Life in the Submarine - The Mill Hill Missionaries

oil palm plantation within the area of the parish of Waka when Armstrong c.s.landed. That night I sat around for a chat outside with primary school teacherRaphael Iwoku and a few others. The moon shone bright from the cloudlessAfrican sky. “Do you see the moon?”, I asked, and then pointed out excitedlywhat was happening there at that very moment. People walking on the moon?A look of astonished incomprehension was all it solicited. Those ‘bendele’ andtheir stories…..After just over a year of acclimatisation and initiation into the language andculture of the Mongo people in Waka I was asked to return to Europe to get alicentiate degree in Romance Philology (French and linguistics) at LouvainUniversity in preparation for a posting as a teacher at one of the two secondaryschools of the diocese. And so I left Waka in June 1969 to start the process ofenrolment at Louvain University. Some fellow MHMs in Basankusu, I heardlater, thought I would never return. Little did they know that strength ofattraction I felt for the people and the area after that one year’s initiation! Andso, after an interlude of four years - a description of my experiences of studentlife and university studies, a whole new and in many ways exciting world,constitutes a different chapter altogether and will not here be included – Ireturned to Congo and was appointed to the secondary school at Bonkita.BonkitaSituated at about 18 kms from Basankusu on the banks of the Lulonga river, atributary of the majestic Congo river, Bonkita was an idyllic spot, one of the fewplaces in the diocese which afforded a wide view over the surrounding area anda horizon not curtailed by giant rainforest trees. You could swim in the riverthere, which I did almost on a daily basis. That is to say if you took the warningsabout crocodiles with a pinch of salt. I never saw one in all those years,although there were plenty of relatively harmless small alligators, usually insmall streams in marshes in the forest. The people hunted and ate these,rather than the other way round! I learnt to row in an African dugout canoe andmade regular rowing trips around the large island right in front of the house atBonkita. Peace Corps volunteers working in schools around the diocese lovedto come and visit their friends teaching English and other subjects at Likong’aNguwa, Bonkita.Fons Mertens, a veteran missionary and member of the Bonkita team (togetherwith Wim Beentjes and – initially - Jan Hendriks, and Gerrit Gerritsen for the