put down by Tshombe’s mercenary-led Katangan gendarmes).

This man had belonged to a clan that had been slaves traditionally. Apparently a main point was that though the Belgians were harsh, even brutal, they ended the slavery system and treated all Africans equally. After independence the story dealt with the persecution and renewed subjection of his people. It told that his tribe had to be evacuated on a train from Lubumbashi or face death.

One of the things that was described was the Belgian system of colonization where everybody was forced to work (the Frenches mentioned a time when all men were forced to grow a garden). If they missed a day of work, they were whipped, etc. They were “paid” with cloth and salt, but the lines between that and slavery are nebulous, as are in fact the differences between colonization from Brussels and colonization from Kinshasa. Forced labor would go a long way toward explaining the good roads and productive labor preceding 1960. Some people will always say they were better off then, others now. One frequent comment is that in colonial times “many laborers could afford bicycles, and now virtually none are sold”. This difference of opinion with regard to colonization we found within the Methodist Church as well.

Another comment: FILTISAF, the cloth company here can get cotton shipped more cheaply from the U. S. than they can get farmers to grow it here. (Unsubstantiated.) (In retrospect this might have been an artifact of the absurd official exchange rate at the time).

Unfortunately, Willners were not able to supply us with the full name of the book they described. Mr. W. did the main part of the storytelling, but several of the children were sitting there and would often offer a detail or correct something he said.

Kalemie, Zaire, Tuesday, 10 May, 1983

(HELENA) Naturally, our day started out with “Will we or won’t we leave today?” Then I got up and fixed our luxurious cup of café con leche. We get up before the family does, so we can heat the water on their stove without getting too much in the way. Mother, you would love the water here. As I mentioned before, it is pumped into their cistern, but I neglected to say that it is the city that does the pumping, and the water comes from the lake. It was a bit of a shock to pull my first bucket of water and see cute little bigheaded worms swimming to and fro. From then onwe just used their boiled water and did not use our different purification systems.

Our getting ready this morning was much more leisurely than it was yesterday because we only had to put up the tent, sleeping bags, and pajamas. Yesterday we had clothes drying, boots to be polished, and water containers to be filled with drinking water for the trip. We were soon ready, so Dan went into town with Mrs. W. (she had to go in to shop) to check on the boat’s departure, and I stayed at the house to work with Mina on some school work that her teacher in Canada had asked her to re-do. During her break we worked a little on her recorder. It would be so hard to give individual attention to seven children.

Dan returned on foot to report that the verdict was that we would leave at 1500 or 1600 (the former according to the ticket window). Dan and I thought we should try to be there before the earlier hour just in case, but Mr. W. once again assured us that it would leave at around 18:00. We could not very well say “Please take us now” (or “we’ll walk, thank you” for that matter) so we tried to act cool and collected while talking with Mrs.W. I think she kind of agreed with us, but he said we would go when he had finished writing a letter. Finally we left the house at 15:00, and Dan and I were steeling ourselves to find the boat already gone.

ALMOST. We drove up to immigration, and once again Mr. W. commented that things looked mighty empty. They stamped our passports without a single question (as always they had to inspect every single page of the accordion passport additions and probably never saw our Zaire visas) jumped into the car and drove on farther to the gate leading to the dock.Fortunately, the soldier guarding the gate was a friend of Mr. W.’s, so we drove right on in. The boat was just ready to pull away, so I jumped on as best I could (what with keeping my balance with my pack on and trying not to step on anyone on the crowded boat) and did not really say “goodbye”to Mr. W. Dan was a little more correct since he had to get out the tickets, but at the most there were 30 seconds between our arrival at the boat and the moment when it definitely started to back out. Whew! The boat had already been free but not moving determinedly.