Never say never
My journey to the “C.A.R.” actually began in 1986, in Togo, West Africa, at the exact moment when my wife glared at me and declared, “We are NEVER going there!” This was her reaction to a recounting of a series of incredible mishaps and misfortunes by a fellow Peace Corps couple, who had just transferred to Togo after one year in C.A.R.. Of course, one year later, my wife, my 2-year old son, and I found ourselves in Bangui, C.A.R’s capital, after I accepted a position with the CDC as a technical advisor to the government’s Ministry of Health. By the time you finish reading this piece, you probably won’t remember that my wife contracted malaria during her first month in the country, but I suspect that you will be impressed by her knack for forecasting trouble.
Wild game, big and small
I never made the trip to the far southwest of the country, where lowland gorillas and elephants welcome the rare visitor. I opted out because my job required that I be on the road so much of the time. The Lonely Planet Guide describes C.A.R.’s roads as “poor throughout the country.” This may be one of the great understatements of our time. Had I been asked, I might have said: “It’s all gorge, gulley, gulch, chasm, rift, and abyss.” I never regretted missing out on the animals as I was fortunate to experience many sights and sounds that most tourists never did. Take my hotel room in Bambari, one of C.A.R.’s 5 regional capitals, where one of the great incidents in modern entomology unfolded before my very eyes. Actually, my eyes were closed most of the time.
Following a late afternoon arrival, I noticed a solitary cockroach in my armoire as I was unpacking. Luckily, a full can of insecticide was included in the cost of the room, and so I set about giving my roommate a thorough spraying. About 8 hours later, I awoke to what sounded like Orville Redenbacher’s stove-top, quick-popping corn. What I witnessed was anything but. A population of dead or near-dead cockroaches, equal in number to the residents of Rhode Island, had come to rest peacefully on the top of my mosquito net. Many of their less-acrobatic colleagues had missed the net and had fallen directly to the floor—herewith the source of my middle-of-the-night tropical alarm. Those that clung to the ceiling—none of which, in any part, was visible to the naked eye—were in the throes of their last spasmodic movements. Having just spent two years in West Africa, during which time I came to appreciate how quickly the unusual could rapidly become the ordinary, I went back to sleep.
The beauty of C.A.R., however, was that you did not have to leave the comforts of your home to observe wild game. One afternoon my family and I had lunch with a reptilian guest. Mind you, I’m not talking about a picnic in our backyard; I’m talking about a routine sit-down at the dining room table. Well, there the snake was, having just emerged from the inside of the air conditioning unit, staring at the three of us from across the table like one of those zany Dr. Seuss creations. This time, though, we weren’t reading one of his stories to our son, we were actually in one!
Of course, one of our two security guards, to whom we had appealed for help, just happened to be a twin—which was good news for our uninvited visitor, but bad news for the rest of us. According to the customs of his ethnic group (the guard’s not the snake’s), if a twin killed a snake, the sibling would die. Luckily, his partner was not a twin and he managed to capture the creature, eventually carrying it out to the compound on a broken tree branch. “Snake on a Stick” made for wonderful theater and provided further evidence of my wife’s unassailable instincts.
Up against the wall, or I’ll wipe my brow
For anyone who has traveled extensively in Africa, the usually innocuous “shake-down” at an airport or a border crossing is as familiar and annoying as that mosquito buzzing your ear while you are trying to sleep at night—under the mosquito net. There are those who view this African institution as an unwelcome, even aggressive encroachment upon one’s personal space. For others, it can be an excellent opportunity to refine one’s negotiation skills, as the following vignette demonstrates.
Male and female police officers routinely took positions at different points along the circumference of Bangui’s central traffic circle. The female officers usually stood under an umbrella, which offered protection from C.A.R.’s equatorial sun. They commonly packed in their holsters 9-calibre hankies (I’m not kidding—not enough guns and ammo to go around, I guess). As a colleague of mine from CDC was moving through the circle in one of our project vehicles, he was stopped by one of Bangui’s finest male officers. After having spent a good 30 minutes “negotiating” the amount of fine to be paid for his egregious, albeit ill-defined, transgression, it appeared that my friend had finally secured his freedom and was about to be released.
During the negotiation, however, the officer had ascertained that my colleague was a physician. Consequently, the parting words turned from money to medicine, and the officer offered freedom with no fine in exchange for some treatments for whatever ills were ailing him at the moment. Without hesitation, my colleague pointed to the Toyota Landcruiser and asked the officers to read, aloud, what was printed on the door. He read, “Department of Preventive Medicine.” My colleague then replied, “If you had come to me BEFORE you had fallen ill, I might have been able to help you. Now that you are already feeling sick, there is not much I can do for you.” Recognizing that he had met his match, the officer bid farewell to my colleague, who drove directly into the Shake-Down Evasion Hall of Fame.
The Once and Future King (Not!)
If anyone has heard about the C.A.R., it is usually because of the notoriety of a former president, who declared himself “Emperor,” had the French pick up a major share of the tab for his coronation at a cost that exceeded the country’s annual GDP, and changed the name of the country to the “Central African Empire.” The excesses of Jean-Bedel Bokassa are legendary. He was eventually overthrown and went into exile in France and Cote d’Ivoire. His statue was torn down from the downtown traffic circle and the pedestal left in place (see photo above) as a silent testimony to this bizarre period in the country’s history. In 1987, our first year in C.A.R., the self-declared Emperor decided to return from exile, expecting to be welcomed home with open arms. The only arms that welcomed him were those slung over the shoulders of then-President Kolingba’s troops, who immediately arrested him as he stepped off the plane in Bangui.
He was eventually convicted of treason and other crimes of hyperbole and sentenced to death; his sentence, however, was later commuted to life in prison. He spent the rest of his days under house arrest at the Presidential Palace in Bangui, where he eventually died in virtual obscurity. One day, as my driver and I were passing by the palace, we saw an elderly, unshaven man in shorts and a tattered tee-shirt, washing his clothes, by hand, in a basin on a primitive wooden table located in a rear courtyard. My driver insisted that it was the erstwhile Emperor. Although I was not entirely convinced, if what my driver said was true, I’m willing to bet that these were not the new clothes this Emperor had in mind when he first took the job.
Oh, no, not another spoonful of sugar!
At a time before internet, DVDs, and CDs, in a place where there was not much to do after work, and where there lived few compatriots, finding diversions and distractions was always a major challenge. There were swimming and tennis at the U.S. ambassador’s house, the occasional softball game, and even some basketball with the local university students at the house of the U.S. Marine detachment. At our house we had a pool, which had achieved some notoriety because its diving board had been installed at the shallow end. The Central Africans, particularly the young people, were passionate about basketball. In 1987 the national team won the Africa’s Cup. The day after an animated and exuberant victory celebration through the city, a colleague from the Ministry turned to me at one point and said, with no small amount of discomfort, “Well, I guess it’s nice being #1 in something other than infant mortality.” Sad, but true.
For us, having a young child meant organizing playdates and watching videos at home. We brought with us from the States a couple of classics—“Mary Poppins” and “The Sound of Music”—to hold us over until our personal effects arrived. The shipment took far longer to arrive than we anticipated, however, and we were forced to watch or listen to these two films more times than the manufacturer recommended, and twice as many times as was legally permitted. To this day I still suffer from Post Julie Andrews Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The principal symptoms are random, inexplicable urges to clean out my chimney, and transitory impulses to jump from any second-story window with umbrella in hand.
Lepidoptera flying amok
What the C.A.R. might lack in artistic tradition, it certainly makes up for in creativity. C.A.R. exports butterfly wing “art” all over Africa, and the world as the living rooms of many a home in Atlanta or Washington, DC can attest. Again, as with the word “road”, I use the word “art”, liberally. Whatever you choose to call these creations you can be sure to find just about any image of an animate or inanimate object fashioned out of butterfly wings: village women carrying large water buckets on their heads, birds (parrots are particularly popular), assorted wild animals, and even circus performers. Two collages that I’ve never seen in African markets, or hanging in anyone’s home in the U.S., however, are the butterfly “portraits” of then-President Reagan and then-Vice-President Bush, which were hanging in the lobby of the U.S. Embassy in Bangui. The likenesses created by the “artists” were uncanny.
Oh, the places you’ll see and the people you’ll meet
One of the nice things about being a resident advisor was that consultants and colleagues were always passing through. Many of the consultants were quite entertaining, while others were memorable for other reasons. For example, there was one consultant who was an accomplished squash and tennis player, a very dexterous juggler, a man of great humor, and a connoisseur of chicken bones. He used to eat all the bones at one sitting. He was very popular with my Central African colleagues and with the expat community, as well as a favorite at our house, with the exception of our dog, who used to eye those bones with considerable, albeit unrequited, longing. I will always remember the colleague who almost dove into our pool—from the diving board. And then there was a colleague who accidentally slammed the door of the project vehicle on my fingers.
During supervisory visits to the interior of the country, European and American missionaries kindly offered me lodging. The European Fathers were most hospitable, albeit men of few words, even fewer possessions, and Spartan quarters. The Americans were equally hospitable, albeit more chatty, and some had spent many, many years in C.A.R.; accordingly, their homes had become repositories of Americana Past. As I strolled from kitchen to living room to bathroom, I always felt as though I was walking through a 1952 Sears showroom that had suddenly materialized before me.
For administrative purposes, I had occasion to travel to Cameroon once a year to touch base with the staff at the local USAID office. Most of these trips were uneventful, with one exception. At the time, the passport control area at the Yaounde airport was organized into 5 kiosks, each designated by several of the first letters of the traveler’s last name, and manned by highly specialized agents, as I would soon discover. On this particular trip, to my dismay, approximately 90% of the arriving passengers happened to have last names beginning with the letter M or N. Consequently, a long queue formed at this kiosk, while the few remaining passengers moved quickly through the other lines. Once they had cleared these travelers, the agents responsible for these kiosks closed their books and took off, leaving the unfortunate, middle-of-the-alphabet-travelers to spend most of their morning in line at the airport.
An amazing labor of love
We had arranged for my wife to depart C.A.R. a full 2 months prior to her projected delivery date. So, when a complete stranger came to tell me that my spouse was in labor at the precise moment when we were about to begin a training course for health workers deep in the interior of the country, I was skeptical. She was only in the 6th month of her pregnancy! Nevertheless, he informed me that he had just received a radio communiqué from the U.S.Embassy, and insisted that I return to Bangui immediately.
We still laugh about the moment of our reunion at the local clinic in Bangui where my wife had been admitted. She thought my ashen complexion was a reaction to seeing her in this unexpected place, three months ahead of schedule. She was already well into labor, the medical evacuation plane from Switzerland was not expected for another 8-9 hours, and no one was quite sure whether there was an incubator anywhere in the city. Even if there were, the electricity in Bangui at this time of the year was completely unreliable. The truth was that I never thought I would survive the six-hour return trip from the bush that we completed in just four! The driver claimed, at least ten times, that he used to work for Bokassa. Well, the self-declared Emperor sure could have used this guy two years earlier when apparently the royal welcoming party got caught in traffic somewhere on its way to the airport.
Miraculously, my wife’s labor did not progress, and she held on through the escorted ride to the airport in the President’s personal ambulance, and the seemingly endless wait for the plane on the tarmac, on a stretcher, in the most chic hospital attire. Once she was successfully loaded onto the plane, we all breathed a sigh of relief as we watched her head off to Frankfurt and the U.S. 97th Army General Hospital. It was there that our son was born 2 days later, weighing in at 2.2 lbs, and where he would stay, in the neonatal intensive care unit, for the next three months (and in Frankfurt for another four). My older son and I joined the new baby and my wife a few days before Christmas, and it will always be, in our collective memory, the best of all our holidays.
During the next seven months of family separation life was far more challenging, and my memories of C.A.R. are less clear. One last recollection cannot help but come to mind, however. The event in question occurred on the eve of my departure from C.A.R.
Excuse me, but do you work here?
It was barely perceptible, but unmistakenly familiar—the sound of the glass door, sliding, like a fingernail across a chalkboard, in its rusted metal track in the upstairs living room. I rose sleepily from my bed, stumbled over to the window, and peered, with difficulty, through a covering of screening and metal security bars. It is difficult to see much of anything through these windows at night. The back of someone’s head against the screening, however, makes the task even more difficult. In fact, as I stepped back to gain my bearings and a better view, it became clear that it wasn’t just any head, but one attached to shoulders, over one of which was slung a “coupe-coupe”. A “coupe-coupe” is a crude version of a scythe, usually employed by residents throughout C.A.R. to cut back the elephant grass found throughout the country, which, despite repeated cuttings, insists on behaving like a cowlick on a bad hair day and just plain refuses to be controlled.
My first thought was: “Does this guy work for me?” When I came to my senses and realized what was transpiring, I approached the window, and, after a deep breath, screamed, directly in his ear, “Thief!” The kid almost had a heart attack. He leaped into the air, his coupe-coupe went flying, and he scrambled to find his legs, which suddenly were failing him. As the cacophony of whistling from security guards gradually unfurled down the river’s edge, where most of the embassy and expatriate residences were located, it wasn’t long before six more pair of feet joined those of the erstwhile “look-out,” who, while still in control of all his visual faculties, was now running around with impaired hearing.
The other 12 feet came tumbling, in cascade, down the external staircase that led from my house. I watched with a mixture of amazement and bewilderment as best I could as they scaled my compound wall and disappeared into the African night. By this time, Dali, our German Shepherd, came upon the scene. I don’t know where he had been (probably looking for chicken bones!), but now the chase was over, and the thieves were halfway across the river to Zaire in their dugout boats.
Luckily, they only made off with our VCR. Unfortunately, they forgot to grab the Julie Andrews videos on the way out!
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