Clément-Marie Biazin accomplished his great “journey of instruction” between 1946 and 1966. He first walked across what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. Back in Bangui in 1955, he set off again for the Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the two Congos. The destitute traveller worked everywhere in order to eat and often found
a place to stay at mission stations. He became a polyglot and practised participative observation like an ethnologist in the field. Itinéraire is a report with scientific ambitions, intended for the
“authorities of the CAR fatherland” and entitled “Central African National Institute for Research and Discovery in the domain of our CAR’s traditional history and the history of the geography all over the African globe through the travels of exploration studies…”. Essentially structured by lists in three columns, this protean account covers all the geography and spoken languages he encountered in these lands still under the colonial yoke.
F. Morin/MEG