Brazzaville Charms

"I wrote it after living and working in the Republic of Congo, which is the smaller of the two Congos. It was a country I loved from the moment I arrived. Despite having a horrible government, it has a wonderful tiny capital city that is beautiful and French in its centre, with lively African districts where the majority of the population lives. The Congolese are great fun and there were many intriguing social issues and a history of some terrible civil wars. One ethnic group was led by Pastor Ntumi, who claimed he was the reincarnation a Jesus-like figure. His followers believed he had magical powers. It was a religious movement and also an armed rebellion and a political movement. The majority ethnic group were being sidelined from government and services and were fighting for their right to be equal citizens. But in terms of the actual leadership of the movement, it was a priestly figure who promised redemption and revelation as well as a change in social life. The actual civil war Pastor Ntumi led started in 1998 and it was a terrible crisis because fighting took over half the capital, where the main ethnic group lived. They fled to the bush, which was essentially rainforest with a few patches of cultivation. Pastor Ntumi held that civilian population captive in the forest while his band of followers called the Ninjas fought against the army. For around six to nine months up to 400,000 people were trapped in the forest and there was terrible malnutrition. After the fighting finished people started returning to the city and it was one of the worst emergency situations that NGOs have ever seen. But because it happened at the same time as the Kosovo crisis the world just wasn’t listening, even though it was much more severe in terms of numbers and the humanitarian crisis that followed. The main response was to set up nutrition centres. Usually it is those under five years old who are the most severely affected by malnutrition. But this was the whole population. Adults were coming in looking absolutely wasted by malnutrition. A doctor showed me his ID card from just after the war. It was like looking into the future. His photo showed a shrivelled, ancient face and his neck was so thin. In real life he had recovered and was once again a strong, muscular, good-looking doctor. But he had come out of the forest as malnourished as everyone else. The acute phase lasted for three months and then the CRS supported the health services as a lot of the clinics had been burnt in the fighting. We trained staff and gave families seeds and tools so they could start farming again. It was so moving because these areas were so desperate for assistance. No goods were reaching them because the roads were destroyed. The young men who had fought were waiting for life to get better and you knew that if it didn’t the fighting would start again. There was officially a peace deal but the rebels were still there and fighting blew up again in 2002 with another civil war. It’s still in a precarious neither-war-neither-peace situation. I became really intrigued by the widespread belief in sorcery and magic. I met a famous sorcerer who was locally believed to be the most powerful sorcerer in the country. He was said to have played a role in the civil war. His city had escaped the war and he claimed credit for that because he put a magical barrier around the city and fought another sorcerer. People brought him tributes afterwards and even the president had called on him to keep him on side."