That Isn't a Dandelion

“White Eldorado, Black Fever” is a novel by Rais Neza Boneza ,who hails from the Katanga region, which almost broke off during independence, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  A young boy and his friend decide to head off to the countryside to secure the “Grey Gold”, a mineral available in the Kivu region that has columbite and tantalite from which tantalum is extracted.  It is highly conductive and used in a myriad of modern devices from jet planes to laptops.  It is also radioactive and dangerous to secure.  A novel and a conscious wake-up call, Mr. Boneza actually provides a list of all the many devices that leverage this mineral in an appendix in the back.

I causally began the book, not sure if I’d proceed in earnest, but was quickly drawn in.  The two boys travel at the front of cargo truck and then rest in a small town before finding another ride onward. They are constantly talking to people from other tribes and struggling to find a common language with the people they encounter.  They meet a doctor who has lots of questions and one of the boys doesn’t trust this man.   Deeper and deeper they go towards the source of tantalum and, as expected things become ever more rudimentary, the further off the grid one goes in the eastern Congo.

When they make the deal and purchase the mineral at a price that will net them a big success if they can get the product home, they are ecstatic.  And later, when things fall apart, as they always do, we have not only the horror of what’s befallen them, but also the bitter loss of all that bounty they almost enjoyed, that lingers for the rest of the book. Something about this ephemeral wealth and sudden change of fate, seems rather topical just now.  Part of the wonder of fiction is you can spend time with someone whose circumstances are more dire and less hopeful than your own and draw succor from it. 

Later in the day, my mom and my stepdad came over.  The Mrs. had set up a nice, distance-appropriate set of chairs around a table outside.  We all wore masks, for a while and got no closer than an elbow bump.  Long overdue, I enjoyed the walk around our property with my stepdad who was able to point out the call of a cardinal and correctly identify a number of the plants we had which were starting to bud.  Down on the rail trail I pulled my wife and he over to show them some dandelions that had suddenly sprouted near the trailhead to our home.  “That isn’t a dandelion”, he suggested.  “That is . . . coltsfoot.  You can tell the base of the plant doesn’t have the same leaves as a dandelion.”  And indeed, as I looked closer this was all very clear.   Skunk cabbage, trout lilies, coltsfoot, someone must have had fun naming all these plants when they came across them for the first time with the English language.  

Saturday 04/11/20