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I met Patou in the early 1990s, when I was a teenager. I had gone to visit my godfather, whom I almost idolised. I did not have a father, and I know I was craving for one. So when my Godfather showed up at my house one day after years of living in Europe, I secretly and immediately adopted him as a father figure. He did not share the same sentiment. As far as he was concerned, he was just making a courtesy visit to a boy he had once stood next to during his baptism.

I don’t remember how I knew where my God father stayed, as I’m sure he did not take me to his place. Maybe during his visit he had given me his address? The very following day I started hanging out by his house. I was there often enough to know that he was seldom at home, which fascinated me even more. In the afternoons after work I would stand by his house for fours, hoping to see him. One evening, finally, I saw him entering his house. I quickly went to his door and started knocking. He came to open for me, he looked vaguely surprised and mildly pleased to see me. He kissed my two cheeks as was the custom in the old Congo, and invited me inside his apartment. He lived in a huge house which had been divided in four or five magnificent apartments, two of which he occupied (He had leased the whole ground floor, which comprised a furnished apartment where he lived, and an unfurnished one in which Patou would later live). His apartment was simply and elegantly furnished. I told him I was there because I needed A4 format papers (I did not need them). He asked how many I wanted and I answered “a lot”. He laughed as if I had said the funniest thing he had ever heard, and I was pleased. He did not offer me a chair. He went to his bedroom, and a few minutes later came out with a ram of paper which he handed to me, before ushering me outside. I said goodbye and left, feeling disappointed. But I was young, and visited him again.

Somehow my mother noticed that I hung around my godfather’s house, and sternly asked me to stop to stop doing so. I thought she was being silly. He lived in the same area as we, as I continued walking in his street as often as possible. On my way home from school, I made a detour and ensured that I passed in front of his house, hoping we would meet. But he was a busy medical doctor, and during the day he worked at one of the biggest hospital in the city. I was going through a difficult teenage period, my mind filled with painful, answered questions, and my mother thought she would ask him to introduce me to my father. She thought a man would know how to talk to another man and convince him to finally have a relationship with his son. My god father initially agreed to take me to my father’s firm where he worked as a lawyer, but changed his mind for reasons only known to him, but which I could only guess. I was young, but I had a lot of time on my hands. I was very self-aware, introspective, observant, and most times I was able to perceive people’s true reasons for doing things. I stayed away from my godfather for some time, but I missed him, so one afternoon I went to visit him. He was there, but so were Patou, Oliver and Patou’s sister, whose name I forgot. It was my first time meeting them and I stared at, fascinated. Oliver was this monk-like character, clean, intelligent, quiet, and reserved. Patou and his sister looked like twins, both very tall with the same piercing, smiling eyes and vibrant personalities. I was immediately drawn to them, for they made me feel at ease. It felt like I had always known them. Patou looked at me, first time anyone had really seen me in a long time other than my own mother. He spoke to me not as a child, but as someone his equal. I loved the topics we discussed, how witty and funny he was. This is the big brother I’ve always dreamed of, I thought to myself. But would I ever see him again? His sister offered me a biscuit which I swallowed in a single mouthful. I wished she would give me more, but she did not.

After that I befriended Patou, even though he was much older than I. I would go to my godfather to see him, and I noticed that he also started visiting me. I presented him to my mother who also took a liking to him. He often came in the evenings, my mother would fry sweet potatoes and tilapia fish, we would sit at the dining table and have long conversations, Patou, my mother and myself. One Saturday morning I went to see Patou, and exceptionally my godfather was present. We were nearing the December holidays. To my great surprise, my godfather asked that I spend one week of the holidays with him. I was quite surprised as I did not think that he liked me. But the prospect of living in the same house as Patou thrilled me. I flew rather than walked home and asked my mom is I could stay at the doctor’s house for a week. She flatly refused. Outraged and embarrassed, I went back to Patou and told him that I could not come. I was angry, I thought my mother was the most unreasonable mother on earth. But deep within myself I suspected why Mother did not want me to sleep anywhere else than on my bed, in her house: I was a bedwetter. Patou was a tenacious young man. He came home a few days later and convinced my mother to let me spend the holidays with them. She begrudgingly agreed (not sure what arguments Patou used to change her mind), and my joy of leaving the house was marred with her thinly veiled disapproval. Patou came to fetch me, and I said goodbye to my mother. As we walked away, I looked back at my house, at my other standing in front of our house, and my heart was gripped by anxiety because she looked frail, too fragile to be left alone. Already I felt remorse and wanted my holiday to be over so that I could go back home.

I thought then that I knew why my mom did not want me to spend a week in my godfather’s house. It was because I was a bedwetter. I arrived at his apartment early that evening, and I found that my Godfather had another godchild whom he had invited too, a boy I vaguely remember from my school. We immediately got along and started playing. He was heavy set, very athletic, and he soon started jumping on poles and showing his physical prowess. Patrick looked admiringly at him, Oliver looked like he adored him, and I admired and envied him at the same time. He had a nice, clear skin, and he gave all signs of someone who was well fed, while I was skinny like a stick. Our godfather came in later that night, and welcomed us warmly as if he had never seen us before. He gave each one of us three kisses on the cheeks and we all sat down to have supper, which consisted of smoked fish in tomato gravy, sweet potatoes leaves and foufou, which was called “boukari” in Lubumbashi. A disaster awaited us: there was no water. I wondered with horror how we were going to use the one bathroom in the apartment. At some point I observed my godfather’s godson, whom I will call Ahmed, go to the bathroom, stay in a few minutes and come right out. He looked very comfortable leaving it as is, and I imagined that my mother would start a mini world war 3 if anyone had left her bathrooms dirty. We went to sleep later that night, Oliver, Ahmed and myself in one bedroom (we shared the only big bed in the room), Patou in his own bedroom in the other apartment, and my godfather in the master bedroom. I was terribly anxious as I closed my eyes, prepared for the awful embarrassment I would feel the following morning.

I woke up early, before everybody, and quickly patted myself and the bed. To my greatest relief I was dry, and I would not wet the bed for the remain of my stay there, as if my body had realized where I was and decided to behave. Patou walked into the room later and found me awake, he joked that I was the last one to sleep and the first to wake up. If he knew why I could not sleep comfortably. Furthermore, Ahmed went to the same school as me, can you imagine if the disaster had happened and he had broadcast the news at school? I thank God, even today, that I did not pee in my godfather’s bed. I wonder if my mother had told Patou that I was a bedwetter, if she had told him to deal with the situation discreetly should it happen? One never knows with parents.

Like I said, Ahmed came from an affluent family, while I came from nothing. I noticed an uncomfortable difference in treatment from Oliver (another relative of my Godfather’s who also lived with him), I felt like he liked Ahmed more than he liked me, all based on our financial situations, and that treatment translated clearly in the ever-subtle spite he showed me. He would gaze over me as if I did not exist and only acknowledge Ahmed. His responses to me were icy, distant, almost non-existent. He barely tolerated me, and I started feeling stupid, out of place. I started missing my mother, and I wanted to go home. Patou, on the other, treated us all kindly, and I was grateful to him for that. He was constant and fair in the way he seemed to view us, we had the most fun with him. He knew how to balance the big brother vs friend act, we felt comfortable being around him, joking with him without ever being tempted to disrespect him. I felt seen around him, for the first time in my life. Before then, people in and out of my family (except my mother of course) had only addressed me to mock me, but now I felt I had found a genuine big brother, and I so wanted him to be proud of me, as crazy as that may sound.

The bathroom situation was horrendous, our town Lubumbashi had not had water for almost 3 weeks. Most times I had to hold it until we fetched some water from the catholic convent swimming pool, four houses away, which we used for bathing and the toilets. But I noticed that some people did not hesitate to defecate on top of other faecal matter already piled up in the toilet. I will not expend on that subject any further.

I was really missing home. Oliver’s attitude was starting to spread to Ahmed. At first kind, he was now calling me a villager, because he thought I was not as civilised as he was. I wonder if he and Oliver talked about me, because their stance towards me was the same. Oliver would snap at me for the smallest thing, then turn to Ahmed and address him with exaggerated courtesy,  as if he wanted to point out where his sympathy went. On the last day there, which was a Sunday, I was so over that place that I wanted to leave. But we had to stay until the afternoon, that was the arrangement. I was irritated further because Oliver had to take me back home, and I would have preferred that Patou did it instead. But he was busy. I had a slight disagreement with Ahmed in the morning, I cannot clearly remember why, and for an hour or so he kept chanting that I was a villager, had come straight from the village. I kept quiet, I could not fight him as he was clearly bigger and stronger than I was, but that incident achieved to deteriorate my mood. Oliver later approached me and said that he was sorry that I looked so upset to go home, he could do nothing about that. I couldn’t believe my ears, and I shot  him a blank stare. I wanted to grab him by the scruff of his neck and drill in his brain that no, I actually could not wait to go to my mother’s house, where no one disrespected me. His remark was particularly insulting because it was an assumption that I lived it up at my Godfather’s house and did not want to go home where there was famine. Yes, we were poor, we had very little, but we did not starve. We lived in dignity, sobriety, and we had the respect of our neighbours. I’m glad I never interacted with Oliver again after that stay.

Oliver took me home later that afternoon, I was so glad to see my mother. She was outside, watering her flowers. She looked dainty in her beige robe; I felt remorse having left her alone in that big house. I was secretly happy that Oliver saw where I lived, and I could see confusion on his face as his eyes went from our big garden to our beautiful house. He had been told that we were poor, and he probably expected a mud house in a shanty town. He seemed not to reconcile what he had heard, whomever he heard it from, with what his eyes lay upon. My mother thanked him for bringing back home, and then he left. I briefly saw him again on his way to school one day, then he disappeared forever from my life.

My Godfather went back to live in Belgium, I don’t know what happened to Patou. We did not have cell phones during those days, and not everybody had a telephone, so it was easy for people to lose contact. I met him again once in town, he looked emaciated, I can only imagine how hard life must have been for him. I did not know of his family situation, I remember him telling me once that his mother had passed away, and you know how difficult life can get when your mother is absent. But he stayed on my mind always. When I was older I regretted not keeping in touch, not visiting him and finding more about him. I now realise that he had invested in me, as little as his investment might had been, he had showed kindness and interest, and all I did was take. With the advent of Facebook I tried to find him, I contacted all the people I thought might know where he was but without success. Patou had become like a ghost. I started to fear that he had died. I also tried LinkedIn, twitter, Instagram, but I did not find him. I thought of asking my Godfather, but I did not have his number. He, too, had become like a ghost.

My mother passed way in 2008, I came to South Africa, and my father passed away in 2001. My father was estranged, but his death hurt me too. I mourned him alone in my apartment, no family member called to check on me. My father’s side claimed I was not my father’s child, they said my father only had five children (when he clearly had seven). My mother’s side pretended nothing had happened, so I bore the pain alone. If my mother was alive, she would have understood my grief,  but as it stood I only had to rely on God for comfort. I was sitting down having supper shortly after when I received a WhatsApp message. I looked at my phone and realised it had come from Canada or the USA, because the country code was 1. Intrigued, I read the message. It had come from my mother’s childhood friend. She was extending her condolences, expressing her compassion at the fact that I now had no father and no mother. I let out a bitter laughter, I was fatherless since I was born, his death was just a validation to his comportment. I responded, and we started chatting from then on. We shared our pains, she told me how she had been depressed since she lost her husband over 30 years ago, and I said how distressed I was since I lost my mother 14 years ago. Then I suddenly remembered that Mrs JK (that was her name) had the same surname as Patou. What were the odds, I thought to myself. Another memory flooded my mind: when I spent the week at my Godfather’s house, Mrs JK had come to visit him. So I asked her if she knew Patou, but she said she did not. She advised, though, that she knew my Godfather (he was her cousin), and suggested that she reconnects us. She passed me his cell phone number. I nervously sent him a message, after nearly 30 years of not communicating. I immediately told him that I contacting him to find out if he had Patou’s digits. He was nice enough, he asked me how I was doing, he asked for my pictures to see how grown I had become, he asked what I was doing, what type of job I was going, if I was married, etc. I found his interrogation ridiculous, this was my Godfather, who did not bother to reach out when I had lost father and mother, and now pretended to care. I politely complied and sent him a couple of pictures, then I asked again if I could please be connected with Patou. Instead of giving me his number, he made a three way call with Patou. The network was bugging, we could not hear one another, so the call had to be ended. I was puzzled: why did my Godfather want to be included in my conversation with Patou? Out of that botched call I retrieved Patou’s number and excitedly called him. Finally, after so many years, and after searching for him for so long, I was going to be reunited with my dear friend. I dialled the number and he immediately picked up the call. The iciness in his voice should have predicted how our conversation was going to go. He asked me who I was. I said it’s me, Christian! He said he did not know me. I said I am Christian, Michel’s godchild? He replied that he had no idea who I was, and asked who my mother was. I was shocked. How could Patou forget me? I tried to remind him a few moments that we had shared, still he claimed not to remember me. After 10 minutes or so of trying to remind him who I was, I gave up and ended the call. I was very disappointed. Was I so forgettable?

The following day Patou called me. I dubitatively answered. He said: “be honest Christian, you tried to contact me because I’m not famous, and you thought you’d benefit from that fame?  I was very confused. Where was he famous, I asked. He sent me a few links on YouTube, where he could be seen engaging in tribalist rants against another Congolese tribe. His posts had enough likes and views, but they were not hugely popular. I called him back, and told him that I did not even know that he was on Youtube, I was looking for him because I missed him. He explained that he was a controversial figure in Congo, popular and loved, not free to walk outside without security. He added that when I noticed that I was looking for him, he thought I wanted to share in that fame. I asked him again if he remembered me. He replied: of course I remembered you from the moment your Godfather told me you were looking for me, I even remember your mother. I simply could not allow you in my circle because I was adamant that you were coming to me because I’m such a personality. I think I laughed, loudly, in his face after he said that. And I felt all the love I had for him drop. Now I found him to be quite delusional, arrogant and stupid. I knew  the Patou I knew had died somewhere, somehow. I quickly said my goodbyes and ended the call. He called me again the following day, and asked me about my personal life. I listened to him talk about his plans, his intentions of having intelligent people like me in his circle (his words), he told me of his sufferings after my Godfather left for Europe, he added that he had talked to my mother about it (I did not know that he had reached out to my mom, she never told me anything about that conversation). Again, I said goodbye and ended the call, never to call him again. Maybe we’ll meet one day in different circumstances, or not, I’m not sure. I’m not at peace not having him in my life.