| Becoming Baba A creative non-fiction coming-of-age story by Sven Eberlein On a day like any other, seventeen-year old John White returns from school to his parents' spacious suburban home, and without a word hurries upstairs to his room. Tired and drained by his teachers' constant nagging and his classmates' meaningless chatter about dating, cars, and the latest TV shows, he tosses his backpack on his bed and turns on the radio. "...No dark sarcasm in the classroom..."—he turns up the volume—"...hey, teachers, leave us kids alone..."—now shouting along as loud as he can—"...ALL IN ALL YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL!" The song ends, and at full blast the station segues into, "...get your rebate today, down at Troy Barker Toyota. Troy Barker—we mean it when we bark!" He frantically turns the dial a notch—"Feeling tired and low on energy? Party like a ROCK STAR with MONSTER JUICE. Monster Juice—if you need it BIG and BAD!" Desperate, he scurries to the end of the dial, when suddenly he is hypnotized by a beautiful sound. "Bamaman moke baye...bataata toke baye..."—a soulful voice, punctuated by a staccato bass, multiple layers of percussion, and an ensemble of weaving and echoing guitar lines, gives John goose bumps. By the end of the fifteen minute song he is dancing on his bedroom floor, tapping rhythmically against the wall with a pair of rulers. "Well, that was a tasty treat from the other side of the world." A smooth and unassuming DJ voice fades into the final beats. "This one was called 'Attention Na Sida' by Francois Luambo Makiadi, aka Franco, the master of Congolese rumba, and his OK Jazz Orchestra. Recorded live a year ago on March 14, 1984, at the Un-Deux-Trois Club in Kinshasa, Zaire. This is 'Rhythms of the World,' and you're listening to KFRO, your local college radio station. Keep it loose and groovy, folks." The following weeks John is tuned in to Rhythms of the World every time the show comes on. He is enthralled by the diverse styles played on the program, especially Afro-Cuban and West-African Highlife music. However, it's the buoyant sounds of Congolese rumba that continue to crawl under his skin like a contagious virus, and soon he is not content to listen anymore. Could he learn to play like that? Could he find musicians to play with? He begs his mother to buy him a guitar, and finally—after vociferous protests bemoaning his falling grades and lackluster SAT preparations—she caves in to the spark in his eyes. He promises her—and himself—that the guitar will take him places. From that moment on, John spends most of his time practicing double-stops, a technique fundamental to learning the African guitar. While his classmates are fretting over SATs and their first awkward experiments with sex and alcohol, John is sitting in his room playing along with old records of African music he finds at the public library. When he is not practicing, he contemplates his growing distaste of modern day consumerism and the spell it has cast on many of his friends. Their pursuit of wealth and upward mobility is not what John is after. Instead, he thirsts to find the rhythm of the world. After three more years of hard practice and growing disillusionment with the wasteful ways of suburbia he decides to take a trip to the Congo, making good on his promise. A month-long journey by ship, train, and even by foot takes him to Kinshasa, capital of Zaire. Kinshasa is a bustling metropolis, full of smells, sights, and sounds in a sea of undulating humanity. At first, John gets by solely on high school French and body language. Within weeks, however, he discovers the musical pulse of the city, pointing him toward different, more vibrant, means of communication. The further he dares to venture off the main roads and into Kinshasa's narrow and unnamed back alleys, the more he can feel Franco's imprint, exemplified by musicians of all ages who fill the neighborhoods with his fluid Congo beat. Finally, he finds the place he's been dreaming about since high school. John becomes a regular at the Un-Deux-Trois Club, the legendary venue for over thirty years of so many Franco and OK Jazz concerts. One night, after a few weeks of alternately shaking his hips and leaning against the stage monitors to stare wide-eyed at the musicians, Bekele Kabila, a graying trumpet player and leader of Orchestra Sucre, steps up to the microphone. "Madames et Messieurs. Nous avons un invité spécial çe soir!"He motions John to come on-stage and, with a heavy French accent, asks, "what is your name, young man, and where do you come from?""I'm Johnny from the USA," John mumbles into Bekele's ear, his heart almost stopped and his French forgotten. Bekele turns to the microphone. "On guitar, from USA, please welcome Baba Ndjhoni!" With no time to ponder how Bekele knew he played guitar, and whipped up by a frenzied rhythm section that has already started the next song, John launches into his double-stops for a series of call-and-response melodies with the other two guitar players. Then another rumba. And another. By early morning, after Orchestra Sucre and Special Guest have outlasted everyone on the dance floor, Bekele and his band members, smiling cheek to cheek, shake John's hand. John White has become Baba Ndjhoni. The deeper Baba digs into the city's social network that seems so free-spirited and exciting, the more he sees of its darker side. Led by General Mobuto Sese Seko, the ruthless dictator who imposed Zaireanisation on the former Democratic Republic of Congo under the guise of anti-colonialism, the corruption and cronyism of Zaire's ruling elite seems to have trickled into common life, leaving a sediment of resentment and suspiciousness. Baba realizes and bemoans that a few people at the top control and consume most resources, while the majority of Zaire's people fights for leftovers. Although he has been touched profoundly by the creative genius and bottomless generosity of his musical brethren, the origin of the Congo beat still seems far away, lost and diluted in the smoggy urban air, jaded by centuries of foreign meddling and intrusion. Baba describes this dilemma to his friend Bekele. "Bekele, I feel stuck. While you and Orchestra Sucre have taught me so much, I still feel that I haven't found what I was looking for. Worse yet, I don't know what exactly it is that I am looking for." "Baba," Bekele puts his hand on his shoulder, "Orchestra Sucre is only a messenger carrying a distant message. We don't know the source, but we can feel it in the rhythm of our music. To find the soul of Africa and get to the source of the message, you must venture deeper into the countryside, away from the city's distractions. You have to find the spirits that will speak to your heart!" Thus, almost seven months after his arrival in Kinshasa, Baba Ndjhoni pays for a seat on the bus that treks into the most remote outposts of the Congolese heartland, just once a month. After five days most passengers have gotten off at towns and villages along the way. As the terrain gets more rugged, the only signs of the road are two flushed-out tire tracks weaving around barren hills and baobab trees. At the end of day seven Baba is the last remaining passenger, still twenty-four hours of bumps and bruises short of the final bus stop, the village of Mwenge. Finally, at dusk the following day, the steady chatter of the diesel engine shuts off and the bus driver gives Baba a gentle nod. Feeling every muscle in his stiff body, the awkward young man from distant America hobbles down the step and into a deserted field of savanna grass that is shimmering in the golden red cloak of an African sunset. From a safe distance, silent and still, two children are staring at him. They have never seen a man so pale. The next few weeks are the most challenging yet. Not only does Baba not speak Kiluba, the language of Mwenge, but the people seem to be ignoring him altogether. It would be discouraging, but Baba is much too determined to be discouraged. And what choice does he have? The next bus won't come for another month. Each time he approaches the communal cooking pit by the fire the villagers disappear, forcing him to take rice and Maanyi—a local dish of manioc leaves cooked in salt water— without asking first. He fetches water from the well fifteen minutes away and tries to engage his reluctant hosts with a smile whenever they cross paths. However, as the days pass more and more slowly, he often finds himself hiding in the nearby forest, feeling desperately isolated. At night, he sleeps alone, under a thatched roof open on all sides, down by the well. One evening, on his way to the well, Baba comes across an old man sitting in front of a small straw hut. To Baba's surprise, the man greets him in fluent French, the broad smile on his gently aged face setting Baba at ease. He introduces himself as Kimuni Wa Nchinta, chief of the neighboring village of Kihanga, and motions Baba to sit down next to him. Baba gladly obliges, grateful for any interaction and relieved to have found a friendly spirit. When Baba asks where he learned French, Kimuni replies that he has traveled across the whole world. Unsure of how large Kimuni's world might be, Baba's inquiries initially focus on the people of Mwenge and their shy demeanor, but the chuckling old man seems to be uninterested in the subject. "Mudilo. Say it with me, Baba: Mudilo. It means 'Fire' in English. It's burning all around us. Burning in the forests. Burning in our hearts. Burning in the internal combustion engines of the world. It's all part of nature, a mysterious energy ignited by the universe's great thirst for motion, and stored in tremendous furnaces like our very own sun." Baba doesn't quite know where Kimuni is going with this, but he is enthralled by the dancing rhythms of his voice. "That's where we get it from, Baba, all our energy, all our fire - from the sun. It makes us get up in the morning, let's us travel near and far, and helps us recover from unspeakable hardship and pain. After a long winter we yearn for the sun and her secret agents of fire - the blooming spring blossoms, singing birds, and a reawakened human zest for life." Kimuni is now looking right into Baba's eyes, his bristly gray hair illuminated by the soft orange light of dusk. "It's there all the time, this sunfire," Kimuni continues, "but sometimes, in the middle of winter or after an exhausting day, the presence of the sun's warmth is more subtle, more obscure, slightly tilted away from our attention. It gets dark, and we feel cold and lonely, deserted by the energy that drives our physical and mental engines. And when our engines coast or don't run on all cylinders, we get scared. Scared to be stranded, scared to go hungry, scared to slow down and wither away." The imagery of engines and cylinders strikes a chord with Baba, as he is reminded of their almost mythical significance back home. More so, he is taken by Kimuni's knowledge of internal combustion. But before he has a chance to ask him about the origin of this information, the old chief continues to expound. "Controlling fire has undoubtedly been humanity's biggest coup in its attempt to create eternal sunshine, to escape from the cold and dark places inherent in the cycle of life. From the earliest and simplest triumphs of scaring away wild animals with a burning branch, to the invention of gun powder, our thirst for more and more of the sun's great power has created a world lit up brightly and permanently. We've also learned how to extract the sun's energy to allay our other great fear, the fear of stagnation, by digging deep into the ground for coal and oil to extract the energy it took the sun millions of years to create. So now we move around in trains, planes, and cars—all on borrowed energy—but at what cost?" "So much pollution," Baba interjects, as if answering Kimuni's rhetorical question. "And people don't have time anymore to just talk to one another because they're always so busy chasing the latest gadgets that are supposed to make their lives easier." "Not all modern inventions are bad," Kimuni calmly replies. "I've seen it with my own eyes. The big problem today is that so many people have forgotten how to trust their own inner fire and they've become too dependent on external sources which then get wasted because they're taken for granted. At the same time the people of Mwenge have a lot of inner fire but could use some of these external sources to make their lives a bit easier. See Baba, that's why I have lived in Paris, Brussels, and New York as a UN ambassador, and that's why you are here. Our people need to learn from each other to balance the inner and outer fire of humanity. And for you, my friend, to connect with the inner fire of Central Africa you have to let your own fire speak." Kimuni flashes a broad smile and points at a guitar leaning against his hut. "This might help to spark your flame a bit," he laughs. Plucking some of Franco's beautiful rumba melodies, Baba strolls down the hill toward Mwenge. The two children he encountered on his first day join him without a word, tapping a rhythm to the song with a pair of sticks. As they reach the fire pit around supper time, still playing, the villagers immediately put down their pots and pans and move to the rhythm. Before long, the music is supported by congas, talking drums, and marimbas, joined by singers and dancers. Mwenge Village parties into the night. No words are spoken, yet Baba and the villagers understand each other. After that night, life in Mwenge changes for Baba. His two young friends, Nkoi and Mulunda, are always by his side, urging him to play Kimuni's guitar. Their mother, Lolo Asina, takes him under her wing to teach him Kiluba and how to make Maanyi. In return Baba teaches English and French to the village kids and helps out in the field during harvest time. As he settles into the rhythm of Mwenge, a month quickly turns into a year. With the slow pace of village life, Baba's frustration with the ways of the world eases. For the first time in his life, Baba is content. Three years later Kimuni Wa Nchinta returns from another lengthy residency abroad. Baba runs into him outside the little straw hut. "Kimuni," Baba says, "my heart is filled with fire! I am itching to travel and change the world. Can I come with you on your next assignment?" "Well sure," Kimuni smiles, "I think it is time for a journey, but I am not going anywhere for a while. You will have to take this trip by yourself. Go to your hut tonight and dream of the place where you are most needed; that's where people are already waiting for you." Indeed, that night Baba has a dream. It is filled with music, family and community, casting Bekele, Kimuni, Lolo Asina, Nkoi, and Mulunda side by side with his family in America, some of which he knows and others he doesn't yet. He is married to a beautiful wife and cooks Maanyi for his children. There are musicians writing original songs, and a great band that Baba takes on tours around the world in a biodiesel wagon, at times even lifting off the horizon. Suburban sprawl and material pursuits are all around him, but Baba is right in the middle of it, lending his soul fire to balance the fires of consumption. It feels so real, as if they were dancing around his hut, that when Nkoi and Mulunda come to pick him up in the morning they ask him who he is talking to. |