Travels with Myself and Another (23 page)

Meantime the Fulbé women moved gracefully around the place, covered in their elegant pagnes (does clothing induce grace; the naked women have none). The Fulbés are on the whole the most attractive, and have the most lovely eyes. Their language—the language of the conquerors—is the nearest to a lingua franca in this tribe-divided land.

At the edge of the market were the barbers. The barber squats on his heels, the customer squats opposite him. And then, with a sure hand and a razor-edged knife, he shaves the inside of the customer’s nostrils. A terrifying feat.

I caught the plane at lunchtime for Fort Lamy in Chad. By local standards, Fort Lamy is a big city and I was looking forward to a clean room and, by God’s will, air conditioning. I also had romantic dreams about Chad, though all I knew about it was its name which appealed to me from childhood. It was boiling hot, even in the plane, and for half an hour before reaching Fort Lamy we flew over poison green swamp. Horrible country. In this swamp there were small islands with a clump of trees; then the endless scum and craters in the scum. I began to feel depressed about Chad.

There is one good hotel, the Chari, on the river of that name, which bounds the town—a wide stream in a flat land. This hotel was full. I went to the Grand Hotel, in town, and suffered complete despair. The squalor is even greater than in Garua, and here there are mosquitoes to boot. The dirty dark little room stinks of DDT and is littered with mosquito corpses. One dares not open a drawer or a cupboard, to see the relics of the other guests. There is one toilet for the whole hotel. The hotel keepers themselves are like something out of a bad play about Africa; a poor obese young man with open sores on his face and arms, and dirty clothes, a sluttish dark woman. It is appalling.

I went to the bar to take to drink (but they had nothing that one could swallow except beer) and there my acquaintance was made by an elderly muscular Frenchman who began to attack me, as an American. It was the fault of America that all these black countries demanded and got their independence; France had brought civilization, France should fight to keep her colonies and etc. etc. I asked him if he was a member of the OAS, said that I hadn’t seen enough civilization to sneeze at, noble talk tired me, I thought whites were fools ever to have come to these god-awful places in the first place and if they stayed it was obviously to make money and not spread civilization which no one wanted or could use, and though normally I disagreed with my country’s politics, on principle, if we really were responsible for getting the blacks’ independence, which I doubted, we were on the right track. Also considering what a waste of life and money Algeria had been, it was demented to suggest more fighting for people who didn’t want you. The French had better be chummy with the blacks and go on making money, if anyone could in these unbearable places. With that I flounced off to the U.S. Embassy, hoping to find some mail—I had given the Embassy as my forwarding address, knowing no other—and hoping someone would ask me to stay the night so I could get out of that ghastly hotel.

There was mail but no warm-hearted invitations to come on home. The famous American talent for hospitality, as I have noted often before, is lacking in the U.S. Foreign Service; but I suppose that’s self-preservation. And the other thing is: whites do not cluster round newcomers, with smiling welcomes, in Africa. They keep themselves to themselves, much more carefully than in New York or London. Rarity has no special value in these parts.

I roamed, ate a foul meal somewhere, and came back to that despairful hotel room when I was too tired to care any more.

February 5:
The horrors of the Grand Hotel exchanged for the horrors of the Parc Hotel. Cigarette butts in the corners of the room, the last tenant’s sheets, a filthy bathroom with a cracked cement floor; but a toilet of one’s own. Sartre should have seen these places so as to get the stage set absolutely right for his hotel room in hell. The privilege of residing in these sewers costs $12.50 a day; two inedible courses for lunch cost $4.40. It is no wonder that people find it strange not to say suspicious that I am travelling in Africa for pleasure.

Added to which, these hotels are in the centre of town, and with their small shuttered windows the rooms might as well be on the airshaft of a Times Square hotel. Not that there is any view in Fort Lamy; it is perfectly flat and suburban. The place name is full of romance; the place looks like an ill-kempt “garden city.” Straight streets run to roundabouts, whence diagonal streets cut off—there must have been a plan at some time. There are trees and flowers and grass and it is cooler than in the northern Cameroun; but dull. The shopping street is short, with offices, shops, and the U.S. Information Service reading room, in one-storey buildings.

Outside the Grand Hotel, the natives display their tourist wares on the pavement; the beasts of the bush carved in wood; some well done, some badly done, but all done alike—yet this is not factory work, and the same design for every antelope, every elephant, is proof of a wanting imagination in the craftsmen. However, this is the first time I have seen any handicrafts for sale; there are also daggers and baskets and ugly brass work. The pavement merchants have a curious notion of business: they expect bargaining but when there are
no
tourists and
no
sales, the prices rise—the idea being that you have to make more money when you sell less.

I returned to the U.S. Embassy; proof of being at the end of my rope. I am not an Embassy-category traveller and do not expect help from our embassies or consulates. We have an Ambassador in Chad, because we are a rich and foolish nation. The work could be done by a Consul and a stenographer, and they would have time on their hands. An Ambassador immediately brings into operation Parkinson’s Law; he needs a staff commensurate with his rank. The Ambassador was away on a hunting trip, and the staff was turning over papers; Parkinson’s Law demands that people make work for each other. They have a visitor’s book with four names in it, to which I added mine.

By luck, the First Secretary knew someone in my family. Owing to this personal (not duty-to-the-public) bond, I was quite well received and asked to lunch the next day. My object is to get out of Fort Lamy and see Chad but this is a grand undertaking. There are practically no roads in a country which is three and a half times the size of France, and mostly desert. Due to this year’s floods, the few roads are mainly impassable. Further, there are almost no cars to hire and those will not be rented for travel on the roads, which ruins them. (Only for use in the town and environs.) It is impossible to get to Lake Chad, a body of water larger than Lake Michigan when the rains swell it, otherwise a swampy mass, with approach only by river boat. River boats are not passenger boats, but trading vessels; they go when they go, and plod around the lake villages for a couple of weeks; rather be shot than stay here a couple of weeks.

The French military are in control of whatever the independent Chadian government does not control, and control seems the order of the day. The French have an Army and Airforce Commandant here, and their combined permission is needed to go to the Tibesti, the strange country on the northeastern frontier adjoining the Sudan. The Tibesti is desert, with curious rock formations, and oases, and is alleged to be fascinating. The only other place to go is south, to Fort Archambault, where there is reputed to be much game and the biggest elephants in the world. Planes fly about once a week to each of these areas.

I spent the morning with the U.S. cultural attaché (I think he is that), a very nice man, half black, who no doubt was selected for this job to prove to African blacks that all men are equal in the U.S. Mr X. has about as much relation to the Chadian blacks as I have to Einstein. He speaks careful correct French, and is courtesy itself, and patient; hand in hand, we went to the Chad Ministry of Information, since one must check in here as in a dictatorship or country at war. (More and more convinced that the whole place operates on Parkinson’s Law.) There we met a nervous thin young black, second in command, who was doing his best to run a Ministry of Information, according to notions received from whites or from reading, when there is no information to give and no one to ask for it. He was cordial, upon being told that I was “a distinguished American writer,” and suggested a dinner party for me on my return to Fort Lamy from wherever I was going.

We moved on to the Mayor, whose permission was needed to go to the Tibesti. His Honour was large, cross, and not up to his job. A small, infinitely discreet Frenchman stood at his elbow, while His Honour was unable to make head or tail of my passport, my wishes, or what he was meant to do about it. Still with great tact, the Frenchman got us out to his office, a hole in the wall, and did the necessary writing on my passport. I wonder whether His Honour can read or write? Out of a population of three million, there are three Chadian university graduates, none of whom live in Chad.

The futile and dreary day wore on. I was sitting in the patio (at least shady) of my loathsome hotel when a young American came to call. This youth is aged twenty-two and on loan from a midwestern university to help the Chadians with their mobile film unit, the said truck and camera equipment being a U.S. gift. He’s nice, if as unfinished as the foetus in the womb, and has a general right idea; he lives in the native section of town, with an “Arab” family—i.e. a black family of the same general race as the Fulbé, distant Arabic descent and the Moslem religion—he speaks the local Arabic dialect and perfect French. He’s adventurous, and untroubled (lucky chap) by any need for hygiene.

We talked French literature to my headaching disbelief; I doubt if I’ve had such a conversation since college but then he is just out of college. We also talked about Life; a subject of which I am increasingly unsure with every year. We agreed to go south together; he knows an odd couple at Fort Archambault who run a hotel, which he describes with enthusiastic romanticism—there we would surely find transport to get to the big game country.

I wrote letters until 1 a.m., again seeking the fatigue which would blot out the filth of my surroundings; and watched my ankles swelling, and with weary dismay realized that I was getting ready for another bout of ptomaine or whatever it is.

February 6:
Up at 6 a.m. in the fresh grey morning. As soon as possible (offices open at 7 a.m.) I went off with our First Secretary to call on the French Army. We visited the Infantry Colonel, who saw no reason for me not to go to the Tibesti (and equally no reason for me to go); and proceeded to the air base, to get the okay of the Airforce Commandant, Colonel Bienaimé, and to learn when an army plane was going and if I could have a place on it.

The Colonel is a man of thirty-five, I should guess, tall, dark, with shining dark eyes and an early morning stubble of beard, clad in the remarkable uniform of French soldiery hereabouts, the shortest possible khaki shorts displaying hairy legs down to ankle boots, and a leather windbreaker with fake fur collar (it is cold before the sun rises). He received us with splendid teasing ceremony, always addressing my chaperon as
Monsieur le Chargé d’Affaires des États-Unis.
He asked to what he owed the extreme honour of this visit. He then telephoned to a military chum and colleague whom he must have seen the night before if not that morning. With the same beautiful stateliness he began,
“Mon
Colonel, je profite de l’occasion de vous rendre mes hommages respectueux,”
and went on to outline the situation:
une dame Américaine de haute distinction
wanted to fly on one of their planes to the Tibesti. It appeared this could be done. The fare was discussed, far from cheap; the plane would not be going for four days, and one had to take another plane back within two days or be stuck in the desert for over a week. It all began to seem more trouble than it was worth.

Evidently the Americans do not mix with the French, and there is some bad blood because the Americans think the two swimming pools—one belonging to the French infantry and one to the French Airforce—are breeding grounds for polio. This is taken as a reflection on French standards of hygiene. American officialdom is usually resented. It has far more money than anyone else and clings to its golden ghetto and its exclusiveness irritates. I’d have given anything to spend the day laughing with Colonel Bienaimé but I was under the wrong auspices.

I lunched at the house of the First Secretary. It is quite pretty, a modest bungalow with five rooms, furnished in imported American interior decoration style, cool and clean. This wee dwelling belongs to a coony Chadian who soaks the U.S. taxpayer $15,000 a year rent for it. It cannot have cost more than $5,000 to build if that.

In the afternoon, in a hired car, I drove about with young H. of the mobile film unit. He adores this place but then he is too young to have seen a great deal of the world. He took me to the market, where the large array of foodstuffs, spices, bleeding meat etc. was nicely covered with flies. He eats everything local and takes his dysentery as it comes. All the blacks are dressed here and not nearly as interesting or varied as the natives of Cameroun. The women wear a long sarong from breast to ankles and a gold ring in one nostril. They do their hair in short braids, plaited from the crown of the head, so that they seem to be wearing a cap of dusty wool fringe.

We visited H.’s home; he lives with his chauffeur’s family, in an adobe compound. He has two rooms, off the mud courtyard, the family has the other huts—these are square and like Mexican Indians’ houses. He is very fond of this black family (several generations of it) and they of him. He covets his chauffeur’s wife, whom he thinks a beauty, but honour forbids his lifting a finger. Honour has not however kept him away from all black girls, and he thinks it’s great.

Moved to the Hotel du Chari, and it changes my outlook to have a clean room and view over the wide sand-banked river.

February 7:
First day of Ramadan. For a month, all Moslems will be gloomy by day, from hunger, and happy as bird-dogs after sundown when they can feast.