1937 January | Dead Drop

Then – Camp 4, somewhere near Kissi, Cameroon

A nova Sun burns over the Sunday market. The crowd jostles, points and elbows its way to witness the event: the muzungu boss is taking a picture. Every village from a 20 kilometres radius is here, for the market. To trade and gossip, but free entertainment is always a godsend! Under the white furnace sky, everyone holds their breath. 

Suzanne strikes her trademark pose, big smile, head slightly tilted, helmet askew. 

She tugs back Boy, the lolling dog, by his collar. The little monkey nuzzles her arm. All the main village chiefs are here: Kissi, Doroko, even faraway Beka, in their best finery. François leads the photo ops, points at spots for the main characters, directs a background of women in colourful boubous, re-arranges the baskets of wares they sell. The men are huddling in the shade, eager, puzzled, expectant.

Is this the perfect composition, angle and lighting? In your own time dear… He lifts his finger. Ready? Click. Suzanne stretches her shoulders. 

With the enthusiasm of a photographer at a movie premiere, François winds up the camera for the photo; just one other with only the chiefs please? And you, of course, darling. Suzanne wears jodhpurs in such a horse culture as here, in North East Cameroon. The message is clear: she is part of the bosses. The boss-lady. She strikes the pose again, eyes like flint. Boy has run off to François.

Click. The show is over. François smiles at her. She smiles at him.

Life goes on.

Her eyes already drift towards the wares the village women sell. Not that she does not enjoy it, but she is eager to be back to their bungalow. Suzanne haggles for the few vegetables they don’t grow themselves. They are laid out in wicker baskets on the dusty square. That is so in keeping with the region: this is not lush Kivu where anything grew, it is arid, hot. It is stone and Sun. And gold, of course. François is negotiating this week’s work parties and drilling zones with the chiefs. And any pest, predator or game he could help with. 

She nods to him that she is heading home now. He nods back.  

The voices drift like motes of dust behind her. The afternoon already grows old, and so does the Sun. Boy is racing her to the house, as usual, yapping and barking, turning around to look at her, panting, eager. He always arrives first, scratching enthusiastically, jumps in when she opens the door, runs around the rooms quickly, sniffing, whining. He can’t shake off the habit of months. She strides, the little monkey still fast asleep on her arm. The poor thing lost its mother, and since then desperately clings to her. Her travelling menagerie of companions never stops expanding: there is also Lolly the cat and Owl the owl. Rescued, fed, cared for. Loved? She just makes sure they are alright. 

She reaches their largely nominal fence and takes in the silent house. Their home. For the month.

Like always, they have been given a spot just that far apart from the village. In Cameroon, it is always on top of a hill. A family-sized hut in traditional style, with breathtaking views on the surrounding hills, as a real estate agent would say. As the Compagnie had advertised it to both of them. Yes, family sized. She still likes it. Even if, with any tree within a 100 meters zealously cleared, the relentless blowtorch of the Sun is burning a dust circle around the bungalow. And the 2 pathetic palm trees just wave around skeletal branches. 

An outpost of dried mud and solid wood, lording it over the hill.  

But look at the surrounding hills! Talk about infinite generosity, embracing luxuriance! Boy barks for her to hurry. When François had picked her up from Bétaré-Oya, after her trek from Douala, she had been ecstatic with where they would live. She had even clapped on seeing the bungalow! And they had laughed, and cried, and embraced: a new life, a new leaf, together again! And opening all the crates from the Comptoir Congolais that kept randomly trickling in the whole of December, like some weekly lottery. Suzanne misses the innocence of these days, even more than the laughter or the rest. 

And that Christmas! They had telegrammed Nanou for the occasion. She must have been pleased. A month ago. 

She opens the door, the handle white hot under the cobalt blue skies. The cool gloom past the bead curtain welcomes her. Tonight, Sunday, she will cook. Takes things off your mind. She slides her apron over her head, opens the squeaking shutters. From the window, the hills roll in every direction, slowly baking under the Sun: that is what they had left Europe for. She poses, letting the view sink in, soothing. 

François will be back for dinner, and not before the food is ready. That was their new agreement. This is her time. That is his time.  

She pours water in the big pot, the one they brought back from Congo, turns on the gas cooker she had bought at the Comptoir Congolais, Parys, while Nanou was staying with Aunt G. What a good buy that had been. She shakes her head a bit and sighs. Time to cook, my dear: ratatouille. And a Coq au Vin in the other pot. Between what passed for chickens here, and that table wine, two hours of simmering the leatherlike meat would be a must. Soon, the sauce starts to bubble and squeak hypnotically. 

Her eyes linger on the decrepit palm trees. Life must go on.

Nothing more to do but wait and endure. She sits down on the chair by the window, fidgeting with her apron. They had never talked about it anymore. They just looked at each other from the corner of their eyes, whenever they thought the other one did not see it. Only 3 months ago, in the Past, on a comfortable night in Watermael, she had written to him, with absolute moral certainty, to grow a spine. Now, it was her turn to do it. 

Suzanne had sent him a series of photos where Nanou was so cute. 

She had forced François to take down the picture of the 3 of them he had religiously hung everywhere he went, and replace it with the ones at Aunt G’s. How she had chided him on her arrival at Camp 4! Why are you not using the nice ones I sent you? Would he forgive her? That would be his choice. He did not need to. Maybe he thought that he was also to blame? 

But in the end, she had made the decision, so the only real question was: would she ever forgive herself? 

It was the right decision. She would soldier on, teeth clenched. Just face Life, fists on hips, feet planted apart; never complain, never explain. Her pain, her regrets, her remorse, her grief. All of that would only be hers, forever buried. She simply had no right to try and make excuses, ask forgiveness, explain? And to whom? No one else needed to pay any collateral price for a decision she had to assume entirely. 

It was not his fault. She knew. It was not her fault, he knew. And yet…

Everyone else seemed to be contemptuously smiling at her. Wisely nodding, condescending. Brushing any of it aside, her mind screamed: that is only what you do. She had sent them black rimmed announcements. She could imagine them opening the letters, pontificating, harrumphing at their gloomy tables: told you so, my child. Who were you to defy Life? She stirs the chicken pot, her eyes glazing over.

Whichever, she will forever be that one, to any of them, the one that abandoned her child. She could never fix that. Why even try? 

And the last picture they sent her! Nanou looking straight at them, happy. No. Jubilant, radiant, beautiful. Youth. The photo was just 3 weeks old? What a morbid joke she had received it a few days after the telegram. Suzanne had stared at the picture. François had stared at the picture. She can’t remember what he did with it. Nor with the album pages, nor the small keepsakes box of Annie’s hair. Why would she? Set up a shrine?    

She was talking to God now, of course… she asked Him if it was fate, punishment or A Lesson? 

Only the susurration of the boiling water breaks the silence. The smells of Coq au Vin speak of hospitality, welcome, contentment. Not grief. The sunlight plays with the steam, creating glittering illusions of faces and memories. How beautiful, how fresh, how intelligent their little Chick, Annie had been. 

When the employee of the CEM had driven all the way up the hill a few days ago, they had waved at him, puzzled. He had waved back and went straight in, parting the bead curtain, searching for the words to say. He had just laid the telegram on the table and bent his head apologetically.  

They knew. She knew. 

7 January 1937 / Watermael / Aunt G. to François and Suzanne D: – Annie deceased – stop –  Pneumonia – stop – Condolences – stop. 

That was the sum of the facts. Anything else was conjecture. Not even something to rail against. Who, what, when, even where, were just conjectures. Thinking about any of it, tossing and turning at night, there was the path to madness and bitterness. Had it been carelessness, incompetence, would she have done better? She hoped so. She could not know. 

The telegram just laid in the drawer of the table.

She sits there, a hand over her mouth, yearning for the Lightness of an age now gone, a week ago; her trademark pose whenever she thought people could not see her in the years to come.  

Nanou had been so beautiful, kind, youthful, enthusiastic, and intelligent, and… the Coq au Vin bubbles. 

Suzanne dug in at the top of the hill in her Laager. Defiant. 

Let them come. Let Life come. Lightness is a lure.

Pain and Duty. 

---

You read part 24 of Transvaal Blue Skies: the true story of how, early last century, Suzanne moved to Africa and built her laager. This is a series of loose dots weaved in a chronological thread, wrapped into a story to be plucked and observed, heard and remembered, recognised and judged. Suzanne Dulière was my grandmother.  

Follow the story: sign up here to receive the weekly article. More photos and videos on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.