Wild Spirit (12 page)

In the village, the week before the
fête
passed in a haze of palm wine. Kruger sent up dozens of cartons of the government's commemorative cloth, printed with President Bongo's portrait and proclaiming the fifteenth anniversary of independence, and overnight, everyone in the village seemed to be wearing a dress or a shirt made
from it. A small contingent of our workforce was going to Makokou to take part in the formal celebrations, but even this became contentious. Every man felt he should be one of the ones to go. The verbal battle between Mario and the men over who would be chosen lasted for days. The men also lobbied for extra spending money, extra days off, whisky and free beer.
Fête
madness gripped the whole village, to the point where hardly anyone wanted to work. The government evidently expected trouble in Makokou, too, as a convoy of military vehicles was mounted from Libreville, carrying 600 gendarmes to keep order in the town during the festivities.

The government had set Saturday 16 August as the date for the official opening of the new road. A pavilion would be erected near the Makokou end of the route, and representatives of SOMIFER's shareholders would assemble there to await the arrival of government dignitaries by helicopter. The only problem was that the road was not yet finished at the Belinga end. Eamon and his men were still out in the forest on Friday the fifteenth, working on the final section.

We had expected Eamon and the men to arrive in camp that morning. When there was no sign of them by mid-afternoon, the suspense got the better of Mario. ‘Let's go out and find them!' he cried.

Jacques, Rodo and I climbed into the Méhari with Mario at the wheel, and headed out along the ridge of Bakota South, where the old track from the 1960s had been partly cleared. Branches of giant trees overhung the route. Loops of thick liana straddled the spaces, and families of monkeys leapt screaming and chattering through the canopy. I had only come this way once before.

About twenty minutes out, we came on three of Eamon's men walking along the track with their shotguns, framed by the massive bulk of a Caterpillar grader in the background. Eamon wasn't far away, they said. We left them to their hunting and soon reached a fork in the track. One of the paths was freshly cut. A stack of chainsaws and jerry cans littered the ground at the junction. We followed the new track to the bottom of a steep incline: a massive tree, newly felled, lay across it.

Mario cut the engine. ‘Listen!' he whispered. The low rumble of heavy machinery sounded through the forest. We climbed out and followed the direction of the sound. Fallen trees strewed the ground. Oozing mud sucked at our boots. As we breasted the next rise, the rumble became a roar. Below us, a gully sloped sharply, and we caught sight of the huge bulldozer halfway down, moving ponderously on its tracks back and forth on the hillside, Eamon sitting stiffly at the controls.

When he changed direction, he suddenly caught sight of us. He inched the dozer up the incline, drew level with us, and stopped with the engine still running. The noise of the engine made conversation impossible, but he climbed part way down the machine, and one by one we reached up and shook his hand. His gaunt body was streaked with sweat and mud. The sinews in his legs and arms stood out against the bones. Under the hard hat, his face was haggard and his skin the colour of putty; he managed an exhausted smile before excusing himself. The final bend in the route, just 150 metres long, had to be shaped before nightfall. As we watched him move off again, I wondered how long a sixty-year-old could punish his body and mind to that extent, and what drove him. Still,
on the way back to camp, we all felt the euphoria of his achievement, fortunate to have been there to witness that final push.

The day of the official road opening began quietly in camp. No formal celebrations were planned for Belinga, but at the morning radio session Kruger informed us that some of the dignitaries wanted to come on to Belinga after the ceremony. That meant providing accommodation, meals and hospitality, but we had no specific information. As the opening ceremony was scheduled for early afternoon, we calculated we would have most of the day to prepare for their visit.

This sanguine view was abruptly shattered when, at 11.20 am, the thwack-thwack of a helicopter's rotor blade sounded over the forest. Mario, Win, Rodo and I dropped what we were doing and ran outside to peer at the sky, where the silhouette of a helicopter had emerged over the canopy.

‘They're probably just sightseeing,' Mario said. But the helicopter traced a wide circle around the camp, then began its descent.

‘Quick, quick!' Mario shouted to Étienne and Bernard, who stood on the guesthouse porch watching. ‘Put a cloth on the table, and bring out the whisky and some glasses!'

The pilot had spotted the landing pad on the hillside and manoeuvred the helicopter over it, preparing to land. The Alouette touched down lightly – it was the type of aircraft the president used. We braced ourselves to greet him in our grimy jeans and T-shirts, but as the pilot climbed out, followed by several men with cameras around their necks, he called out, ‘We need to get this one out of the way quickly – the big one will be here any moment.'
They were journalists charged with covering the road opening. We sprinted up the hill and helped to push the Alouette off the pad. Moments later, a bulky Puma jet helicopter lumbered noisily into view. Like a giant insect, it descended slowly, sandblasting us with fine laterite dust. The door opened and I counted the passengers alighting – fourteen in all – mostly men in business suits with open-neck shirts and sunglasses.

A heavy-set man in a chocolate-brown suit headed the delegation. He walked towards Mario, smiling broadly, and shook his hand. It was Vice-President Mébiame, deputising for President Bongo. His deep, resonant voice, speaking impeccable French, reminded me of Paul Robeson. ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to indicate to the pilots the direction we should be taking to the ceremony? I'm afraid we're lost!'

Mario didn't falter. ‘Yes, of course. But perhaps you would care to join us for a drink first?' Win, Rodo and I hung back, waiting our turn to be introduced.

At that moment a group of about thirty women in bright costumes and headscarves appeared, moving as one up the red dirt road from the village. They danced, clapped and sang their way up until they reached flat ground, where they formed a tight block and shouted a traditional welcome, swaying and stamping their feet. They must have planned it beforehand and been ready to move as soon as the VIPs appeared.

The official party stood to watch, waved their acknowledgement, then slowly made their way down to the guesthouse. Étienne and Bernard had covered the old wooden bench on the porch with a spotless white cloth, and drinks were set out as if the event had been planned for months.

Mario introduced us to the vice-president and the minister of energy and mineral resources, Monsieur Edouard M'Bouy Boutzit, an older man in a powder-blue suit who walked with a stick. Much later I learned he was one of the most loved politicians in the country. He'd been cured of leprosy by Schweitzer as a young man, and still seemed to glow with the miracle of his recovery.

Mario moved among the visitors, pouring drinks and expounding on the life of the camp. Everyone agreed that the landscape at Belinga was breathtaking, and that they all wanted to return some day. I had never mixed with a vice-president or a cabinet minister before, but I had learned to expect that life at Belinga would be full of ‘firsts'. The party stayed just half an hour, then filed back into the Puma to keep their appointment at the opening ceremony.

Doug, Gina, Eamon and the rest of the official party had been waiting for them at a ceremonial pavilion down on the new road. By the time the two helicopters finally reached them, the assembled dignitaries were on the point of going home. We heard no details of the opening ceremony, but Doug told us that another ceremony was held that afternoon in Makokou before a large crowd, and Eamon was decorated by the president once again for his outstanding contribution to the development of the country. I felt myself to be caught up in big events – the Belinga exploration project was the highest profile development in Gabon. But in the day-to-day frenzy of life in camp there was little time to reflect on that fact.

 

August 17 brought Mario's departure. As promised, he'd stayed just long enough to see out the celebrations. We were
all in subdued mood as we drove to the
débarcadère
to see him off. Win, Rodo, Bernard and I stood on the riverbank to watch as his belongings were loaded into the pirogue. Lupo stood close by his leg, calm as always.

I remembered all the good times we'd had with Mario around the dinner table when we first arrived – the wine, the good food, the jokes. We'd all miss him. He shook hands with each of us formally. His last words to me were, ‘
Courage, Nettie!
' I would need it while the camp adjusted to this latest convulsion. Then he and Lupo stepped into the waiting pirogue and we watched as their silhouettes grew smaller and smaller in the distance. That night I lay awake for hours, wondering what lay ahead for us. My job was certain to grow, and I hoped I would be up to it.

In the week after the
fête
, Makokou's hastily erected infrastructure fared badly: the multistorey hotel closed down, the television station ceased to operate, the stadium track was flooded and partially washed away, and some of the street lamps fell over. Life in Makokou, and the whole province of Ogooué-Ivindo, then returned to normal.

The thunder of hooves pounding down the hillside nearby brought our planning meeting on the porch to an immediate halt. Men's voices, high-pitched with panic, shouted, ‘
Buffle! Buffle!
' – buffalo. The animal had bolted towards the village; if it stampeded through there, people could be killed. Doug, Jacques, Win, Rodo and I dropped our paperwork and ran down the slope. Madame Elizabeth, the senior woman of the village, joined in the chase, with several others trailing behind her.

We stopped at a fallen log and peered towards a patch of thick forest, where it seemed one of the hunters had cornered the animal with his dog – we could hear the beast thrashing about trying to escape. Then a single shot rang out and echoed around the hillside. In the silence that followed, we stood motionless, holding our breath. Then someone called out, ‘
Il est mort?
' Is it dead? No answer. ‘
Est-ce qu'il est mort?
' A small voice from the undergrowth replied ‘
Oui, il est mort.
'

We entered the forest in single file. In the dim light, our
eyes took a few moments to adjust to an unwelcome sight. A large, roan-coloured animal with white stripes across its back and face lay on its side. Although it was as large as a buffalo, it looked more like an antelope with long thick horns twirling gracefully back from its skull. It was in superb condition, its coat glossy even in the deep shadows. The shot had entered cleanly between its eyes. The hunter, Émile, stood transfixed in front of it, his eyes set in a glassy stare, his body bathed in a sweat of fear. He could barely speak. Augustine, the village chief, squatted nearby with his wife, Madame Elizabeth, staring at the beast's wide eyes.

I stroked its warm flank and felt the smoothness of the fine coat under my fingers.

‘
C'est quoi, Émile?
' I asked. ‘What is it?'

‘
Nous ne savons pas, madame
,' he answered. ‘I don't know.'

‘It looks rather like a kudu to me,' Win said.

Jacques shook his head authoritatively: ‘No, no. There are no kudus in Gabon. They're only found in the south, on the savannas.'

There was a silence. I looked at the faces of the group squatting in a circle around the carcass. There was no doubt what the expatriates were thinking: why did this magnificent – and apparently rare – animal have to die like this? But, try as I might, I couldn't interpret the stunned response of the Gabonese. In the middle of the dry season, that amount of meat would feed the whole village, I thought. Why aren't they rejoicing? Madame Elizabeth picked a handful of broad, glossy leaves from a nearby shrub and placed them gently over the animal's eyes. To me the gesture seemed reverential: perhaps an acknowledgement that the animal had a spirit. After a time, we all stood up, still silent, and walked away.

The animal's rare status was confirmed in our wildlife atlas. A colour illustration showed exactly what we had seen – a bongo antelope – and its conservation status: ‘Rare, seldom seen in the wild'. Reading that, I felt even sadder. I would never get used to such killings. Other species of antelope were abundant, and I could accept that they were important sources of protein for the people, but the bongo's death struck me as a tragedy.

 

Following Mario's departure, Doug had come up to sort out the reallocation of administrative tasks. Under the new arrangements, I would also take over running the guesthouse and ordering food. I would continue to operate the radio, and be responsible for ordering supplies generally.

Our domestic staff now numbered four. The two recent arrivals – Mambo Bernard and Mohibi Léon – had both worked at the camp in the 1960s, were fully trained and knew Eamon and Jacques well. I was to be their new supervisor. In addition, I would continue to oversee stock control and cash flows at the
économat
, and supervise M'Poko Lucien at the warehouse. With these increased responsibilities, my salary of US$300 per month seemed meagre, but the company was feeding us, and once our flat was ready our housing would be provided too, so I didn't make an issue of it.

‘Some good news, though,' Doug said. ‘Eamon's found a man to look after rations. He'll weigh and allocate the game meat, purchase the manioc and supervise the distribution of rations. He'll be reporting to you.'

‘When's he coming?' I asked.

‘He should be here within the week. He comes from the Makokou area.' It was welcome news, even though it meant I would have seven men to supervise instead of six. I grinned at the irony of being in charge of the domestic staff. I had never run a home, and my cooking was indifferent. Worse, I didn't know how to go about it, how strict I should be, or what the norms were. I couldn't imagine what I could teach these men who had been doing the job for so long.

‘I want to go down to Makokou to see what foods are available in the shops there,' I told Win the next day.

‘How about we go down together?' he suggested. ‘It'd be good to get out of this place for a couple of days.'

‘Damn it, you guessed,' I laughed. ‘I do need to escape for a while, but I've got a good excuse. If I'm going to be ordering food, I need to know what we can get locally.' We arranged to go the following day.

The river trip was slow and difficult, as the water was at its lowest level for the year. Giant rock outcrops loomed above the shallows, and we had to walk the pirogue through several stretches of rapids. We arrived in the early afternoon and Kruger drove us to the Roux house.

 

Makokou had just two general stores – Kaczmarek and Loupin. I decided to try Monsieur Loupin's establishment first, as I'd heard he had a better range. We arrived at the shop mid-afternoon. I was especially interested in small luxuries like bacon, poultry and fruit preserves, because I believed that interesting and varied meals were essential to boost everyone's morale.

The force of Monsieur Loupin's personality hit me the
moment I stepped through the door. He was short and wiry, in his late fifties. His pale-blue eyes were bloodshot, and his short grey hair stood straight out from his head. He wore the standard bush uniform – shorts, lace-up khaki jungle boots and a short-sleeved cotton shirt – and spoke in a harsh, rasping whisper. I'd seen him briefly when we first visited Makokou two months earlier. He was also the Air Gabon agent in town, and looked after ticketing, passengers and cargo.

When I introduced myself and explained why I had come, his eyes lit up at the prospect of substantial ongoing custom. He spun around to face the door to a back room and emitted a screech like a startled cockatoo: ‘Lisette! Lisette!' His wife, a thin woman with wispy hair, appeared in the doorway. Her dry and wrinkled skin bore the mark of too much tropical sun, and a look of resignation was etched into her face. She took up a position behind the counter, and Loupin turned back to give me his full attention.

He ushered me to a dimly lit corner of the shop where a bulky deep freezer took up half the floor space, and opened the lid with a flourish. ‘Look at this! Is it not magnificent? A home-grown guinea fowl, raised and slaughtered by my own hand!' The frozen bird had been plucked and dressed, ready for cooking. ‘Madame, just look at these: snails, partridge, rabbit, quail! What more can you desire?'

‘Look at this!' he urged, gesturing at a stack of frozen jars, small beads of saliva forming at the corners of his mouth. ‘These jars contain completely pre-cooked meals I prepared myself. I keep these always on hand in case of guests. People come to Makokou to visit and I say, “Come! Eat with Loupin!”' I started to understand why Madame
Loupin wore a resigned look. Loupin was a showman – he must have been exhausting to live with.

We moved on to inspect the contents of the shelves. Loupin waved extravagantly towards the jams. ‘Jams? How many do you want? Plum jam, cherry jam, pineapple jam, loganberry jam, Eng-lish mar-ma-lade jam! Which one do you want, madame? Madame, tell me, what is it you want? Anything you need, Loupin will find it! You like tea? Come with me!'

I was starting to wilt under the onslaught, but he grasped my elbow firmly and marched me to the other end of the shop. ‘There!' He swept his arm along the display: ‘Assam, Darjeeling, Jasmine, Breakfast, Lapsang Souchong, Herbal … take your pick! You see the brand? Jacksons of Piccadilly. That's one thing the English do know, how to drink tea!'

I tried to marshal my thoughts about exactly what we needed. As I reeled off the items, I watched his face fall – our menu at the camp was never going to encompass quail and partridge. To him, the list was disappointingly mundane, and his face told me there would be no excitement for him in my custom. In an attempt to placate him, I launched into an explanation of how conditions were at Belinga.

‘Belinga! Don't talk to me about Belinga! Nobody knows it better than I do! I once lived there, you know!'

‘I didn't know that,' I said.

‘
Mais oui!
' His voice dropped into the bass register, conveying his incredulity that I hadn't already heard. ‘I've worked for SOMIFER, and I've worked for Roux. Twenty-four years I've been in Gabon, madame, twenty-four years! You will still be in Makokou tonight?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Good! You must come to Loupin for an aperitif. Oh, I can tell you so many things …'

‘That's very kind of you, but …' I began.

‘So, it's settled then. You come at six-thirty tonight!
Bien!
'

 

Win and I arrived at the appointed time, and as Loupin ushered us into the living room, Lisette appeared silently from the kitchen with a tray of savouries. I still hadn't heard her speak. Loupin settled us into two worn armchairs and poured us a glass of Ricard each. We still hadn't developed a taste for this aniseed drink, but we took the glasses politely – it was a French tradition, and we wanted to at least appear to fit in.

Loupin wasted no time in embarking on his repertoire of stories.

‘I was paymaster for old Roux at the gold workings at Camp Six,' he began. The abandoned gold camp stood on the banks of the Ivindo, within walking distance of Mayebut. We'd heard about it from Kruger. Loupin pointed to a gold nugget displayed on a shelf. ‘That comes from there. Belinga was wild in those early days. We used to have leopards coming right up to the house. I shot one once just a metre from my front door, and then a week later another one in exactly the same place.' This tallied with what we'd heard from Peter Telfair, so I knew it wasn't just bravado.

‘They still come in,' I said. ‘We had one prowling around our annexe one night.'

Next, Loupin launched into a string of stories about
traditional tribal practices, throwing in anthropological terms here and there. Anthropophagy (cannibalism) and necrophagy (eating of the dead) featured prominently. I think he was trying to shock us. Then a cat entered the room, backed up to a wall, and sprayed the paintwork with its urine.

Loupin's face turned purple with rage. He grabbed the gold nugget and hurled it at the terrified animal, shouting a tirade of abuse. The nugget hit the wall like a cannonball and the cat bolted for its life. Win and I could only watch in silence, mouths agape and eyes wide. When he had calmed down, he stood and beckoned us to follow him out the back door.

He stopped before a spacious cage, where a breeding pair of fish-eating owls and their chicks fixed their luminous eyes on us from a high perch. They were the most exquisite owls I had ever seen, with delicate fluffy feathers the colour of coffee cream. Loupin entered the cage, calling to each one by name, and we watched, bewitched, as they flew down and perched on his arm.

In a nearby enclosure, he kept a tree-climbing primate which he called a cuscus. The shy animal looked down at us warily with wide, forward-facing eyes. Its thick fur was a rich gold, and its prehensile tail gripped the branch tightly. Months later, when we saw one at Belinga, I learned that this animal was in fact a rare golden potto.

Seeing our joy in the animals, Loupin continued the tour: ‘Now watch this,' he said. Beside a fenced yard he called to another of his charges. ‘Bismarck! Come here, Bismarck!' An enormous whiskered hog emerged from the semi-darkness, minced gently up to the fence, and coyly rolled over on the ground to allow Loupin to scratch its
belly. The hog had prominent fleshy pads protruding from its cheeks, fringed with light yellowish hair that curved around like a fan. Its huge ears also bore long fringes, which dangled at right angles to the ground. Its coat was patterned russet, black and pale yellow.

Loupin's pride shone from his face. ‘
Un potamochère
,' he explained. ‘Go on, touch him. He doesn't bite.' Bismarck was a red river hog. I had never seen one before and thought him one of the strangest looking creatures I had ever encountered, but his sweet temperament won me. I made appreciative noises and tickled the coarse hair behind his ears.

We had to cut our visit short at that point, as we were expected back at the Roux house for dinner. I extended my hand to Monsieur Loupin and thanked him for an evening I knew I would never forget. Win followed suit: although he hadn't followed much of the rapid-fire French, he'd loved seeing the animals, and he appreciated a genuine eccentric when he met one.

That night, I pondered the hugeness of Loupin's personality. Was it Africa that had made him into such an overblown character? Was that how he had survived life in remote camps? I guessed that his eclectic interests were now what kept him sane amid the mundanity of life as a shopkeeper and airline agent in a place like Makokou. Expatriates had to create their own micro-worlds – there was nothing else for them.

Next day, we shared the pirogue back to Mayebut with Mendoum Dominique, the new man Eamon had recruited to look after rations. He was tall and articulate, with polished European manners. I put his age at around fifty. I was relieved that Eamon had found someone so quickly because it would lighten my workload.