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Published: October 21st 2006
The Congo is exciting and relaxing after CAR. Dense forests, plenty of rain, amazing hospitality. As soon as I find a USB cable I will post pictures for the last few entries.
I took the pirogue from Bangui to Zongo, lots of fisherman sit out on islands in the river and on the bank casting nets from their dugout canoes. Leaving Bangui behind is leaving most of modern civilisation behind, which is nice. The border was predictably a hassle, with people wanted more than 60 dollars in bribes, but with plenty of patience I got through quickly and payed less than 15. Then I learned a lesson that has been slow in setting in since my arrival in Central Africa; money here is like water in the desert heat; if you leave it unattended even for a few seconds it will find a way to evaporate.
In each town I am often given a police escort for a while. I thought I could trust this one, he didn't set off any alarms in my mind, and I let him pay my ticket to Gemena. Well, I had asked lots of Congolese in Bangui and I knew the price
was 8000 franc cfa to ride in the front of a truck, but of course he said it was 10000 and decided to pocket the four dollars, which I let him. Later, when I had waited two days for thetruck to leave (which it promised to do each day right away) I finally refunded my money and found out he had actually kept 5 dollars. I just decided to let it go, he has to feed his family, and none of the officals here recieve their salaries.
I talked to a former soldier while waiting for the truck to be repaired, he told me how he had been fighting for Kabila and then he was captured by Bembas men, so he started fighting for Bemba, the rebels. He thought this was really funny and started cracking up. He also told me how he was the best shot with Surface to air missiles and how he had shot down two planes and blew up more trucks than he could count. He was a lieutenant, and 22 years old. He told me how a tourist from Belgium had come in the middle of the war, showed up in Gemena, and he
On the Road
Tolekas, bicycle transport is how most goods travel in this province. These guys ride day and night for 5 to 10 days,with more than 50 kilos on their bikes eating almost nothing, to make about 10 to 15 dollars profit. The toughest people I have ever seenhad met him on the street and invited him to stay at his house where he stayed for 3 months.... sounds like something I would do. As far as I can gather, this tourist, 5 years ago, was the last one to come through.
Finally I paid just 3000 to ride on top of the truck, which was fun, but you have to hold on tight as the roads are very bumpy. I started to amaze myself with the things I could do... sleep on the ground for five hours, get up, eat a piece of bread, walk 25 kilometers, while in the midst of a malaria fever complete with headache and dizziness in the equatorial heat without drinking water(except for out of streams) and not complain, just march like everyone else(we had to walk a lot because some secotions of the road were so bad we couldn't ride on top).
At first I was very hungry, but I quickly adapted to eatting only scraps of bread once or twice a day. My stomach shrank and I felt fine. This is how the people here always have to manage.
The election is on here, everyone is waiting
Gemena
A woman on Gemenas main street for the second round, it is a showdown between Kabila and Bemba, and there is propaganda everywhere, and people all over the place with megaphones campaigning, and people argued much and passionately about the politics, though personally I don't think either of these candidates are much good. Their troops each slaughtered large portions of the population(3 million dead in the war 1998 to 2003) and Kabila son had the former president, his father, assassinated to take power. I heard some real horror stories on the road. I asked why the villagers were so jumpy along the road, and they told me stories of how troops would come into the village saying that they were going to make an announcement and to get together everyone in the village, then they would put them all in one hut and burn it so they would all be burned alive. Also they would force whole villages to jump into a well where they would die. These troops were mostly illiterate. They slaughtered villages to take away supplies for Bembas troops. This was really the worst war in my reckoning since world war 2. In one village I saw an eery statue of a skeleton
Bamboo forest
Lots of bamboo on the way to Bumba standing on top of a hill holding an AK 47. It is a shame with all this war because the forests here are amazing, and without even trying to look I saw some incredible birds and butterflies, colors I never knew existed, as well as strange insects, centipedes longer than my hand, etc.
But in spite of this the people were still friendly, most being recently returned refugees. Two and a half days on the road(I was told it would take about 12 hours) and I arrived in Gemena. My designated helper helped me find a hotel, and after having eatten very little for two days I enjoyed some of the best grilled chicken in Africa. Towns in Congo have little to offer in the way of things to do, they have that characteristic African chaotic feel, all dirt roads and mud and cement buildings, with curious people who are not used to seeing white people outside of their vehicles.
I stopped by the Catholic mission and chatted with some friendly nuns and an unfriendly priest, and a couple of Italian NGO workers. At my cheap hotel, there was unsurprisingly a lot of prostitutes, one was a little
Children
No shortage of children in Africa. No shortage of shocked children in rural DRC. too friendly. She first approached me, like they do, asking to buy them a beer or cigarettes. When I politely refused she left, which is all normal. Then she came back later and she offered all of her services for free because she thought I was nice and because I'm white. When I refused again she left, but came back later and said, that if I didn't want sex she could prepare all of my meals for me, for free. I refused again, but all the same the next morning she knocked on my door with an excellent breakfast on a tray and she just wanted to chat with me and didn't ask for any money or anything. She was nice, she explained to me that she had been trying to smuggle mercury when she'd got caught and the police had taken everything, which I have no difficulty believing, and that she had become a prostitute because she didn't know what else to do, and she had to save some money to try something else. She was the same age as me, 20. Africans running around with old water bottles full of mercury scares me.
I though I was
Truckers stuck in mud
The roads are so bad, in the trucks sometimes they will get stuck for weeks at a time in the jungle, and just dig dig dig going to try to go to Lisala, but I decided on Bumba instead, because it would cost the same as going to Lisala, but it's closer to Kisangani. I was told this trip would take about 10 hours, it took 3 days. This was an amazing and difficult trip, the motorcycle driver took a series of ridiculous short cuts through muddy jungle foot paths and remote villages, where if we stopped I would cause a childrens riot. People were astonished to see me, in many of the more remote villages they haven't seen any white people for 10 years, so for a lot of children it was their first time to see a white person, since the missionaries left before the war. The first night we heard about a Belgian planter who lived in one of the villages, and we stopped at his house for the night.
He turned out to be French, named Bouillon, and reminded me a lot of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now,as we talked by the dim light of a palm oil lamp with the sounds of the jungle all around us. He told me how he hadn't set foot in Europe for 9 years,
bridge
honestly, this was one of the better bridges, many were only passable by moto, because they were just one log though he wanted to go back. He seems to be the only white person for hundreds of miles, and since so few of the roads are practicable, he goes everywhere by bicycle, even the 300 kilometers to Bumba. He told me how during the war he retreated to the most defensible place, to wait out the worst of his fighting. His plantation was looted, everything was stolen. He was one of the only European planters to stay on when Mobutu nationalised all of the countries plantations, and he stayed to help his village, he didn't want to abandon them during the war. He must be in his late 50s or early 60s, his face is very worn. He told me also how 300 of Bembas soldiers had passed during the war, on a mission to march 500 kilometers to Bumba, and they had left with nothing, no food, no water, nothing. He had took them in, fed them for the night, and given them a map so they could find there way to Bumba. He had survived for the last 9 years only on what he could make out of the jungle, just like all of the people living there.
He also fed me, rice and manioc leaves, and gave us a bed for the night.
The next night we stayed in a village that flipped out with joy to have a real American stay in their village. The poverty of the village was illustrated when I took out a can of sardines, which I and my driver shared that night along with a piece of bread, the only things we had eaten that day. As soon as we finished the sardines, the village chief said, almost trembling "Please, can you make me a gift?" his eyes were locked on the empty sardine can. I gave it to him and he rushed out of the hut in excitement. They use old sardine cans to make palm oil lamps here, and they can also be traded for things, I guess.
I will try to post a satellite picture of the Congo here, if you look at it you can tell right away this region is special.
However, the rainfall necessary to create such beautiful jungle means that the paths we rode along were narrow and slippery, and we fell over and crashed more times than I can count,
probably between 20 and 30 times. Most of the time I was able to get my legs out from under the bike before it crashed, but a couple of times I was too slow, and I badly injured my right leg. The bike was also damaged, and we had to get it fixed in villages a couple of times.
Once we passed a dead body of a boy about my age being carried along the path by two other boys. We also often killed chickens speeding through villages. Once we ran over a baby chick, and I looked back to see it twitching on the ground, and I realized that I had felt more remorse for the chick than the boy we had seen, weird. Once we killed a full grown chicken. Somehow these chickens think the best strategy to try to escape a motorcycle is to run as fast as they can straight forward in front of the wheel... my driver said " The chicken wanted to play with the moto, but it only found it's death! Ha ha ha!" I thought this was kind of poetic.
After three days of constant riding over bumpy ground, my
dawn on the boat
those are the three main barges attached to our boat... sometimes as many as 1000 people will be on there, though I think on ours there was closer to 500 ass was burning red, and for two days after the trip it was painful to sit down. There had been a big fight before I left, the owner of the motorcycle had bought a liter of motor oil with my money and he was going to try and keep it for his car instead of sending it with us my friends, Bosco and the prostitute, watching out for me made him send it with me, of course held in a plastic bag. When we were at Bouillon's I had got out my toiletries bag and my towel, and when I woke up he already had our bags strapped down and was ready to go, so I put my stuff in his bag so we could leave more quickly. Of course the bag of motor oil exploded on my toothbrush, rendering it useless.
We finally arrived in Bumba, and luckily I was able to get a boat right away. Riding the boat was a highlight of the trip, I made a lot of friends, and though the trip was suppose to last 3 days, it lasted a week due to two deaths. A child died, and also one of the
barbershop
cutting hair on the boat around sunset soldiers on board was harassing a fisherman, trying to take some of his fish by force. The fisherman refused, and his canoe tipped over, the soldier fell into the river, and didn't know how to swim, so he drowned. The fisherman swam ashore and fled into the jungle. We had to stop while the other soldiers ran an investigation. This is a good example of how things happen here. Someone is greedy, and then people die. I thought about it though, and I think fish is something better to die for, at least you can eat fish, while a lot of people die for far less practical things like a concept of god or a set of political ideals.
The boat is a large river boat, it reminds me of The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart. I passed my time watching the river, the villages, the jungle pass by. I stayed on the captains deck with his family, and they prepared my meals. I sampled many African delicacies, including snake, monkey, grubs, crocodile, pigeon, and other strange animals, as well as old classics like bananas, corn, chicken, manioc, palm wine and other things. I highly recommend a trip on
Dinner
I find it hard to eat something that reminds me so much of myself one of the public riverboatrs. It's like living in a never ending market, villagers constantly swarm the boat and the barges it pushes with goods, food, beautifully handmade sculpture, pestel and mrtars, chairs, as well as wild animals that they capture alive. The deck where I stayed was filled with the captains pets, a grey parrot, two boa constrictors, two baby monkeys and one adolescent, two turtles, two baby crocodiles. I slept on the floor with 8 other people who were in the captains favor. I've managed to get the photos up, so I will let the photos of the boat trip speak for themselves.
I think I have culture shock from arriving in Kisangani. In Equateur there is basically nothing, save a few metal pots, that is not made from the earth or the trees. I saw some disturbing things, especially children with incredible life threatening diseases and conditions going about their business. I can see why this is the home of so many diseases, like AIDS, ebola, and a host of frightening things that exist no where else. People live in very close contact with animals. My last couple of nights on the boat some pirogues had
Lunch
I find these hard to eat for other reasons... deep fried I don't have a problem with them but the locals eat tem raw as well "rich in vitamins!" joined the barges bringing dozens of hogs. Around 4 oclock in the morning the hogs would decide to have a huge screaming brawl. I saw some fall in the river and try to escape. The captains parrot also tried to escape. Before we arrived in Kisangani I saw a man cleaning pig feces off the deck with his hands. When he was done he took a bucket of river water and rinsed them off without soap, then went to eat his fufu with his bare hands. 99 percent of the time this won't get you sick, I mean, I would handle living and dead monkeys, not wash my hands, and eat with them, and I'd be okay, but every once and a while some strange bacteria will mutate and you have an ebola outbreak. There was an outbreak of plague recently in Ituri, because the mining conditions there are so bad, and the miners are often in contact with rats. It is aggravated by the fact that outide towns there is basically no health care whatso ever. However, the villagers have amazingly effective natural treatments for many diseases.
Catholicism is big here, christianity. A lot of people were excited
A village
They came out to watch the boat pass to meet me "You come from the same country as the Prophet William Marrion Branam? God Bless you!" This guy, who I'd never heard of, is apparently huge here. Also, Catholicism is big, but it's different. I once arrived in a village, and saw the whole village dancing wildly around, singing in Lingala, and drumming around sunset. I asked what they were doing and was told "They're Catholic, and that clearing is the church" Catholics also do little rituals, like putting chili peppers in brooms to stop the rain, and it's not uncommon for Catholics here to have several wives. I kind of think that the missionaries, having difficulties, might have just gotten some villages to change the names of their traditional gods to Jesus and carry on as usual. I think though there are many more traditional Catholics, and the Catholic church here seems to be a major force for good. On the boat they called me Alex the Priest because I would lecture on Christian values "The Bible seems to say that you should have only one wife" or "It seems to me that war is un-Christian, yet the people who fought and caused the war here all
Monkey roasting on an open fire
This must mean christmas time is coming claim to be Christians" and everyone would say, "He's right! What a good Christian!" I was often mistaken for a priest, because in many areas where I went the only white people they have seen were all priests.
I also have to defend the UN here. A lot of people criticize the UN, but they do amazing things here. There is a lot of wasted resources, but I would argue that they are still more efficient than governments, and as for the Sex for Food scandal, the UN soldiers come from countries all over the world, and you should blame the training of these soldiers in their home countries rather than failure on the part of the UN.
I thought to get an idea of the kind of interactions I have here I'd list a few sample interactions.
(Restaurant, meaning woman with two pots, some plates, and a few benches)
Me- So what do you have to eat?
Woman- Chicken or Monkey
- I'll have the chicken.
-Why don't you like monkey??
- Ehm, I just don't I want chicken right now.
-Here you are.
I eat...
- This doesn't taste like chicken.
-That's
Leaving Bumba
My first day on the boat because it's monkey.
- I asked for chicken!
-Yes, but the monkey is more nutritious.
Or trying to buy a Tshirt.
Me- Do you know where I can find a Tshirt?
A friend- What kind of Tshirt?
-A white, sleeveless Tshirt, for the heat.
-Ahh, white sleeveless, because it's hot.
-Yeah, do you know where I can buy it?
-Just give me the money I'll go to the market and buy it for you.
-I'd rather pick it out myself.
-Oh okay, we can go together tomorrow morning, I'll show you where they sell that.
The next day a knock on my hotels door early morning
-Hey, I bought you the Tshirt!
- What? I said I wanted to buy it myself, and this Tshirt is green and has sleeves!
Looking hurt- YOu don't like it?
-I said I wanted a WHITE and SLEEVELESS Tshirt.
-Its no problem I'll take it back.
-No really, just take it back, I will go myself, because I want to pick out a specifically, WHITE and SLEEVELESS tshirt.
-RIght, right, white and sleeveless, white and sleeveless. You sure you don't want a red tshirt?
-No a WHITE tshirt
-Not
Girls
who constantly pestered me to take their photo, which prompted me to learn the phrase, come back tomorrow in lingala "yaka lobi" a green one?
-WHITE!
- Okay, okay, white
Later that day...
-Okay I got you your tshirt!
- I said I wanted to buy it myself, and this tshirt is red!
-What's wrong with red?
- Good God...
- I can cut off the sleeves for you!
- Fine, okay, just cut off the sleeves. I'll wear it.
This stuff really happens every day, I am not exaggerating. Sometimes congolese people are so weird.
Well, okay, since I have some photos to post I won't write anymore, until next time.
Alex
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Alana
non-member comment
Wow, it sounds about hundred times more hard core than anywhere we went.... But your pictures are beautiful, and even with a bout of falciparum you look healthy. Despite my anxieties I'm endlessly pleased that you made the trip. And thank god you made it to some internet because I was seriously perusing airfare to come find you dehydrated and dying on the side of the river. Love Alana