A bend in the river

and being flattered by them that we were not ordinary customers paying the full price or having to take our place in the queue, we thought we had mastered the world; and we saw those salesmen and representatives as men of power who had to be courted. We judged traders by their coups, the contracts they landed, the agencies they picked up. It was the same with Africans. We judged them by their ability, as army men or officials in the customs or policemen, to do us services; and that was how they also judged themselves. You could spot the powerful in Ma-hesh's Bigburger place. They, sharing in our boom, and no longer as shoddy as they once were, wore gold as much as possible--gold-rimmed glasses, gold rings, gold pen-and-pencil sets, gold watches with solid gold wristlets. Among ourselves we scoffed at the vulgarity and pathos of that African lust for gold. Gold--how could it alter the man, who was only an African? But we wanted gold ourselves; and we regularly paid tribute to the Africans who wore gold. Our ideas of men were simple; Africa was a place where we had to survive. But in the Domain it was different. There they could scoff at trade and gold, because in the magical atmosphere of the Domain, among the avenues and new houses, another Africa had been created. In the Domain, Africans--the young men at the polytechnic--were romantic. They were not always present at the parties or gatherings; but the whole life of the Domain was built around them. In the town 'African' could be a word of abuse or disregard; in the Domain it was a bigger word. An 'African' there was a new man whom everybody was busy making, a man about to inherit--the important man that years before, at the lyc? Ferdinand had seen himself as. In the town, when they were at the lyc? Ferdinand and his friends--certainly his friends--were still close to village ways. When they were off duty, not at the lyc?or with people like myself, they had merged into the African life of the town. Ferdinand and Metty--or Ferdinand and any African boy--could become friends because they had so much in common. But in the Domain there was no question of confusing Ferdinand and his friends with the white-uniformed servants. Ferdinand and his friends had a clear idea of who they were and what was expected of them. They were young men on government scholarships; they would soon become administrative cadets in the capital, serving the President. The Domain was the President's creation; and in the Domain they were in the presence of foreigners who had a high idea of the new Africa. Even I, in the Domain, began to feel a little of the romance of that idea. So foreigners and Africans acted and reacted on one another, and everyone became locked in an idea of glory and newness. Everywhere the President's photograph looked down at us. In the town, in our shops and in government buildings, it was just the photograph of the President, the ruler, something that had to be there. In the Domain the glory of the President brushed off onto all his new Africans. And they were bright, those young men. I had remembered them as little tricksters, pertinacious but foolish, with only a kind of village cunning; and I had assumed that for them studying meant only cramming. Like other people in the town, I believed that degree courses had been scaled down or altered for Africans. It was possible; they did go in for certain subjects--international relations, political science, anthropology. But those young men had sharp minds and spoke wonderfully--and in French, not the patois. They had developed fast. Just a few years before, Ferdinand had been incapable of grasping the idea of Africa. That wasn't so now. The magazines about African affairs--even the semi-bogus, subsidized ones from Europe--and the newspapers, though censored, had spread new ideas, knowledge, new attitudes. Indar took me one evening to one of his seminars, in a lecture room in the big polytechnic building. The seminar was not part of any course. It was an extra, and was described on the door as an exercise in English-speaking. But more must have been expected from Indar. Most of the desks were taken. Ferdinand was there, in a little group of his own. The biscuit-coloured walls of the lecture room were bare except for a photograph of the President--not in army uniform, but in a chief's leopard-skin cap, a short-sleeved jacket and a polka-dotted cravat. Indar, sitting below this photograph, began to speak, easily, about the other parts of Africa he had visited, and the young men were fascinated. Their innocence and eagerness were astonishing. In spite of the wars and coups they were hearing about, Africa was still to them the new continent, and they behaved as though Indar felt like them, was almost one of them. The language exercise turned into a discussion about Africa, and I could feel polytechnic topics, lecture topics, coming to the surface. Some of the questions were dynamite; but Indar was very good, always calm, never surprised. He was like a philosopher; he tried to get the young men to examine the words they were using. They talked for a while about the coup in Uganda, and about the tribal and religious differences there. Then they began to talk more generally about religion in Africa. There was some movement in the group around Ferdinand. And Ferdinand--not unaware of me--stood up and asked, 'Would the honourable visitor state whether he feels that Africans have been depersonalized by Christianity?' Indar did what he had done before. He restated the question. He said, 'I suppose you are really asking whether Africa can be served by a religion which is not African. Is Islam an African religion? Do you feel that Africans have been depersonalized by that?' Ferdinand didn't reply. It was as in the old days--he hadn't thought beyond a certain point. Indar said, 'Well, I suppose you can say that Islam has become an African religion. It has been on the continent for a very long time. And you can say the same for the Coptic Christians. I don't know-- perhaps you might feel that those people have been so depersonalized by those religions that they are out of touch with Africa. Would you say that? Or would you say they are Africans of a special sort?' Ferdinand said, 'The honourable visitor knows very well the kind of Christianity I mean. He is trying to confuse the issue. He knows about the low status of African religion, and he knows very well that this is a direct question to him about the relevance or otherwise of African religion. The visitor is a gentleman sympathetic to Africa who has travelled. He can advise us. That is why we ask.' A number of desk lids were banged in approval. Indar said, 'To answer that question you must allow me to ask you one. You are students. You are not villagers. You cannot pretend you are. You will soon be serving your President and his government in different capacities. You are men of the modern world. Do you need African religion? Or are you being sentimental about it? Are you nervous of losing it? Or do you feel you have to hold on to it just because it's yours?' Ferdinand's eyes went hard. He banged the lid of his desk and stood up. 'You are asking a complicated question.' And 'complicated,' among these students, was clearly a word of disapproval. Indar said, 'You are forgetting. I didn't raise the question. You raised it, and I merely asked for information.' That restored order, put an end to the banging of the desk lids. It made Ferdinand friendly again, and he remained friendly for the rest of the seminar. He went to Indar at the end, when the boys in the _jackets de boy__ pushed in chromium- plated trolleys and began serving coffee and sweet biscuits (part of the style the President had decreed for the Domain). I said to Ferdinand, 'You've been heckling my friend.' He said, 'I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was your friend.' Indar said, 'What are your own feelings about African religion?' Ferdinand said, 'I don't know. That's why I asked. It is not an easy question for me.' Later, when Indar and I left the polytechnic building to walk back to his house, Indar said, 'He's pretty impressive. He's your _marchande's__ son? That explains it. He's got that little extra background.' In the asphalted space outside the polytechnic building the flag was floodlit. Slender lamp standards lifted fluorescent arms down both sides of the main avenue; and the avenue was also lit with lights at grass level, like an airport runway. Some of the bulbs had been broken and grass had grown tall around the fittings. I said, 'His mother's also a magician.' Indar said, 'You can't be too careful. They were tough tonight, but they didn't ask the really difficult question. Do you know what that is? Whether Africans are peasants. It's a nonsense question, but big battles are fought about that one. Whatever you say you get into trouble. You see why my outfit is needed. Unless we can get them thinking, and give them real ideas instead of just politics and principles, these young men will keep our world in turmoil for the next half century.' I thought how far we had both come, to talk about Africa like this. We had even learned to take African magic seriously. It hadn't been like that on the coast. But as we talked that evening about the seminar, I began to wonder whether Indar and I weren't fooling ourselves and whether we weren't allowing the Africa we talked about to become too different from the Africa we knew. Ferdinand didn't want to lose touch with the spirits; he was nervous of being on his own. That had been at the back of his question. We all understood his anxiety; but it was as though, at the seminar, everyone had been ashamed, or fearful, of referring to it directly. The discussion had been full of words of another kind, about religion and history. It was like that on the Domain; Africa there was a special place. I wondered, too, about Indar. How had he arrived at his new attitudes? I had thought of him, since the coast, as a hater of Africa. He had lost a lot; I didn't think he had forgiven. Yet he flourished on the Domain; it was his setting. I was less 'complicated'; I belonged to the town. And to leave the Domain and drive back to the town, to see the shacks, acres and acres of them, the rubbish mounds, to feel the presence of the river and the forest all around (more than landscaping now), to see the ragged groups outside the drinking booths, the squatters' cooking fires on the pavements in the centre of the town--to do that drive back was to return to the Africa I knew. It was to climb down from the exaltation of the Domain, to grasp reality again. Did Indar believe in the Africa of words? Did anyone on the Domain believe? Wasn't the truth what we in the town lived with--the salesmen's chat in the van der Weyden and the bars, the photographs of the President in government offices and in our shops, the army barracks in the converted palace of the man of our community? Indar said, 'Does one believe in anything? Does it matter?' There was a ritual I went through whenever I had to clear a difficult consignment through the customs. I filled in the declaration form, folded it over five hundred francs, and