Pascal Bollon

Category: Day-to-day Life in Katanga

Chameleons

If you want a friend, get a dog. Warren Buffet. Do you eat whale, horse, rabbit, guinea pig? What about domesticated pigs? Are animals just emotional support, Life’s guide dogs? Or should they be re-introduced where they were hunted to extinction? Whatever the case, and whichever side of the discussion...

African Suburbia

African Suburbia

1940-1955 The triage of memories continues. Albums pile up. They get thicker. Now covered in heavy bordeaux faux-leather, they look like spell books waiting for a lectern, and a priest to officiate. Out with the earlier scrapbooks, the glued and stringed pages. In with the temple tomes and careful order....

Claude-Anne’s Africa

I am addressing you Emm. As you told me some days ago that you knew nothing of my life before, when I was a young girl over there [in Africa]… I know that the memories we keep, even with images, the smells, none of it can be communicated, but, for...

Katanga Congo Map

Mapping the Unmapped

Katanga 1917-1957 Every second of every minute of our lives, we know where we are. Within 64 cm. That is the accuracy of our smartphones. If we actually care, that is our precise position in the universe, the space we occupy. If we use a smartwatch, that is even the...

Camp during Mission Marin in Katanga, Belgian Congo

Life on the Trail, the Routine of Adventure

François Dulière started off in Congo as an electrician in 1914, then a draughtsman for UMHK around 1917. He came to Europe in 1921 to complete his qualification of Surveying Engineer at the famed School for Travaux Publics in Paris. From there on, he never ceased to map out, draw...

What Does Africa Need: Bridges or Castles?

In 1942, the Belgian colonial authority, Governor Schollaert was asked to build a two-way lane bridge in Dungu, the north-eastern-most corner of the Congo, in the Oriental province. Next stop across the border of South Soudan. The deepest, most remote post. The bridge still stands today. A proud witness of...

Barefoot

In most of the pictures taken in or around the bush, locals walk around, parade, hunt, work barefoot. All alarm bells ring! Colonialism! Poverty! Exploitation! Do not trust the smiles, it is just the Stockholm syndrome of capitalistic oppression. And still. They are all smiles on the picture. Even clearly...

Cars, to Infinity and Beyond!

I have now been shuffling through teetering piles of photos for weeks. Discovering, observing, guessing, filing, moving on to the next stack. A conveyor belt of once cherished, or at least worthy, memories. A triage of someone else’s memories.   All pictures will give you an obvious subject: a house, a hut, a...

Xmas 1919 in Panda Likasi

Whomever has been expat or away from home during the Christmas period, knows that very mixed feeling of longing for home, family and hearth, but also at the same time a bit relieved that you will not have to undergo all of the mandatory year-end socials. Today, planes are full,...