Synopsis: Down the Slave River (The Slave River Part 3): Team leader Nol Maes establishes a sustainable partnership for his water project with the dispensaire - the provincial health post in Rosso, Mauritania - run by mission sisters of the Marist Order. The project receives vital support from the hospital in Saint-Louis and even from the French military garrison stationed there. French army doctors, including Pierre Hornez and the female head of medical services in Senegal, Major and physician Marie-Claire Vadim, make regular 'river jumps' to support healthcare and ensure the safety of expatriates and local mission sisters on the Mauritanian side of the Senegal River. The Dutch-financed development project functions effectively, constructing small-scale irrigation systems in the Senegal River valley. Villages contribute their own manpower to the effort. The developed black African crop farmers -Toucouleur, Wolof, and Soninke - succeed in multiplying their crop production with project support. Cooperation with the 'black Moors,' often Harratin - freed or former slaves still living in dependence - proves more difficult. The project offers irrigation assistance and training to these mainly nomadic small livestock herders, who often tend herds belonging to white masters. Many remain 'debt slaves' or serfs. Desertification hits them hard, but agriculture remains completely foreign to their way of life. The Peul Fulani, livestock herders who roam constantly or partially and sometimes attempt to combine this with crop farming, face similar pressures. The Beydani - the nobility and masters of Arab-Berber origin, power holders and generals - want to drive the black African population from the country and monopolize the fertile Senegal valley. During their 'Arabization campaign,' they force the Wolof, Toucouleur, and Soninke across the river, attempting to seize prime land with water access for their own feudal power structure. Despite these tensions, cooperation between the health department of the Dutch development project and the French mission post flourishes. The mission, run by French and local nuns and doctors, operates from Senegal but serves both sides of the river. The team leader and French physicians decide to incorporate the health department as much as possible into the Catholic diocese of Saint-Louis, believing the Church's longer time horizon will outlast any temporary project. The medical department of the French garrison in Saint-Louis proves useful not only in support but especially in defence when the Moors begin driving out or massacring the African river population. Friendships and love affairs between white and black individuals have become solid - including the deepening relationship between Dutch team leader Nol and French major Marie-Claire. One early morning, without warning, Berber mercenaries on horses, camels, and a pick-up truck attack the mission post in Rosso. Jack, the agronomist with an Indo-New Guinea military veteran background, Nol, and Major Marie-Claire - who happens to be spending the night with Nol during the attack - spring into action. They relieve the post using French weapons Nol has stored for defence. Under covering fire, they free the nuns and nurses. Nearly all have been raped by the Berber vandals. The adjacent church is burning, with people locked inside. Nol breaks them out while Marie-Claire, the diminutive major, takes down most of the mercenaries with her French FAMAS submachine gun. She rescues the young field employee Fatoumata from the guest quarters. Fatou escapes, badly shaken. Engineer Cas later rebuilds the church. In inadequate consultation with the Dutch Embassy in Dakar, the project is suspended. Within weeks, the Senegal valley has turned into a gruesome battlefield. Genocide rages back and forth - murder and lynchings, burning and hanging, expulsion of population groups, displacement, land seizures. Many thousands depend on refugee camps or settle destitute around cities. The Mauritanian director Cheikhou is murdered in reprisal for earlier lynchings. His wife is raped by young, furious Wolof men avenging their hanged family members. The local staff of the project receives extra payment and transfer to sister activities in Senegal. Project engineer Cas and the project's local mainstay Magatte start a new and active life in Senegal with their beautiful Dutch-Senegalese daughter and Magatte's naturalized son. Jack and Nol must say goodbye to all their friends. Nol experiences one final passionate night with Marie-Claire. They love each other, but their paths can never run parallel - their occupations pull them in different directions. Nol has his development mission; Marie-Claire is a major and physician, deployable anywhere, with a son who is studying. They say goodbye to their beloved ones: Cas, Magatte, Marie-Claire, and especially to the Toucouleur-Dutch daughter Evaline, who has connected them all. An active epilogue follows. Thirty-five years later, the author - now inhabiting the aging body of the team leader - returns to the river to assess the results and remnants of their far-reaching cooperation. This wasn't his intention. The beautiful daughters of Cas and Magatte -both now young doctors in Antwerp - manage to lure the old border-region warrior out of his hole. They convince him to revisit the work at the river and meet their parents in a reunion. And so it happens. The writer has been paralyzed on his left side from a brain tumour. The team leader/writer sails down the river from his original base in Rosso and back up again, interpreting the changes. No "sentimental journey" on the Mauritanian side, but on the Senegalese side he finds clear improvements and... a reunion of two bent men after thirty-five years, plus the still-charming sixty-year-old Magatte with a nursery of follow-up activities.
