to us. The entrance to the premises was packed with sandbags and there were soldiers carrying Brownings.
We entered a magical world. A beautiful, snow-white colonial house commanded our attention. Kilometres of lawn were neatly mowed and the garden was manicured up to the edge of the lake where luxurious yachts and speedboats worth hundreds of thousands of rand bobbed in the water. The waiters wore waistcoats and their bowties and starched cloths worn across their arms were brand-new. Here you would not see any signs of war, only the people who benefited from it in a big way. I even spotted a Hummer in the parking area.
The lunch menu wasn’t complicated. You could choose between pizza, pizza and pizza at 40 American dollars a piece. The cheapest whisky was Johnny Walker Blue. The pizza crust tasted like bread and the cheese was hardly visible over the half-baked effort. Around me everyone feasted. How else did one spend the spoils of war?
Everyone always tells you that “there is no such a thing as a free lunch” and this valuable lesson I learnt in Goma’s country club. The security chief got drunker and drunker and more people joined us at our table to be introduced to the brave mzungu. The next moment someone got out a television camera. The same television team who had waited for us at the Kigali airport, reappeared in Goma and suddenly wanted to interview me.
Then it struck me what the invitation was really about. The plan was to show that Rwanda had had such success in cleaning up those parts of the Congo that it was safe enough for a white tourist to lunch there. I agreed to the interview, but I talked so much politics and went into such detail about how Rwanda was stealing the Congo’s resources that I doubt it was ever used.
I was ready to go home, or at least back to Gisenyi. I had had enough exposure to Big Boy’s arrogance and people who benefited from other’s misery. The pizza didn’t do much to lift my spirits either and the beers began to affect my better judgement.
But Mr Security Chief, quite peeved that his PR stunt had not gone according to plan, had more up his sleeve. He was intent on showing me exactly how far his influence extended into the Congo and rejected any resistance on my part. He had the keys and I was at his mercy. Armed with another bottle of whisky for the road he drove in a westerly direction and we went deeper into the war zone.
We got through the first roadblock without any trouble. The second one was bad enough to make my urgent need to pee disappear and the third one was the cherry on top. At the third roadblock Mr Security Chief, in his drunken arrogance, got involved in a brawl with a soldier who was even drunker than he was. He insisted on being let through, but the soldier was set on stopping him.
The soldier’s uniform was decorated with freaky fetish symbols that would make any sane person tremble. A split second after he put his AK47 rifle through the open window at the security chief’s side, I was already standing next to the vehicle. My beer pee was back and more pressing than ever. I could not wait for the outcome of their fight; I had to go and walked into the bushes. I had just opened my fly, when I saw a man sleeping in the grass. That was very strange, especially given everything that was going on only a few metres away. I stepped closer to inspect him and then I saw the small, round hole in the centre of his forehead. I nearly wet myself. He would never wake up again.
When I looked around I realised there were seven or eight more bodies. I didn’t hang around for an exact body count or to find out if they were all indeed dead. But I did grasp immediately where the fighting at the roadblock was leading. I ran back to the bakkie to find the security chief standing next to the vehicle with his pistol against the soldier’s head and the soldier’s AK47 against his. I began to plead with them and took the bottle of whisky from the bakkie as a peace offering for the soldier. I had some success in calming everyone down and at last I got the security chief back into the bakkie. At that point I demanded to GO BACK IMMEDIATELY. The details of that particular conversation were lost in the adrenaline of the moment.
I regained consciousness when we entered Goma just after sunset, where the security chief demanded another beer. I could see the lights of my hotel beyond the security post. I left him there and had a huge fight at the control point until my passport was back in my hands. The next morning the security chief – who clearly didn’t sleep a wink – woke me with an incessant knocking on my door. By then the whisky bottle looked like a natural extension of his hand. He wanted his safe pass letter.
A few hours later I was on an aircraft back to South Africa. Nyiragongo, the volcano near Goma erupted some years later. For some reason the lava missed Gisenyi, but flattened Goma. I secretly hoped that a certain security chief was busy drinking there when it happened.
The Rwandan anthem is entitled Rwanda Nziza, which means “Rwanda the beautiful”. In Zulu siza means to help or aid someone. I have always found the similarity between these two words very ironic.
[1] The 1994 genocide was instigated by the Hutus and lasted about four months. It was brought to an end when a Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, defeated the Hutu-controlled army. Because they feared the Tutsis’ revenge thousands of Hutus fled to the Congo. They were interned in refugee camps, which caused another humanitarian crisis.
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