October 1974.
5 days before Ali fought George Foreman for the Heavyweight Championship in Kinshasa, Zaire:
It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe. Muhammed Ali
Muhammed Ali looked out over the Congo from his window seat and then turned with a smile to Norman Mailer, “You think you’re going leave me in Kinshasa like the naked and the dead?”
The flight touched down on the tarmac at the N’djili Airport, also known as N’Djili International Airport and Kinshasa International Airport, in then Zaire – now Republic of Congo.
The Pan Am pilot asked the flight attendants to prepare for landing.
When Ali’s plane came to a complete stop his entourage of 35 people began stepping out of their high-octane careers in high-stakes boxing into a totally different world – a dark continent with the 2,900 mile Congo river snaking through the darkness.
Ali bit his lip and raised his fist towards Mailer, “Ain’t nowhere to run sucker..”
They both laughed.
Later as they disembarked George Plimpton whispered, “I don’t think our Ali is going to win.”
Mailer replied, “I don’t think our Ali is going to survive.”
The two writers walked through the airport and underneath a large national flag of Zaire – green with a hand holding a torch and a Chairman Mao sized picture of President Mobutu.
The president stated he wanted the entire world to see the beauty and resources of his country.
Ali and Foreman would help put his land on the map by fighting for the Heavyweight title and belt in Kinshasa, at the Stade du 20 Mai.
The world needed a distraction: Richard Nixon had weeks before resigned from office and President Mubutto had pledged 5 million dollars to each fighter.
Many people in North America and the world thought that Ali had a “Death Wish” in fighting the behemoth Foreman. They did not have to wait for the Charles Bronson 1974 movie, it was being played out before their eyes in Zaire.
The world was in a gambling mood to roll the dice and just hoped they did not come up snake eyes.
The electricity was most felt in the dining hall of the Hotel Continental where everybody including the journalist stayed.
Men, for different reasons, from around the world over centuries had come to test their hearts against the dark emptiness of the Belgian Congo. And here in the setting of deep chairs and small waiters, these men could enjoy the last vestiges of civilization. They could brag about deeds not yet accomplished. They could lie to themselves and have the ceiling fans and bellhops carry away these lies on the wind and down the Congo river.
But there was one brutal fact that the Congo river could not wash away: a match of heart and soul, of brains and brawn would be forged in blood within the squared circle.
The Rumble in the Jungle changed both Alis’ and Foremans’ lives forever.
Ali used boxing psychology on Big George, however, that is only half of the story.
Alis’ willpower was imposing; he moved an entire country; children and old men danced in the streets of Kinshasa. He pushed the old to be young again, and the young to dream. He united a country through his sheer will. He gave hope to a country struggling under the harsh sun of oppression. He brought sunshine to a dark continent that knew little about the power of the individual.
He brought a supernova belief system that young and old rode on like a rocket ship ride at Disney World.
And even more, he was a beautiful sculpted David who would, on that sweltering biblical night – October 30, 1974, at 3 am, bring down the Goliath, that was George Foreman.
The similarities between King David and Muhammed Ali are striking. Each man charmed their way through life and held the world spellbound! David’s harp floated gently over the ears while Ali’s jab stung the temple.
Both however, experienced subjugation. David lived under Philistine rule. Hebrews were not allowed to hold weapons made of iron. Ali lived in the Jim Crow era where his civil liberties were trampled on and he was not able to travel freely in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, United States.
Both men were outcasts of society. David was an outlaw running for his life against King Saul’s displeasure. Ali was brought before congress for not participating in the Vietnam war. He was subsequently jailed for standing firm in his beliefs.
But on this brutally hot October night in Kinshasa, Ali was king as he walked in front of his people.
And so across this African country, this heart of darkness, where men find their cowardice or their courage in between the watering holes and past the goat herds, past the coffee plantations and the huts, and onward to the light of Kinshasa, you could hear the cries of young and old shout out in Lingala, a Bantu language spoken in the northern part of the Congo,
“Ali, bomaye.”
On October 23 at 3 am in the morning…
While the two boxers toiled in front of a packed stadium of 60,000 and millions more watched on TV, another individual also toiled below the surface in the Cobalt mines.
Dante, a young boy of 12, worshipped Ali and thought of the great boxer as a father figure and mentor. He shadow boxed in the darkness of the mines far away from the high life and from the President’s Palace.
Dante’s Inferno;
Dante emerged from the fifty-foot Cobalt mining shaft, his eyes were bright yet he coughed deeply and clung to the ladder.
He scrambled up to the top and then ran around the other younger children who were using shovels to remove rocks and debris from the mining site.
He coughed as he ran through the KOV Cobalt mining shacks which were roughly 1300 kilometers from Kinshasa.
KOV was one of the largest cobalt/copper mines in the region and hauled up some of the most highly-rated copper in the world.
As he ran through the warren of Tin shacks he passed a group of young girls, huddled by the roadside, prostitutes who serviced the miners.
Dante yelled out into the coming darkness,
“Ali, bombaye.”
The girls looked up and giggled and cast shy glances at Dante as he passed.
One girl shouted back,
“Ali bombaye.”
He stopped for a moment and looked back at the mining camp, its lights now twinkling in the dark Congolese night.
The earth had been torn away and left open like some great sore upon a beautiful dark continent.
He coughed and muttered again,
“Ali, Bombaye.”
Dante’s mother and father had been killed on the road by bandits when he was seven and now his Uncle tried to look after the boy.
Uncle Judio David’s tin roof hut was full of stories of the great Ali. And outside of the one-room makeshift home was a rough-hewn boxing gym with old broken crates for seats around the ring.
The boy raced into the hut, grabbed at a tin foil wrapper of baked bread and sat down on a mat in the darkness.
He ate greedily, while his eyes darted left and right. He was thinking of the great Ali. Did Ali really have an iron Jaw?
He rubbed his chin and wondered how he could have one. Could the nurse at the mining camp give him one? Would that hurt?
The nurse at the camp saw Dante every day for his cough but it never went away. She would put her stethoscope on his chest and lean forward to listen. She smelled pretty and he would do as she said,
“Breathe deeply”
He did but then would cough.
“Did the great Ali really throw his 1960 gold medal into the Ohio river from the second street bridge?”. Dante would think of these things while in the Nurse’s office. Oh, such wonders his Uncle had filled his head with, but these wonders made his life somehow easier.
These stories of the great Ali were the coin of his realm, his treasure trove which he would dip into in order to keep his body and soul together in the mining camp so far from the ring side of the 20th of May arena where the Heavyweight Championship of the World would be fought in Kinshasa, Zaire.
Dante’s world was dark and dangerous. He worked in a fifty-foot cobalt shaft with only a scarf to cover his mouth and nose from cancer-causing agents and small levels of radioactivity.
He worked 5-hour shifts and was given $2.50 USD daily.
The Nurses at the camp saw more and more of Dante as his cough became deeper.
The great Ali kept him lost in a world of grace and beauty.
Ali was a beautiful butterfly that flew high above the KOR mining camp, untouchable and shimmering over the dark continent.
There in the darkness of the mining shaft, Dante watched the butterfly. He would watch as its wings would gently touch his tools and hover just over the top of them.
Dante was caked in mud and sweat but the light in his eyes was that of the butterfly. And as the heavy bins loaded down with rock passed by his eyes lit up the darkness.
His breath came as hot and heavy as the air. He had heard that Ali trained so hard every day and that he did sit-ups but only started counting “When it hurt” so he knew that to be a champion he would need to work hard. Each time he lifted his shovel it was not a shovel but rather a tool of courage. His cough was not a bad omen but rather a badge of honor.
He was exhausted but the thought of himself in a heavy-weight battle, fifteen rounds with Big George Foreman, kept him strong.
The other boys would either sing in the pit as they dug into the rough earth, or jabber on about girls in the village.
Dante was quiet with his thoughts of the great Ali. He was in training. He knew that Ali chopped wood and ran in heavy boots early in the morning.
And so – shovelling earth was his training. He would flex his muscles and move side to side avoiding punches and ducking to avoid another flying fist. The butterfly gave him wings.
Dante had marked down each of Ali’s fights on the cave wall and had crude drawings of boxers engaged in battle so that if an archaeologist stumbled across this dark world illuminated by one single lamplight, they would think they had unearthed some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or early cave dwellers stone etchings.
The heat and dust were a pall that hung over Dante’s every move. When he swung his shovel the dust blew up and to see his drawings one would have to push the dust away and peer into his strange world. There was a stick figure of Ali. His hands raised in Victory: 1960 Olympic Gold read the inscription.
Then came the professional fights and names: Tunney Hunsaker, Herbert Siler on Dec.27, Anthony Sperti Jan 17, and Jimmy Robinson, on February 7th, Archie Moore 1962 Nov 15…. Henry Copper 1963, June 18th.
The boxer’s names resounded like so many drum beats echoing in the hot Congolese night …Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Brian London, Joe Frazier….all immortalized across this stone page. Muhammad Ali once said that the late Earnie Shavers hit me so hard, it shook my kinfolk in Africa.
And if you looked quickly between the sliver of light and the dust you would almost see a moving picture of boxers engaged in a timeless battle. You would see flickers of jabs and right crosses etched in time.
And in that sad, lonely gym, you could, if you listened closely, hear the groans of men and the bloodthirsty cries of spectators. You could feel the tension in the hot dusty air.
Dante stumbled and clung to the wall for a moment. The steel shovel rang out as it dropped to the ground.
He coughed up blood that stained his threadbare work shirt and then watched as pebbles dropped from beneath his worn sandals.
He stumbled and fell to the earthen floor of the mine but he saw a butterfly full of grace and beauty, hovering above him deep in the Cobalt mine so very far away from Kinshasa.
As he lay quietly, covered in dust and dirt, he whispered,
“Ali Bombaye”
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