A New York journalist and a USIS officer pay a visit to an old-style African
potentate.
As the van left Bukavu and the peninsulas stretching out into Lake Kivu, Eric felt
pleased with the prospect of adventure. Night rain had washed the haze from the air.
The day was clear and sunny. Out on the road Kabare women trudged down from
the hills, balancing baskets of strawberries on the straight columns formed by their backs
and heads.
Wedged between two companions on the van's torn seat, Eric
breathed deeply of the rain-washed air; he surveyed the patterns of the cloths tied about
the women's bodies. As the van climbed toward the chefferie of Kabare, he noticed
the green fluttering of banana leaves, the burnt umber of the earth. He watched the
lake shimmer and the mountains stretch away in receding blues all the way to the
Ruwenzoris.
"We've got a great day for this," he said to Mark who peered
intently out the window. For the sake of Déogratias who was driving, he added,
"Quel jour, eh?"
Mark studied the huts visible through the banana leaves. There
were two types: one rectangular, mud and wattle with pitched frond-thatched roofs, the
other conical. How to describe these to American readers? "Like squat
cones?" "Like a thick fur coat of banana fronds?" Hmm.
His editors would balk at that. They wanted news. Space was always tight for
color pieces like this.
But it was some story. An interview with an African king, demigod
to some; autocrat to others. Mark had already worked out his lead: "Being
received by the Mwami of Kabare, absolute ruler of a quarter million tribesmen here, is
like stepping four hundred years back into 1563." He would make the Mwami a
traditionalist rogue, a charming anachronism, and sprinkle gems of his wisdom throughout
the piece. |