Let’s make it personal: the other side of colonial reparations

He was 18 years old, in 1948. She followed 9 years later, at the age of 22, out of love. I never knew my grandfather, who died just before I was born. My grandmother survived him for 27 years. I’m not very sure I knew her that much better. Certainly regarding their time in Belgian-Congo.

My grandfather, Yaleko, circa 1953

I never had the chance to ask them “Why?”. Although I actually did have that chance with my grandmother, it never entered the conversation. I was never able to ask my grandfather what drove him to the colony. What his reasons were. Until I had a conversation with his sister, my great-aunt. “We were adventurers” she said. “We wanted to see the world, not lie down on some dusty sofa. And as you must know, your grandmother followed because she was in love with him.”.

Back in 1948, it didn’t take long before he was the kapíta (chief of the site, of the workers) on a coffee plantation. Later on he also oversaw the harvesting of rubber. How he was as a kapíta I couldn’t say, time has a way to make stories like that fade away. Perhaps that’s a major issue in the debate about reparations and restitution: time. It took us so long to finally start a half-decent dialogue regarding our colonial history in/with Congo. How many stories are still left intact? Did we wait long enough as to disguise are own wrongdoings under a cloak of romantic retellings of what happened there?

Because I certainly was brought up with that romantic version. My grandmother shied away from any horror she may or may not have witnessed, but she would always tell us the good ones. About the lovely people who treated them like gods. The beautiful landscapes. Seba.

Seba, who was a bói for my family (a house servant). My brother is named after him. I never heard stories about how they treated him. His payroll.

Seba with my mother in 1959, Yaleko

Congo is thus part of my own upbringing, it is part of my heritage. To this day I still refer to medicine as kisi, which used to be confusing for my kindergarten teachers whenever I felt sick. “I need kisi!”.

I learned to play chess on a board made from ebony and ivory. Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder ain’t got nothing on me!

Chessboard made of ebony and ivory

Am I in too deep? Can I still look at this subject from a critical perspective? I think so, I hope so. But it is difficult. I have all these positive memories from my childhood concerning the colonization in Congo. Yes, we get some education regarding the history of it all in school, but it’s absolutely insufficient. Lessons that don’t even begin to scratch the surface, certainly not once you hear the stories of men, women and children that actually had to go through it, the colonized. Stories of grandchildren, who live with that history like I live with mine. There is no issue I think in telling my story, but it is no way the center of the debate, the discussion, the dialogue; whatever form it takes. The center belongs to the (Belgo-)Congolese. They are on the mainstage. How do we repair all of this? I have no clue. It is time that they show us the way, how we proceed. And there are many voices, of course there are. This is not an easy subject. There probably won’t be a universal answer that satisfies all. But it is their right to try and find, and ours to follow them, ask them, support them.

From left to right: my mother, grandmother and uncle Photo taken in Yaleko, Belgian Congo, 1959