Whomever has been expat or away from home during the Christmas period, knows that very mixed feeling of longing for home, family and hearth, but also at the same time a bit relieved that you will not have to undergo all of the mandatory year-end socials. Today, planes are full, children packed and loaded, gifts weaponised. Back then? Not like you could have a brief hop back, wave and re-start on the 2nd of January, hangover cured, hopefully – as all good expats do.
Christmas 1919 in Belgian Congo… You are really far away from home, in the middle of nowhere in Panda in Likasi, not even in Elizabethville – the bigger city next door. Oh, and the blazes of WWI are still guttering across the continent in Turkey, Germany, revolution rages in Russia, and everywhere are threats of general strikes. Great news. And yet, all of that is over there, so not a reason to avoid the cheer!
Now, what to do?
A hearty Christmas dinner with fellow engineers and friends, of course! Let’s be merry, unleash the mirth, release the topical and engineering jokes! It is the season to be jolly! Especially if you are 19, as my grandfather was that year.
So, here is how it turned out: The Belgian Congo Christmas Party of 1919.
The venue
The Christmas party took place at the European Hospital of Panda Likasi, a pretty small hospital in comparison to the one in Lubumbashi. The below photos give you an impression of the place.
The office colleagues, aka the Malachite Manglers
Malachite, mineralogists will tell you – if you care to listen and you would listen – is a copper carbonate hydroxide. In other words, it contains copper, and you have to extract it. Copper mines are the first claim to fame of Katanga. You may have already seen malachite anywhere around the world, in gems, or cute primitive local arts and crafts sculptures. For millennia, it has been as well the base of dark green pigment.
(zoomed in screenshot from photograph below)
In Katanga, finding and mapping the ore fields was done by hand, pith helmets on the heads and with boots on the ground. Not via LIDAR drones. My grandfather belonged to one such multi-national team roaming the bush: the self-styled Malachite Manglers. That 1919 Xmas dinner was (literally) dedicated to them.
The menu
The menu itself is a laugh-out-loud inside joke written on a small blueprint paper. It promises nothing less than an evening of puns, innuendos and topical jokes. Engineering-level stand-up comedy, slapstick of a century ago. In Africa.
(full translation in English at the end of this article)
The highlights:
Hors d’Oeuvre “à la Bolshevist”
December 1919 was the height of the Russian revolution. The White armies, supported by the Allies, had sent French, English, Belgian support troops. The first refugees were trickling in Leopoldville, Shanghai,… with wild tales and wilder hopes. The Allies were still pretty shocked that Russia betrayed their word, and, worse, that it had denounced its international debts. For the European public, it meant massively subscribed bond vanishing into thin air, ruining many who had invested in what seemed like a safe investment.
That was the case of my maternal grandfather, who had “conservatively” invested in the economic frontier of the time: Russia. The publicly subscribed loans were to build infrastructures such as railways. One of the first decisions of the Communists was to denounce this debt contracted in their eyes by the Czars, and nationalise all assets, making the funds unretrievable. It cost my French family around a third of their assets. To this day, the Russian state in its different incarnations has still not paid these historical debts.
Hence this wormed itself on the Xmas menu, as a joke likely for cheap hors d’oeuvre. Or it refers to the poor quality of the food itself.
… with Quinine
Quinine was the standard malaria medicine, taken by anyone travelling out of Europe, from South East Asia to Africa. If you are British, you may be familiar with it as it is root of one of your greatest inventions. Not marmite. But G&T. Quinine was so bitter that, to promote its usage, it was mixed in water with spritz and herbs… tonic water. Add gin as an excuse, make it a regular at 17h00, and “drink” your quinine, as per doctor’s order. Someone has to do it.
By now, malaria is quinine resistant, so don’t try this at home and check the medical alerts before travelling.
Consommé of Jigging Plant … with Quinine
A jigging plant is a specific machine, within the process of copper production, to separate the useful ore from the attached sediment. It shakes and vibrates, basically an industrial sieve. The jigging plant produces slush at one end. Hence… soup, or consommé.
Waka Waka.
Ancient Brontosaurus Eggs … with Caution
Brontosaurus(i) are, like Pluto, one of these scientific facts that knows ups and downs. Today, archaeologists believe the species was made up of several other skeletons, and so that they never existed. Or at least most do. Back then, legend had it that they were bound to have survived in some blank spots of the African maps. Some remote, hidden, inaccessible place, where dinosaurs still roamed the earth. With King Kong, Tarzan, in Wakanda. A myth for credulous mind and science-fiction writers. Uh-uh.
Until they found coelacanths, armoured fishes, prehistoric survivors, living on the coasts of South Africa. Scientific.
Brontosaurus Rumps à la LePage … with Potassium Bromide
Although it has always been denied, the rumour was that armies used to give soldiers sexual inhibitors, specifically potassium bromide. Bromide was also a standard recommendation for anyone who had some intemperate sexual needs. Such as masturbation. Whichever way, not a ringing endorsement of Monsieur LePage… although he himself signed the Xmas menu program (right side of the title).
An innuendo then.
Conglomerate Pudding with Cognac, Holly and Quinine
Holly was a then popular herbal drink. And conglomerate? Well, as far as I understand, like the jigging plant, that is the slush during the process of copper extraction.
Nuts, Raisins, Chocolates at Heetien
Heetien… I found absolutely nothing online, in automated translators nor in the family documents. It does not mean anything, it seems, in no language. So Heetien is probably someone, maybe a local shop, bar or tearoom, or someone’s larger house.
Among the Drinks list: Sodium Sulphate
No idea. It is apparently used in detergents… so maybe some hilarious innuendo there too. I remember my grandmother harping about the fact that you could find anything in the bush, except washing powder. Hence it was more valuable even than water, which you could always boil. Who knows.
And, with that, we conclude Xmas 1919 dinner, of course with copious drinks. Drive safe, and let your colleagues carry you home if not! See you next year, same day, same place, same time. Hope you enjoyed it! Anything for a laugh!
My grandfather clearly did enjoy it, why else would this menu have made its way into one of his favourite photo albums, together with his best hunting trophy photos.
Stay tunes for more.
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