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1899. You are writing a novel about travelling back to the origins, of man, of mankind. You want to express physical, cultural and psychological challenge. It has to be a journey into the deepest, the darkest the most unknown. What would instantly say: primal, savage, mysterious? For Joseph Conrad, there was not much hesitation about it. Congo. And, so, we travel up the Congo river in his famous novel Heart of Darkness, from London to the Source of Mankind. A mere 10 years on, and this is the very wilderness my family crisscrossed, explored and mapped. For another 30 years. Likasi. 2 hours North-West of Lubumbashi.
Likasi – the Heart of Darkness for some – a home you are now more familiar with through my previous articles.
Maybe the book plot sounds somehow familiar to you? From air-conned city to primeval jungle in a boat, from modern to ancient. So it should. This is the very plot Francis Ford Coppola transposed in Apocalypse Now, swapping the Congo and the Mekong rivers, Pygmies and Montagnard. Just writing this sentence alone showed me the depth of what it actually meant to me. It is my all-time favourite movie. Fate or happenstance?
2024. Ghent. Pictures scrolling past, reminding me of what they once meant. How the layers of pictures settled down in my mind, a narrative of my creation, lives and purposes I re-imagined.
It never was the Africa of lions and sunsets that got me going. It is the lands, characters, the myths, of history, of literature, of science fiction, the mental pictures of African Angkor Vats lost in mists, nestled in my brain. They all set me off on a journey not ended just yet, exploring cultural, social, psychological mists. Digging out the mythological, the philosophical, the religious still out there.
Travelling to a place that does not need to exist. A place that just needs to be at the corner of my eye. A life concept.
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Africa. The Mystery.
Congo, the heart of Africa, has been for far too long a mythical terra Incognita for this to change overnight. It was for millennia the very byword for mystery. The ever-blank space on the map. Of course, there always was history there, but, it went unrecorded for aeons, and Congo just existed on the edge of the world. Oh, we procured its fascinating animals for entertainment since trade exists. Yet, Congo was over there, a shrouded shadow in the distance, the world of rumours half-heard, strange animals – incredible, wonderous, bizarre and terrifying. This is what is still fixed in our collective imagination. Map, tag and bag Africa, and yet, just there, beyond the mountain, beyond the jungle mists, there could be wonder. After all, Congo, and specifically Katanga, were still largely unmapped until late into the 1920s. Myth and Mystery imprinted in our collective soul.
The Untamed Wilderness.
We are compelled by the Call of Africa. It is the animal call of the wild. It is the waterfalls and orange sunsets of Out of Africa. It is Nature Untamed. How else to understand that, while we are starkly aware of Ebola, monkeypox, blood diamonds, corruption, traffic jams, … yet, we enthusiastically lounge in hunting lodges, a glass of Swartland wine in hand, watching birds wade in shallows, crocodiles yawning in the distance? That is also a true Wild. It is Safari Africa, sensory shock and awe of Victoria Falls for only 50$ and a rain poncho. But why do we yearn for it? Not the actual experience, but what it represents.
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Left: Ekom Nkam, aka Tarzan’s falls in Cameroon today (source WikiCommons)
Right: 1943 photograph of Gulungu Falls in Katanga, Congo
The Unspoiled Nobility.
Africa, Congo, or, at its core, Katanga. To me, not only birds, lions or giraffes. Not only lodges, waterfalls and sunsets. Else we would swap it in a flash for the South Pole or Terra Del Fuego. It always was more than just nature. To a jaded humanity, it is a world untouched by civilisation. Sure, travelling up the Congo river to its origins, you will meet danger, disease, death. You will be confronted to the bare bones of Humanity. Humans and their society. That is the core of the Heart of Darkness: the Law of the Jungle untouched. Entire shelves of popular fiction use the sources of the Congo for the purity it represents. Mentally, it feels like that, it looks like that. Wakanda of Marvel is around Likasi, of course, hidden from predatory eyes; that is why we cannot be truly sure. But rumour has it… And this is where Tarzan, the stranded British Lordling, learnt from the Great Apes how to survive and rule the Jungle. It was inland, up the Congo river; true nobility taught.
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The Essence of Humanity.
Travelling up-river as a metaphor to the cultural, social and psychological regression, until you hit the heart of Africa, the Heart of Darkness, the Heart of Mankind. As civilisation recedes over the horizon, its layers peel off one by one in each encounter. Until only the bare skeleton of a judgemental, self-satisfied social and cultural order remains. The price of it revealed. Civilisation? The London of child labour, Jack the Ripper and industrial smog. On the other hand, Freedom unshackled. The stone age temple, tribes and blood feuds. The only moral compass is your personal responsibility. Your choice. Nothing else to blame, no-one else to ask. No judgement, no etiquette nor propriety, just needs. What will you do, what will you chose, what price are you willing to pay? That is what the challenge of Katanga was, is, to me.
The pervasive Arcane.
Africa is spirituality. It constantly balances between the mundanely rational and the bewilderingly spiritual. Dennis Hopper, the stoned photographer of Apocalypse Now, jabbers and extols the divine in murder. Unspoiled, raw spirituality. Artists at the turn of the 20th century sought in Africa the primeval source, humanity untainted. The essential lines of the wooden ancestors. Africa is supernatural. Be blown away by the energy, the fervour of the church services. Africa Believes. In religions, witchcraft, spirits, separately or together? Why not everything at once? And so missionaries, Leopard Men and other secret societies, witch doctors to cure, féticheurs to protect and bokors to curse.
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The Last Continent.
Africa is a real continent. I was on the ground for some years. Its realities, experiences, urges and issues are immediate and direct. And yet, all of that is transient, it washes over: diseases, wars or famines. Africa will always remain Gondwana, the original continent, the Cradle, the Origin. How easy is it to believe that somewhere over there dinosaurs still roam the bush, like the Mokele-mbembe brontosaurus. It just fits the Africa we all dream of.
Africa has potential, opportunities. It has legacy, issues. But it also has a massive emotional and psychological capital, wherever you are from. It is more than gorillas in the mist or lions in the savannah. Africa is a dream of humankind.
Europe lives in Yesterday, just across from crumbling Roman arenas.
The US lives in the Now.
Asia lives in Tomorrow.
Africa?
It is Timelessness. Black & White pictures of the Gulungu waterfalls.
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