The Sick Man, Sprung

by Zonial Pix

March 22

I meet Deborah, Kassie’s young housemaid, and give her my laundry, at Kassie’s suggestion. I did the dishes last night and Kassie gently admonished me, saying that I’d left nothing for Deborah to do. Hubert, when I later tell him the story, suggests that it’s important not to undermine anyone’s position. Whatever I may think of the employer/ employee relationship, with its colonial echoes, I obviously can’t implicate myself in it. Kassie is fair to Deborah, pays her quite well for the market she works in, and provides educational support. Kassie presumably understands the contradictory elements potentially at play between her own liberal and highly conscious political views and the fact that she is the white overseer of a host of black workers whose prospects are, to my crude understanding, systemically hemmed in. Kassie apparently takes her western-level compensation and distributes a considerable amount of it among a number of her African compatriots; on an individual level, it’s difficult to say what more’s to be done.

Hubert is sprung today, the doctor telling Kassie that so long as the sick man is released into her care, he can go. And indeed, Hubert is cheerful and ready to quit the hospital. Only after an hour and a half of waiting and wrangling with the administration over the bill however—and getting Hubert’s deposit reimbursed—are we able to leave.

On the way home, we see a troop of baboons on the roadside and some camels browsing the vegetation. Southwest of Nairobi and surprisingly close to where Kassie resides, there is a large game preserve. Reportedly many wild creatures live there, including a carefully monitored lion pride. The baboons move about freely and occasionally make garbage-scavenging nuisances of themselves.

Hubert finds Kassie’s place as paradisiacal as I. He says it’s a welcome contrast to the “shit-holes” he’s usually staying in while shooting his films in Africa. We spend the afternoon and evening not doing much of anything; laughing and conversing, me imbibing “malt” and Hubert, ginger ale. Adam Hochschild has sent to Hubert by email a couple of recently published articles. One is about the present-day Congo (DRC), which sadly doesn’t sound all that much changed from Leopold II’s Congo that Hochschild so chillingly describes in his book.

One of Hochschild’s articles confirms that the Congo, after more than a hundred years of exploitation, remains a veritable treasure trove of mineral wealth. Western companies such as Ashanti continue to find that the Congo’s weak central government is perfectly amenable to their extracting maximum value without having to leave too high a percentage of the resulting wealth behind, in the form of taxes and labour costs. One study puts the value of gold deposits at Ashanti’s concession at $3 billion. It is an extraordinary paradox, really, not to mention depressing; the Congo is one of the richest countries in the world, with one of the poorest populations imaginable.

After dinner, Hubert shows us some of the footage he has already shot for the film.

Not the hermit H.S. filmed…

One sequence, set in the Tunisian desert, features a somewhat hermetic, 50-something man who lives in the leftover set from George Lucas’s Star Wars shoot, which was of course produced in the 70’s. The image of this poverty-stricken desert-dweller, living in a sort of bauble erected by the west, is perfect for Hubert’s idea of mixing fictional space colonization with images of present-day African colonization.

He has much beautiful aerial footage shot in Libya and Sudan. Kassie suggests that he take some of the Libyan footage and sell it to CNN, to capitalize on the present-day conflict playing out there. This is not an idea that had occurred to Hubert, nor is it likely to be one he follows up. He’s uninterested in selling his images for use in an ephemeral, current affairs context, and hopes instead to create something with lasting resonance. Besides, he is in the enviable position of not needing more money for this project.

Freddy, a young man about Max’s age, out from the U.K. and now 5 months in Kenya, is staying with Kassie too. Freddy has been bumped from his bed to allow Hubert to have a room, and Kassie has given him use of the living room and a spare mattress. He’s a smart young man, very interested in literature, and is presently working for the Save the Elephants organization run by the Douglas-Hamiltons. Freddy talks of wanting to start up a literary magazine in Nairobi. I admire his youthful idealism and hope that he retains the energy to pursue his ambitions.