Production
Write To Life: Crocodile Seeking Refuge
FRIDAY, 6TH JUNE 1997, 11AM.
The sun rose slowly in the sky with a bright glare over the majestic Congo river. Compared to the political crisis, the day seemed somewhat heavy and long. This, however, did not prevent people from going about their daily business. As usual, I set out on my journey to the university where I was studying civil rights and attending a training course in accountancy.
Suddenly, I heard heavy automatic gunfire. Utter chaos set in, panic broke out in town. People stopped in their track, everyone rushed home to take shelter. I did the same, without realising that this was my undoing. My whole life was to collapse in a fraction of a second – perhaps the well was too deep or my fall too slow since I had all the time in the world to look around me and start worrying about what was happening to me. I reflected on the beauty of the sun while my thoughts turned around my family. I prayed that nothing untoward should happen to them before my arrival home because of our political and tribal affiliation and because of the area we lived in. But alas!
My father was a large, square-shouldered man with an upright gait, powerful arms and a pleasant smile. He was still a strong man at the age of 55. His hands were still as powerful as when he first worked for the railway company in the 70s. He was the first political man from the South to be gruesomely assassinated at home in the northern district of Brazzaville by the militia from the North. He was in his pyjamas when this happened, on the veranda, in front of his wife. His body lay lifeless on the ground, abandoned and never buried. His remains have never been claimed, most probably devoured by the carnivores. My path into exile and my suffering began when the climate became unbearable.
Being the eldest son of the family, with two sisters, two brothers and myself married with two children, it was my heavy responsibility to lead my family to a safe place. We found refuge for a while in Zaire but we were too vulnerable for the conditions and the atmosphere to allow us to stay on. We decided to return to the Congo and go South where we thought we might find safety.
Unfortunately, everything went wrong. On the road, we were arrested by the militia and subjected to humiliating acts. For two days I was tortured, beaten, given electric shocks on my genitals whilst simultaneously my mother and the other females in my family were being raped before me. All the while the blood flowing was freely from my body and I was pissing blood. Those two days of torture, that humiliation, seemed to last for ten years. I gained the impression that nature herself had turned against us. The humiliation was worse than death – indeed I was hoping death would come to deliver me from my cowardice because I was unable to stand up to my assailants.
The looks in my mother’s and wife’s eyes begged me to do something because I was a man. Yes, rage overwhelmed me while they were being raped, but what was I to do? Where was I to start? In my weak, pitiful and unhappy state I could only think of death, which would put a stop to all these humiliations, because the road ahead of us was long. I couldn’t bear it any more. What was the point of going on? I felt an intense desire to fade away from the harsh realities of my existence. I gave myself over to despair and I chose to die for reasons that seemed insignificant to others. I looked upon my death as a means of taking revenge on those who had harmed me. I fiercely desired that my death would serve as punishment to those who made a martyr of me.
I discarded all these thoughts when my mother died one night on the road in the thick forest. I have always thought that my mother welcomed her death because of all the humiliations she had had to endure in front of her children. She couldn’t carry on any longer.
Having lived in the forest from 1997 until August 2000, I finally decided to leave the country and seek my exile in Europe. I wanted to forget the pain, escape the persecution and find justice and protection in a country where human rights are appreciated.
I thought I had dealt with one set of problems but, unfortunately, what I had done was add pain to my misfortune. I committed the same idiocy as the crocodile that escapes from the rain. Believing the raindrops falling on him to be stones, he takes refuge in the river without realising that the rain is the water. This is my story too! I am this crocodile who lived on earth a long time ago. Because of the large drops of rain he decides to leave the ground and hide in the river. When he realises that the rain he is fleeing from is nothing more than water and that he is fleeing the rain to go into the water and that the rain will never stop and will turn into the river, he then decides to stay there because his persecution came from the rain which he mistook for pebbles. This is my story. Who am I? I am Pierre Junior, a young, wise man, happily married and father of two children.
Pierre-Junior is the inspiration behind the character of Destin in the play Crocodile Seeking Refuge whose title is also are inspired by him. Pierre joined the Write to Life Project in 2000 and worked with Sonja Linden on writing his experiences as a victim of torture in his native Congo-Brazzaville and his imrpsonment as ann asyum seeker on arriving in the UK.