Character Analysis
Congolese Family Values
We don't get to spend too much time with Anatole's Aunt Elisabet, whom they find at Bikoki Station. Anatole is happy to no longer be an orphan, sure, but Aunt Elisabet mainly serves to illustrate how different Anatole's and Leah's cultures are. Like, Leah is appalled to learn that Elisabet's ten-year-old daughter, Élveé, sometimes works as a prostitute. (Seems like the right response.) Elisabet, on the other hand, accepts it as just the way things are sometimes. Yikes.
Leah likes spending time with them—after all, aside from Anatole and her children, she's the only family Leah has in Africa—but she has to accept that "She loves me [Leah] but finds me baffling and unfeminine, and probably a troublemaker" (5.10.29). And it's a little sad that, no matter where she goes, people still see Leah that way.