PART TWO June-October, 1963
Kango
Our next school site was in Kango was situated high on the bluffs overlooking the Komo River. It took about four hours to drive to Libreville and about six hours to travel to Lambarene, on the poor door road. (Note: this school was demolished over 10 years ago and replaced by three primary schools.)
Jerome Mba, the chief from Okala joined us in Kango. The chief brought along wife number one and three. In Kango, Chief had no status nor was he of the same tribe and tongue.
One day I asked Chief Jerome, why he always called me "N’toma".
He replied. "It is man who walks with tired feet!"
Thanks Jerome. True, I did shuffle around a little wearing heavy boots while working at the construction site but I didn’t need to hear that.
Wilkes was scheduled to make his first visit to our Kango site. In preparation, we coached one of our workers to greet Wilkes in English. When Wilkes arrived, the worker walked up to him, extended his hand and said, "Kiss my ass".
Although we loved to fool around with the locals, we didn’t descend into the racist mind-trap that was quite clearly evidenced by a trio of Peace Corps Volunteers from the Ivory Coast. They arrived in Gabon for a six-week assignment, between their school-teaching break. Certainly, we grossed them out with our vulgar bush language and heavy partying but they grossed us out even more with their ever-present racist remarks that degraded the locals. Come to think about it, when they are back in the US and get together as teachers, they probably degrade their American students just as rudely and often. We learned, early, that to win over the Gabonese, gaining their respect, we needed to sincerely demonstrate the same.
Picture of Kango site today. School torn down by French and new schools constructed.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer
On June 8, 1963 we made our first trip to see Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Although Lambarene is less than 100 kilometers from Kango, to get there we needed to cross several rivers via hand-pulled ferries. All passengers of the ferry served as the motor of the ferry; grab the rope and pull ourselves and vehicle across the river.
Getting to see and meet with Schweitzer was a dream come true. My mother adored Dr. Schweitzer to the point where she gave her only public speech in front of our entire church. The subject: "Reverence for Life" as practiced and scribed by Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
We were met by Dr. Schweitzer’s interpreter and personal nurse, a Dutch woman who had been with Schweitzer since 1949. After only a few moments with the nurse, Dr. Schweitzer burst out of his office and climbed down the stairs to greet us.
We lined up to shake the doctor’s hand and to exchange greetings in French. We learned later that the doctor understands English perfectly but prefers to speak in French. He was an avid reader of Time, International Herald Tribune and Saturday Review.
I made an effort to be the last in line to shake hands with Schweitzer since I had been briefed by an embassy staff member on just how to do it and didn’t want to tip my hand to the others.
Everyone stood in line to shake hands with the doctor and to say, "Bon jour Dr. Schweitzer".
At last, it was my turn. He grasped my hand with a firm hand shake and said, "Bon jour".
I replied, "Bon jour Le Gran Dr. Schweitzer" to which he responded with a twinkling smile.
Previous to the individual greetings, we asked his nurse if the doctor would mind if we took photos of him to send home to our families. She relayed our request to the doctor. He, immediately, took off his glasses, smoothed his hair and said, "Bien sur". An icon with an image to maintain.
Le Gran Doctor was on his way to lunch and asked us to join him. In the dining area, the doctor introduced his daughter. I had never met a person quite like her. Her immediate warmth and sincerity were like a breath of fresh air coming through a heated dark forest. Through her, we immediately sensed the meaning of Christianity and the brotherhood of man (and beast) which envelops the hospital grounds.
At lunch, the doctor asked us about the Peace Corps and our specific project in Gabon.
In our elementary French, we attempted to convey the objectives of the Peace Corps as we understood them: to answer the development requests of our host country, to learn from our hosts and to share our respective cultures and to bring back to the US a new international awareness and skills that we may find of use in our lives back in the US..
Schweitzer acknowledged that he was one of the architects of our schools since he had convinced Marshal Erdman, the official school project architect, to build double roves. With a double roof, air would circulate between the two roves making it much cooler inside for the students. Schweitzer used his money from the Nobel Peace Prize to build roves for his leper colony and did not provide them with the same double roofing he used to house his staff.
We listened as Schweitzer imparted upon us his rules for building in the tropics. He was surprised that we imported most of our materials versus relying upon the local products.
"When you build for the Africans, you must build what they are familiar with", he preached.
Apparently, he thought that mud huts with thatched roves were all that was required for African students. He also thought it a mistake for the US to send non-professionals to Gabon although he praised the good intentions of the Peace Corps Volunteers. Easy for someone to say who hadn’t trained, in over 50 years in Gabon, one Gabonese to be a doctor, nurse or other profession.
After a tour of the hospital grounds (animals everywhere both running free and in cages) and the facilities, Schweitzer invited us into his living quarters. His desk was strewn with correspondence and magazines from around the world. We learned that he corresponded with many of the world’s leaders including those in China, India, France and Germany.
We had a very provocative discussion in his office that ranged from world’s geopolitical situation to the problems faced by the Gabonese in their transition from a hunter/farming society into one entering the industrialized world. It would have been interesting to hear Schweitzer’s views of how Africa should cope in this new Information Age.
Schweitzer had garnered a very unique (if not distorted) local and world perspective through his emersion and doctoring the ill for 50 years within Equatorial Africa while staying in contact with leading thinkers from around the world.
He believed that Equatorial Africans were ill prepared for self rule and incapable of entering the professions. His theory was that it took hundreds of years to advance from a hunter/gatherer society into the professional industrialized world. According to Schweitzer, first the Equatorial African should learn the trades such as the Europeans did in the present Millennium. Those that learned best would be eligible to enter the professions and then would replace their European "masters". Apparently, this was his ill-reasoning behind his decision to not train any local inhabitant to become nurses or to have any other role of authority or skill in his hospital.
Schweitzer believed that because of the extreme heat found all around the equator, it was almost impossible for its inhabitants to progress. This was unlike Europe and other areas with a more temperate weather where hunters and food gatherers evolved into the trades, then into the Industrial era and soon-to-be Information age.
Schweitzer had a good point. Without air-conditioning, it was impossible to accomplish more than make it through the day and party at night to ward off the spirits and to have fun. During the day, the women performed all the work while the men either entered the forest to hunt or sat around the village drinking palm wine and telling stories of their latest conquests or bad luck.
What would happen when the nation has universal air-conditioning, access to good education and free from the yokes of their European masters and tribal fears? Answer not available for, probably, another 100 years, a minute speck of time considering that Gabon has been inhabited for at least 100,000 years.
On the world scene, Schweitzer was quite enamored with much of Asia and Communism. He believed that the West was in a moral and economic decline, much like the fall of the Roman Empire, while the East was inclining and would surpass the West in both social and economic terms. We were later informed by one of the hospital doctors that Schweitzer had become recently smitten by an extended visit with several East German Communists and was beginning to sound like Lenin.
We left Schweitzer’s office and were given a tour of his leper colony conducted by his daughter. Out of a total patient level of around 400, half were lepers, confined to the leper village area of the hospital. Family members of the ill were allowed to stay provided they agreed to perform menial work for the hospital. The leper village was headed by a Japanese doctor who was thought to be Schweitzer’s eventual successor.
On the way back to our quarters in Kango, the many images of swollen limbs from Elephantiasis, protruding bellies filled with worms and mutilated faces were difficult to let go. I also had a hard time reconciling Schweitzer’s refusal to treat Africans in the same manner as others. These are not inferiors but a proud race of warriors and hunters who have conquered many foes including the white invaders and enslavers.
In my return to Gabon in 2002, I revisited Schweitzer's hospital. It had grown to approximately three times its original size but much has remained as we remembered it 40 years ago.
Le Rank Cinq
Comradeship is a real gift. Five of us at the Kango site (pictured left to right, standing Larry Jackson and Dale Judkins from California, me, Lou Williams from Missouri and seated, Don Reighard from Ohio) formed a tight group, and labeled ourselves "Le Ranq Cinq". We sported beards, smoked, drank heavily upon occasion and swore profusely. My mother became worried.
The five of us were fairly typical of our entire group. We hadn't finished college and were taking a two-year break before we completed our studies and entered the 9-5 world. None of us had previous construction skills but we quickly learned. Of the five of us, Lou was the most idealistic. He planned to return to the states, enter medical school and practice medicine.
(Subsequently, Lou joined the Navy, earned his MD and practices medicine in Colorado)
When we joined the Peace Corps, we hadn't even heard about the hostilities in Viet Nam but, after a few months in Gabon, we all became aware that we could be drafted when we returned and be sent to fight.
Our favorite pastime was spending an evening at the local bar where they play Congo-African music and was frequented by the local young. The music had a strong drum beat and was accompanied by electric guitars, twanging away. Songs were always in a native dialect, never in French or English. A few of the entertainers mimicked the sounds of Ray Charles and other American, French and South American musicians, singing in local dialect. The older members preferred their tribal music consisting of age-old drums and chants.
The rhythm of the work day had a fairly steady beat. We woke about 6:00 AM and deeply breathed in the peaceful damp air of the break of dawn, drank our coffee and trudged over to the nearby work site where the morning ritual of greetings always occurred. "Mbolani", "Ca Va?", "Un Peu" and a shake of each worker’s hand.
This formality had a nice connection. Each worker was individually acknowledged and personally greeted as we were by them. Most called me Monsieur Robert in French and something less of a salutary status, I’m sure, in their native tongue. At least I never heard them call me "Entembe", once Chief Jerome Mba departed.
During the work breaks, the volunteers usually retired to one area to rest, smoke and yap with the workers doing the same in their group. Now and then, we would get together to discuss various issues that normally involved women.
I admired the Rolex of one of our Rank Cinq members, Larry Jackson from San Diego. One day in Fougamou, I got hold of a magazine that had an ad for fake Rolexes, only $10 each. I immediately ordered one from Switzerland and received it in about two weeks. Looked exactly like Larry’s Rolex and about 1/20th of the going price. So, I figured if I could order 10 at $100 and sell them at $100 each, I could pick up some quick cash. I mailed in the $100 and two weeks later I was told to get my butt to Libreville to meet with Wilkes. He had opened my shipment of fake Rolexes and got me to promise not to sell any to the locals. I said thanks and gave him one.
The disadvantage of living together as a large (8-12 PCVs) group was that it was too easy not to regularly socialize with the Gabonese. I only became very sociable when I moved out of our house in Fougamou into a one-man tent. By physically separating myself from the house of my colleagues, it was much easier for the locals to come to visit and for me to go out and make new friends.
When I moved to Alene, I was separated from the other members of Le Rank Cinq and only had four months left of my service to complete. There were only three of us in Alene (Bob Anderson, Dick Schuster and me) for the majority of the time. It appeared that with this smaller number that it was easier to branch out and make more Gabonese personal friends than by living in a larger group.
Gabon II Teachers Arrive
On September 25, 1963, the Gabon II group arrived. These were primary school teachers who were destined to be sent to various towns in Gabon.
We were scheduled to come into Libreville that same weekend to meet them and were surprised when they came out to meet us on Friday. They invited us to Libreville where we would have a beach party that night. When Wilkes had heard that we left our campsite, a day early without his prior approval, it was like we had deserted the front lines of Iwo Jima. Someone had to pay.
In his military mindset, the penalty must fall on the "commanding officer" of our group who turned out to be Jim Boyd. Boyd had taken his appointed leadership role quite seriously and feared the wrath of Wilkes for "disobeying his commanding officer".
We were all called in to be dressed down by Wilkes. He told us that Boyd had been demoted and would be transferred to Endende, a town in the south of Gabon. I conferred with the other members of Le Ranq Cinq and we agreed to stand together in opposition.
I said to Wilkes, "Colonel Wilkes, we all take full responsibility for our actions. Jim Boyd is no more at fault than the rest of us. If there are any consequences to be paid, we will all take equal punishment." Wilkes backed down and I was on his shit list.
