Life in Africa
This used to be a four-storey clapboard building with a large roof terrace, a bar counter, and a few small tables. The terrace is still there but is now even bigger, with windows added – and it has moved up a few floors. Now it offers a dazzling view of the bay and the Indian Ocean.
This is the Hotel New Africa, right in the centre of Dar es Salaam. Nowadays its main attraction is the view and a locally popular casino. In 1962, when Kapuściński drops in there in the evenings, the attractions are different: the terrace is a meeting place for the African freedom fighters who are here taking advantage of the hospitality of Julius Nyerere, president of Tanganyika, the first independent state in East Africa. This is the place where – as Kapuściński wrote years later – Africa does its plotting. He sits down at the tables where Mugabe from (then) Rhodesia, Mondlane from Mozambique and Karume from Zanzibar are conspiring. He buys them cheap beer and listens. He absorbs the news and the atmosphere.
Africa is on the boil. The colonial system is crumbling, and state after state is declaring independence; Kapuściński witnesses the start of this process in Ghana. In some countries there is armed combat underway. He has met it head-on in Congo; he has seen the chaos, anarchy, divisions and victims.
Into these liberation wars and conflicts, another war is forcing its way – the Cold one being waged by the countries of the Northern hemisphere. On the southern continents, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Washington and Moscow are setting up training grounds for themselves, competing for influence and raw materials, testing their deadly weapons. In the South, the Cold War has a high temperature.
The socialist countries, including Poland, support the anti-colonial movements. The Polish government opens a diplomatic post in Dar es Salaam, with a staff of three. Tanganyika is the right place: it has declared independence, it is hosting freedom fighters from all over the continent and acts as an informal centre for the conspirators, and its leader, Julius Nyerere, calls himself the first African socialist. It is a superb observation point from which to view the process of decolonization. The socialist camp wants to pave the way for good relations with the continent as it awakens to political life. It is a potential ally in the battle against the capitalist West and a source of valuable raw materials.
Clearly there is a need for news from the region, and so the Central Committee Press Office takes the decision to open a PAP bureau in Dar es Salaam. The task is assigned to a reporter who has proved he has a feeling for Africa, as well as the credentials of a comrade who is devoted to the cause of socialism.
‘Oh, they’ve sent us a Yid,’ comments the chargé d’affaires waiting for him at the airport as soon as he sees Kapuściński descending from the plane. Attaché Jerzy Nowak is struck dumb by this remark (‘It was meant as an allusion to Rysiek’s dark complexion,’ he explains).
Kapuściński first heads for the embassy, located in the Indian district of Upanga. For a short time he rents a small flat not far from the diplomatic post, then settles for a longer period in a white-painted multi-family house amid coconut palms and large banana trees, with a view of the ocean. He has a flat upstairs with two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. In one room there is a bed with a mosquito net spread above it like a bridal veil; in the other there is a table and some chairs, nothing else.
Upanga is occupied by Indians, predominantly from the Ishmaelite sect; whites are rarely encountered here. Next to Upanga is the luxury district of Oyster Bay:
magnificent villas, gardens exploding with flowers, thick lawns, smooth, gravel-strewn avenues. Yes, you can live truly luxuriously here, especially since you don’t have to do anything yourself; everything is taken care of by quiet, vigilant, discreetly moving servants. Here, a man ambles along as he probably would do in paradise: slowly, loosely, content that he is here, enchanted by the beauty of the world.1
Naturally, this is the kingdom of the whites.
Kapuściński finds himself in a cage of apartheid, a golden cage that makes contact with the locals difficult. For them he is just a white man, just like the British who are packing up to leave Tanganyika. He belongs to the race of oppressors – so what if he comes from a country that has nothing to do with the wrongs done to the Africans. He notices the perversity of apartheid: a black cannot enter a white district (except for the servants), but by the same token a white cannot feel safe in the African districts.
There is no one to talk to, at least not at the beginning. He makes his way to the local newspaper, the Tanganyika Standard – nothing but whites, from Oyster Bay. They are sitting on suitcases and don’t give a damn about anything.
Every day Kapuściński drops in on Jerzy and Izabella Nowak at their home within the embassy grounds; he becomes part of the household, and they make friends for life. He sets the style in which they will spend time together. He buys a Land Rover, thanks to which they do a lot of touring, and later a second car, a Morris Mini, which he will sell to his new friends at the end of his mission in Dar. Together they discover evidence of the German empire: solid oak furniture at the town hall, and post boxes. They also follow the trail of the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz and visit the former slave market at Bagamoyo, once the German capital of East Africa, famous for its attractive beaches.
Kapuściński enjoys going to the African markets and tries to take photographs, but he finds that the Africans shout at him angrily. First he’s amazed, then realizes you have to ask permission if you want to take a photo. He is learning the ABC of travel.
Wanting to get close to the Africans, he complains to Nowak in a friendly way that the Polish diplomats shut themselves within the circle of the other whites. ‘Do you ever go and see Tanganyikans?’ he inquires. Nowak explains that it isn’t easy, and that the Africans never invite them to their homes. Once he and his wife did manage to get invited to a local home, and they went, but their African hosts felt ashamed of their poverty – and whenever the Poles invited Africans to their home, the guests never turned up.
During a trip outside town, Kapuściński and Nowak meet some Germans and Africans at a hostel. Kapuściński admits that there is nothing to talk to the Africans about, and that getting close to them seems almost impossible. However, he doesn’t hide his antipathy towards the whites in Africa. In a report from Ghana he describes one of them:
I look at that fat little man, at his sweaty face and his hangdog expression. What could I tell him? I think to myself: he’s a petty capitalist, not a financial shark, another little man in the ranks of the army of little shopkeepers.2
Nowak explains that the whites they meet in Tanganyika ‘are ghastly, even in terms of facial appearance’, whatever the nationality: Germans, Britons, Belgians, Poles . . . Abominable types, losers who flocked to Africa because things hadn’t worked out for them anywhere else; upstarts, exploiters of the local population, and, without exception, racists. They run bars and hotels – they are ‘petty businessmen’. One of the people they encounter goes about with a monkey, because ‘he’d rather drink with a chimp than a black’. These are the typical remnants of the colonial class whom Kapuściński encounters in Africa: the face of Europe, which came to Africa ‘to spread civilization among the savages’.
Many years later, as Poland’s ambassador to NATO in Brussels, Nowak will take his friend to Belgium’s African museum, where, in the 1920s, Africans were still being brought to live in a summer village built in the museum’s courtyard. You could look at them in their huts, above which was a sign: ‘Please don’t feed them, we feed them very well’. Forty years later, in The Shadow of the Sun, the summary of his African experiences, Kapuściński will write:
The philosophy that inspired the construction of Kolyma and Auschwitz, one of obsessive contempt and hatred, vileness and brutality, was formulated and set down centuries earlier by the captains of the Martha and the Progresso, the Mary Ann and the Rainbow, as they sat in their cabins gazing out the portholes at groves of palm trees and sun-warmed beaches, waiting aboard their ships anchored off the islands of Sherbro, [Kwale] or Zanzibar, for the next batch of black slaves to be loaded.3
The two men learn French together, attending a course at the French cultural centre three times a week. There they flirt with Ishmaelite women of heavenly beauty. Kapuściński also studies Swahili and reaches a level that will allow him to have a simple conversation and to figure out what the local papers are writing about.
They take long walks and go to the beach at Oyster Bay or further – an hour and a half by car, along a bumpy road – to Bagamoyo. During one of their walks by the sea, Kapuściński says to Nowak: ‘I know we’re always going to be friends.’
‘Our relationship was always more sisterly than brotherly,’ says Nowak, laughing, ‘by which I mean to say that we confided in each other about everything, like sisters. It was like that right to the end.’
They have similar sensitivity and similar fortunes. Both are from the Borderlands. Both are modest in their social relationships, and they do not overwhelm each other. Each is making his way in a different sphere professionally, so there are no grounds for competition, and this provides a sense of security and helps create the loyalty of true friends. Neither has a brother, and both always longed for one; they have an idealistic notion of fulfilling that dream.
During one conversation by the sea, Kapuściński encourages Nowak in his plan to join the Party. Although far from home, they are still living within the framework of the recent revolt of October 1956. Kapuściński believes it is possible to reconcile Polish interests with participation in the socialist camp. Despite Gomułka’s mistakes, one should not withdraw into a private niche; there is a need to attract honest, idealistic people into the Party and to change socialism for the better from the inside. The condition for active involvement in socialism should be to do no one any harm. Despite violent objections from his wife, resulting in an actual domestic row, Nowak does decide to join the Party. Kapuściński writes his friend a letter of recommendation.
‘As soon as they started praising socialism, I would immediately counter-attack,’ Izabella Nowak tells me with some pride. In her traditionally anti-communist family home – her father had fought in the war of 1920 against the Bolsheviks – they trusted Radio Free Europe, not the Party organ, Trybuna Ludu (The People’s Tribune). ‘You’re a total reactionary, Izunia!’ Kapuściński used to thunder as a joke, but sometimes entirely seriously.
According to her, ‘He was dreadfully upset by my remarks, even more since it was a woman uttering them. In time he began to tolerate me, got used to me and grew fond of me. But he never treated any woman as an equal partner in conversation.’
In photos from the beach in Dar (or is it Bagamoyo?), Kapuściński looks slim, fit and athletic. In his flat he has a bar for pull-ups and takes daily exercise despite the heat. He likes showing off his physical fitness. He sunbathes on the beach and goads Mrs Nowak, daring her: ‘Izunia, stand on my stomach, see how rock-hard it is, I won’t even shudder.’
‘He was always the macho type,’ she tells me, ‘but of a very specific kind: he had warmth, sensitivity and even fragility in him.’
A long, fat caterpillar with a black exoskeleton and red legs crawls onto him as he’s lying in bed. The victim must not move, lest the horrid creature stick its legs into his body. He moves! Though the creature isn’t poisonous, it leaves a burn on his hand that itches for several weeks.
Life in Africa involves constant vigilance to make sure nothing bites or stings you, including poisonous scorpions, invisible amoebae in the water and food, and giant cockroaches, which are certainly disgusting but at least not dangerous. Above all, there are the omnipresent mosquitoes, carriers of malaria, and the tsetse flies.
[T]hese small but insistent aggressors establish each evening a battle plan meant to exhaust their victims, because if there are ten of them, say, they do not attack all together – which would allow you to deal with them all at once and have peace for the rest of the night – but one by one. The first to take off is, as it were, the scout, whose reconnaissance mission the rest closely observe. Well rested after a good day’s sleep, he torments you with his demonic buzzing, until finally, sleepy and furious, you organize a hunt, kill him; you are just lying down again, confident of returning to sleep, just turning off the light, when the next one begins his loops, spirals, and corkscrews.4
Africa is an adventure, and not just on the war front.
One day Kapuściński and Nowak go together to sort something out at an office. In the waiting-room they sit on some solid old benches. Shortly afterwards, red spots appear on their bodies. Soon the spots change into sores. The doctor confirms that insects nesting in the benches have laid their eggs under the men’s skin; now the victims will nurture the larvae until maggots emerge from them.
Kapuściński accepts this kind of inconvenience. He explains it to himself thus: ‘This is the only way I will get to know the life of the people I’m writing about.’ He wants to live like them; he lets himself be bitten by the same insects, falls ill with the same diseases, eats the same food. He is not disgusted when he finds grilled locusts on his plate – fat, whitish abdomens that have been only lightly toasted. Nowak finds this disgusting, but Kapuściński all but leaps on his food. He’s in Africa, so he will eat what Africa eats.
In dangerous or uncertain situations he does not panic. Once when they are driving to Lake Nyasa in Kapuściński’s Mini, they are attacked by a group of aggressive monkeys, which besiege the car. It’s enough to cause hysterics – they haven’t any water left, it’s baking hot in the car, yet they can’t open the windows. Kapuściński keeps his sang-froid – they’ll be off eventually. Slowly they drive out of the danger zone and the monkeys give up. Another time, the Mini breaks down far from town. Kapuściński knows how to fix anything; he is manly in the extreme – he talks about engine construction, boasts of his knowledge of car technology, and loves rally-driver’s goggles and gloves.
He also seeks adventure at sea. They sail a small boat to a nearby island, catch fish and light a bonfire. Kapuściński pitches the tents, and they go to bed early. He can get to sleep in any circumstances and makes a point of saying that, unlike most intellectuals, he isn’t a night owl – he goes to bed early and gets up early. Suddenly some small, twinkling lights appear around the bonfire: it’s a pack of rats. Nowak wakes up his friend and they keep the bonfire going all night, staying awake until dawn.
Intent on studying Africa, Kapuściński explores beyond Tanganyika. He goes to Kampala for the Ugandan declaration of independence celebrations; he visits Nairobi, which is still under British rule; and he witnesses the inception of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa.
In Addis he sees the great leaders of Africa as its new countries are being born: Ben Bella from Algeria; Gamal Abdel Nasser, then leader of the United Arab Republic; Ugandan premier Milton Obote; Sékou Touré from Guinea; the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and his old ‘friend’ from Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. The latter is calling for the creation of a political union of African states. Obote offers Ugandan territory as a training ground for guerrillas from countries that have not yet gained independence: Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, and so on.
The fact that the British still rule Kenya is plain to see from the newspapers. Liberation from the colonial powers is just around the corner, and yet on the front page of the East African Standard, published in Nairobi, are announcements that the Duke of Gloucester is sick with the flu and that a tea party is being held at Buckingham Palace in honour of Prince Andrew’s third birthday. The only newspaper in this part of the continent to be edited by Africans is the Nakawi News, issued in Nyasaland (Malawi). Kapuściński studies it from the first page to the last; he sends press reviews to Warsaw that are based on it.
From Malawi: The government issues a directive that all drivers must stop at once whenever Prime Minister Hastings Banda drives past (‘a rigid anti-communist,’ writes Kapuściński, ‘a rich man who maintains his party on his own money’), and ‘those who do not carry out the order will incite the rage of the Malawian nation and will be severely punished.’
From Southern Rhodesia: Gangs of young nationalists are hunting down girls who straighten their hair for fashion. The punishment is to be shaved bald: straightening your hair is symbolic of renouncing your race.
From Kampala: A member of the Ugandan parliament is appealing to the Ministry of Health to issue a ban on dancing the twist, because this dance is bad for one’s health. The speaker of parliament, owner of three nightclubs, protests: ‘This is an attempt to push the government onto a dangerous path of state interference in popular pleasures!’
In November 1962, for the first time, Kapuściński sends in some fifteen in-depth reports for the PAP’s Special Bulletin. The articles published there are not just short pieces saying that a particular committee held a session, what a particular leader said, or what a government announced; rather, they are full, sometimes detailed professional analyses, with elements of reportage as well as personal impressions.
The bulletin has a limited audience. At first it is issued only to the highest of the top Party functionaries; in time it also goes to Central Committee members, people from the ministries and other government departments, and newspaper, radio and television editors. As the years go by, the bulletin achieves ever wider distribution, including university libraries, academics and self-governing institutions (the number of copies printed approaches five thousand). Some articles in the bulletin are labelled ‘not for publication in the press’: they contain information, analyses or opinions that would be undesirable from the viewpoint of state propaganda. Usually these pieces are reprints from the western press that are critical of Moscow and the socialist camp. The bulletin is not censored; the only censorship is in the mind of the author or the editor responsible for issuing it.
The policy of the agency bosses varies at different periods of the PRL’s existence. For example, in the 1970s the agency’s editor-in-chief, Janusz Roszkowski, reprimands servile correspondents who ‘follow the line’ of the Soviet agency, TASS. ‘You’ve got to describe what you see, and not guess how it “ought” to be written; judge it as you feel it to be,’ he demands of the journalists. At the editorial office they can of course change the meaning of an article for propaganda purposes, but the chief insists on sincerity from his journalists.
Almost 100 percent of Kapuściński’s articles from Africa – and later those from Latin America – contain no news items or analyses that can be considered ‘unsuitable’ from the socialist perspective. Sometimes they end up in the Special Bulletin merely so that some record of them should remain, or because they do not fit in the agency’s daily foreign bulletin. More interestingly, those that provide a broader picture or describe an event of topical importance are reprinted by Polityka, and sometimes by other periodicals and dailies, such as Życie Warszawy (Warsaw Life) and the Central Committee organ, Trybuna Ludu.
Kapuściński is interested in anti-colonial liberation movements, the political awakening of Africa, the United States’ struggles to gain influence and access to raw materials on the continent, and also the encroachment of China, which is competing with the Soviet Union for patronage over the anti-colonial revolutionary movements and for natural resources.
To submit his reports, Kapuściński drives to the post office in the city centre. He transmits them to Warsaw by telex via London. When he sends his dispatches by telegram, he combines the shorter words meaning ‘of ’, ‘for’, ‘by’ and so on with longer ones to make it come out cheaper. Money is a nightmare for a reporter from a poor country, and the same goes for his agency; Kapuściński earns about $300 a month, and although in the PRL that is a fortune, for a roving reporter in Africa it is peanuts.
‘The work of an Africa correspondent is a hard slog.’ Like Kapuściński, Wiesława Bolimowska worked on Africa for the PAP, alternately as an editor and as a correspondent. She frequently received and edited dispatches from her friend and, to some extent, rival. ‘What an exhausting climate, it gave you the tropical blues,’ she remembers. ‘And there was constant frustration, because you could make appointments with the Africans, but they wouldn’t turn up at the meetings, for no obvious reason.’
Rysiek, she says, did not always perform well as a correspondent. He wrote slowly, was capable of spending all day grinding out a single page, and composed several versions of a single sentence. Working for an agency, however, necessitates the ‘mass production’ of dispatches. The bosses continually reminded him that he was writing too little.
But that happens later on. At the beginning of his work as a correspondent, Kapuściński floods the PAP bulletins with dispatches, analyses and thoughts. He soaks up the new and still unfamiliar world. He identifies with the inhabitants of Africa and their aspirations, walks in their shoes, and looks through their eyes. He fixates on his new political idols.