De Gaulle’s Hat
Arthur S Firkins (Conakry 2011)
Finally he got off the plane and as he walked through the airport of Conakry he observed sheer chaos, small groups of Chinese arriving as they once did to the gold fields of California, bands of rather seeding looking Europeans, handing over money for visas and Arab businessmen clambering for immigration forms, not to mention the occasional official chanting a recurring song ‘have you got money for me sir, a little something maybe ? ” He had flown down from Casablanca to meet his wife, five and a half hours on Royal Air Moroc, first time to West Africa, the last time on Royal Air Moroc.
Legend has it that Seka Toure had told de Gaulle that Guinea would prefer “poverty in freedom to opulence in slavery”. They say that de Gaulle was so furious that he left for the airport, and was in such a rush that he forgot his hat, where it still hangs in the halls of the presidential palace to this day. De Gaulle’s hat was left behind, a symbol of the people of Guinea’s aspirations for their freedom. Like the story of Africa over, the colonial powers deserted Guinea at the crucial moment leaving the new government struggling and floundering into the waiting arms of the soviets, the dubious traders and the mining companies who were only too glad to help, at a price anyway.
He was so looking forward to seeing his wife’s face that he ignored the hive of activity and blanked out the struggle, the noise, the chaotic atmosphere that surrounded him, which he didn’t really understand anyway and there waiting for him was his wife’s niece “bag, bag, that your bag, will I take, that yours?” and they left to stay at the family compound. He could see nothing but shards of light from the small windows with sprinkles of colour, jarred doors and the occasional small house. Along the sides of the road hundreds of people were walking in the darkness, carrying things, talking, dressed up. “We are going to run over somebody” he thought. He turned to the driver “Where are they all going? “Nowhere, nowhere in particular, just out”.
For a few days they showed him around the country as his wife had gone to the border of Mali for a funeral and would not be back quickly. As they were driving through the streets, this time in his wife’s niece’s, husband’s, friend’s, friend’s, friend’s rather run down Toyota, he understood that Seka Toure had got the poverty he wanted for his people, but the people didn’t seem to get the freedom they had long yearned for and expected after the French had left. De Gaulle’s hat hung over the people like the promise of the lost democracy gathering dust in the presidential palace.
Conakry was littered with rundown small apartment blocks, grey colonial compounds that had not seen a coat of paint since the French left. tiny shanty huts clustered together, rows of markets and small corner shops, hairdressers and butchers. The suburbs of Conakry were peppered with large opulent medeterianian style houses, some half built, some standing as skeletons of concrete, some complete, with high fences to keep out the people. These were the houses of the politicians, the scammers, the civil servants the overseas diaspora come to show off the wealth they had made in the old and new world to the people. “Wait here, your wife will join you soon she’s coming, the road back from the border, well not good but she won’t be long and by the way try the Guinea beer”.
The people endured the rule of Seka Toure waiting for the opulence for so long and on his death had to endured the rule of yet another brutal dictator who had murdered his wife’s uncle in a coupe and would hover over the people for a further twenty years. Conte, a brutal corrupt dictator had squandered their promise of a bright future, to enrich himself and to give the people the poverty Seka Toure had promised them. At least it could be said that the leaders of Guinea are true to their word.
De Gaulle had left and so did the French and along with them, the money and the light. They threw the type writers into the sea, just to ensure there would be no opulence and flooded the power station and if it was today they would have thrown all of the cell phones and computers and anything else. The people were punished for wanting to run their own lives; the French had swept away their ancient regime, but clung to the colonies like the dead hand of their kings. They had cut the heads off their oppression, yet the governors still kept theirs. Robspierre’s revolution didn’t come to Guinea until 1954. DeGaulle wanted to make Guinea French, but instead “off with his head”, but they couldn’t find the guillotine, the French had already taken it back to Paris, so they kept de Gaulle’s hat, at least that was something. But now it seemed that the former governors had set up fashionable bars and were serving bread sticks and good food to the new ones, not to mention a pretty good beer.
He could feel the gentle soft breeze of the South Atlantic as he sat in a bar by the sea, the light blue silk sky could still be seen, the heat hovered, but it was not too hot, the cold beer went down nicely. He well understood why the French didn’t really want to leave. He understood why De Gaulle was so pissed off! Maybe he was planning to come back for that hat of his? With a climate like Guinea’s who the hell would want to leave? Even the Mandeka among many other tribes had to be carted off in slave ship, no one wanted to leave and by the looks of the airport he had manoeuvred his way through a few days before everyone was coming back. This time a new colonial power, China and he could see that they won’t be in a hurry to leave either, or at least not before everybody had a plastic electric kettle and a generator to operate it.
It was February 2011 and a new President had just been elected by popular plebiscite, and hung his hat on the rack, next to de Gaulle’s. He had been elected promising a new and better future for the people of Guinea, but “we will wait and see if that happens”, was the opinion of my wife’s brothers, who the day before had all gathered in a circle outside the family compound, seated beneath a giant tree to give him ‘the inquisition’ along with a personal tour through the rather run down National Museum of Conakry.
He had bought some postcards at the museum, black and white, of Conakry in 1954, half naked villagers and round houses with thatched roofs. That was his image of Africa, growing up in Sydney watching Tarzan movies after school, Bogart and Hepburn dragging the African Queen through the swamps of the Congo, that was the image that Lord Baden Powel had given to him as a scout, that the Zulu had wiped the arses of the British at the battle of Isandlwanaa and that the British had whipped their areses at the battle of Rourkes Drift while singing “Men of Harleck” at the top of their voices.
The Zulu chief had shook the hand of Baden Powel, admiring his bravery and compassion extended his left and that was why, so he was told as a young scout Sydney, that all scouts now shake hands with their left hand, well so the story goes. Likewise he had shaken the hand of the Governor of New South Wales when he received his Queen’s scout award, but now in Africa, if he had offered his left hand in greeting, it would have been the most grievous insult to the people of this predominately Muslim country.
Looking around Conakry, the roads were sealed with baked mud and the mud clad round houses of his youthful dreams of Africa were not to be seen, except for the facades that were part of the bar he was now sitting in. The houses of the people were not the quaint villages of the Tarzan movies he remembered, but were instead rather run down shanty town’s characteristic of a country dry of investment, where the teachers and nurses road motorcycles and held down several ways to scrape a living together and the soldiers and generals seemed to drive around in chauveur driven luxury. This was a country of wealth, but the wealth had been taken along with the culture and Seka Toure’s dream of nationalism, his pride in a colonial free Africa had been stolen along with it. It seemed that Marx’s rants had been long ignored, along with Christ’s parables and it seemed the words of the prophet even, as the greed of the few had usurped the needs and aspirations of the many.
The promised poverty was easily seen, yet as he looked around the bar it seemed that de Gaulle had left his hat hanging alongside a deep sense of fashion. The young people and the old dressed immaculately in traditional African clothes and the latest fashions of Europe straight off the boat from Shenzhen. He sat in the bar the waves washing the rocks in front of him, the soft breeze, the hum of a generator that now lit the fairy lights in the trees, the flickering of the table candles a figure approached him moved a chair across the stone pavement and sat down. “Sorry I am late, the traffic was terrible, god I need a drink. Oh, by the way, my niece said that you forgot your hat, you left it in her car, umm. here it is”. “Great thanks I was wondering where I put that”. He kissed her and they called the waiter over, “two more thanks mate”.
