Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and he told them about the magazine. Due to his youth and popularity, they warned him and let him
go. But his action only increased his fame among the students.
Because the government had ceased paying university officials, they began selling classroom
chairs and tables. Then they started asking the students and their parents to pay, and they established
a quota system, taking only a certain number of students from each area.
André was in his third year when he organized a demonstration. In 1987, most of the European
priests who ran the institutions had left, and the state had taken over the schools. But there was still
a priest as rector, Père Milani, a tall Italian in his early seventies who loved soccer. By then, André
was the student spokesman, popular not only for his politics but also for his skill on the soccer field.
André first tried to negotiate with the officials for affordable tuition. He and the students put to-
gether a memo and sent it to the school's directors. But when it was ignored, they decided to deliver
it to the governor's offices. André organized a nonviolent march of over a thousand students to take
it there, but the police shot tear gas canisters into the crowd, then beat the students with clubs.
“The next day, I was invited to the office of the institute's general director. As I arrived in the
hall, I saw seven police officers waiting. I knew what could happen when you took action. I didn't
want to be a martyr. I just wanted to fight the system I hated, and when I saw the police, I under-
stood right away. I was ready for anything, even death, but I believed my popularity would protect
me.
“The police wanted to know who was behind the protest. They had a list of students, but the
other leaders had already escaped across the border to Rwanda, and were on their way to Europe. I
said that I was just trying to protect student rights and that the demonstration was peaceful, but they
put me in prison, alone in a cell for a month.”
Days passed, and his friend Célestin Chishibangi brought him study notes for his classes. André
learned that many students had run away. Relatives had to pay to bring prisoners the only food they
would receive, and Célestin paid to bring him the notes, which André studied even though he had
been expelled from the university.
A month later he was released, and when he walked into the institute, Père Milani was waiting.
The lean Jesuit would leave a few months later, following the others back to Europe, but he helped
reinstate André—not just because he'd been a good student, but because the soccer team hadn't
been the same without him.
Since high school, André had been close friends with Guillaume, the younger brother of Pierre
Kakule, the head conservationist of North Kivu's Tayna Gorilla Reserve, who would go on to win
the 2005 Condé Nast Environmental Award. Visiting the reserve, André learned from Pierre of the
similarities between himself and gorillas, as well as about bonobos. He could see how quickly the
wildlife was disappearing in the areas he'd hiked as a boy, but after their conversations, André went
on to read articles about the environment, about global warming and a hole in the ozone layer.
This was one of those moments when, as André spoke, I could see what might have come of
his life if his energies hadn't been consumed by survival, with feeding himself and his family. But
Zaire was disintegrating, and André focused on building a teaching career. He finished his degree
in history and gave courses at the technical college in Goma. He was twenty-five, and soon married
a twenty-two-year-old graduate in English from Bukavu. By 1992, he was the syndical delegate for
the teachers of Goma. Salaries were rapidly diminishing, and they used SIDA, the French acronym
for AIDS, to describe the situation:
salaires insuffisants difficilement acquis
—insufficient salaries
acquired with difficulty.
