On Being a Patron

Samuel with his Peace Corps employers

Three weeks into his service for me and my fellow Peace Corps Volunteer David A., and serving as a cook and house-cleaner in a bush town of the Central African Republic where we were teaching at the local high school, my servant Jacques asked for a 1,000 CFA advance (roughly $4 American) on his monthly salary of $26 to pay for his children’s school fees. I gave him the money promptly and with no fuss. Jacques was so grateful that he made a little speech that evening about how I was his patron and he was my boy and that if I had any problems I should ask him about it. 

It was obsequious and embarrassing. But it was also true.

Jacques came to our house every day except Sunday, went to the marché in downtown Bossangoa to buy the food that he prepared for our lunch and dinner, cleaned our house, drew water from the high school well, washed and ironed our clothes, and steered us to black market providers of kerosene when there was none to be had at the official points of distribution.

We hadn’t come to Africa to live this cut-rate version of colonial splendor, but given the logistical demands of running a household without water, electricity, or even a working stove (Jacques cooked over an open fire next to the house), it simply wasn't practical to live without servants, called “boys” in the local French dialect even though they were often older than the patrons. Fulfilling our teaching duties was plenty time-consuming, and that's what we were there for. 

For the most part, Jacques discharged his duties well enough, but there were some spectacular lapses (a few times he showed up too drunk to work) and the ongoing downsides that all the patrons complained about: frequent pilfering, lies to cover up said pilfering, and lies about items that got lost or broken. (As my site mate put it, “You can’t get served hand and foot here without someone stepping on your foot.”) Jacques would hit us up for advances, loans, and gifts to help him deal with the constant financial demands of his extended family. This was all part of the patron relationship that had defined colonial relations from the beginning.

The patron relationship bled into civic life as well, encouraged by missionaries, hangers on from colonial times, and European arrivistes, searching for a life of greater wealth and ease than what they could have back home. As an ex-hippie and college activist, I wasn’t prepared for the automatic deference shown to me by bus drivers, shop keepers, and anyone in a service position. They all addressed me as patron. I couldn’t stop them from doing so, but I wouldn’t use the term boy to refer to the servants. This was purely cosmetic and morally self-serving. The fundamentals of the relationship remained intact

In theory this relationship didn’t obtain with Central Africans presumably of the same social status – teachers, administrators, professionals – but the inferiority complex instilled in the native populations during the 57 years of brutal and arrogant French rule hadn’t dissipated in the 14 years since Independence, and I would hear cringe-inducing apologies for the state of “underdevelopment” from lower class folks if they were trying to curry favor or from educated Africans if they were drunk.

One of the ancillary dimensions of being a patron was that one heard about or got recruited into the messes (called histoires) that the servants had to deal with in their private lives. This provided a window into African society but one that was frequently begrimed by linguistic handicaps or “incomplete” contextualization, if not outright lies. This February 16 entry from my first-year journal is as exemplary as any.

Jacques's fifth relative has died in as many months – a sister this time. His older brother, who seems to be some sort of bigwig in [the capital], arrived to beat Jacques up because he didn’t visit his sister at the hospital every day while she was dying. She was there for a month. Jacques was apprehensive at the appearance of the vengeful brother and got sufficiently drunk to calm his fears and botch our dinner. We sent him home early, but he still got knocked around. The story is infinitely more complicated, but our communication with Jacques is treacherous at best, and when we leave the familiar waters of household routine, our conversational skiff easily floods in such stormy seas.

How little I knew him and how much he hid from me! I gave him a shopping list every day for his trips downtown and asked for an accounting of the money spent. The numbers never added up and the change he brought back didn’t reflect even those numbers. It was only at the end of our first month together when I tried to make him sign a receipt for his salary (a “best practice” encouraged by the local Peace Corps staff) that I discovered, in a showdown that still makes me cringe, that Jacques was illiterate. Couldn’t even sign his name. 

To be fair, I enjoyed the employ of servants who were more professional and brought fewer histoires into our working relationship. Samuel, the servant of my second year in Bouar, was a fabulous cook, carried himself with dignity, and made no unusual demands on our generosity. But it was understood that we had to grease the wheels of the patron relationship with small gifts of money throughout the year. 

The insidious quality of the relationship was that the smoother it ran, the more corrupting it was. In my relations with other whites, it was understood that one talked about Africans – the majority of the people we were surrounded by – as subordinates: the servant problems, the inefficiency and corruption of the local government, the gleeful and sarcastic retailing of the African histoires. One could either stay silent or join in the fun. I wish I could say I held myself above this poisonous camaraderie, but the journal tells a different story.

Tuesday, March 18

Jacques got into a fight with his sister-in-law, and she broke his wrist with a piece of wood. Dave took him to the hospital. I met them coming down the road, and Jacques looked miserable. He was actually whimpering, which runs counter to my idea of stoic sufferance, although I would probably be screaming in similar circumstances. I must confess, my first reaction to news of the incident was, “Well, there goes dinner tonight.” 

Six months into my Peace Corps placement, the patron transformation had done its work.

— Robert Philipson

Read about the professorial foray that prompted this autobiographical essay in The Poisoned Patronage of Charlotte Osgood Mason.

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