Monday, January 23, 2006
Leaving the Pygmy Village and Heading towards Libreville (Second Week of January)
On the first night of our visit, the village witch doctor informed us that the spirit of the forest would only be comfortable with our continued presence if we purchased local manioc alcohol for the villagers. We anticipated this thirst on our second night and further inebriated the spiritual head, who had woken everyone with shouted abuse at 5am drunk the day thru. By 9pm he was explaining to Tuuli that he was in love with her; he asked her with cloudy eyes what he could do with his feelings. As he rose to touch her knee, he toppled into the spent fireplace. Laughing members of the future generation removed him. He managed to repeat this maneuver twice before our guide lead him back to his wife.
The next morning he was up first, drying two cat sized tobacco leaves on corrugate tin that balanced over the intersection of thick slow burning logs. He mixed the leaves before they had browned with a mouse sized nugget of jungle marijuana and then rolled everything up with graphing paper. He sat under the men’s shelter in the company of the others watching the three of us pack up our tents and our rucksacks, watching us dispute about money, smoking his sloppy joint. Then he shook our hands and watched us go.
It took about three hours to row away from the village, hike through the forest, pass through the larger town of Minvoul and find our car, still parked on the Mayor's front lawn. We sent one of the paddlers with a final gift for the chief: a short sleeved, tied died African suit jacket that we have carried around since Gambia for an occasion like this; this jacket, complete with shoulder pads, was the closest thing to a fruit cake that I have ever been given.
We left Minvoul with the intention of bypassing Libreville and dropping straight through Gabon into Congo; but we had misgivings about the possibility of purchasing visas in Congo for the DRC and Angola. We decided to make some expensive phone calls at the next large town. It was Friday afternoon by the time I got thru to the U.S. Embassy in Congo and the only American on hand was the marine doing security duty at the front desk. He couldn't answer any of my questions; but, he was able to call the duty officer, who called me back at a random Gabonese telecenter perhaps fifteen minutes later. She was similarly confounded by my questions about road conditions, ferries around DRC and specialized car documents, so further telephoning ensued. Few hours of daylight remained when we realized that we would need to abandon our aspiration to reach Congo by Sunday and, instead, purchase our visas in Libreville, a city that we were avoiding on the basis of its reputation for being obnoxiously expensive, overly westernized and boring.
We pulled into Libreville on the following afternoon and tried to avoid getting lost by heading directly for the coastal road. The only hotel in our price range was the Catholic mission; but there wasn't anybody around to show us rooms or discuss pricing. This was frustrating; so we decided to look for cheap food. We were fortunate enough to drive straight into the most energetic and restaurant packed of Libreville's quartiers and word of mouth lead us quickly to a reasonable unmarked hotel. This was Saturday.
Gabonese nightlife was much more authentic, enjoyable and affordable than we had been lead to expect and our hotel was situated directly in the middle of it. Our neighborhood, known as "Louis" fills with traffic around 10pm and remains congested until 2 or 3am; it remains lively until you feel like sleeping. Gabonese women of exceptional beauty and other African women able to pay the staggering cost of Gabon's residency permit pack the nightclubs, admire their reflections and hope their gamble will bear fruit. Dancing with the mirror is an ordinary aspect of African club life. There is much less shyness about dancing and there is no shame about being alone. The more expensive the club, the fewer the men; but that is normal too. The people were talkative, unpretentious, ready to dance and seldom clingy. The more affordable gender balanced nightlife was just two streets away; it featured less dancing and more television.
On the first night of our visit, the village witch doctor informed us that the spirit of the forest would only be comfortable with our continued presence if we purchased local manioc alcohol for the villagers. We anticipated this thirst on our second night and further inebriated the spiritual head, who had woken everyone with shouted abuse at 5am drunk the day thru. By 9pm he was explaining to Tuuli that he was in love with her; he asked her with cloudy eyes what he could do with his feelings. As he rose to touch her knee, he toppled into the spent fireplace. Laughing members of the future generation removed him. He managed to repeat this maneuver twice before our guide lead him back to his wife.
The next morning he was up first, drying two cat sized tobacco leaves on corrugate tin that balanced over the intersection of thick slow burning logs. He mixed the leaves before they had browned with a mouse sized nugget of jungle marijuana and then rolled everything up with graphing paper. He sat under the men’s shelter in the company of the others watching the three of us pack up our tents and our rucksacks, watching us dispute about money, smoking his sloppy joint. Then he shook our hands and watched us go.
It took about three hours to row away from the village, hike through the forest, pass through the larger town of Minvoul and find our car, still parked on the Mayor's front lawn. We sent one of the paddlers with a final gift for the chief: a short sleeved, tied died African suit jacket that we have carried around since Gambia for an occasion like this; this jacket, complete with shoulder pads, was the closest thing to a fruit cake that I have ever been given.
We left Minvoul with the intention of bypassing Libreville and dropping straight through Gabon into Congo; but we had misgivings about the possibility of purchasing visas in Congo for the DRC and Angola. We decided to make some expensive phone calls at the next large town. It was Friday afternoon by the time I got thru to the U.S. Embassy in Congo and the only American on hand was the marine doing security duty at the front desk. He couldn't answer any of my questions; but, he was able to call the duty officer, who called me back at a random Gabonese telecenter perhaps fifteen minutes later. She was similarly confounded by my questions about road conditions, ferries around DRC and specialized car documents, so further telephoning ensued. Few hours of daylight remained when we realized that we would need to abandon our aspiration to reach Congo by Sunday and, instead, purchase our visas in Libreville, a city that we were avoiding on the basis of its reputation for being obnoxiously expensive, overly westernized and boring.
We pulled into Libreville on the following afternoon and tried to avoid getting lost by heading directly for the coastal road. The only hotel in our price range was the Catholic mission; but there wasn't anybody around to show us rooms or discuss pricing. This was frustrating; so we decided to look for cheap food. We were fortunate enough to drive straight into the most energetic and restaurant packed of Libreville's quartiers and word of mouth lead us quickly to a reasonable unmarked hotel. This was Saturday.
Gabonese nightlife was much more authentic, enjoyable and affordable than we had been lead to expect and our hotel was situated directly in the middle of it. Our neighborhood, known as "Louis" fills with traffic around 10pm and remains congested until 2 or 3am; it remains lively until you feel like sleeping. Gabonese women of exceptional beauty and other African women able to pay the staggering cost of Gabon's residency permit pack the nightclubs, admire their reflections and hope their gamble will bear fruit. Dancing with the mirror is an ordinary aspect of African club life. There is much less shyness about dancing and there is no shame about being alone. The more expensive the club, the fewer the men; but that is normal too. The people were talkative, unpretentious, ready to dance and seldom clingy. The more affordable gender balanced nightlife was just two streets away; it featured less dancing and more television.
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