Chez Gaspard

Chez Jean, chez Fernand, chez Pascal and chez Simon won’t get you anywhere in this place.  Taxi cab drivers will be baffled and you’ll die of hunger.  Mention instead Chez Gaspard and any of the ten thousand white and blue cabs will take you there for 700 francs.  You guessed it.  We are neither in the Rive Droite nor in the Rive Gauche of Paris, nor in Marseille, Rennes, Poitiers, Nice, St. Tropez, Gap, Le Puy nor Brest. We are in the heart of Africa, near the equator, but with an ocean view, where the few last fish are still swimming but not for long.  Let those who fish with dynamite stop the explosions and what are mortals to do to stop the killing of great swimmers.

Pointe-Noire (noire is the femine of black) is not just a regular town.  It is the economic capital of the Republic of Congo.  A very respectable city, multicultural if we check passports, hedonistic where easygoing ways offer the wrong role model for youth trying to catch flights for northern destinations.

Most of the seating at night is outdoors, except when it rains.  Along the generous sidewalk, next to the parked cars, in front of passersby and peddlers of cds, wooden creations not always obscene, and colorful goods from China of many a form with blinking lights, you help yourself to a seat or two and pray that the waiters and waitresses take notice.  When they do please choose fast as the fish does not like to wait for latecomers.

Lucky if you get things in a reasonable order.  For charm’s sake you’ll get the unopened large bottle of a soda pop before the glass, the fork and the knife after the plate, the fish before the rice, the saka saka before the chikwanga, the pili pili before the rest.  The proximity to the ocean means that an early customer can choose whole fish of the likouf kind, or merou, bar, capitaine, dorade, carpe or mulet.  And how can one forget the “brochettes” of fish, grilled with 4 whitish pieces of fish. The saka saka is the green of the cassava plant, the chikwanga is a stick made out of the cassava root and replaces rice.  If you fancy fried bananas or the makembas, safous and shrimp, chicken or sausages all can be ordered chez Gaspard, and the bill will not leave you choking.

It is all about African ambiance with loud Congolese music from the nearby dancing bar.  Rhumba from here sometimes known as ndombolo gets your feet going even as you chew. Foreigners of different persuasions come to this sidewalk restaurant as if on a pilgrimage. 

You haven’t lived if you deny yourself the pleasure of visiting Gaspard as an entry point of this continent.  From any airport in the world you’ll find your way to the Agosthino Netto airport and a white and blue will drop you off around 7 in the evening if you insist on being first to be served by the ladies of the family of the founder of this monument close to a mosque built we suppose for other African brothers from the western parts of the continent.

Place Saint Ferdinand

 

An unassuming square of the round kind with six streets emanating from its perfect greenish circle in the middle adorned with a statue planted in its bull eye- but for the life of me I never registered the hero for whom it was created, neither in my mind’s eye nor jotted down in my south african inexpensive small black notebook as a curious footnote in passing.  I suddenly experience the guilt of a so-called astute traveler who does not take a historical look at a city laden with history.

Any square is a focal point for hundreds of city dwellers and dozens of neighborhood boutiques.  Only two restaurants will be singled out on this saint’s day.  The Saint Ferdinand restaurant -a no non-sense business lunch spot & a relaxed dinner place- stands across the square from La Maison, a café and lunch rendez-vous joint,  both food monuments like two soccer teams facing each other respectfully like two soccer teams of a dissimilar league but never engaging in any type of game.

I am such an atypical client I dare not comment on the food.  I will venture to say that whenever I visit I order exactly the same meal, the best meal for a diabetic in my Paris years of trying very hard to avoid dying from excess sugar. Here is the food part which is the least interesting segment of this story: bread I did not order but harder than the soft crusty baguette with no butter ever put on the table, a medium-size Badoit sparkling mineral water, one of a thousand brands in France, haricots verts et champignons with balsamic sauce (you guessed green beans with mushrooms), and as a fitting conclusion tagliatelle with 2 salmons, chunks of smoked salmon slices and modest pieces of cooked salmon, with a dangerous white sauce safely ordered in a separate bowl used sparingly in order to survive the night.

My seat was actually occupied by an elder very dignified aristocrat with a large black dog sitting erect as a body guard, a statue.  I admired them both immensely.  At the end of that evening, after staring without staring, I would die for that chair. Instead of bringing a black dog, on my next visit, I brought my bush hat that I placed on the chair next to mine (during those solo visits to the capital of the world).  As visits accumulate I am reaching the evident conclusion that in France most people that surround you in cafés and restaurants are newcomers to the country, and where are the previous generations gone?  Wake up  the world is one:  you know you are in California when you hear spanish spoken, and you know you are in London when a Spaniard greets you in that tongue of his. Gracias.

The walls are the home of a dog gallery, paintings of dogs in different costumes that are making a statement about the higher rank occupied by animals in French society.

La Maison is a 19^th century café, or looks like it, with a particular round heavy low chair that surrounds your back, you feel you belong as you sit and sink ant sip a double expresso with a cheese sandwhich in a generous baguette while reading the Herald Tribune or Le Monde, or even Le Figaro around 7 am as the inhabitants head for a bicycle or a metro or a parked car on their way to work.  Serious faces leaving the square for the real world.

Vive Paris.

The Mbanza Tadi rooster

Years ago, 1984 or 1985, I became the proud co-owner of a Toyota Landcruiser, the smaller model kind with a roof rack.  White.  We take ourselves back to a country that used to be called Zaire.  Now it is called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The trip started in Kinshasa, the capital, with two or three friends and two or three more to be picked up in Bas-Zaire, a province west of the capital in the direction of the ocean. The last passengers boarded in Inkisi and Mbanza Ngungu and we slowly headed for the ferry in Luozi ready to be carried across the river in a beat-up ferry towards our destination.

Our project required documents one of which was entitled “Devotion and Sacrifice”, in french.  Things went dandy and the proud owner of that cute four-wheel drive maintained a respectable speed along laterite roads, reddish with sprinkled gravel.

And then our rooster decided to cross the narrow road as we reached the Mbanza Tadi village.

In that summer hidden-sun atmosphere (in the dry season the clouds hide the sun), I really believed in animals.  Out of ill-placed respect, instead of running over the proud creature, I slammed the breaks.

The trees, the gravel, the goats and the heavens witnessed the one hundred and eighty degree turn “My Toyota est fantastique” did.  Keeping its speed it went through the village backwards.  Through the windshield I could see more of the sky as the car went downhill looking backwards.

No master of African reddish roads, I kept turning the wheel in whichever direction inspiration pushed me.  That uninspired work managed to slam the car against the side of a tiny hill and overturned the four-wheel gem.  In its new position the driver could contemplate below him his fellow passenger and a backward glance could sadly perceive the five or so friends eyes closed indicative of an end of life state.  And all around, everyone was “sleeping” in a mixture of sugar and water amongst dozens of “Devotion and Sacrifice” handouts.

And in a matter of minutes all “resurrected”.  No human harm.  In that miracle that probably occurs in many places across Africa, we all walked out “sains et saufs” and pitied a car that was top-smashed. Roof, windows and doors twisted in strange shapes.

With help, not quickly forthcoming, the vehicle was set aright.  Oil was added as suggested by a bystander.  We continued our spiritual journey as if nothing had happened.  And although the landcruiser looked, for weeks on end, as if it had gone through a war zone, our spirits remained high, knowing that Divine Assistance is a reality some will never deny.

And the rooster survived and is probably still running around, with his luck….