The Masque of Africa_ Glimpses of African Belief - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,78

to the secondary stage. Every Wednesday the children lined up for a quinine tablet and milk to help the quinine down. Even the university education in Paris was free. And when Rossatanga married in Paris, the Gabon government paid for his wife’s fare to Gabon, even though she was from the Ivory Coast.

He was a lawyer by profession and thought of himself as a political scientist. At the university of Gabon he also taught political anthropology. It was through these latter studies, no doubt, that he came to his poetic understanding of the place of the forest in the Gabonese mind.

It wasn’t always like that. His mother was a civil servant and he was born in a hospital in the town. When he was three he was taken to the forest. It was a great opportunity to learn the ways of the forest, but he was too young to see it like that. The forest was frightening; it is frightening even now, although in the family house they have a generator. In the forest night falls very quickly. It is dark by seven; by eight you go to sleep; and you wake up at five. The darkness is dense. To understand the vision of the people of Gabon, you have to understand the forest.

“When darkness comes to the forest there is no sound. But at night there are different sounds or noises that come from animals hunting. The night plus the noises make up our mentality, because people are linked to everything in the forest. Thunder isn’t just thunder, as it is for you. It is the voice of God: try to understand that. In our village the most terrifying creature is the owl. We are frightened of the owl because it is a manifestation of evil. If you are out walking and you see an owl it is a very bad omen. And this country of ours is a specific place. Our village is in the mouth of the river, and even if we take a car we will get nowhere, because of the water and the condition of the roads. It is a primeval area. The forest will always break out, always win. There is a place called Loango Lodge. You should see it. It is heaven, an Eden. On the land you will see elephants. From the same place you will see whales and dolphins in the sea. When you see that place you will understand why I say that this land was not meant for humans. It is for the animals. It is very hard to survive in the forest. You cannot farm here. You might not have noticed it, but we have no cattle. Put these things together and you will understand why this country, which is half the size of France, has such a small population. Malaria, sleeping sickness, and the hot climate.”

The French, fine engineers though they were, never built roads here. There was too much rain, too much water; it washed everything away. The French concentrated on air travel. The first railway was built in 1981 by independent Gabon; it was very expensive, and it was done against the advice of the World Bank.

I asked Rossatanga, “What is it like physically in the forest?”

He said with extraordinary passion, “It is like a wall. At fifty feet you cannot see, as it is so dense and thick. Your vision is limited by the forest and everyone of us in the forest is small. I’ll say it again: this land was not made for humans. You have to fight to survive. You don’t know what will get you even in the river. It could be a croc, a water snake, or something living there. God knows what else is there.”

“How does this affect your belief?”

“We feel that everything has life, even trees. There is a mystical tree, a red tree. When we go to the forest we talk to it and tell it our problems. We also ask its permission to cut its branch or bark, and we tell the tree why we are taking its bark, why we are cutting it. You must tell the tree. All tribes have totems here, and that totem is taboo for them. They can never kill or harm their totem. They can never hunt it. It can be a crocodile, parrot, monkey, anything.”

Because the conditions of life are so hard, everyone in Gabon believes in the forest and in the principle of “energy” that the forest exemplifies.