The daughter of Josephine Wouassimba, a Banziri woman, and Pierre Gerbillat, a French businessman and adventurer, Andrée Blouin was born in Bessou, a village in Oubangui-Chari. At the time of Andrée's birth, her mother was 14 years old, and her father was 41. At three years of age Andrée was taken from her mother by her father and his new wife Henriette Poussart, and placed in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny orphanage for girls of mixed race. She spent 14 years in the orphanage before she and two other girls ran away in 1938.
Personal life
After escaping from the orphanage, Andrée moved with her mother to Brazzaville began work as a seamstress. While riding on a riverboat in the Congo River, Andrée met a Belgian aristocrat named Roger Serruys. Soon afterwards, she moved in with Serruys to Baningville, where he was appointed the new director of the Belgian Kasai Company. Frustrated by his insistence that their relationship be kept a secret, Andrée returned home to Brazzavile three months pregnant. She gave birth to her daughter Rita on her 19th birthday, December 16, 1940. Andrée met a local Frenchman named Charles Greutz, and they welcomed a son René on her 21st birthday, December 16, 1942. At two years of age, René fell ill with malaria but was refused treatment in local hospitals because of his African ancestry and before long he died from complications related to the disease. Tramautized by the experience, Andrée decided that Rita should not grow up in colonial Africa, and after legally marrying Greutz, she and her daughter relocated to France in 1946. Greutz stayed behind in Bangui to work, while Andrée and Rita resided with the Greutz family in the town of Gebviller in Alsace. Andrée returned to Bangui in 1948, and learned that her husband Charles was having an affair. Not long afterwards she met French engineer André Blouin, one of her husband's contemporaries, who was on assignment for the French Bureau of Mines. The two fell in love, and after Andrée's divorce from Greutz was finalized, she and André Blouin were married. The couple went on to have two children, a son named Patrick and a daughter named Sylviane.
Activism
Andrée Blouin credits the untimely death of her young son as her primary motivation for becoming a political activist later in life. Her son's death from malaria could have been prevented with the right medication; however, because of his African ancestry, he was denied the proper medical treatment. Blouin launched a campaign against the Quinine Law that prohibited individuals of African ancestry in French Equatorial Africa from receiving appropriate medication to treat malaria. In the 1950s, she left her new husband and her daughter to travel to Guinea to support the country's independence movement. Blouin joined Sékou Touré, the leader of the Guinean Democratic Party, in the fight for independence from France. After being expelled from Guinea by French President Charles de Gaulle for her political activism, she returned to Central Africa to support the struggle for independence from France. She organized and mobilized women for the Parti Solidaire Africain, an organization whose goal was freeing Africa from colonial rule. She later became chief of protocol in Patrice Lumumba's government, formed during the aftermath of Congolese independence from France. Blouin was expelled from the Congo just before Lumumba was executed by political rivals, after which she decided to settle in Paris. In Europe, she continued her work as an advocate for gender and social equality, as well as for economic justice in various African countries.
Literary works
Blouin's autobiography, My Country, Africa: Autobiography of a Black Pasionaria, was published in English in 1983.
