Union, Travail, Justice Page 2

  As my first guide to the country, I have chosen Madeleine Aubame, and that lady has graciously agreed to receive me. She is the daughter of Jean-Hilaire Aubame, the socialist who represented Gabon in the National Assembly during the Fourth Republic and the early Fifth, and who was among the chief opponents of M’ba and his successor Big Men. I am given to understand that his daughter has inherited the role; she’s had a political career unusual for a woman in Gabon, and is the parliamentary leader of the Rally for Gabonais Independence.

  Madame Aubame lives in a comfortable but modest home in the wealthy fourth arrondissement, decorated with wood-carvings from the forest peoples. She is much younger than I expected; she explains that she is Aubame’s daughter by his second wife, who he married late in life. She has the manner of an academic and her clothing is traditional; the latter is no doubt the deliberate choice of an independence-minded politician, just as Alain-Bernard’s suits signaled his allegiance to the Republic.

  “Don’t read too much into it,” she says, and explains a bit sheepishly that her party no longer supports immediate independence. “That battle’s already been lost, with so many Gabonais living in France. Independence would break up families, and most people here are content with being an overseas collectivity.” The party platform now calls for expanding Gabon’s autonomy, particularly on fiscal and development matters, and protecting its cultural patrimony.

  Still, Madeleine’s voice is wistful when she speaks of what might have happened had Gabon become independent along with the rest of French Equatorial Africa. “Bongo père always said that staying in France saved us – that we kept the rule of law when the rest of Africa came under dictatorship. And when you look at Bokassa or even Touré, it’s hard to argue with him. But the other side is that when the rest of Africa democratized, we couldn’t follow. We were a province rather than a nation, and our laws were made by people who listen much more to the oil companies than to us – even our own deputies listen when Elf speaks.”

  That was an opening I couldn’t refuse. “I’ve been told that Elf is recruiting African executives now, and that it’s trying to pay more attention to the people in Gabon.”

  “They pretend to. They give out a few scholarships, and they’ve hired some politicians’ sons.” Madeleine’s disdain is more than apparent. “But they never wanted Gabon to become a collectivity – they don’t like the environmental and land-use powers we have now, and they go over our heads whenever they can. They’ve had trouble with the territorial assembly, and they’ve had trouble with the unions – at least, the ones they couldn’t buy off.”

  “I’ve heard that there are ethnic fault lines. In the unions, that is.”

  “Of course there are. Elf likes it that way.” She picks up the café au lait that she’s been nursing since I came in. “My father” – the last word emphatic – “thought all Gabonais were one nation, but M’ba and the Bongos preferred us divided. That way, they could dole out jobs and favors by ethnic group, and if someone from one tribe wanted to change things, they could tell the others that he was after their jobs.”

  I could feel things starting to come together. “Has it always been that way?”

  “From the beginning – and don’t think they didn’t want it that way in Paris. That’s why we’re still French in the first place. De Gaulle wanted to get rid of us along with the other colonies, but Elf pointed to the ’57 election, where no one got a majority and M’ba had to bribe the independents to back him against my father. The oil drilling was just starting then, but the companies wanted to sew up their future. They wanted M’ba in power, not my father and certainly not Boucavel, and the only way to make sure he stayed there was if Gabon were French and he could be appointed chef de département. You know what happened then…”

  I did. M’ba and Elf persuaded de Gaulle to add a third question to the September 1958 referendum in Gabon only: where the other colonies chose between membership in the French Community and full independence, the Gabonais had the option of staying an overseas department. And then, through methods that amounted to three parts ethnic politics, three parts bribery and four parts outright cheating, they made sure the voters chose that option.

  But I needed to return to the present. “How do you see that playing out now? Is there any connection to the murders, the ones for which Bongo fils is on trial?”

  “I hear things. But I don’t know things, and I won’t bear false witness or spread rumors.” I am reminded that Madeleine is as devout a Catholic as her father was, and I decide to save any questions about a Bwiti connection for another person. “If you want to know more, you’ll want to talk to people who’ve worked in the oil fields, or who’ve worked as hired muscle.” She hands me a piece of paper, but forbids me to look at it until I’ve finished my coffee.

  Ten minutes later, I’m in a taxi, on my way to my hotel and a meal. I unfold the paper, and read an address in Libreville’s poorer quarters. And under that, a name.

  V. WHERE THE WORLDS MEET

  There are buses in Libreville and even a suburban rail, but they don’t go to the Périphérie Est. The taxi drivers also shake their heads when I mention an address there. The only way to go, it seems, is the way people get around in any other African city: minibus or motorcycle taxi.

  Fortunately, I find one of the former: between the state of the roads outside the center city and the reckless driving habits of the Gabonais, moto-taxis are a chancy proposition. The conductor, who is hanging out the open door soliciting fares, says “oui, oui” when I mention the street where I’m going, and follows with “one euro.” I suspect that the fare for Gabonais or migrant-worker passengers is far less, but I pay without complaint.

  I can see the neighborhoods changing as the minibus plies its route. The opulent shops and modern office buildings of the premier arrondissement give way to four-story cement apartment blocks, and finally to shantytowns. The markets become steadily shabbier, and the roads less well maintained; by the time we get to the périphérie, the side streets are unpaved.

  By this time, few of the remaining passengers are Gabonais. Natives of Gabon, even poor ones, are eligible for subsidized housing, and although oil production is declining, construction projects are still a common way to give jobs to the working class. Most arrivals to the city are taken in hand by a political patron and find housing in the neighborhoods where others of their ethnic group and clan live. Those who are newly come, on the run from the law, or orphelins politiques might live here, but for the most part, this is a neighborhood of foreigners, for whom even day labor in Libreville is better work than they can get at home.

  Like the Gabonais ethnic groups, the foreigners cluster together. There is safety in numbers; sometimes, when the economy is bad or a foreigner commits an infamous crime, the Gabonais riot against the migrant workers. I’m reminded of an occasion in the 1960s when a Congolese soccer fans abused the visiting Gabonais team; when the news got to Libreville, gangs took to the streets and beat up every foreigner they could find. Since then, Gabon’s football teams have played in the French leagues, but for migrant workers without papers, life is still precarious.

  I get off the bus on the Avenue Lambaréné, one of the main streets of the périphérie, into a swirling crowd of Congolese, Central Africans and Nigerians. I draw distinctly more notice here than in Libreville proper; Europeans rarely come here, and when they do, it is usually for less than legitimate reasons. I wonder whether, in my case, the stereotype might be correct.

  John Okpala’s store is two blocks off the avenue, and he rises to greet me. He isn’t surprised by my arrival, and I suspect that Madame Aubame has sent word. My suspicions are confirmed when he calls me by name and invites me to sit down and drink a Sobraga Dark beer.

  I accept it, relieved to be offered something other than coffee in this oppressively hot place. “Madeleine is a good woman,” Okpala says, a thick Nigerian accent flavoring his French. “We go to the same church.”

  I remember t
hat Madeleine’s church, unlike many, makes few distinctions of ethnicity or social class, and allow myself a moment of private amusement at the irony. Nigerians are stereotyped as criminals; in most cases, that perception is unfair, but Okpala is one of those for whom it is accurate. He is an importer and exporter, but some of the goods in which he trades are contraband, and some of the contraband is drugs. Iboga bark and iboga tea are displayed openly on the shelves – their sale is legal here, albeit regulated – but behind a partly-open door, I can see the bags packed for shipment to France.

  What this means – aside from the fact that he is an unlikely acquaintance for Madame Aubame – is that both Gabonais and foreigners come to him. Okpala knows iboga growers on both sides of the border, has connections to the Big Men in Paris, and most importantly of all, his customers bring together all of Gabon’s many nations.

  “This is Ferrand,” he says, introducing a hulking young man in his twenties with a scarred face, threadbare jeans and a T-shirt with the logo of a Central African football team. He has the look of someone who’s passed through many jobs: unskilled work in the oil fields, construction in Libreville and Port-Gentil, and if there’s nothing else going, a hired machete or pair of fists.

  “Johnny says you’re looking into the murders,” Ferrand says. He doesn’t need to say which ones.

  “Why, do you know who did it?”

  “Of course. Couple of Bateke from Djambala, like they say in the trial.”

  “Do you know that, or is it something you heard?”

  Ferrand gives me a very old-fashioned look: asking a question like that on the oil fields could start a fight. “I was working that field at the time. I know. They went around talking about it after – said they got two thousand euros each, and they were going home and getting married.”

  “They weren’t afraid that someone would get even?”

  “Oh, they didn’t tell the locals – only the other foreigners. They figured no one would tell. Turned out to be a bad idea.”

  He says nothing more, but the other person in the room – a Gabonais in his thirties, from one of the Ogooué Basin peoples – breaks his silence. “Etienne and Paul were organizing the foreign workers. They wanted to bring them into the union, so Elf couldn’t use them against us. There had been meetings between the migrants and the Gabonais workers, so what one of them knew, everyone knew.”

  “The two of them never made it back to the Congo,” Ferrand adds.

  “Dead?” It seems a superfluous question, but I had to ask it.

  “Yes,” Ferrand says. “We’re not thieves, though. We sent the money to their families.”

  “Who put them up to it? Elf? Alain-Bernard? Someone else?”

  “They didn’t say.” And they’re certainly not telling now, I added mentally.

  But Okpala prompts Ferrand further. “Tell him what you told me,” he says.

  “People are saying that Pascal Ganao arranged it.”

  “A Teke gang boss,” adds the Gabonais, whose name I’ve learned to be Paul-Marie. “Foreman. Same thing. He was against the foreigners joining the union – afraid it would cut him out.”

  I drink beer, look around at the cell phones and cameras on display, and consider. If Ganao were the culprit, then Etomba was right about ethnic rivalry being at the root of the murders. But if so, why hadn’t Elf taken this evidence to the police? As I asked the question, I answered it: even if the murders began with Ganao, that didn’t mean they ended there. Gang bosses had patrons, and maybe Ganao was connected to Alain-Bernard or Elf or both.

  “Is there any way I can find out more?” I ask.

  “You’ll have to go to Moukouti,” Okpala says. “It’s dangerous if you go alone. Paul-Marie can take you.”

  “Three hundred euros,” Paul-Marie adds.

  I don’t argue about the price. “Is it dangerous if I don’t go alone?”

  “Not for Paul-Marie,” says Ferrand, and for the first time, I hear him laugh.

  VI. MOUKOUTI

  The Gabonais sometimes call the Mitsogho the old people, the people of the forests; they are Bantu, like the late-arriving Fang and the peoples of the Ogooué basin, but they’ve lived in Gabon centuries longer than any of the others. Only the Baka pygmies were here earlier; legend has it that the Mitsogho learned the ways of the forest directly from them, and acquired great magic and knowledge of the spirit world. When the French came, they retreated into their mountains and jungles and fought as late as the 1940s, and it was from them that the Bwiti faith became a symbol of resistance.

  In truth, however, all Gabonais are forest people. Eighty-five percent of Gabon is forested, and the Atlantic equatorial jungle goes all the way to the coast. The forest is cut by thousands of rivers, and in much of the country, the only way to go from place to place is by air or water. This is why Gabon is such an empty land – just over a million people, a third of them in the capital, scattered over a quarter of a million square kilometers – and why a journey of a few hundred kilometers can be one of days rather than hours.

  The oil fields, at least, are connected by roads – the government made sure of that, and so did Elf. But “connected” is a relative term. For the first three hours from Libreville – to Lambaréné and the crossing of the Ogooué – the main trunk road is paved and the going is easy. But after that, the highway becomes a dirt track through ancient, impassable forests and across swift and treacherous streams. In some places the bridge is washed out, and we have to wait for a ferry that’s little more than a raft and hope that it will take the weight of Paul-Marie’s car without capsizing.

  “How do the oil companies get anything out here,” I say while we wait for one ferryman to fix his tow ropes and pull us across.

  “Their trucks can ford the streams, or they come by air from Port-Gentil. And there are pipelines from the wells to the refineries on the coast.” His words are confirmed while we’re still waiting: a deep horn sounds, and we see a tractor-trailer with a snorkel and deep-water fording kit cannibalized from the army. The ferryman pulls us out of the way in a hurry, and the truck passes inexorably across the stream, leaving the ferry to rock dangerously in its wake.

  After a few more hours, we turn onto a smaller road. It’s not the kind of track I’ve seen in Congo or the Central African Republic, with mud and potholes that can swallow a small car; it’s well-graded, and it’s clear that someone maintains it. But it’s too narrow for two vehicles to pass – narrow enough that the canopy closes overhead and bathes the scene in an eerie green light. We emerge on occasion as the road climbs across ridges with breathtaking views of the coast, but it always descends again. I feel that I am taking a spiritual journey, and when we finally get to Moukouti village just before nightfall, it seems that I’m returning to the world.

  The village is a few kilometers from the oil fields, and it isn’t made for tourists; concrete and cinder-block houses have replaced traditional dwellings of thatching and packed mud, and loud Congolese pop music issues from the bar next to the general store.

  Paul-Marie gets out of the car first and opens the door for me. We walk together toward the crowd in front of the bar, all eyes on us; strangers are far from unknown here, but they’re suspect until someone vouches for them. One of the men by the door, still in work clothes from the oil fields, says something to him which I don’t understand but which is obviously a challenge.

  Every syllable of what Paul-Marie says next is engraved on my mind: Me onlomo wa Onabe. Me onlomo wa sa me nkembe na Ndona, na Lekita, na Lesambe, na Lebonde, na Lendembe na Diolemboba, ngomba ngomba. Diome le mabona na ma bona maba, mabe dibe masi, maloba ma zebe.

  “It’s my clan lineage,” he says. “We all learn it as children, even in the cities. It means ‘I am an Onabe. I am a descendant of Ndona, Lekita, Lesamba, Ledembe and Diolemboba. We are vigilant and brave people.’”

  Even as he explains, one of the men at the bar breaks into a smile and repeats the words. There is another of Paul-Marie’s clan here,
and although they probably aren’t of the same nation – clans exist across ethnic lines – Paul-Marie is suddenly no more a stranger. He motions to us to come inside the bar, and we find a table as far as possible from the speakers and dancing couples while he goes to get some beer.

  He comes back with three bottles of Sobraga Gold, and we take the edge off our thirst for a few minutes while Marcel – for that is his name – makes introductions. Finally, he puts his bottle down and looks at Paul-Marie meaningfully.

  “He writes for an English magazine,” my guide says. “He’s covering the son’s trial, and he has questions about Etienne and Paul. The daughter sent him to me.”

  Marcel nods. “Those are dangerous questions.”