Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Under the Belgian colonial administration, André's father moved to North Kivu, a far more af-
fluent province than Kasai-Oriental. He married there, and André was his second son, followed by
a daughter. At home, his father made them speak the Tetela language of Kasai, even André's moth-
er, whose native language was Mashi, the Shi language of Bukavu. Outside their home, with their
friends, they spoke Kalanga or Swahili.
After independence, his father worked for the Service of Public Works and Land Management.
For his job, they moved to Bukavu, then to Goma, on the Rwandan border. Later, they would move
to Rutshuru, where his father started a coffee plantation and continued to raise cattle and goats.
André was proud that his father's uncle was Lumumba. He often asked his father why he'd nev-
er returned home, and his father said that his parents were deceased, that he'd built a life here that
they never could have had in the much poorer Sankuru area. But André was conscious of his home-
land because of the Tetela language that he used with his family.
Those years, his brothers didn't herd the goats that their father raised to sell for meat; only he
did, and it was the only time he could play soccer. His mother refused to eat goat or sheep, and
wouldn't even cook pork. André followed her example. If his father slaughtered one of his goats,
he wouldn't touch the meat, eating cassava and
pondu
—stewed cassava leaves—instead.
As his love of animals grew, he became more curious about them in the wild. When he was
in sixth grade, he went to Virunga National Park with his teachers. Virunga dominated the region
around the Zaire-Rwanda border, and boasted massive volcanoes, forests with leopards, elephants,
gorillas, and hippopotami. He loved watching the animals, and with his friend Théophile, he began
going often, climbing to the volcanoes to stare over the rolling hills.
“Are there also wild animals in Kasai, like those in Virunga?” André asked his father one night.
“Yes,” his father said. “There are many, many wild animals in our province.”
“Someday,” André swore to him, “I will return to Kasai and go into the forests and see all the
creatures that live there.”
From his childhood, the strength of his conviction was clear, passions and loyalties dominating
his personality. When he was ten, he confronted his father, who, after he took a second wife, began
to ignore André's mother and to beat her when he drank. The priests at school had drilled into the
students respect for their parents, and André never would have lifted a hand against his father, but
he put himself between his parents and took the beating.
Over the years, André repeatedly told his siblings, “Anyone who drinks like our father will be
unhappy in life.” To this day, neither he nor his siblings use alcohol, and the only two drinks he has
consumed have been glasses of champagne: one when the Sankuru Nature Reserve was officially
established, the second when he and BCI were put in charge of Sankuru's carbon rights by the Min-
istry of the Environment.
He also told his siblings
Malheur à celui qui prend une seconde femme
, “Misery on whoever
takes a second wife,” and none of them are polygamous. As a child, he asked his mother to stop
drinking, and she agreed. But his father never did.
The other conflict with his father concerned soccer. It was the pastime of the loiterers and louts
in Goma, and though his father banned it, André skipped school to play. By the time he was four-
teen, he was playing on the region's official team. His mother and siblings sneaked into the city
to watch his games, but his father knew nothing about his son's growing fame. They lived a long
walk from the city, and it was populous enough for André to lead a second life. It also seemed as
if people, knowing about the conflict and admiring André's skill, conspired to keep him a secret.
