Congo-Brazzaville
- Karen Darnell
- Aug 21, 2020
- 4 min read
The hosts for our visit to the smaller of the two Congos are justly proud of their country’s beauty and its people’s intelligence and independence. Before I introduce you to our hosts, let’s make sure we have landed in the right place. In Africa, there are two countries called Congo. The locals differentiate them by adding on the names of their capital cities.
Congo-Brazzaville, formerly the French Congo, is now officially the Republic of the Congo. The larger Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, formerly the Belgian Congo then Zaire, officially the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the DRC, will be the subject of my next blog. For this trip, we have landed in Brazzaville, named for Pierre de Brazza, an Italian explorer working for the French who beat Henry Morton Stanley (working for the Belgians) to the goal of signing a treaty with King Makoko. This treaty created a French protectorate on the north bank of the Congo river. France benefited greatly from this treaty. Brazzaville was the capital of Free France during World War II while Hitler held Paris.
As in other African colonies, the Europeans who administered this colony treated the Africans in ways that horrify me. De Brazza's humanitarian work against slavery and the abuse of African workers is what keeps his name on their capital city and inspired a recent memorial. Congo-Brazzaville is the first country in Africa to give indigenous people legal rights.
The host for the first part of our trip is wildlife cameraman Vianet D’jenguet. His documentary My Congo produced by PBS shows him as a gracious and joyful host who is sharing his native country with love. He not only films and narrates about the wildlife and people, he bubbles over with excitement with what he sees and who he meets. I love his charisma and the photography is beautiful. I borrowed the DVD from the LA County Library. It can also be purchased through PBS or Amazon.
Our second host is Alain Mabanckou who tells beautiful family stories in The Lights of Pointe-Noire. I won’t spoil any of his stories which are so well written with wonderful endings, but I will tell you what he says about the independence and intelligence of his family and his fellow citizens.
· To a man from Congo who has lived in France so long he has accepted “the image of the black continent projected by the media” he says, “Every day my nephews and nieces walk out in a long line down the rue du Louboulou. Their childhood knits them together, they wouldn’t swap it for all the world. They drink from a small glass, but it’s their own. Your glass is big, but it’s not yours, and each time you want to drink from it, you have to ask for permission. And alas, that permission is never granted . . .”
· About his fellow citizens, the Director of the French Institute who has been hosting Mabanckou and who would like him to meet with a group of hopeful poets tells him, “They want to be writers, like any self-respecting Congolese, and they certainly have lots of manuscripts. I have never seen that in any other country I’ve worked in.”
I love the way Alain Mabanckou puts words together as he presents this proud culture. He has written many books and I intend to read more of them.
Let me fit in just one more book before we move on to the unique fishing, food, and fancy dress of Congo-Brazzaville. The novel Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd is set in a fictitious country in Africa, but the narrator tells us on the first page that the name is from a historic moment in Congo-Brazzaville’s liberation struggle. This novel makes me think! A chimpanzee war from Tanzania and human wars from Angola and Mozambique inspired Boyd to make a statement about all conflict and violence between human beings throughout time and yet it’s a relatable book about chimpanzees and researchers. I enjoyed it.
We can’t talk about Congo without talking about the river, and if we talk about the river, let’s talk about fish. I found an extreme fishing series, River Monsters in which season 2, episode 1 “Demon Fish” is set in Congo-Brazzaville. It can be found here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5gcebw
Food! We must have food! Check out this page for recipes: https://www.marga.org/food/int/congo/
The last thing I expected to find in Congo is fancy dress! Sunday in Brazzaville is a documentary on Amazon Prime showing the wrestlers, the musicians, and the people who like to dress well (sapeurs) as well as the radio show that talks about them. If you don’t have Amazon Prime and don’t want to pay to watch, you’ll still catch a glimpse of the sapeurs as well as many other parts of Congo in this video:
Here’s where my search came to an end. Apparently even TheCrazyTourist is confused between the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo because they don’t have a page for Congo-Brazzaville. I couldn’t find any other tourism page that I like as much, except for the one that is the source of the attached picture, so we’ll skip that for this blog.
I can’t skip the recommendation to travel to Congo-Brazzaville and my shout out to my amazing daughter and favorite travel advisor Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive - may we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Congo-Brazzaville and throughout the world.
Comments