Madame Livingstone: The Great War in the Congo

"This is an unusual story. Part of the reason that I love it so much is because, although influenced by that Francophone bande dessinée style, it comes out of the mind of an African comic genius, Barly Baruti. It’s in the Francophone tradition, but very much Congolese. He creates an amazing story, loosely based on historical fact. The loosest thing is that it seems like the German ship that they’re all hunting gets blown up by our heroes, but that is not what really happened. It wasn’t sunk but was eventually abandoned by the Germans. I’m completely willing to forgive that detail. It’s about a real person named Madame Livingstone—a local man who was a scout for the Belgians. He dressed in a kilt, which is why he was sometimes called Madame. He claimed to be descended from Livingstone, the great explorer and philanthropist, who allegedly had a relationship with a local woman. There are two tiny pieces of evidence that this might be true, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not Barly Baruti who makes up that story. He is this stunning figure, who guides Belgian pilots to attack this German ship. It captures the complexity of colonialism. It doesn’t pull back from the fact that the Belgians did some terrible things, but it isn’t about that. It is about this mixed-up mélange of weirdness and tribal identities. World War One is all about tribal identity: the Germans are a tribe, and the Belgians are a tribe. It tells the story of this crazy situation in the middle of Africa, where the Belgians and the Germans are fighting it out in the middle of Lake Tanganyika, with a very human and empathetic touch. I should mention the second author, Christophe Cassiau-Haurie. While I’ve focused on Baruti because he’s a genius, Cassiau-Haurie has deeply researched Francophone African comic creation and is empathetic. If you’re going to have a European co-authoring an African comic, he’s the guy you want. There are a lot of pages that need very few words indeed. This story is told by the art. The art is gorgeous, and it’s variable. There are a lot of brushstrokes on some pages, it’s really textured. Then you get these amazing dark pages that are very much black and white. A whole encounter can be told without any words at all—you get a sense of it from the sweat dripping off the faces, and just the variety of panels. This is comics work at its finest, and that’s all Baruti. Baruti is probably my favorite African comic artist of all time, and this is why. Yes, it is, but I sometimes think the forewords want to make something of it that it wasn’t necessarily. This was not a political act by Baruti and Cassiau-Haurie. This was an act of making a really good story. It’s a Tarzan-ish adventure story with a more up-to-date conscience."

"Then there’s the other book by Barly Baruti, published by Catalyst Press, Madame Livingstone . It’s great because you don’t really know if it’s fiction or fact. This man claims to be David Livingstone’s son. I guess it is supposed to be true. It’s set in the Belgian Congo in the First World War . He’s a Belgian pilot’s local guide but, at the same time, he’s saying, ‘I’m one of you’ and wears a kilt. It’s just really cool. All these stories we don’t know anything about—I just love learning about them."