Bongo Bongo Bongo, I Don't Wanna Leave the Congo | Autobiography: Literary

Veronica Cecil

In the early 1960s, twenty five-year-old Veronica Cecil decided to move to the Congo with her husband when he was offered a good post at a large multi-national company. Filled with enthusiasm for their new life the couple and their eleven-month-old son set off for an African adventure . . .

But Veronica arrived to find a newly independent country in chaos after the murder of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba and she was forced to face realities such as food shortages and the internal politics and tension between the locals and the colonials in the capital, Leopoldville. Six months after their arrival in the Congo, they were finally sent to Elizabetha, a remote palm oil plantation on the banks of the Congo River.

It’s during their stay in Elizabetha that brutal civil war broke out. The rebels had captured the neighbouring town of Stanleyville and taken all the whites hostage. Despite the fact that Veronica was on the verge of giving birth, the situation was so dangerous that she and her toddler were to be evacuated. Leaving her husband and all their possessions behind, she and her son began on a two-day journey through the jungle. But on the plane back to Leopoldville, the first labour pains began . . .