44. Zaire: Muajinga - Musumba- Chitazu

For many readers these three posts from western Katanga (Shaba) will have a heavy emphasis on visits to Methodist missions. Of course our host, Mr. French, was a Methodist agricultural missionary contacted through our own parents of the same denomination. Dan was in the middle of his university studies of soil and water conservation.   But the broader context was that though NGOs were just beginning to appear around the world, much of the agricultural work was still done through missions.  In fact a lot of the early NGOs, in our experience, were staffed by people who had previously worked for one church or another.  The Zaire government appeared to be absent from the area, with the exception of the dreaded soldiers.  In short it was the only way to observe agricultural development work in that part of Africa.

Since independence this had become a very remote part of Africa.  The border was closed into Angola, and in the nearly two weeks that we travelled, well over 1000 kms, we only met one other vehicle on the roads. Though the diary does not mention it, I recall that we met a single dump truck providing public transportation.  It still had the lettering of Japanese aid to Zaire, one of many trucks that “disappeared” into the hands of President Mobutu’s friends and relatives once they arrived in the country.  The new owners did not even bother to erase the lettering on the sides of the cab.

In fact so much of Zaire (today Congo again) was inaccessible, that the Methodist Church had six full-time pilots working for “Aire Methodiste”.

Detail of this portion of the trip: yellow in Miss ruth, red in diesel Landrover and blue on the motor cycle

Muajinga (Sandoa) - Musumba, Zaire. Saturday, 16 April, 1983

(DAN) Our schedule had us going to Kapanga today, which is another 240 kms over a terrible road. We wanted to leave early, but we got word that Mr. Woodcock was flying in from Lubumbashi with a Peace Corps Volunteer who needed to get to Kapanga as well. This meant that we had to wait for the plane before we could leave. It is a three hour flight from Lubumbashi, and they did not take off until 0900, so we had another morning to spend. Of course, Mr. French had people 3 deep wanting to talk with him. He had bus­iness to finish up with the new director, and was trying to gather seeds from some desir­able plants, so he was not ready to depart when the plane arrived.

The arrival itself was rather confusing. We heard the plane approach, so we headed out toward the strip. Instead of landing, however, it flew over wagging its wings. Then after it flew over a second time we decided something was wrong so we started running across the “station” toward the radio room.   By the time we got there, he came in again and landed. It turned out that people had run out on the strip and were standing across the end, and Mr. Woodcock refuses to land in that situation. Mr. French said that an air official came from the U.S. to evaluate the Aire Methodiste, and that Mr. Woodcock who is in his sixties was “scored” the safest pilot, much to the chagrin of all five younger pilots.

There is some discontent here (in Muajinga) with the flying service. It is felt that since there are no more missionaries in Sandoa-Muajinga, airplanes don´t come any more. They go “up to six weeks between flights”.

Along with the Peace Corps dude, Bill, there was another passenger aboard who wanted to go to Kapanga with us, a French commercant. Mr. French had agreed to take one of the woman patients we saw yesterday, so it took us another hour to get everything sorted and loaded. In the confusion we met Howard, Diane’s husband. We also talked with Mrs. Wood­cock whom we first met back in Kinshasa, and met Mr. Woodcock. The two of them were going to stay the weekend in Sandoa before flying on to Kamina on Monday.

When we finally rolled off, we were really loaded: 8 passengers, sundry baggage,-100 lbs. of salt (we had to leave the big bag of salt that Mr. French bought for our hosts in Kapanga) maybe 150 lbs. of manioc meal (50 for the woman patient). It was hot, dusty, and we had 8 hours of bouncing ahead of us.

The person who suffered the most was the patient. She had what Mr. French described as a “deep tropical abscess” on the right breast, and she would cry out with every heavy bounce. The roads that we have been traveling recently consist of two main tracks with (by now) dry, hardened mud ruts or patches of sand. On the inclines there are diagonal eroded ruts. One of the common topics of conversation is the state of the road as compared with colonial times when these country roads were 35 mph standard. We averaged 30 kms or 18 mph. The common car used in those days was a GMC station wagon where now nothing runs out here now except 4 wheel drives.

Landscape near Sandoa (Muajinga) Zaire.

We passed through more tremendously beautiful country. We were running parallel to the Lulua River all day though a lot of the time we were driving on the ridges of the up­land between its valley and the next one east. It was savannah, of course, but long cool patches of forest with sandy soil was also common. We stopped once at “Missionary Falls” where a large stream crosses a granite outcropping. It seems that the Frenches passed some days of their honeymoon camped here, so he always makes the practice of stopping here.

He also pointed out where the Methodist missionary was “executed” by the rebels in the 1977 war (or 80-day War). Apparently the rebels had held a mock trial and some disgruntled employees and ex-students had spoken against him. Dr. Eschtruth was a surgeon and head of the hospital here. After the trial they supposedly were taking him back to Angola for his execution. Instead they got 70 kms. down the road and shot him. His wife did not find out for three weeks. (Ed: we met his widow at a summer conference in 1977 very shortly after it had happened.) The people at Sandoa had more warning, and wives and Peace Corps were evacuated by plane before the rebels arrived. Then the men left behind chose to go back across the border into Angola with the rebels rather than wait for the Moroccan-Zaire forces. They got back to the U.S. via Luanda. Their wives did not hear from them for more than three weeks as well.

We rolled into the station at Kapanga about 2030, and after depositing our passengers in town, we sat down to a big supper with the Wolfords and Marty Hertzog. The conversa­tion centered around the recent installation of the new Great Chief, the Mwanti Yaav. 

The Wolfords are a couple that came out with the Peacocks[1] in 1960 and have been in the SAME house ever since. He is a pastor, but now is occupied with retranslating the Bible into Lunda, the language of the great tribe by the same name. He obviously speaks Lunda very well.

Apparently the Mwanti Yaavs have been officially Methodists for quite a while now, at least fifty years. In fact there is a sort of throne for him up on the dais of the church here alongside the pulpit and preachers. When the new chief was named and came to church the first Sunday, he declared he would sit down with the “people,” much to everyone’s relief (at least the missionaries’). Well, the next Sunday the pastor preached a rip-roaring sermon that had some illustrations that among other things were construed by the Mwanti Yaav to mean that the pastor had cast a spell over him.

A big controversy ensued, Mr. Wolford made several trips to see him, and finally he agreed to return to church, but only if he sat up on the dais. Anyway, the pastor was suspended by the district superintendent. The church’s tie with the chief is apparently very important as the hospital, school of nursing, school of pedagogy, etc., are all at Musumba, 8 kms. from Kapanga. Musumba by definition means “the place where the Mwanti Yaav is”.

Musumba, Zaire Sunday, 17 April, 1983

(HELENA) Just in case any of you are confused as to the name of this place, so was I. All the time we planned this trip, we talked of going to Kapanga, but we have yet to set foot there. As Dan just said, the mission station is at Musumba, or at least it is there for the time being. If the Mwanti Yaav so desired, he could move his “court” to another location, and THAT would become “Musumba,” leaving the current one with no name. The Belgians during colonial days assigned this place to a former Mwanti Yaav, and the ones that followed him chose to leave it there.

I slept at the house of Pauline Chambers who is a pediatrician, director of the hos­pital, and director of the school of nursing. After we had breakfast with her, the four of us walked into the center of Musumba for church. We made it just in the nick of time because we arrived at the square (upon which you find the U. Methodist and Catholic churches and the Mwanti Yaav’s palace) just as the U. Methodist women accompanied the chief from his home to the church amid loud whoops and beating drums. In fact we slipped in the front side door just as the chief sat down on his raised throne.

I am one who often thinks the traditional is better than the modern, “civilized” way, but I am afraid this business of treating anybody with such honor any place, but especially in a church, goes against my “democratic heritage”. The pastors and superintendents were allowed to sit on the platform, but way at the back and on folding chairs.

The service was all in Lunda, so our minds were free to wander. There was the usual offering procession; even the Mwanti Yaav walked down to the baskets, one for the men, one for the women, and one for the young people. The choir was much smaller, but enjoy­able.  They even had two electric guitars hooked up to a battery which made for a pleasing sound level. To make it longer they had communion. Quite a commotion because some of the men would have to pick up the little glasses hurriedly so they could be rushed backstage to be refilled for the next comers. The chief did not take communion, but I do not know if it was by choice or by tradition.

At the end of the service the big chief was the first to leave, and everyone stood to watch him go. All during the 2 1/2 hour service, two of his attendants stood at atten­tion, one right behind him and one to the side. Every time he would go up or down the stairs, one of them would offer his arm for him to support himself. He looks young al­though we later learned that he is somewhat over 50. He was dressed in a new black pin­stripe suit with the blouse collar of the jacket in the Zairois mode. I guess it is the style that has evolved since neckties are outlawed. If a shirt is worn under it, you cannot see it. Pinned to his jacket was the little green Zairois flag with Mobutu’s picture on it.

We had lunch with Hugh and Elizabeth Frazier. He is a surgeon at the hospital who is in charge of the women’s ward, shares the surgical load with a Zairois doctor, and teaches a bit at the nursing school. She teaches English at the high school. They have a son who is a pilot who flies on a contract for the U. Methodists and another son who is studying aviation. It is quite a fad because the Wolfords have one son who has just been accepted by the Board as a pilot (obviously the one mentioned above), another who is train­ing to be a pilot, and Andy, who is still in high school but wants to be a pilot. We had a relaxed afternoon, the first good rest Mr. French has had, and then supper again with Pauline. They have some delicious mushrooms here that they are able to serve in quantities. Oh, and tea time over at the Wolfords’. You should see our puffy cheeks!

All of the missionaries got together for a worship service at Wolfords’. We sang and listened to a taped sermon.

Musumba – Chitazu, Zaire. Monday, 18 April, 1983

(DAN) When Mr. French first planned this big trip (when discussed in Swahili it comes out as “safari”) we wanted to go on to Chitazu (Chitanzu on the modern map above), 200 kms, on to the northeast of Kapanga. The Methodist Church has an ag school there as well. Since gasoline simply is not to be found here in Zaire, that extra leg had been ruled out. However, Mr. Wolford was send­ing his own diesel Land Rover out to take the district superintendent to Chitazu. They had room for two more persons, so Mr. French and I decided to continue on. It would be another six hours in both directions.

They had to change the spring on the Land Rover, so we did not leave until 1400 hrs. Mr. Wolford appears to be quite a mechanic, has a fully outfitted garage, and stocks around $5,000 of Land Rover parts and $5,000 of Chevy Blazer parts all the time.

The Land Rover was assembled in South Africa and has many differences including the right-hand drive. “Miss Ruth” has six extra air vents that the vehicle’s former owners took from large trucks and installed especially, one in each door. Instead of having a second row of comfortable seats, in the diesel Rover there are benches running down either side. We have been spoiled.

Though hot, it was an enjoyable ride. The road was our “bushiest” yet, and went on for 200 kms. One nice feature is that such a road reflects beautifully the changes in soil, red to white, sandy to clay. One appreciates every bounce over a rock out­cropping, etc. Now all this trip we have traveled discussing the soil and vegetation (Mr. French has a master’s in range science) but today we were especially close to ecosystem changes. Since Mr. French can speak Lunda, we got a couple of the passengers into the conversation. They pointed out where they would or would not make a garden. Most of the time they could not say WHY, but they did point out several plants (mostly leguminous trees) that are tradi­tional signs of fertility, and would thus be favorable places to place a garden.

As the track gets more narrow you see the people and vegetation from closer range. 

Once again the panorama was impressive--wide rolling expanses of savannah and forests, a few villages, but in general no signs of human habitation. This is truly one of the most isolated areas of Zaire, 550 kms from a railroad that has one train a week. As at Sandoa, there is good soil but no market.

We rolled into Chitazu (don’t bother looking for it on a map. It is about 100 kms southwest of Mwene Ditu on the OTHER railway, but that road has not been touched since 1960) at about 2200 hrs. to an extremely warm reception. The prefect of the ag school was one of Mr. French’s students, and the director of the grade school started teaching with Mr. French back in ’57. They talked a lot about old times and then about problems facing the school. HOWEVER all they want from Mr. French, they said, was his continued shipments of seed. They have a lot of surplus (?) from the school farm (?) but have no way of marketing it. A visit to the school and gardens was arranged for the next morning.

They insisted on giving Mr. French the one bed (for 5 persons) and I slept on his army cot! The prefect’s house is a four room, well-built mud hut with a thatched roof. It was all built with student labor. His furniture was more of the beautiful kind that is made out of the strong ribs of a wild palm branch. The doors and window shutters were of the same material.

Mr. French dropped right off, but I was forced to listen to the “anopheles choir”. I had my pajamas but no sheet, and the mosquitoes got so bad that I took Mr. French’s pillow case off and pulled it over my feet. Finally, I dropped off. Now, I did have my Banjul mosquito net, but they were not QUITE bad enough that I felt like stumbling around to set it up in the dark. Matches and petrol (kerosene) (I’ll bet he means “paraffin”: Ed) are “dearer” than gold here. The drums played all night -- some sort of exorcism.

Chitazu--Musumba, Zaire, Tuesday, 19 April, 1983

When we rolled out about 0630, it turned out that nearly everybody had gone to the early service at church. In rural Zaire the Methodist churches have the custom of meeting for a service every morning around 0600 hrs. Only recently have they gotten away from it in the cities. When church let out, about twenty older women and men came singing hymns to greet Mr. French. They brought 8 eggs as gifts which in these areas are true love gifts. Every year Newcastle´s disease comes through and wipes out poultry, so there never are “extra” eggs; they are only used to make chickens.

After all the greetings we “toured” the school. Again the two school buildings were built with student labor, with local material, and without outside help (the church only pays teachers’ salaries). The walls were adobe with palm thatched roofs. Where the students in the well-subsidized school in Kapanga wrote on their knees, here they had made seat desks out of the same palm rib material. Unlike the Muajinga school, all the stu­dents were writing on paper when we visited. (In Sandoa they asked Mr. French to give them paper.) Here at Chitazu they were able somehow to market fifteen sacks of peanuts from the school farm and used this money to buy the paper.

This school only goes through the 10th grade, and we visited each of the classes. Mr. French and I said something to each class.  After that we visited the town and the school fields. As far as I could tell, the soil was very fertile all the way to the creek, two kms away -- but nary a field. Once we crossed the stream we progressed through the wet-gardens up to the crop fields. We were most impressed with, in my experience, the neatest fields done by hand I have seen[2]. First, and neatest, were the fields belonging to the primary school director. He had manioc, sweet potatoes, onions, peppers, peanuts, beans, and some corn, all weeded and healthy. The biggest problem here is the wild game. Antelope eat the okra, wild pigs and monkeys all the rest. The students here spend 9 hours a week in the fields doing practical work. In Sandoa they spend 0 hours.

Then it was all the way back to the village in the blazing sun. The reason for their distant fields is that they prefer to keep their goats close to home, but if they bring their fields closer, the goats will “tend” them. This is true over all Zaire which ex­plains the general absence within the villages of any crop except the goat-resistant tobacco. Fruit trees are scarce as well. The pity is that they seldom EAT their goats, simply have them as marauding savings accounts. It is too isolated here even for soldiers to “liberate”.

Mr. French brought a good quantity of lucaena seeds, the miracle tree, and wants them to plant them every ten cms to form an edible yet resistant fence. Back near the school they showed us their new, rather impressive palm oil plantation. They have prepared a large area by making paths every ten meters and planting a tree at each intersection. If they can keep goats and fire from doing as they will do, a palm plantation has the poten­tial of producing “eight times” the amount of oil per acre of arable land that soy beans can do -- and they should produce for thirty years. Answering an old question, Mother: yes, this must be the “red palm oil” that is so high in vitamin A. Clue: every food that includes it as an ingredient is to some degree a dirty yellow orange.

When we arrived at the house, after a wait we were served a royal feast -- boiled chicken, lengue-lengue (pigweed) a platter of real potatoes, manioc fufu, bean and potato stew, HOT sauce, etc. Following that they presented us with gifts -- two whistles and two of the most beautiful examples of basket-weaving I have seen on five continents. They are large, vase-shaped baskets with finely woven sides that are used as sifters here. We bought some smaller ones on the way home.

Since we had to be in Kasadji, 500 kms distant, by tomorrow night, we ended our visit soon after and headed back to Musumba station, but not before I got a royal tour of the village in the Land Rover with the school prefect. Of course, the hospitality might have had something to do with it, but we were both impressed by what is accomplished here in its isolation.

We had an enjoyable if hot trip back to Musumba. One of the things discussed was the traditional coronation or installation of the Mwanti Yaav coming some time this dry sea­son. According to Lunda custom he has to bathe in a sacred stream and spend some time isolated in a sacred wood. Both are up here in this isolated area. The Frenches have witnessed one of these coronations previously but intend to see this year’s as well. It is a huge festivity that lasts for more than a week.

We stopped several times along the way to make some acquisitions for the French flower gardens. We had marveled at a very tall, elegant palm tree on the way in, and coming out he noticed that there were several suckers at the base. We asked per­mission at the hut nearby, chopped one out and cut back a lot of the leaves so it will not dry out in the next week of travel. The beginning of the dry season is the time for picking seeds from plants, so we got seeds from five different flowering bushes we found in some of the villages. One very beautiful bush we left alone was Latanum. They are beautiful composite flowers with consecutive circular rows of tiny flowers. The center flower is yellow, and each consecutive circle is a darker shade of orange until a row of red at the edge. These beautiful bushes, however, are goat-fire resistant and “have taken over entire areas of Zambia,” so we let them sit. There are white and purple va­rieties as well.

We pulled into the station at about 1900 hrs. 

(HELENA) At 8:15 I went with Hugh Frazier to see the hospital. The area has some 18,000 in­habitants, so it is a fairly large hospital. In other words it caters to country people who do their own washing and cooking (every patient is accompanied by some family member who does that) and they have gasoline enough to run the generator during surgery and to fill barrels of water. On the other hand, they have pretty modern surgical equipment which was brought in by the doctor who was executed, a man who apparently was quite well to do and used to bring in all sorts of expensive stuff. (Ed: I would say that he was probably a talented fund raiser.) They also have a good laboratory and X-ray set-up.

When we visited the rooms where relatives cook for their sick folk, we saw two middle-aged women smoking something in small gourds. They were sitting in the middle of a room full of smoke from several charcoal fires. Dr. Frazier asked what they were smoking, and they told him it was marijuana. Later someone said they were water pipes. He is in charge of the women’s ward, and he made an interesting comment about the care of the elderly. He says that women have a better deal when it comes to being cared for in old age and sickness than men. If a man’s wife dies, he is pretty much on his own, abandoned, and often suffers from malnutrition and neglect. The woman who is left alone, however, is traditionally cared for by her female relatives.

We visited the maternity ward where I saw some incubators heated with hot water bottles, even a couple which were made from cardboard boxes. He says they do about as good a job as those fancy contraptions they use in the U.S.A. In fact, in general his opinion is that medical care in the U.S.A. could learn a lot from the simplicity of things here in Zaire. So much of what is used there is not necessary. He worked in the U. S. for eight years between his first term in Zaire and this term.

We even went into the operating room and got to have a close look at an operation, a first for me. It did not bother me a bit, but then we were there only a couple of minutes, and the man had received spinal anesthesia and could not feel a thing that they were doing to him.

I had a late lunch with the Fraziers with more delicious rook as the manioc fufu is called, with meat sauce, lengue-lengue and boiled peanuts.

Right afterward I went with Marty (director of the school and his house is where Dan and Mr. French are staying) and Andy (Wolfords’ teenage son who is home for a vacation from his school in Nairobi, Kenya) to look for lumber for the new school building. On the way I rode on the back of Andy’s motorcycle and then switched to Marty’s on the way back. We stopped at several small villages, but no one had any lumber right on hand. It is all cut by hand: two men with a saw over a pit, but as all of the trees are a ways from the road, we did not see any of these pits and I cannot explain them.

At one village we talked with a group of men sitting around making tiny musket balls. One man worked the bellows, a contraption unlike any I have seen, run by moving two sticks up and down alternately.  A second man would watch the little fire, and a third would pick up a lump of heated lead with some tongs, place it in a little round hole in a flat rock, and hammer it and move it around until he achieved a little round ball. We went a good ways on the road toward Sandoa and arrived back at the station after almost 3 hours.

Back to the arrival of Dan and Mr. French. I was already over at the Wolfords’ house by myself, but they drove in right before we went to the table. I learned that Marv Wolford came out as a single “3” missionary in ’54  (I think) and became converted while he was out here. He then went back to the States to seminary (Asbury) married, and they returned in 1960.

We hurried through supper to get over to a prayer meeting at Marty’s.  Rather a strange melange of English, French, Lunda, and Swahili. There were missionaries, teachers, teach­ers’ wives, and the superintendent. Mrs. Frazier gave the devotional in English while Marty translated into French.

(DAN) We neglected to mention that Monday before we left for Chitazu, Marty who is prefect of the school here in Musumba invited us to visit one of the classes. He had been visiting the week before and found one of the classes (eighth grade) studying South American geography.  He though we might be able to add a little life to the class. We decided to take along the guitar, sing some songs, and then I would talk about some of our experiences in Bolivia and South America and answer questions. I would “speak in French,” and Marty, who has excellent French, would stand to fill in the gaps.

We first sang “Sombrero de Sao” and explained that it was about a worthless young man worrying about facing his potential mother-in-law. The teacher said, “Does it happen like that here?” “YES!” I also mentioned that it was from a part of Bolivia much like this part of Zaire.

Then we sang “Lunita Tucumana” and explained that it was about Argentine “cowboys” who live in the grasslands of Argentina and stressed that the Argentine economy depends on cattle. Marty asked them if they knew what an Argentine cowboy is called. The kids did not, but the teacher did --gaucho (pronounced in this case “go-show”). It kind of surprised me because literally in French it could mean “Lefty”.

Next I drew some memory maps of the continent on the blackboard and talked about the general geographic regions of Bolivia, what they grow, etc., etc. I stressed that in eastern Bolivia they eat and grow the same food as in Zaire, that they even prepare much of their food with mortar and pestles (tacús) as they do here. That really came across. I also mentioned that in northeastern Bolivia there are a lot of tribes with different languages just as in Zaire. I always had their attention, but you could tell that they really preferred another song at the end (after the question period) so we sang “Viva mi patria Bolivia”. We had to laugh because when we finished they gave “Indian war whoops” and lifted three fingers just as after a hymn at church. We mentioned that the three fingers in the air date from an E. Stanley Jones evangelism campaign out here.

The classroom situation reminded me so much of my junior high in Caranavi, Bolivia. (We had 60 students to a class, 2 students on each bench, and no textbooks.)  I am sure all of the information is dictated. When I asked a question, nobody knew the answer, but if the teacher asked a question, e.g. “What does Bolivia produce?” they all chorused, “Tin!” But beyond that, nothing.

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[1][1] Helena´s future parents-in-law

[2] But inexplicably did not take a picture.