The Female Touch

Even in darkest Congo, female companionship can help to lighten the surrounding gloom. The Congo's harried leaders last week could be grateful for two comely women flitting happily around the candle of fame.

Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba found soothing companionship in 24-year-old Elyane Vermeirsch, auburn-haired daughter of a Belgian art dealer whom Lumumba first met in Brussels seven months ago. Spotting her at a London press conference fortnight ago, Lumumba invited Elyane to join his transatlantic turbojet as "interpreter, secretary and adviser" for his ten-day trip to the U.S. and Canada. "What girl would not have taken the opportunity?" she breathed. "I just love to travel."

A different kind of impact on Congo affairs was being made by Madame Andree Blouin, a handsome, 41-year-old mulatto of leftist inclinations, whose steel will and quick energy make her an invaluable political aide as well as round-the-clock companion to Lumumba's Deputy Premier, bespectacled Antoine Gizenga.

Madame Blouin had her first flirtation with politics in her native Ubangi-Shari, then a French colony. She married a former French army officer, and when he wandered off to Guinea on a gold mining job, Madame Blouin went along, and became so enthusiastic about Sekou Toure that she became a close adviser to him, and a kind of Madame de Stael of his revolutionary movement. In time, she shifted her affections to Gizenga and the cause of Congo freedom. She gave it her all. In expensive Paris frocks she campaigned on a leftwing, anti-West platform to help her boy Gizenga. "I am not a Communist," she insists stoutly, "but I am African, and so naturally I oppose the West and its colonialism."

Last week Madame Blouin, who now holds the official title of Chief of Protocol in the Congo government, was peddling her views to dozens of Congolese politicians who streamed through her office which adjoins Lumumba's residence. As chief speechwriter for Deputy Premier Gizenga, she also whipped up the tirade against the U.N. and the West which Gizenga delivered at a banquet honoring Dag Hammarskjold's arrival.

As Patrice Lumumba's plane finally headed south on his return journey to Africa, he parted with Elyane Vermeirsch. bright with purple parasol, lipstick and nail polish, and she quietly headed back to a more prosaic life in Brussels. Those who know Madame Blouin best suspected it would not be so easy to get rid of her.

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