23
I have no idea what the Congolese who saved our lives was called. I never saw him again. He was a human being: that’s all I know about him.
24
And not only do I also not know the name of whoever it was at the UN headquarters in Leopoldville who saved our lives, but I never even saw him. There is so much crap in this world, and then, suddenly, there is honesty and humanity.
25
I can’t say if there was actually any bartering between the Ethiopians and the paratroopers over our fates. I can say that they didn’t like each other, and they treated each other spitefully. They were competing for the prestige of controlling the Congo.
26
The next morning we took a Sabair flight out through Fort Lamy and on to Malta and then to Rome. In the great glass block of Fumicino airport, we watched the splendid and — to us, at that moment — exotic world of contented, calm, satiated Europeans on parade: fashionably dressed girls, elegant men on their way to international conferences, excited tourists who had flown in to see the Forum, meticulously preserved women, newlyweds flying off to the beaches of Majorca and Las Palmas; and, as the members of this unimaginable world passed by us (we were a disreputable-looking trio, three dirty, smelly, unshaven men in horrible shirts and homespun trousers on a chilly spring day when everyone else was in jackets, sweaters and warm clothing), I suddenly felt — the thought horrified me — that, sad truth or grotesque paradox that it might be, I had been more at home back there in Stanleyville or in Usumbura than here now.
27
Or perhaps I simply felt lonely.
28
The police looked us over suspiciously and I couldn’t blame them. We could not go into the city because we had no visas. The police phoned our embassies, which had been looking for us all over the world. The ambassadors came out to the airport, but it was already late in the evening and we had to sleep there because we would not have visas arranged for us until the next day.
29
I returned to Warsaw. I had to prepare a note on what I had seen in the Congo. I described the battles, the collapse, the defeat. Then I was summoned by a certain comrade from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘What have you been writing, you?’ he stormed at me. ‘You call the revolution anarchy! You think that Gizenga is on the way out and Kobutu is winning! These are pernicious theories!’
‘Go there yourself,’ I answered in a tired voice, because I still felt Stanleyville and Usumbura in my bones. ‘Go ahead and see for yourself. And I hope you make it back alive.’
‘It’s regrettable,’ this comrade said, concluding our discussion, ‘but you can’t return overseas as a correspondent because you do not understand the Marxist-Leninist processes that are at work in the world.’
‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve got some things to write about here, too.’
30
I went back to work at Polityka, travelling around the country, writing up what I saw. In the Congo things turned out the way they had to, which in the end had been obvious to everyone who was there. A few months later I received an offer to travel to Africa for several years. I was to be the first Polish correspondent in black Africa and was to open a bureau office for PAP, the Polish Press Agency. At the beginning of 1962 I was sent to Dar es Salaam.
MARRIAGE AND FREEDOM
What follows is the complete and exact text of a letter sent to me by Millinga Millinga, an activist in the Frente de Libertaçao de Moçambique, the Mozambique Liberation Front. Millinga Millinga is a close friend: influential, serious, a figure at political rallies and diplomatic receptions.
L. Millinga Millinga
P.O. Box 20197
Dar es Salaam
Tanganyika
Dear Friend,
PERSONAL MATTER
At this critical moment in my life, compelled by an immense and unsolvable DILEMMA, I feel no shame in revealing deeply concealed problems that I have incurred in the preparation of my future, nor do I feel any shame in revealing them to you especially, a friend whose kindness and assistance have never been wanting on occasions of this kind in the past.
As you know, I am one of the Freedom Fighters who has devoted all his time to the struggle and receives no compensation. But in view of the fact that a human being cannot escape from his natural needs, I have for two years been plunged in heavenly love for Miss Veronica Njige (district secretary of TANU, the Tanganyika African National Union) of the Morogoro district, whom I have promised to marry. However, as I have been so deeply engaged in the struggle, and, moreover, given the particular circumstances in which FREEDOM FIGHTERS live, I have been unable to fill our treasure chest with funds sufficient for the preparation of a festive wedding. In addition, the parents of the Lady of my Heart are demanding fifty pounds as a dowry, plus, in lieu of cows and goats, another twenty-five pounds as a gift for the cousins. After calculating precisely all the necessary expenditures incurred from the preparations and the wedding day ceremony, the total sum of money required to meet my aims amounts to not less than 200 pounds, including the items mentioned above.
In the opinion of my Beloved the date for the wedding has been delayed too many times already and so she has taken to writing to me three times a week, demanding that a wedding be held before November 1962. In these letters there is nothing more than one simple and clear statement: ‘FREEDOM AND MARRIAGE BEFORE NOVEMBER 1962.’ Despite my relentless declarations on the theme of my present financial situation, with which she has no sympathy whatsoever, the Lady of my Heart insists resolutely on a wedding IMMEDIATELY because, a Freedom Fighter herself, she states categorically that she would prefer to suffer with me in our own home than remain in her parents’ care. To a certain extent, I feel sorry for her. She is a grown woman, ready for marriage, and is always telling me, passionately, that she has, at present, strong desires, unprecedented desires, to become a wife without delay, and, acceding to her many requests, I have been compelled to agree that by 3 October I will pay her parents and relatives the seventy-five pounds and that the wedding will take place on 1 November 1962.
Dear friend, I would like you to turn over in your mind the true meaning of the sentence: ‘LOVE IS THE MISTRESS OF THE WISEST MEN AND THE MOTHER OF EVERYTHING.’ If you think about this sentence in relation to the matters presented here, you will certainly adopt an attitude sympathetic to my present situation. Under these conditions I have nothing more to say, except to ask you to give me as much financial help as you can afford. I should stress here that this support is to be treated as private aid to me, MILLINGA, and not as aid to the Mozambique Liberation Party or to me in the role of its General Secretary. For this same reason, all payments should be addressed to my private post office box: Millinga Millinga, P.O. Box 20197, Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika. Payments sent in connection with the matter presented above will be confirmed by myself personally or by my cousin W. L. Mbunga, whom I have appointed to the post of Personal Secretary in Charge of Fundraising for my Wedding. His signature is to be found below.