Through the Eye of the Needle

By Yeno M Matuka Pierre

The reader may ask, How did you get here or through? The tragic nature of the event on which this memoir sprang in 1951, the multiple relocations from my birth village to the second and third villages, the weeks and months spent in boarding schools in Bas-Congo from age five to twenty, while spending vacation days in villages and towns, all sharpened my sense of observation and reflection. Therefore, my brain got me here and through. Moreover, this book documents my life which, like a cotton thread made of tiny pieces of fiber, exceptionally passes through the eye of the needle. The nineteen chapters elaborate on and share certain reasons and ways of acting: walking on the sides of family members or kins who believed in conforming to and respecting ancestral and clanic traditions; working with teachers in Kikongo, my first language, French, my almost first language, and later, English, my third language, during pre- and post-Congolese independence; putting in ninety-five percent of academic perspiration and relying on five percent of inspiration; adapting to life circumstances, and last but not least, depending on Christian beliefs and sense of cooperation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483645216

Yeno M Matuka Pierre

The author of this memoir, Yeno M Matuka, Ph.D., has worked as assistant professor of English at Ball State University since 1991 after graduating from this university’s English and applied linguistics program. He completed a second MA (’87); his first one is from Reading University in England, UK (‘78). He has a diploma in English Studies from Ealing Technical College, London, England (’77); started teaching college English after BA in English and applied pedagogy (’75) at Teachers College/IPN, Kinshasa, Congo (75-76; 78-85); has taught applied, general and English linguistics, and Freshman Writing 1 and 2; his dissertation, “The Pragmatics of Palavering in Kikongo” (1991), is the source of a chapter, “The Palaver: A System of Conflict Management” in Pan-Africanism and Cross-Cultural Understanding: A Reader (1993); recent years’ publications included five poems: “The Grader’s Crowd,” “Interrogating Happiness,“ “Homage to Courage,” “Reflection on Common Sense“ and “A Letter to Humankind” in four Anthologies edited by Ely; Franz; Lavender Aurora; and Noble House; and four of them recorded on Sounds of Poetry CD’s; has taught a Diversity Associates Research and Writing course, a Freshman course, product of his presentation at the BSU 2009 Diversity Symposium; has worked on Freshman Connections programs since inception; works as a temporary academic adviser in Summer; is interested in writing and error analysis, grammar and usage, language and culture, cross-cultural understanding, Peace Studies, and Faculty Mentorship for the Disabled.

Book preview

Through the Eye

of the Needle

Yeno M Matuka Pierre

Copyright © 2013 by Yeno M Matuka Pierre.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 07/02/2013

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One: The Rooster out of an Egg

Chapter Two: Widening the Horizons

Chapter Three: Return to the Source

Chapter Four: Backing Up for a Long Jump

Chapter Five: Surviving the Second Selection

Chapter Six: Surviving the Third Selection

Chapter Seven: Work at the Alma Mater

Chapter Eight: To Go or Not to Go to College

Chapter Nine: A Frightening Job Experience

Chapter Ten: Foretelling the Future

Chapter Eleven: First Days in Britain

Chapter Twelve: Living my Predictions

Chapter Thirteen: The Re-Entry Shock

Chapter Fourteen: The Struggle for a Way Out

Chapter Fifteen: The Rock

Chapter Sixteen: Stretching the Unbroken Thread

Chapter Seventeen: Financial Assistance Needed

Chapter Eighteen: The Escape from Limbo

dedication.jpg

Dedicated

to

My Late Mother, my Wife and Children, Sister, Half-Brothers, Uncles, and Educators of Foreign Languages

Preface

Through the Eye of the Needle conveys several aspects of my life: First, it reveals my humble origin. Second, it tracks my immersion in the European and American systems of education, which has taken place in the second and third languages, doing so the hard but, luckily, not impossible way. Third, it is a testament to my children, and anyone like them, who must learn about the often ignored beginnings of a parent that eventually helped them succeed. It represents hard work, endurance, determination, and moments of despair, courage and perseverance that paved the track, ending with the last academic hood in 1991. Fourth, it supports the view that the struggle for integration in and the sense of partly belonging to western civilization is tantamount to life as an invisible thread passing through the eye of the needle. Finally, it is a reminder of praise and honor I owe to the crowd in my life, one respectable crowd made of all the people of good will who daily allow the creation of something out of thin air. They let me run like a cockroach that hens and roosters watch desperately slip through the cracks of a barn full of raw peanuts. The book also contains bits of information pertaining to history, anthropology, sociology, politics, religion as well as Kongo culture and traditions. May the stories in it be motivational to the readers.

Chapter One

The Rooster out of an Egg

Although it was only the third year of my life, nineteen fifty-one will remain profoundly unforgettable, for I experienced an event that was likely to foretell the kind of life I would live.

I was barely asleep in a hut opposite the big house in red bricks. The house was in Central M’boto, my birth city. It is actually just a large village located in the Ntimansi County, in the Mbanza-Ngungu District then known as Thysville, in Lower Congo.

In that hut, I heard loud and gloomy musical notes from outside. The notes were distinctly sad; I had heard them before in a particular context, but in those instances, they less directly affected me even though they were motivated by a similar event.

This kind of funereal, cheerless music was loaded with sociocultural bits of information. By definition, it was a combination of women’s bereavement jeremiads that were punctuated by frequent explosions of gunfire; but no, there was no war taking place out there. The apparently cacophonous sounds of sadness varied in pitch and loudness depending on the size of the gun barrel. I also know now that those patterns of sounds depended on the quantity of gun powder ignited in the barrels. The voices were from people soliloquizing while weeping. The loudness of the voices depended on the level of distress the mourners, mainly the women, were conveying.

Other accompanying noises were coming from different sources such as the drumming of the musical instruments called masikulu, in Kikongo, the language of my Kongo ethnic group. These instruments are oval, carved wooden drums. They are part of a traditional band comprising four to five units. The volume and peak they generate vary according to the width and length of tree trunk sections. Completing the funereal ensemble were the mpuungi, large and small wind instruments made out of elephant hollowed ivory, and one or two pairs of metal triangles called ngoongi. As old as I am today, I could still, and will always hear the traditional, funeral music ensemble in action deeply in my subconscious mind and auditory memory.

The evening after my father had passed away was characterized by the same unusual noise. The burial was on the third day. The atmosphere in the large village or Mbaanza M’boto was heavy and lugubrious. My sister Helen Kiese, then a three-month old baby, and I were taken along. We were part of the long line of mourners proceeding slowly toward the Makulu. This is the land of the Bankulu, the ones who are ancient, or simply the Bakulu; so are the dear ancestors referred to. They are also neutrally called the Bafwa, the dead, who live in the invisible world and are endowed with invisible powers.

I was thus living the last day of Yowani or John. This was his Christian name. He received it when he was baptized, but he was well-known as Mfumu Chief N’kanza Madiadia. On that fateful day, my father was being handled on earth by the living, especially the sons and daughters of the Lemba clan, his clan.

Indeed, the man my mother referred to with his long, but most meaningfully challenging name of The-needled-and-hard-roots-that-the-wild-boars-would-never-attempt-to-eat, (Sadi-kia-nseende-kia-leembana-dia-bangulu), was being taken to his last dwelling place at Fwa-Nkosi, where he would become a resident of Makulu or Mpeemba. This is what the grave yard was called. From thereon, the members of his culture started thinking of him as an ancestor, a n’kulu in Kikongo.

In those days, Mbaanza M’boto the town of M’boto, was a long village. Located within a clearing in the forest around the Bangu chain of mountains called Wuya, it had four burial grounds or makulu. These had tombstones mounted with Christian crosses: Malamba, in the North, and Mboma, which was contiguous to Mfwa-Nkosi in the South; N’zaanza was in the East.

Because my father lived in the Southern side of the village, he was made to go rest in Mfwa-Nkosi. That’s probably where his ancestors had been resting in peace. I know, though, that there he was preceded by his former wife, the most light-skinned and beautiful Lakele (Rachel) Luswaamu. This woman, whom my mother succeeded in marriage, bore only boys: my four handsome and light-skinned half-brothers, whom my sister and I called Mfumweto (Our Elders). In order of birth, they were Mbadila Clément, Menayaku Thomas, Kisina André, and dearest of all, Mabanza Noé. In the Belgian anthroponomy imposed on the colonized Congolese, Christian names were post-names, and the given names were first and also the main names.

The last son of Mama Luswamu was born probably ten years before me, but by the time I was a toddler, he had already been gone to the middle school in Nsona Mpangu, a Baptist Missionary Society’s school, in the Mbanza Manteke region. That was approximately two hundred miles away west of M’boto. I called him Mfoto Nowa. Mfoto is the contraction for Mfumweto Our elder brother. He was raised by my mother during the first five years she lived with my father.

The children of Leemba clan dug the grave of Mfumu Nkaanza Madiadia next to Mama Luswamu’s. As sons and daughters of the Leemba clan, these men and women had the traditional duty of enhancing the dignity of their father. They had to carry him gently to his last dwelling. My sister Helen and I were carried along probably because in those days the customs required that we be at the grave site to take part in the burial ceremony. My mother, the widow called mfwidi-mfwidi, carried my sister while an aunt, the widow’s sister, pulled me by the hand. We were right behind the coffin carriers. The male adult children, whether carrying the coffin or not, were singing in canon with the female children. The coffin was gently lifted up and swayed up and on the shoulders. They followed the rhythm of the funereal song. They sang the traditional burial procession song, Maleembe weenda, May thou go gently:

"May you go gently, oh our Father! (Solo)

Eeh, please go gently, oh our Father! (All)

When you go, please go slowly, oh our Father! (Solo)

When you go, go gently, oh our Father!" (All)

"May you go gently, oh our Father! (Solo)

. . .

Eeh maleembe weenda, eh Taat’eeh, ehe!) (Solo)

Eeh maleembe weenda, eh Taat’eeh, ehe! (All)

Bu wu-kweenda, maleembe weenda, eeh taat’eeh, ehe! (Solo)

Bu wu-kweenda, maleembe weenda, eeh taat’eeh, ehe! (All)

Eeh maleembe weenda, eh Taat’eeh, ehe. (Solo)

. . .

In procession, we walked about half a mile away from the village before the song died out. The little cemetery displayed its white monuments, each mounted with a cross, symbol of Christianity introduced in the sixteenth century in this Kongo area. Even though this is not done immediately, a cross-mounted tombstone is always placed on the grave head. One can see clear inscriptions indicating the name of the ancestor and his or her death date. People probably did not know when anyone who passed away in the first half of the century was born as very few people were literate.

The oldest, but still able-bodied, children of the clan lowered the nail-sealed wooden box in the freshly dug out grave. Then, the youngest children, that my sister and I were, were made to cross the open grave in width. They performed this rite which, ironically, was meant to make us forget about our father. They did this by handing each of us over to a person standing on the opposite side of the grave. Then, I was helped to push some fresh mud in the grave. This was, presumably, my contribution to the burial chore that all male children undertake. The older children of the clan, bana-ba-kaanda, then finished up the assignment. The outcome was a mound of reddish dirt.

Three weeks after the burial, my mother was allowed by her in-law N’sabelo to resume work in the forest. The path to the forest went past the Mfwa-Nkosi cemetery. I clearly remember stopping in front of the mound, the fresh and brown grave of my father. I stood there, while my mother had walked a few feet past. Today, I can still vividly hear her voice as it were, in my fist language:

Come on. Let’s go!

I am waiting for my dad, I answered loudly.

It’s too late, son, she said, as she came back to pull me by the hand. You will never see him again. Those who join the Bakulu, the `ancestors,’ cannot be seen again! She concluded mournfully.

My mother reported this curious event to the villagers who, since then, looked at the three year old that I was with awe. They started suspecting that my father handed over to me some of his subtle form of intelligence that the Kongo people call bundoki or ki-ndoki, meaning witchcraft or sorcery. To reinforce this idea, there was in Mbanza M’boto one woman, whose face and name I can no longer remember, who once said that she had seen me at dawn, sitting on a branch of M’boto’s biggest and tallest baobab tree locally called M’fuma.

Now I can explain this tall story. My father was a judge at the colonial justice court in N’timansi. He was in charge of traditional litigations. He was the Wise Man from Mbanza M’boto, my home town. But his wisdom was easily confused with necromancy. The Kongo people refer to it as nocturnal intelligence, that is, kinganga kia mpiimpa. It was, therefore, easy for people to believe the woman’s extrapolation. Nobody among the Kongo people believes that such an old wise man would leave this world without communicating his form of intelligence to someone. Such a person would have to be his last son, no matter how little he was.

Concerning my mother’s widowhood and residential status, the custom required that a woman who loses her husband stay to mourn for one year in the family house. After fulfilling this requirement, she is allowed to return to her chief clan’s village, that is, in KiKongo, vata dia kimfumu, her maternal mother’s village. There, her maternal brother or cousin is traditionally obligated to watch over her or take care of her and her children whom, as an elder, he owns.

In this old village of hers or new for the children, the children are considered chiefs of the clan, or Mfumu-za-kaanda. They bear the status of kimfumu kiakanda, meaning chiefship of the clan. Their mother’s clan, which is their maternal grand-mother’s or great-grandmother’s clan, is their first clan. This is an anthropological characteristic of the matrilineal system in that part of west-central Africa. In our case, Kiaangala-Nsuundi is the name of the chiefship clan or first clan. Our folks lived in Kitomisa, so this is where we moved to from M’boto. We stands for my mother, Madeleine Sita, my sister Helen Kiese, and my half-sister Clementine Lukebuka, last of our mother’s first marriage, who was eight years older than I.

During the year of my father’s death, in 1951, we stayed in Mbaanza M’boto. My father’s nephew, my cousin Pierre N’sabelo, took care of us. Although he deserves the title of Grand-cousin, he was a man I considered a grand-uncle, for he probably was a cousin or a clan’s brother of my father’s. Growing up and visiting him in the sixties and seventies, I never had a chance to investigate this relationship. Such research would not be normal anyway, but what matters is he belonged to my second clan, the Lemba clan: the same matrilineal clan as my father’s. That is why I used to hear him refer to my mother as Nkweezi Mandelani, that is, Sister-in-law Madeleine, which is the way the Kongo people refer to their cousin’s wife. Cousins within the chiefship rank are associated with brotherhood or sisterhood.

Moreover, according to the customs, this surviving relative of my father’s was to be treated exactly as one would one’s own father himself. It must be stated here that in Kongo kinship, no one is supposed to be without a father, even if it is only a paternal cousin, or uncle. Even a paternal aunt is a suitable and authoritative substitute of a father so that "a female