Moliere and Matonge

A play, in three acts.


Act I. A bedroom in Ixelles; and, the Chausee d'Ixelles.

You are standing in the middle of your room. It is a little chilly, because heating is expensive, the ceiling is high and thus the room is drafty, and because you're only going to be here a little while longer so turning on the heat isn't worth it. You look at your dress in the mirror. It is a commonplace, everyday black knit dress. You slant your eyes critically. It is not theater-appropriate attire, you think. The Theater, for you, is an Event, a reason to get dressed up in a pretty dress, to invest in an overpriced coffee or wine beforehand, to take senseless photos of yourself and your friend before and after the play. Never mind that your ticket cost less than a movie ticket. You should wear your new black dress, the fancy one you bought for orchestra concerts and holiday fetes.

Yes, that's more like it.

You are bundled up. You leave, intending on taking your scooter. You realize that it is raining rather hard and could ice. You think better of it. You realize you do not have your umbrella. You return. You realize you do not have your ticket. You return again, mentally kicking yourself. You are now, officially, running late. You text your theater-going friend. Pre-theater photos are not happening. Dommage.

The 71 bus is nonexistant. Mais qu'est qu'il se passe?
Fellow frustrated passenger 1: Mais il y a les petites fleches, il devrait etre ici, merde!
Fellow frustrated passenger 2: Mais c'est quoi cette histoire du transport en commun? Il sert a rien ici a Bruxelles!
FFP 3: Mais c'est fou! Moi je dirai qu'il serait mieux de marcher meme jusqu'au Porte de Namur!

You agree with FFP 3. Since you are late, you begin running up Chausee d'Ixelles in the rain, in your dress. You soon realize why the bus is nonexistant. A car is flipped upside down in the middle of the Chausee, its wheels spinning helplessly, its underbelly charred. Burnt cars mean one thing: les manifs. And, indeed, just ahead are the Storm Trooperesque riot cops, round shields in hand. You are secretly glad to see them, and secretly really angry at the manifesteurs, who you somewhat irrationally blame for your lateness (since they, after all, were not responsible for your dress, the rain, your forgotten umbrella, or your forgotten tickets). When you realize that these are the same manifesteurs protesting the same Congolese elections with the same tired chants, you become irritable. When you realize that their rowdy behavior and spontaneous bonfires have closed your metro stop, sealing the Porte de Namur entrances tight, you become positively livid. Trudging through the rain to Trone, you realize that this is a wild night; not only are several storefronts smashed on Chausee d'Ixelles, manifesteurs also attacked stores on the way to the European Quarter.
You would be a little frightened, but you're more worried about missing the play.


Act II. Theatre Le Public, Quartier Saint Josse. Salle des Voutees. You are sitting in a chair on the front row of a black box theater.

The play begins. It is called "Georges Dandin en Afrika." It is confusing at first; youtube videos mingle with blogs mingle with Belgians in African dress and Africans in Louis XIV-era costumes. Moliere is dense, and the added breaking-of-the-fourth-wall element they're trying to introduce makes it harder. You almost regret deciding to watch this.

Then something clicks. You realize that this is about a group of Belgian actors, funded by some sort of humanitarian grant, who are trying to put on the Moliere play Georges Dandin in central Africa (probably Congo, definitely a former Belgian colony, they never specify which). There is a scene- a rather moving one- where the handsome black man playing Georges Dandin, a servant, refuses to kneel before M. Clitandre, a nobleman, to pray his forgiveness for something he did not do. The actor insists that this action, required by the script, forces him to look subservient, and brings back baggage about colonialism and slavery. This causes a row in which the white director finally yells "Yes, I'm white, and I'm Belgian, but I wasn't even born when we liberated the colonies in 1960!" Later, another black actor proclaims, "The next terrorist will be from sub-Saharan Africa. Forget the Belgians; I want a bomb on the Paris metro. The French women should know what it is to lose a son, to weep for senseless violence!" And, later, a middle-aged Belgian actress mourns, "I don't know what I'm doing here in Africa. Everywhere poverty, big dirty eyes, flies swarming. All I know are images. I don't have names."

The play is very good. You are conflicted about the end, though, in which Georges Dandin is face down, supposedly frustrated and conquered by his cheating, devious, intelligent wife. At this point Georges Dandin has become a clear metaphor for Africa; the wife, for a West who gives token aid with one hand and requires interest on debt with the other. The play makes Africa's situation look hopeless. You don't like this.

You leave, and are on the metro, and sigh. Is Porte de Namur closed? If so, you'll have to get off at Louise and walk 15 more minutes in the rain. You are kind of sick and this will make your cold worse.

 Darn manifesteurs.


Act III. Chausee d'Ixelles, three hours later.

Porte de Namur is not closed, thank heavens. You get out of the metro, reveling at the sight of the wacky Hector Chicken sign which signals a short walk home. It's then that you smell the remnants of burning rubber. The place is still lurid with blue police light, but almost no one is there. Instead, a huge blue sign hangs on one metro entrance. It is written half in French, half in Lingala. You gather than the Matonge manifesteurs are angry, still, about Kabila. You feel tired and sad, reading it. No one is standing by the sign except a few policemen. The party, such as it was, is over.

You start walking home. You then notice that almost every store front has a hole punched in its window. The street is littered with small, round, clear-green balls of shatterproof glass. You realize that you were here, in this sports store, two days ago, buying much-needed thick socks. You were in this Zara looking at dresses a few weeks ago. Today, this afternoon, you walked by Maison Doree, whose doors are now nonexistant.

It is frightening to see this commercial artery crippled, quite literally shattered. You think, sadly, that their "ouverture exceptionnelle" (they will be open Sunday for perhaps the only day of the year to accommodate procrastinating gift-buyers like you) will be very difficult.

You trip on something. It is a soggy cardboard sign. On it is written this: 800,000 dead. 5 million raped or homeless. Didier Reynerds (the Belgian Secretary of State), why will you put up with Kabila?

This, too, is sad.

You pick up the sign, thinking about taking it home. You are not sure why. You do not think about the fact that the police might look askance at a wool-coated girl carrying a sign associated with the violent manifs of this evening. You do not think about the reaction of the few manifesteurs who still wander the streets. What you do realize, though, is that the sign has no place in your room, with the black dresses, and the books, and the duvet from Ikea. You realize that you do not wholly agree with Reynerds, but you don't agree with the smashed windows, either.


You realize that the reason the end of the play bothered you was that it felt too little like a play, and too much like real life.

Protests, blue Christmases, and that elusive peace on earth

It is time to write about manifs, again.

For the past five days, there's been a helicopter humming over my apartment here in Ixelles. It's been pretty annoying, and I've been wondering why it insists on staying over Flagey. Since it's Christmas, and since I'm profoundly obsessed by European Christmas markets, I assumed it was covering preparations for the Flagey Christmas market, which happened this weekend.

At the same time, I've been reading about the elections in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which took place last week. The elections were the second since DRC was established after the fall of Mobutu and since Zaire became DRC. I'd been receiving flyers since mid-November advertising and campaigning for Tshsedeki, the opposition candidate and the most viable competition for Kabila, the current president. I found it charming (and fascinating) that my Congolese neighbors in Matonge were handing out flyers for their pre-election manifs and distributing fact sheets about candidates to the white students wandering down their street; clearly we couldn't vote and knew little about the election, but they wanted their voice to be heard.
I took the flyers, read them, and folded them nicely in a stack of research on Congo, thinking nothing more of the interactions.

Last week, I started hearing reports from the RMCA's monitoring team, which had gone to Kinshasa to monitor the election procedure in DRC's capitol. Things were, unsurprisingly, not going well; there had already been multiple accusations of election fraud, several injuries from violent clashes between protestors and Kabila's guards, and a sinking realization that, whether he deserved to or not, Kabila would be reelected. The reports from the RMCA team and in the news worsened as the week went on. My hopes of going to consult archives and interview elderly Congolese about their experiences in the Belgian colony were dashed; and what was worse, things didn't look good for Kinshasa at all.

This Friday, some friends and I went to a movie in Bozar, the pretty little independent cinema in the whitewashed neobaroque world that is Leo II's Mont des Arts. To get there, we walked up Chausee d'Ixelles, a broad street filled with H and M's, C et A's, sports equipment stores, oversized banks, and one three-story Leonidas outlet. Normally the Chausee is bustling around 8 pm, full of shoppers struggling with bags, working sorts headed out for cocktails, pairs of young expats awkwardly venturing on first dates, and bands of students passing extra-large cans of Jupiler back and forth. Friday, however, it was almost silent. A few people walked purposefully. Most stores had turned off their lights.

We hypothesized that perhaps all the Christmas lights on the Chausee (Belgians love Christmas lights, and string their streets with them) had blown a power fuse.

By the time we saw the abstract metal claws of the sculpture at Porte de Namur, however, we realized that this was no festive power outage. Storefronts were singed; the streets were fluffy with bizarre white foam; the huge ING bank glowed an eerie blue. Police with the round clear riot shields I'd seen at Steenerkozzel stood shoulder-to-shoulder across the Chausee. Behind them, huge white police wagons rolled slowly. Rows upon rows of silhouetted heads moved inside. I turned, and saw a sign; I didn't pick it up to read it but saw the word "KABILA" scrawled in angry red.

That's when I realized that the helicopter, the news articles, and the RMCA reports had come home, to my home, to Porte de Namur and the Chausee and pretty little Ixelles. We asked the police what was going on; they mumbled something about "sans papiers" (illegal immigrants) and told us to go around the long way to get to Bozar. We did, and saw car upon car with smashed rearview mirrors, countless shattered bottles, and more of the weird foam that looks like Christmas tree flocking but definitely isn't.

I later learned that Matonge, the Congolese quarter not far from my house, has been in uproar since Wednesday. The Congolese who so hopefully handed out pamphlets on Tshisedeki are now angry; they want Belgium to divest from Congo, to refuse to recognize the new Kabila government; to send Belgian soldiers to oust a man they see as dishonest, fraudulent, and directly responsible for many of the horrors that have gone on in eastern Congo for the past half-decade (not to mention the almost complete lack of infrastructure that persists in his big, wealthy, profoundly underdeveloped country). They are bitter at a country that they believe (and somewhat rightfully so) colonized, reorganized, brutalized, and abandoned them; they are frustrated that the Belgians (and the Americans; they protested at the US embassy, prompting the US to respond with reinforced concrete barriers and a few razor wire barricades. American hospitality at its finest) seem largely unconcerned with the election results and are doing little or nothing to prevent Kabila from remaining in power.

I've admired these protestors; have agreed with them (I would like to see Kablia gone, and potentially extradited to the Hague for war crimes); have wanted, like them, to see a new president and maybe (tho doubtfully) a new era for DRC. It wasn't until today, however, that I realized that ideological solidarity is not enough. Today, I walked home from a conference about the ethics of neurological enhancement down Chausee d'Ixelles. The tinsel-covered shops were glowing blue again from the lights of the police cars lined up. (This, I suppose, means it's currently a blue Christmas in Ixelles.) A small group of Congolese protestors were standing around a little bonfire they'd made near the metro station; they were singing, banging on some drums (or trashcans?) they brought, and periodically throwing something that popped like a gunshot into the fire. Curious, I watched them, hiding in the shadow of the metro station. Fascinated by their song, which had something to do with Kabila, I took out my iTouch, hoping to record it so I could figure out the lyrics once I got home. One of the singers looked over and saw the quiet glow; he walked over to me and said none too politely "Why are you filming this?" I responded that I actually hadn't started filming, and that I was curious; I wanted to know what the lyrics of the song were. "No," he said, "you don't, you will use it to hurt us." No, I reassured him, I wouldn't; I was a student, and not even Belgian (couldn't he hear my American accent? I asked smilingly), and was doing research on Congo. I wouldn't film him, I reassured him, putting the iTouch back; but could I watch to learn more?

No. He promptly informed that the Congolese didn't need any more whites researching their country, adding that Americans were as bad as Belgians, and that the proper place for me was across the street by the H and M. He wasn't violent or even hostile, but he wasn't exactly polite, either. Sheepish, I retreated across the street, watched for a bit more, and walked home. I felt a bit stupid about the interaction, and a bit resentful of his gloves-off handling of the situation. As I kept walking, however, I realized that deep down part of me agrees with him. I don't know that we need more YouTube videos of the manifs (they're easy to find); I don't know that we need more scandalous photos of burning cars showing up in Le Soir (Brussels' biggest newspaper); I don't know that we need more broadcasts of violence in Kinshasa. All it does is reinforce our stereotypes: those Africans, they can't be peaceable, they can't get democracy right, they can't protest the right way, they just become violent and irrational and messy and rude to student researchers.

The reality, of course, is much messier. In Kinshasa, people are protesting out of hunger as much as out of anger. In Matonge, they are advocating for families that could easily die of post-election violence or starvation. Both groups protest violently because they've tried the democratic option (voting) and they've tried the diplomatic option (contacting diplomacies) and gotten no response. They know that they'll be a side show until something dramatic happens; and they know they need something dramatic to happen if their country is ever going to improve from its close-to-or-actually-last-place spot on world development and democracy indices. The protestors in Matonge are brave souls; many of them are sans papiers themselves, which means that if arrested they are not only jailed for a few nights but quite possibly deported back to a country in turmoil. And they're out there anyway.

I was going to write something about how context matters and is vital, but I think I'll just say this. There's more to any story- whether a helicopter over your house, white flocking on your street, or riots on Porte de Namur- than meets the eye. And no one's going to understand any story beyond the stereotypes they already have if they don't make the intellectual (and, sometimes, actual) leap into others' shoes. That's one of the most beautiful things about Christmas and the Christmas story: it's fundamentally a story about radically seeing life from another perspective, about giving up power, position, and privilege in order to fundamentally change one's perspective, about expanding one's capacity to advocate and care by quite literally seeing life through others' eyes.

That's the goal, anyway. For now, I'll be watching the Matonge protestors from the other side of the street.