An French-Belgian family’ archive of day-to-day life in Congo and Cameroun, Africa from 1910s until end 1950s – based on photos, documents and memories.
A shadow drifts above the timeline, a creeping sense of déjà-vu.
This is the sister-ship to the SS Baron Dhanis, in May 1931. Suzanne is in Kalemie once again. 10 years ago, only. 10 years ago, already. This had been their Africa, the Africa of the Tanganyika, of the Mutambala…
Every evening in the savannah, it is the same. The roaming band has to organise for the night. A temporary shelter to protect itself from predators, animals or otherwise. As they move tomorrow, nothing too fancy, and mainly relying greatly on the individuals in the group. That was then, at...
Social media does often gives you a sense of inadequacy. Hair falls like this, bodies look like that, the soufflé always rises and stays up. And, of course, when they clear their basement, “they” find the missing Rembrandt hidden in a crate, forgotten for centuries, just waiting to be found....
The last piece of furniture has been disposed of. It was the worms that got all of them. Some, most maybe, were 150 years of memories written in wood. Eaten through, shedding little showers of sawdust every now and then, when you nudged them. Hours, weeks, months spent to try...
The fascination with the Second World War does not wane. In Europe, we are still finding the bombs, grenades, weapons, helmets, tanks, trucks, planes,… in swamps, in lakes, in the ground, under houses or in the sea. It is still beneath our feet. Walk around our cities, try and spot the...
We take for granted the copper of our electrical lines, the iron in our concrete, the rare metals that allowed us to engineer mobile phones that fit in a suit pocket. But all of it starts with finding the ore. True enough, digging up ore is a millennia old activity....
All of it stopped when my grandmother died. It did not have to, but there was an inevitability to it. Maybe because they were doing it for the kids, not so much for themselves. And when the reason went, the endless days and weeks just evaporated. The visitors disappeared, the family...
Now, don’t be squeamish. Maggots are back in fashion. Maggot therapy is even at the cutting edge of wound treatments in establishments such as the Chester and Westminster hospital. We put green-bottle fly maggots in wounds to cleanse necrotized tissue. And it is faster and better than usual dressings. Would you believe...
“You never enter the same river twice” ~ Heraclitus the Obscure aka Heraclitus of Smyrna That was tradition. It was their tradition. Theirs. They just knew each other’s exact thoughts as they happened: glimpses of Zanzibar, Dar-Es-Salam, Conakry… So many harbours, so many colours, so many times. They were standing side...
The massive red brick church on screen was one of the traditional cues of The Old Movies. It was the kick-off of memory, the bravura moment of the retelling of ‘what-we-did-in-Congo’. A breeze of sighs, dreamy smiles and fleeting nods. Nostalgia started oozing from the walls. Smiles we did not...
August 16, 2024
My Heritage | Travel Trunks and Suitcases
August 2, 2024
August 9, 2024
August 30, 2024
From Ghent to Likasi, the Heart of Darkness
September 20, 2024
November 15, 2024
November 1, 2024
WWI in Soissons, Henri Penotet and the Big Bomb
November 8, 2024
November 29, 2024
December 6, 2024