the celebrated ornithologist and the operator of a tour service in Goma, has dubbed himself Negzayo Safari. The women in their elegant long caftans braid their hair in marvelous patterns, while the men have abandoned European shirts and ties in favor of the
abas-cost
(
à bas le costume
, or “down with suits”), a light bush jacket. T-shirts are popular with the nation’s youth, particularly shirts that advertise professional teams in the United States, including a mysterious baseball club called the Boston Giants. Despite hard times and a harsh regime, the people appear happy, and perhaps they hope that the immenseresources of Zaire will one day be well organized to the profit and benefit of the Zairois themselves.
Most Zairians are wry about their president, Mobutu Sese Seko, whose somewhat foolish photographic likeness in big glasses, leopard cap, and leopard foulard presides over every public room and office in the country. At present his discredited regime is exceeded only by the governments of Equatorial Guinea and South Africa in the brutality of its political repression. The Zairois are beginning to resent this “leader” who is so fond of demanding sacrifices for the Popular Revolutionary Movement. The Belgians also bled Zaire, but at least they knew how to run the country.
Drink in hand, I listen contentedly to the evensongs of a tropical boubou and a robin chat, as Goossens speaks about the great days of the early 1970s, when the prospects for Zaire and for the Zairois seemed almost limitless. At that time, he was stationed at Banana, the seaport for Kinshasa and the only port on the short coast of this huge country. One day early in that year he received a wire from the ministry of tourism, instructing him to prepare accommodations for the forty-five hundred tourists arriving by sea for the world-championship prizefight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Since Banana could scarcely accommodate five hundred, the news of the huge ship threw the town into panic; huts for the tourist hordes were thrown up on every side without regard for sewage disposal or the threat of plague. But the Great Boat for Banana was as illusory as prosperity for Zaire; it never appeared, and Goossens wonders whether it ever existed at all.
Returning from Goossens’s house that evening, we passed the car of Adrien Deschryver, who turned up next day to meet with us in La Fiesta Bar. At thirty-eight, Deschryver is a husky, blunt, laconic man with short-cropped dark hair gone a little gray and the restlessness of somebody in pain; though courteous enough, he offers little, averting his flat, pale blue eyes and smiling a private knowingsmile that he means you to see. As a young man Deschryver was trained in taxidermy by James Chapin and had assembled a collection of some seven hundred skins of local birds. All of these, together with his library, were lost during the period of the revolution; he has never had the heart to start again.
“C’est un homme bizarre,”
Goossens had told us, accounting for Deschryver’s reputation for being difficult. “He has had a lot of trouble in his life. I don’t know if that is a
good
reason, but it is a reason.”
Lee Lyon was with him several years ago, Deschryver says, when he saw two Congo peacocks, still alive, that were snared at Hombo; it was not true that she had seen the peacock in the wild. “She was never away from me,” he adds enigmatically, “so I would know.” He seems to doubt that Chapin saw the peacock, although Forbes-Watson loyally assures us that he did. (In
Birds of the Belgian Congo
, Chapin says that he hunted for the bird in 1937; he does not say that he found it. William G. Conway, the director of the New York Zoological Society, tells me that he once asked Chapin whether he had actually seen the bird and that Chapin said he had not. However, Chapin’s notes record that on July 16, 1937, near Ayena, “I noticed something dark running under the bushes of the
abas-cost
(
à bas le costume
, or “down with suits”), a light bush jacket. T-shirts are popular with the nation’s youth, particularly shirts that advertise professional teams in the United States, including a mysterious baseball club called the Boston Giants. Despite hard times and a harsh regime, the people appear happy, and perhaps they hope that the immenseresources of Zaire will one day be well organized to the profit and benefit of the Zairois themselves.
Most Zairians are wry about their president, Mobutu Sese Seko, whose somewhat foolish photographic likeness in big glasses, leopard cap, and leopard foulard presides over every public room and office in the country. At present his discredited regime is exceeded only by the governments of Equatorial Guinea and South Africa in the brutality of its political repression. The Zairois are beginning to resent this “leader” who is so fond of demanding sacrifices for the Popular Revolutionary Movement. The Belgians also bled Zaire, but at least they knew how to run the country.
Drink in hand, I listen contentedly to the evensongs of a tropical boubou and a robin chat, as Goossens speaks about the great days of the early 1970s, when the prospects for Zaire and for the Zairois seemed almost limitless. At that time, he was stationed at Banana, the seaport for Kinshasa and the only port on the short coast of this huge country. One day early in that year he received a wire from the ministry of tourism, instructing him to prepare accommodations for the forty-five hundred tourists arriving by sea for the world-championship prizefight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Since Banana could scarcely accommodate five hundred, the news of the huge ship threw the town into panic; huts for the tourist hordes were thrown up on every side without regard for sewage disposal or the threat of plague. But the Great Boat for Banana was as illusory as prosperity for Zaire; it never appeared, and Goossens wonders whether it ever existed at all.
Returning from Goossens’s house that evening, we passed the car of Adrien Deschryver, who turned up next day to meet with us in La Fiesta Bar. At thirty-eight, Deschryver is a husky, blunt, laconic man with short-cropped dark hair gone a little gray and the restlessness of somebody in pain; though courteous enough, he offers little, averting his flat, pale blue eyes and smiling a private knowingsmile that he means you to see. As a young man Deschryver was trained in taxidermy by James Chapin and had assembled a collection of some seven hundred skins of local birds. All of these, together with his library, were lost during the period of the revolution; he has never had the heart to start again.
“C’est un homme bizarre,”
Goossens had told us, accounting for Deschryver’s reputation for being difficult. “He has had a lot of trouble in his life. I don’t know if that is a
good
reason, but it is a reason.”
Lee Lyon was with him several years ago, Deschryver says, when he saw two Congo peacocks, still alive, that were snared at Hombo; it was not true that she had seen the peacock in the wild. “She was never away from me,” he adds enigmatically, “so I would know.” He seems to doubt that Chapin saw the peacock, although Forbes-Watson loyally assures us that he did. (In
Birds of the Belgian Congo
, Chapin says that he hunted for the bird in 1937; he does not say that he found it. William G. Conway, the director of the New York Zoological Society, tells me that he once asked Chapin whether he had actually seen the bird and that Chapin said he had not. However, Chapin’s notes record that on July 16, 1937, near Ayena, “I noticed something dark running under the bushes of the
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