Andreè was born in December 1921. When she was three years old, she was taken away from her family, to an orphanage in Brazzaville, which housed only mixed race children. They were raised there to protect them from , “living in primitive African conditions.”

The orphanage however, was hell for the children in their care. Andree often went to bed hungry and the mother superior used her hippopotamus hide whip when and how she pleased. She ran away at fifteen.

Then she became a hidden concubine at seventeen. Shortly after, she had a cute little boy. He died of malaria when he was two. He was denied quinine treatment. Poor Andree knew nothing of our herbal tea for malaria at the time. Only what her ‘european’ upbringing in the orphanage had taught her about quinine.

Angered and resolved, she became a nationalist. She spoke out against the double standards of the colonialists. She had seen and experienced enough of them from living in different parts of Africa that had French and Belgian colonialists. She rebelled against their inhuman treatment to her people.

She liaised with Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Patrice Lumumba of Congo, presidents of Ivory Coast -Felix Houphouet Boigny, Algeria, Guinea- Sekou Toure and Mali. She became part of Patrice Lumumba’s kitchen cabinet. When Lumumba was assassinated, she escaped. But she did not stop fighting for justice.