REPUBLIC OF CONGO: The Unorthodox Abbe

More than 5,000 cheering blacks, in headgear ranging from French army kepis to straw boaters and Davy Crockett caps, were at the Brazzaville airport to meet him, and even his wizened old mother, after performing a little weaving dance in his honor, fell on her knees before him. As he drove through the streets in his blue-grey Pontiac, his excited fans followed in trucks and jeeps, shooting into the air and shouting, "Olele! Olele! The Abbé has won!" The abbé—Brazzaville's round, smiling Mayor Fulbert Youlou, 41—had just returned from the French Middle Congo's capital city of Pointe-Noire. There the...

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