Sacrificed by Chanette Paul

Author:Chanette Paul [Paul, Chanette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catalyst Press
Published: 2017-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty-three

Luc

Leuven

“Good day, Luc. So here you are.” Ammie looked and sounded reasonably lucid but her expression was one of distrust. As if she had not been the one to request this visit.

“Good day, Mother Ammie. Lovely autumn weather we are having.”

“That’s to be hoped, after the gray summer. But you’re not here to talk about the weather. What do you want from me?”

“Pardon?” Ammie’s direct approach caught him off-guard.

She did not condescend to repeat the question.

He sat down, facing her. “I want to ask about your health.”

“It’s fine. What else?”

“Just talk.” Did he really have to sound so awkward?

“About what?”

Luc knew he had to pull himself together and quickly. Ammie wasn’t born yesterday. “If you feel up to it, we might talk about your time in Elisabethville. One of my students said she would like to know what it was like to live there and I thought you could give me some background.” It sounded like a safe place to start. Regrettably it wasn’t very convincing.

“That’s all?”

He nodded, but doubted she believed him. “She’s especially interested in the relationship between the indigenous people and the Belgians,” he tried another angle.

“Elisabethville.” The grip on her walking stick visibly relaxed and a far-off look came into her eyes. “The whites lived well. For the blacks who lived in the cité indigène, it must have been hell. I didn’t realize it as a child or even as a young woman. Like everybody else, I didn’t think of them as anything other than domestic or garden help. Someone to do the hard labor. To be sent on errands. To fulfil our wishes.

“Their insistence on independence was a bother, instigated by the évolués—a dirty word to many Belgians, who regarded évolués as macaques, monkeys putting on airs. It was unthinkable that they should imagine themselves equal to whites. That they could presume to get training, work themselves up in a job and accept the European lifestyle. ‘Honorary whites’ they were called when they met certain standards.” She gave a snort.

“It was a humiliating business to qualify, I found out later, when I was wiser. ‘Immatriculation,’ it was called. The candidate had to get a letter of recommendation from his employer, after which he underwent a practical test to see to what degree he had been Europeanized. A commission of inquiry was sent to his home to inspect things like the tableware and linen. Find out whether he ate at the table with his wife, whether he spoke French to his children.”

Luc listened. None of it was news to him, though the story sounded different from Ammie’s lips than from textbooks and academic articles. More realistic. Even more humiliating. He also knew the so-called immatriculation status had had a minimal effect on the prospect of promotion and a raise in salary. Immatriculation thwarted, rather than promoted, integration with the world of colonial power, prestige and privilege. It led to a desire among the “civilized Africans” to terminate the colonial system rather than be assimilated into it. Independence became their catchword.

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