A Reporter’s Notebook--With the Pope in Africa : Too Many Wives; Too Few Rhinos, and Poles, Poles Everywhere

When Pope John Paul II preached sternly against polygamy during an open-air Mass here Saturday in which he married 32 young Kenyan couples, he was valiantly trying to overturn one of the most ancient and tenacious of African customs.

Although about 22% of Kenya’s 19 million people are nominally Roman Catholic and another 13% belong to a wide variety of monogamy-minded Protestant churches, polygamy remains widespread even among the faithful, according to churchmen here who say they are not optimistic about the Pope’s, or their, efforts to curtail it.

One reason for the practice, among at least some of the country’s tribal groups, is an ancient taboo against a husband’s having sexual relations with his wife during a traditional three years of lactation after the birth of a child. Faced with the alternative of three years of celibacy or an additional wife, most men choose the latter, again and again.

One result is Kenya’s crushing 4% annual population growth rate, the world’s highest, which, if continued, would triple the struggling country’s population in another generation.

Ironically, the conservative pontiff, who is often criticized by liberals for his strict views concerning birth control, would probably accomplish more than any family planning group here if he could get across the idea of monogamous marriage, assuming, that is, that with only one wife all loyal husbands would continue to obey the old taboo.

A special treat for the Pope’s half-holiday visit Saturday to the Masai Mara wild game reserve in southwestern Kenya along the border with Tanzania was a rare young rhinoceros, flown to the rhino-less game preserve by park authorities to give the famous visitor a sight few tourists ever see.

Because they have been hunted down for the allegedly magical medicinal and sexual properties of their horns, rhinos have become so rare that they are almost never sighted by tourists on casual camera safaris.

But even a pampered display-model rhino can be unpredictable. So to guard against the creature’s reacting unkindly when the white-cassocked Pope gave it an affectionate pat, park authorities spent several weeks getting the animal ready. Their special group of rhino trainers and feeders dressed daily in white cassocks similar to the Pope’s, just to get the animal accustomed to the sight of the rare man in white.

Speaking to this reporter, an irreverent Irishman recently explained the frequency of the Polish Pope’s trips abroad this way: “Aye,” he said, “you give a Pole a visa and he’ll travel forever.”

The remark seems to apply to many of John Paul’s countrymen as well, for on every papal journey, even to the most remote jungles of New Guinea and on most of his current African tour, the pontiff has been met by groups of Poles, including missionaries, medical specialists and construction men, all waving Polish flags and many with Solidarity banners.

In a meeting with the Polish community of Yaounde, Cameroon, last week, a tall black man accosted the Pope, speaking flawless Polish. The surprised pontiff asked where he had learned the language, and the Polish-speaking Cameroonian explained that he had lived and studied in Warsaw for a number of years.

After enthusiastically describing his marriage in Warsaw, the man introduced his attractive wife to John Paul and she, too, spoke perfect Polish.

“You are very pretty, but you don’t look Polish,” said the Pope.

She explained that she was Cuban, and a student in Warsaw at the same time as her husband.

The 60-odd journalists of a dozen nationalities who regularly fly with the Pope on his foreign journeys feel safer than the average air traveler, not just because somebody up there must like the man in white in the front of the plane, but because they know that the Pope’s chartered Alitalia DC-10 receives the most scrupulous maintenance of any plane in the Italian fleet.

But in many less developed countries such as Cameroon, where the pontiff spent four of his 12 African days, the DC-10 could not use the small, out-of-the-way airstrips to which Pope and press have to go.

John Paul’s transportation problems were solved by the loan of Cameroonian President Paul Biya’s gleaming new Boeing 737, presumably the best-maintained jet in Cameroon’s small air fleet. The press was herded aboard Cameroon Airlines’ only Boeing 727, a disconcertingly worn-looking aircraft that had obviously seen more than a few hairy landings and takeoffs.

On the first papal press flight in the scruffy-looking airplane--from Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast, to Yaounde, Cameroon--something came loose on the right wing. Next day, boarding a flight to Garoua in the far north of the country, the loose something had been taped down with a six-inch strip of gaffer tape, a strong fabric-backed adhesive favored by photographers. To everyone’s relief the tape held.

But the next day, while flying to Bamenda, near the Nigerian border, the alarmed passengers felt a shudder at 20,000 feet and stared horrified through the windows at the left wing. A leading edge wing flap had broken half-loose and was flapping in the air stream. The pilot, apparently an old hand at guiding an aircraft whose parts tend to fall off, landed safely to the thundering sound of applause from the passenger cabin.

Another charming touch of hospitality in Cameroon was the issuance by government postal authorities of a special stamp commemorating the Pope’s visit. It may someday become a collector’s item. On its face appears not John Paul II, but the serene countenance of Pope John Paul I, the visiting pontiff’s immediate predecessor, who died after only a month in the papacy and never flew abroad.