Lumumba's Nightmare

Yesterday, I received a call from Washington from friend and colleaque Jacqueline who was visiting the U.S. for the first time in her life. She was giggling in the phone and her voice was creazing in excitement as she describes to me the glorious scene she was watching. She was indeed in front of the White House and she couldn't hold her [excitement] knowing that her hero, the love of her life, her messiah, the man she fell in love with, a certain Barack Hussein Obama was maybe (theoratically) walking around just metres from the very spot that Jacqueline was standing on.

This scene might sound normal/ordinary if you don't know the stoy of my friend.

Before I set forth on typing those words I demnded and obtaines Jacqueline's authorization to describe her life on my blog as a case in point and introductory to the point I want to make here.

One hundred dayd of an Obama administration that showed little if no signs at all in changing its policies towards Africa (as for the middle east it will need a post in its own right).

Jacqueline is a Congolese (Congo-Kinshassa) doctor. Each time she evoks her story you feel all the pain of the world in her face and voice. Her body language transpires the tragedy that befell her family in the mid-80s when she had to flee her home and country, barefoot, baring her baby in one arm, and dragging the older one by the other.

Before this tragedy accured Jacqueline was living a life of relative prosperity and was above all, with the little means that she had happy... Indeed very happy as she likes to stress.

It was a beautiful october day in Kinshassa when the news came of troops of the Cobras -the paramilitary troops loyal to Denis Sassou Ngeasso- rampaging the outskirts of the cityof Kinshassa.

Sasso Nguesso was president of the "Republic" of the Congo and head of a single party system for a long period spanning from 1979 to 1993, the year when he was peacefully and democratically ousted after a remarkably democratic process that has led to the introduction of a multyparty system and the constitution of a national conference.

The rumors of the Cobras closing in to the affluent neighboorhood where Jacqueline lived with her extended family must have sparked a sheer horror that must have overwhelmed every single membre of the family is simply beyond words.

She doen't any other choice but to flee taking with only necessary things. She couldn't use her car, it was too risky because she was told that if she got hold by the Cobras, she would surely have been killed whilst at foot she would had -she was told- a much bigger chance of fleeing with her life. Most if the road were blocked anyway.

She subsequently left her house, most of her belongings and fled to the unknown not knowing if she would be able to get away with her life and that of her chldren or not.

After hours -indeed a whole day- walking with a column of refugees, in the forest, not being able even to stop for rest, she reached a refugee camp where she met aid workers and some [lointains] relatives.

After day not knowing the whereabout of most of the members of her family, she decided to leave the country all together.

Thanks to her perspicacity and her [strong] wilingness to secure the future of her two daughters and son, ans also thanks to dedicated and {compassionate} aid workers, Jacqueline managed to reach neighbouring, from where she miraculously, thanks to remote family connectio, to fly over to France where she would stay unemployed for some years before

Hate of France. Françafrique. Vincent Bolloré. Monde Diplomatique.

Wiki page on Sasso: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Sassou-Nguesso