The screams of rage from next door broke our trancelike state. We didn't have to know French to get the gist of what Madame Obusier was saying. Fury, as it turns out, is another universal language.
We ran to get Sebastien who, as the most level-headed and unflappable of all of us, immediately took charge of the situation. He grabbed a banana, climbed the wall between Madame Obusier’s house and ours, and held it up to Krushchev.
As soon as Krushchev took the bait, Sebastien grabbed and scruffed him and my mom fired up her old, moldy, mushroom-infested VW bug. My sisters and I quickly squeezed into the backseat and Sebastien, still gripping Krushchev, jumped in the front. My mom stripped the gears shifting into first, and we made a beeline for the nearest jungle opening, where we came to a screeching halt. Sebastien jumped out and flung Krushchev into the bush.
Krushchev did what any sane, healthy spider monkey would—swinging from vines to branches, he got as far away from human civilization as he could.
As it turned out, he was the smart one.
Two weeks later, Madame Obusier was found dead; she’d been macheted to death.
The Congolese had finally had enough. They wanted their independence, which the Belgians refused to even consider, and Leopoldville, the capital of the Congo, exploded in three days of riots. Four-hundred people—African and European—were killed or wounded.
The African political parties that were forming gave the Congolese a way to channel and organize the rage that had been building. They stood up to their oppressors: they began talking back. They refused to obey the laws the Belgians had imposed on them. They quit their jobs as servants.
Now, Sebastien, ever the most level-headed, unflappable—and wisest—of all of us, told my father it was time for us to go. And, of course, he was right. It didn’t matter that we weren’t Belgian, we were white and that's all that mattered.
My dad gave Sebastien and Raphael each 6-months pay and asked them to watch over the house and our belongings, which we’d stashed upstairs. Then we packed some clothes, a few essentials, and a gun, and we headed for Uganda and eventually Kenya. Before we piled into the car, my father
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