Graham Greene in the Belgian Congo. My purpose in this contribution is to present and contextualize the only film footage ever recorded of the novelist Graham Greene in the Belgian Congo in The footage was filmed with an 8mm camera, which did not record sound. It belongs to Mrs. From through , Dr. Lechat was head of the leper hospital and colony of Iyonda, a village and mission station some 15 kms south of the city of Coquilhatville now, Mbandaka in central-western Congo.
Greene stayed a number of weeks in Iyonda and other mission stations in the region in search of inspiration, a setting, and material for a new novel.
Greene occupied a room in the house of the missionary fathers in Iyonda, but spent long parts of his days with the doctor and his family. As he was one of the only Belgian missionaries there with some knowledge of English, he often accompanied Graham Greene during his trips from one mission station to another. Rik Vanderslaghmolen and the Lechats are still close friends today. Regrettably, Dr. Car park in front of the airfield of Coquilhatville, the Belgian Congo, 5 March Photo reproduced with permission from Edith Lechat.
Yet, the order in which the documentary presented the snippets did not respect the original course of the film and they were, in any case, fragmentary. My contribution here is thus an opportunity to present, for the first time, the film in its full and unedited length, and to zoom in on the Congolese and missionary circumstances under which it was made. He was in Iyonda from 2 to 11 February and again from 26 February to 5 March, visiting other mission stations in between these two periods.
His stay in the Congo must have appeared much longer to him with hindsight than it had been in reality. Either way, in he had a rough idea for a book in mind, namely a stranger arriving in a leper colony run by a missionary order.
