Until somewhere around 1800, the continent that lay closest to Europe was also the one most unfamiliar to Europeans. Since the sixteenth century, Portuguese, Dutch, and British merchants on their way to India had become more or less familiar with its coastlines, but for centuries the African interior remained terra incognita. The West’s presence went no further than a few European outposts on the west coast. At the start of the nineteenth century, Africa comprised one of the two blank spots on the map of the known world; the other was Antarctica. By then, the Amazon Basin had been largely charted.
Three-quarters of a century later, however, European cartographers knew with fair precision where the oases, caravan routes, and wadis of the Sahara lay. They had accurately localized the volcanoes, mountains and rivers in the savanna of Southern Africa. The sketches on their drawing tables filled rapidly with exotic place names and the descriptions of peoples. But the map pored over by the conferees in Brussels in 1876 contained one large, white spot in the middle. All of them had circled around it at some point. It looked like a nameless plain without words or color, a yawning chasm covering no less than one-eighth of the continent. At most, it contained the occasional, hesitant squiggle or dotted line. That spot, that was the equatorial jungle. That forlorn dotted line, that was the Congo River.
While the delegates in Brussels were talking and attending plays at the king’s expense, Stanley was making his crossing of Central Africa. On September 14, 1876, the day that Leopold officially closed the conference, Stanley left the western shore of Lake Tanganyika and advanced on the upper reaches of the Congo. If there was one day on which the political fate of the region was, if not sealed then certainly determined to a great extent, it was that one. It must have been the least of Stanley’s worries at that point (he was more concerned about the rain forest, the natives, and the slave drivers), but starting in on that stage of the journey would ultimately lead him to the mysterious river that guided him through the ostensibly impenetrable forest of Central Africa. That day in Brussels, the decision was made to set up an international association, the Association Internationale Africaine (AIA), in order to open up the area scientifically by means of establishing a number of outposts. The association had national committees, but its leader was Leopold.
In Europe, the news of Stanley’s crossing came as a bombshell. King Leopold understood immediately that Stanley was the man who could help him realize his colonial ambitions. He immediately sent two emissaries to Marseille to welcome him back to Europe in January 1878 and to invite him to the royal palace at Laeken. As an Englishman, however, Stanley first tried to interest Britain in his adventure, but when he was turned down in London he decided to accept Leopold’s invitation. The two men discussed plans at length. The king became so caught up in his enterprise that the queen began to wonder what would become of him “should he ruin himself with chasing after shadows.” The first secretary of the AIA complained to the queen: “Madame, let us stop this—I am unable to do anything else, all I do is argue with His Majesty, but he works behind my back with rogues. It is driving me mad! And the King is bringing himself to ruin, but then completely.”9 It was to no avail. The king had his way: in 1879, Stanley left again for Central Africa, now at Leopold’s expense, for a period of five years. This time the explorer was going to travel in the opposite direction, from west to east, upstream. But that was not the only difference. Stanley’s journey from 1879 to 1884 was fundamentally different from that from 1874 to 1877. On that first occasion he was commissioned by a newspaper; now he had been hired by Leopold’s international association. The first time he had set out to cross Africa as quickly as possible; this time he was charged with establishing outposts here and there along the way—a time-consuming business. He had to parley with local chieftains and man the stations as well. The first time he had been an adventurer and a journalist, now he was a diplomat and official.
DISASI MAKULO TURNED TEN, then twelve, and began hearing more and more about a new tribe, the “Batambatamba.” The older children and adults spoke of them in fear and horror. Batambatamba was no ethnic name, but an echoism that designated the Afro-Arab traders. They had arrived in his region now, the farthest west they would ever come. In his village he heard the stories: “We have seen people who walk to and fro; they carry a kind of hollow stick, when they strike it you hear a sound, Bam Bam, and grains come out of it that wound people and kill them. Terrible!”10
Still, it all seemed very far away, as bizarre as that story about the albino and his boat without rowers. One day, Disasi Makulo’s parents let him go off with his aunt and uncle.11 It was 1883, but the years still had no numbers.
It was very hot that day. When we came to a river called Lohulu, between Makoto and Bandio, my uncle and I decided to bathe. My Aunt Inangbelema waited for us a little further along. While we were swimming and splashing each other cheerfully, the Batambatamba heard us and surrounded us. My aunt was singing lullabies to soothe her crying baby. None of us were thinking of possible danger.
Suddenly there was a scream. “Help! Help! Brother Akambu, the warriors are attacking me …”
We jumped out of the river and saw that my aunt had already been seized by our enemies. One of the attackers pulled the baby out of her hands and laid it on a red ants’ nest. We were so shocked that none of us could get to him. Uncle Akambu and my little cousin ran away and hid in the bushes. I remained at a distance, to see what they would do to my aunt. Unfortunately, one of the men spotted me. He ran after me and caught me. Then my Uncle Akambu and my cousin were captured as well.
Until that hideous day, Disasi’s life had taken place in his village and a few nearby settlements. Now he was brutally torn away from those familiar surroundings. Stanley’s journey, and his deal with Tippo Tip in particular, had opened up the equatorial forest to Afro-Arab slave hunters. That resulted in a wave of violence. The Batambatamba plundered villages and put them to the torch, they murdered, and they took prisoners. The local inhabitants in turn painted their faces and attacked the foreigners’ camps at night, slaughtering the intruders with their spears amid loud war cries.
Disasi’s assailants were probably slaves themselves, plundering on their master’s behalf. Disasi would soon meet that master, a man who traveled through the jungle in a spotless white robe: Tippo Tip! He probably also saw Salum ben Mohammed, Tippo’s cousin and close associate.12 The fresh slaves were assembled at the village of Yamokanda.
Here one could buy back prisoners. Many prisoners were let go because their parents brought ivory. My father came with a few tusks as well, but Tippo Tip told him that it was not enough for four people. He let my Uncle Akambu, my Aunt Inangbelema and my little cousin go. Concerning me, he told them: “Go home and come back with two more tusks.” I remained behind, along with the other prisoners who had not been bought back.
The slave driver in question, however, decided not to wait and left that very same day. The adult prisoners were shackled, the children were not. Huge canoes were waiting along the banks of the Aruwimi. “All you could hear during that ghastly cruise was the sound of weeping and sobbing.” Disasi knew he was leaving his home ground and could no longer be bought back. Later he heard that his father had returned to the camp with the ivory, as demanded, but that the caravan had already left.
The trip eastward was not a fortunate one. “For us, that journey downriver was nothing but a departure towards death, although they told us that they wanted to protect us and make us like them.” That latter statement was not meant cynically. The slaves of the Afro-Arab traders were not sent to huge cotton or sugar cane plantations, as in America. Some of them would go to gather cloves in Zanzibar, but most of them would serve as domestic slaves to wealthy Muslims, in places as far away as India. Many converted to Islam and climbed the social ladder. A start was made on their conversion