A Look into My Life — Chapter Three

We lived in a three-bedroom house set in a beautiful, expansive garden populated with fruit trees and plants. I gave all the trees names and personalities, and every afternoon I climbed one of them and dreamt of an imaginary life in which everything was perfect. My favourite was a mango tree that grew beside Mother's bedroom. I thought it friendlier than the others because its branches were easy to climb onto, and it was hollow inside like an enormous house. Sometimes I shared it with agamas and other lizards. The former were shy and scramed when I showed up. Their lightening speed fascinated me. I thought, if they ever decided to attack me, I did not stand a chance to escape. But they were part of the habitat, and I thought their bright blue head and tail looked beautiful. I loved perching on one of the tree's strongest branches so I could observe what went on at the neighbours' house.

Our television had broken down before I even learnt how to enjoy it, so daydreaming in trees became my only entertainment. I had befriended almost everything in our yard, alive or inanimate. I was passionate about flowers and plants, and I enjoyed watching them grow.

After school, I wandered around, mumbling impossibly romantic stories to myself. I enjoyed walking the full length of the yard, from the gravelled driveway to the molehill beside the house, imagining that each part was a different country I was crossing. It was then that I learnt to play by myself.

One day around midday, I was six or seven years old, Mother came home from work for lunch. Shortly afterwards, one of her brothers arrived and told her something that made her burst into tears. She cried so loudly and violently that I was terrified. I followed her anxiously around the house as she packed a suitcase. Then, to my horror, she disappeared for several days.

Surrounded by people yet feeling utterly lost, I feared she would never return. When she finally came back, I learnt that she had gone to Zambia to identify and retrieve my uncle's body from a morgue. He had been shot while trying to steal a car.

Her absence made me realise how deeply attached I was to her. Soon afterwards, I began having a recurring nightmare. The Enemy did not wait for me to grow up to attack. In fact, from the moment I was conceived, the war started. Like Jesus said in John 10:10, as soon as he learned I was on my way, he rushed to steal, kill and destroy. But thank Jesus Christ, Who not only came so set the captives free, but also to give me life, and life in abundance. I wish I was taught spiritual warefare as a child, because as I said the devil did not wait for me to grow up and grasp spiritual concepts. In the first dream, I was inside our house while rain poured outside, and I was watching anxiously through the window for Mother to return. She never did, in all the dreams, and I always woke up filled with dread, afraid that one day she would really leave and never come back.

In the other dream, I stood in our veranda, looking outside. It was always night. A very tall, slender figure of about four metres high, stood in the middle of the garden, wickedly mocking and taunting me. Overcome with dread, I would run towards it and try to drive it away.

I sensed that this demon had been especially assigned to me, sent to seduce me. I no longer remember how the dreams ended, but they continued throughout my early childhood and changed into something else when I reached puberty. Unfortunately, I told no one about them because I forgot them by morning.

I remember my first experience of God. I was having a nightmare one morning, and was unable to wake up, even though I wanted to. I started praying. At first there was no change, and then suddenly I noticed that a man with white air, clad in a red robe, sat next to me. As I prayed, He prayed with me, and soon unspeakable, indescribable and delicious warmth filled my heart. I felt stronger as He and I said again and again "In the Name of Jesus", until the sleep paralysis lifted. I woke up, convinced that God was well alive and loved me. 

By Grade Three, I had begun gaining confidence because I had made friends. Four of us formed a close group and spent our breaks and time after class together. For the first time, I felt that I belonged.

We had naturally connected because we were the four fastest runners in the class. Speed mattered greatly at that age, since so many of our games depended on it. We shared our food, pocket money, joys and troubles, and school became an enjoyable place.

Then catastrophe struck and drove me back to my familiar refuge, the darkest corner of the back of the classroom. I wet my shorts again. This time we were older and more aware of how humiliating the incident was, which made it far worse. I was mocked for many years after that. A cruel little song was sung now and again in my honour:

Il a fait pipi!

Dans sa culotte!

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Ooooooo!

Aaaaaaa!

Given a choice, I would have changed schools, moved to another country or disappeared altogether. Instead, I had to face reality. I withdrew from the group, though by then they no longer wanted to be my friends anyways. News spread rapidly through the school, and I became convinced that everyone was looking at me with ridicule. I was given an offensive nickname that followed me long after the incident. Some pupils used it without even knowing how it originated.

I wished my mother had told me more about herself, about me, about my father. I wished we could spend time together. She seemed to believe that motherhood meant feeding me, sending me to school and Sunday school, and providing a home. I was grateful for those things, but I longed for warmth and emotional closeness. As her only child, I wanted to know the woman who had brought me into the world.

My attempts to open a line of communication were often met with harsh rejection. I never doubted that she loved me deeply, and she made many sacrifices for me. Yet she understood motherhood primarily through discipline, while I needed someone to whom I could pour out my heart, someone who might also entrust me with hers. I could see that she, too, needed such comfort.

I was jealous of the openness she shared with her brothers and sisters who lived with us. I felt I also deserved some of that, but never got it. We started clashing very early. 

As a result, the person I loved the most became the person with whom I got along the least. Mother seemed to believe I lied often, which was not true. I felt safe enough at home to tell the truth and had no fear of abuse or beatings, so her suspicion made me defiant. Feeling dismissed and misunderstood, I eventually stopped talking to her. 

Visitors, especially members of Mother's family, saw me as grumpy and sulky, and they were right. Their disapproval gave me a certain satisfaction because I disliked them. I resented the closeness they shared with Mother and I believed they understood the source of my frustration, yet they taunted me by drawing even nearer to her. A deep divide formed between my extended family and me, and I retreated into my imaginary world.

My maternal grandmother was an unfailing source of understanding and love. Unfortunately, she lived far away and spent long periods at her plantation outside town. When she looked at me, I felt that she saw through me without judging. She acknowledged my existence and was the only person in the family who consistently drew me in and reminded me that I belonged.

Whenever Grandmother was near, I recovered a sense of identity. Apart from Mother, she seemed to be the only person who truly loved me despite my difficult traits. Yet I saw her far less often than I now wish I had. Too often, I visited only after a serious argument with Mother had driven me from home for a few days.

Grandmother recognised the growing conflict between Mother and me. She understood why two people she loved were tearing each other apart, but she was too gentle to place herself between two combative personalities. Later, she tried to reconcile us, but by then I had become deeply passive-aggressive. I now wish I had shown her more affection.

Years later, when Mother died, Grandmother seemed to pour into me all the love she had held for her daughter. She was as lost, wounded and shocked as the rest of us. When I left the country only three weeks after the burial, she felt as though she were losing Mother all over again. I wish I had stayed longer and reassured her that part of Mother lived on in me, and that her love still sustained me. But I had to leave, and it broke her heart.

I can still see Grandmother running after the car that took me to the airport, tears streaming down her face. Had I known I would never see her again, I would have taken her with me, at least for a while, although I knew she would soon have grown homesick. Perhaps that is part of life, enduring one painful blow after another, being knocked down and learning to rise again.

As a grown man, I have more sympathy for my mother because I now understand aspects of her struggles that I could not grasp as a child. At the same time, I am angrier that she did not let me into her pain. Her bleeding heart stained my own, so was it too much to ask why we were both suffering?

I also wish she had talked to me instead of talking at me. As a little boy, I needed direction and guidance, and I truly believe I deserved an explanation of why mine was a broken home, simply because I lived in it. I represented that home wherever I went, and if I was to honour it, I needed to understand it.

But every time I asked Mother why I did not have a father, she sternly rebuked what she considered inappropriate questioning. I understand that I was the living image of the man who had disappointed her, a constant reminder of a wasted, failed period of her life. But what do you suggest I should have done? I genuinely did not know, so I kept quiet.

I stopped talking to her for a long time, finally providing proof to everybody in the family and the community that I was a moody, peculiar child. It added to Mother's suffering, but it added to mine too, because we both missed an opportunity to live a beautifully supportive life. My mother is not here to give her side of the story, but I swear I am being sincere.

Poverty was hitting us hard. Food was scarce, and we had become very thin. The economy was in a dire state, and most people in the country were enduring terrible hardship, except for a few politicians and businesspeople. The banks were closed, and there was no supermarket in the city, except for one I heard about later that was so well hidden only affluent people knew where it was.

The people of Lubumbashi survived thanks to the lakes, the rivers and the soil, which people, including Grandmother, ploughed mercilessly, extracting whatever they could from it. At harvest time, Grandmother brought us vegetables, a few sacks of maize and sweet potatoes, cassava roots and peanuts, which kept us going for a while.

We had also transformed half our flower garden into a vegetable patch where we planted beans, maize and peanuts. We picked and cooked the beans long before they ripened. If staple food was strictly rationed, luxury food was nonexistent. Some of us went years without eating a bar of chocolate, and we almost forgot the colour of milk. Many people did not know what cheese was. One day, when I told a cousin that a drink called hot chocolate existed, he laughed in my face and swore I was a damn liar.

Mother still worked for the railway company, where monthly salaries arrived every six months or so. She walked several kilometres to work, a great humiliation for her, and the journey wore out whatever shoes she had left. She went from being one of the most beautiful women in the city to a thin, tired woman burnt by the harsh Congolese sun. She looked older than she was, and it pained me to see the distress in her eyes and the strain in her body.

One day, Mother came home sadder and more tired than usual. She laconically informed me that she no longer had a function at work and had been told not to return. I could see that she was devastated, and it seemed the house itself bowed its roof in compassion. Even as I write this, I can feel the misery of those days seeping through the years.

She showed me the note, a tiny piece of paper informing her that she no longer had a job. It was signed by her boss, a nephew of my father, whom I hated from that moment with a passion. I stole the paper and kept it hidden for years, vowing that one day I would exact revenge on the scum of the earth who had caused my mother so much pain. But one day I met Jesus Christ and finally threw the little paper away, along with my burning resentment.

Mother fell ill afterwards. Always active around the house, she retired to her bedroom one afternoon and announced that she was not feeling well. My heart fell to my knees. She had been ill before, of course, but something about this occasion made me deeply uneasy.

I hovered around her bedroom, hoping to see her emerge ready to take on the world. But she remained there all afternoon, and the afternoon became the saddest evening of my life. It was hard to watch such a strong woman being crushed by illness.

Most of all, I wondered what I would do alone in the world. I knew that her relatives, the only relatives I had, did not like me. My father was not an option, and the terror of growing up alone, motherless and fatherless, haunted me throughout the night.

I did not sleep. I remained ready to dash to Mother's bedroom if she called. I checked on her several times during the night, and she assured me she would soon feel better. I will not die, Christos, she kept saying feebly and soothingly whenever my worried face appeared at her door.

I fell asleep at dawn, only to wake up immediately for school. I wanted to stay and keep an eye on her, but she was already up, sternly ordering me to wash and leave. She looked stronger, though not as strong as I would have liked. So I took my worry and carried it to school.

I was still in primary school. From that moment until her death years later, the sour weight of apprehension rested on my heart, repeatedly returning me to the panic I felt that afternoon when I first thought I might lose her.

One night, a plane carrying the entire Congolese National Football Team fell from the sky, killing everyone on board. It was a national tragedy, and Mobutu, our dictator, declared a national day of mourning. The following day was bleak, and we were all shocked.

Mother and I were perhaps more shaken than most because a personal tragedy, less grave than the crash but disturbing nonetheless, had also struck us. Thieves had entered my bedroom and stolen everything except the bed on which I was sleeping. No one had heard them.

The incident frightened us because we were two vulnerable people who might not have been able to defend ourselves if they returned. Until then, despite our poverty, Mother had been treated with deference because she was respectable and dignified. Vestiges of our former glory remained. We still had a beautiful home, and people knew that Mother had once been married to a renowned politician and had held a decent job at the country's second-largest company.

We lived in a good, respectable community, but after the robbery we feared the thieves might return. How would we protect ourselves? I was only a child, and Mother was only a woman. If our home had become a target for bad people, how in the world would we survive? I was not too concerned about the stolen clothes, which had all been horrible rags anyway. It was the robbery itself that worried us.

Throughout the day, the radio played sad religious songs in honour of the national team. It was shocking that so many people had died in one accident. Mathy, a cousin whom I loved very much, had come to live with us. She was five years older than me and the kindest child I had ever met. She had a huge heart, the kind one does not see anymore.

Perhaps the mournful songs and the robbery had overwhelmed Mother, because she sent Mathy and me to see my father for the first time in my life. We were to ask him for money because everything I owned had been stolen except the clothes on my back. I suspect she also hoped the meeting might open a line of communication between my father and me.

So Mathy and I set out to see him. I was excited and nervous. I did not know how the meeting would go, but I had grown into such a sceptical and cynical child that I restrained myself from expecting anything. If anything, I thought he would deny being my father and chase me away like a dog. But at least I would finally meet the myth and learn how he felt about me.

At the time, he worked as vice-president of the Regional Assembly, a title I do not understand even today. I was not sure what his work involved, nor did I care. I simply wanted to see him. We made our way to the Building of the 30th of June, where his office was. I had not known he worked there, although I passed that building almost every day on my way to school. The other most important person missing from my life had been within reach, closer than I imagined, and I had not even realised it.

My heartbeat accelerated as we approached the imposing building. We waited for him to emerge, and eventually he did. He was a natty, distinguished and dignified little man in his late forties or early fifties, much shorter than I had expected. The hair at his temples was grey, and he looked just like me. He must also have been startled by the resemblance because I saw my own surprise reflected in his eyes.

He stopped and stared hard at me, then greeted us. Mathy did all the talking. She introduced us and presented our request, explaining the robbery and the difficulties we were facing. Dear Mathy, she was so young, yet adults continually placed grown-up responsibilities on her shoulders. She had been forced to mature quickly and would later raise all her siblings, giving them the love and discipline of a mother.

My father was as oily and slippery as any politician. After Mathy spoke, he treated me not as his child but as some kind of constituent. He did not ask how I was doing, how school was going, what food or sport I liked, where I studied, or what I wanted to become. He simply gave me the most superficial smile, tapped me lightly on the shoulder and told me to return the following Tuesday to collect the money we needed. Then he dismissed us and walked briskly towards his little red car.

I stood there watching until the car disappeared on the horizon, more confused and damaged than before. We walked home slowly, quiet and downcast. I wished I could keep walking forever and never reach my destination, so that I would not have to face Mother and deliver the bad news.

As I walked, I cursed my father for stealing the Father Experience from me. I had a right to both a father and a mother because they were both alive. I found him despicable, unworthy of living among human beings and unnecessarily cruel.

Had I been an accident, I might have disliked him less, because then he could at least have claimed to have been tricked into fatherhood. People don't have sex accidently. But like Shaka Zulu had once said, five minutes of his pleasure had produced a lifelong of suffering. But I had heard that my parents had truly wanted me and had gone out of their way to have me. I had not invited myself. Therefore, in my judgement, my father had committed the crimes of Abandonment, Theft and Grand Negligence.

I began hating him with a passion. At the time, I wished he would be thrown into the worst part of hell, where worms crawled inside him and ate him from within, where it was freezing cold and burning hot at once, where imps stabbed him endlessly with their forks, and where tongues of fire licked his feet, burnt away his flesh and left him a skeleton. I wanted loneliness, sadness, hatred and depression to seize his soul, plunge him into a deep, dark pit and leave him there.

Until then, I had hated myself for being fatherless. I did not know why, but the idea that I was to blame for my parents' separation had been planted in my mind and had grown deep roots. Coupled with my general awkwardness, it had almost paralysed my growth in the world of men and damaged my ability to relate to others. But after my father behaved like a jerk towards me, my self-hatred suddenly turned against him in a surge of blazing heat.

When we reached home, Mother was waiting with great anticipation. She had repeatedly proved herself utterly naïve, always expecting people to be morally upright, while I was naturally inclined towards scepticism and, sadly, was often right. Had Mother been like me in her youth, she might have avoided many heartaches.

But she thought the best of everyone. She had already begun celebrating the fact that I had reunited with my father and was probably blaming herself for not sending me sooner. When we entered the house, she asked whether he had kissed or hugged me, or kissed and hugged me, and how delighted he had been to see me.

I watched her mood change and her eyes darken as I laughed bitterly and mockingly at what I considered her ridiculous optimism. Of course he had dismissed me after promising to give me money the following week, I replied. No, he had certainly neither hugged nor kissed me. Was he even my father? I had seen him for only a few seconds, I rudely concluded, yet I could already tell what kind of man he was. How, then, could she have spent several years with him and actually chosen to make a child with him?

Mother was angry with me, but I knew she was angry for me. I knew she cried for me, for my tragic life, for the paternal love I had been denied and for the contempt with which I had been treated. She was so disappointed that I regretted mocking her. She understood what I was missing because she had had a loving father.

I had decided not to return for my father's money, but we had no food, and I had seen the distress in Mother's eyes. So I dragged myself back to the Regional Assembly at the Building of the 30th of June. I found him walking towards his little red car, probably on his way home. Again, I was amazed by how short he was. I was already taller than him.

He greeted me perfunctorily and pulled a thin wad of cash from the inside pocket of his black suit. Before I had finished saying thank you, he had jumped into his car and driven away. I stood there watching the red car shrink until it disappeared along Citoyenne Mobutu Street. Then I turned and walked home.

The money he gave me was just enough to buy a pair of shorts, since I had no clothes apart from those on my back, and a kilogram of red meat.

Mother was furious, and saddened by her failed attempt to give me a father, but I was relieved. I thought it better not to owe such a man anything. If I ever met him again, I would repay him. The debt amounted to one pair of shorts and a kilogram of red meat.

Years later, I briefly discussed him with someone who justified his wariness towards me by saying that, as a famous man, he had to examine every claim that he had fathered a child. I do not care much for that position. Prudence should not begin after a child has been summoned into the world by lovemaking.

The implications of conception are enormous. A whole human being is created, and responsibility must begin from the moment that new being arrives. Once a child is on Earth, it is not the time to start entertaining doubts. Doubt is only acceptable before two adults have intercourse. Someone provided the seed, and apart from the Immaculate Conception, children do not invite themselves onto Earth. I found that person's explanation weak, insensitive and ignorant.

I saw my father again, but only from a distance. I lived in an area called Carrefour, and there were two routes to school. One followed Kilela Balanda Street, while the other passed the Building of the 30th of June, where he worked. I had always used that road and might have seen him before, although I would not have known who he was.

Now that I had been introduced to him, I sometimes saw his little red car speeding along the street. At other times, I caught a glimpse of his short frame walking towards the immense building. It was strange to be so estranged from someone so intimately connected to me, and my mind struggled to comprehend it.

I wished I had had someone to talk to, an adult who could help me through the cruelty of the situation. Unfortunately, therapists were not available to my people in those days. Like many others, I carried my hurt while it rotted and festered in my mind and heart. Adolescence found me in that state.