04 Dec Central African Rep.: Mission to Birao

Whenever I return from Tripoli, I take the opportunity to retire to my winter quarters. I love to enjoy the peaceful autumns of Brussels with my family, with their grey days, the trees in a thousand shades of ochre and yellow, or contemplating the rain behind the windows, which, by the way, never stops and I've had enough of it. The bad thing is that I get melancholic, and as Machado used to say sad stories come to my memory, without poetry. Stories that make my hair almost white....

Asín While I return to the desert, I am going to take advantage of this melancholy that has come over me to tell you about a stage of my life "never told" in which I had the opportunity to visit one of the most impressive places I remember, a place where Africa showed me all its rawness. There I saw things that I never wanted to see... and today I finally have the courage to bring them out of the depths of my memory so that you can get to know them.

By the way, the blame for this lies with my friend Santi, who has spent a few months in Bangui waxing lyrical about the little angels of the Seleka Coalition and with his photos has been tearing my memories away from me day after day. Now there is another war, more violent perhaps, with other names and other excuses, but in the end, more of the same...

My mission was in the town of Birao, in the prefecture of Vakaga, a godforsaken corner of the Central African Republic, at the confluence of Sudan and Chad. So forgotten that Emperor Bokassa chose this place to banish forever those enemies he did not want to eat. So far away that it was impossible to reach it by land without risking one's life. So isolated, that at least it represented the promised land for those who had lost everything they had, even hope. And so, isolated but not alone, I felt during my stay in Birao. Especially during the rainy season, when the village became an island and it was impossible to enter or leave.

Fortunately, I was welcomed to their bosoms by the commanders of the French Foreign Legion's Foreign Parachute Regiment, who had their detachment there. There was also a centre of Medecins du Monde, with two female doctors, on an equally beautiful and important mission, but even though I put on my best good face, they did not welcome me to their bosoms.

Not long after my arrival, the city of Birao had been attacked and burned by the UFDR rebels, by the fearsome Janjaweed militias and even by the militias of Joseph Kony's Lord Resistance Army, famous for wanting to impose a government based on the 10 commandments and the use of bicycles. There he is, a man of judgement. Even so, large groups of refugees continued to arrive, mainly from Darfur, fleeing the latest Janjaweed attacks.

So during the week we would be escorted around the area looking for possible refugee pockets. Most of the time we would find a few groups trying to survive, and we would try to move them to a large refugee camp.

On one of these patrols we found this school that I have already posted about, and supporting these children was one of the most rewarding projects I have ever been involved in....

But there were also moments of fun and camaraderie. I remember those Friday nights, drinking and forgetting that sometimes it is the best medicine, and for a heart as sensitive as mine, double ration. Even if it's of perroquet and tomato, those dirty things that the French make with pastiss and that only they like so much (and that I drank so as not to make a mess of them, of course...). Not even the night I prepared them an exquisite parachuting calimocho did I manage to convince them to evolve towards more refined tastes.

After the first pastiss began the chants, with the next ones we promised each other fidelité, fraternité and maternité, and for the last few pelotas we would say to each other that you are my second best friend, etc etc etc. Then, humming his song Le diable marche avec nous, which still echoes in my head, I would return to the hut, to sleep under the etoil of Afrique. There, the darkness and the most absolute silence, broken only by the distant noise of some generator still on and by the green cercopithecines, those omnipresent monkeys, who were constantly stalking my hut in search of my packet of biscuit bread, my most precious treasure...

There I shared a hut, but let the air flow, with my friend Birane, a Senegalese (for security reasons I have erased the names of the uniforms so that no one can know who each of us is). I was fortunate that destiny made us meet again years later in Senegal, life is still going round and round. A fervent Muslim, he always spoke to me about Islam and his plan to perform the Hajj. He would start each morning with the cool of the morning (at half past four) by praying in the small space between our beds. That forced me to sleep with one eye always open, because every night the same scene was repeated and night after night I was scared to death, because it seemed that he was coming for me. It was a real nightmare.

Returning to the village, in the centre of the village, surrounded by leafy mango trees, there was a huge baobab tree, under whose shade the daily life of the village took place. Not only did it serve as a meeting point, a meeting place, a noticeboard or even a market place, it also had a sacred character and at its feet lay buried some of the best griots of the village.

And although small, we also had a restaurant, the Chuiterí Kounda. Well, there was another one, but we never went there because it looked so bad. The charred goat was a classic among the chef's daily suggestions, and I admit that I liked it a lot.

Not far from Birao was the Manovo Gounda St Floris Wildlife Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the great diversity of its flora and fauna. I was lucky enough to patrol the reserve, but as most of the roads were frequented by poachers and robbers, and I could not persuade Birane, who had more sense than I, to accompany me, I gave up my brilliant idea of hiring a car and exploring the park on my own, which was what my body was asking me to do.

So these that look like two zebus, dress like two zebus and moo like two zebus are the wildest animals I have ever photographed, not counting the cercopithecines, which made me so happy.

Half of the village was Muslim and the other half Catholic, so there was also a mosque and a church in the village. On some Sundays the local parish priest would come to Birao to say mass. I didn't know much about them because they were in sangho, and besides they lasted more than two hours and after the first five minutes I tend to be dispersed, but they were infinitely more cheerful than those of the parish of San Damaso which I attended as a child, (and of which I have very good memories), so I loved going. I had prepared a video for you to understand what I mean, but I am unable to do it, if someone helps me I will upload it (I upload the video, not the person who helps me, of course).

And with that I leave you for today, you know a bit more about life in Birao, a forgotten place in the Vakaga prefecture... Life was not easy, but I liked it there. One day, a plane came and took me away from there, never to return. That's why I was so sad.