Monday, January 23, 2006
Libreville Extended. (Mid January 2006)
The embassy of Angola disappointed us early Monday morning with the news that they would be processing our visas for a full week. There was no way, official or otherwise, to accelerate this process. The embassy of DRC was also going to take a minimum of three days to issue our visas so we were suddenly confronted with two full weeks in Libreville as compared to our expected six days in Gabon. There is nothing to be done in such situations. We hung around our neighborhood, occasionally cooked our own food, caught up with the internet, and looked around for people doing work on HIV/AIDS.
In contrast to the rest of the country, Libreville is full of posters and billboards with messages about AIDS. Bongo, the man just "re-elected" to serve his fifth decade as head of state, has his face all over them. That doesn't make them special. Bongo's face is on everything. I would estimate-conservatively-that at any given moment five percent of Gabon's adult population are wearing a Bongo t-shirt, of which there are more than fifteen varieties. Those not wearing his t-shirt might be wearing dresses made of fabric printed with dozens of his smiling faces or even serving up the family's dinner in special Bongo cooking pots. This does not necessarily indicate his level of popularity; very few people living on or below the edge of poverty will refuse a free shirt and fewer will choose to wear something tatty and old when a respectable replacement is on hand.
Bongo likes control. Everybody working on HIV/AIDS is working under the Projet National Lutte Contre le SIDA (PNLS); their materials and promotions conform to his wishes. Details on his PNLS and a fragmentary overview of the state of HIV/AIDS in Gabon will shortly be available on the HIV/AIDS section of the website.
Our first week in Libreville passed quickly. After collecting our passports on Friday morning, we intended to pack the car and drive to Coco Beach where we could spend the weekend camping and spending no money. We got as far as packing the car. During this procedure, a friendly young French woman named Crystal approached us, since she had been informed by the people on her street that we were English speaking travelers. She has lived in Gabon for nearly thirty years and was quick to inform us that Coco Beach is completely unworth visiting. She shared a considerable amount of valuable information with us and learned a bit about our travels. Then she offered to help. She operates a small hotel behind a large French military base and her English husband, Dean, operates the adjacent restaurant-where they make the best pizza I have tasted in Africa. They opened La Catalina to us, essentially giving us free room and board for five days. Their establishment was comfortable and the food was a much needed and delicious departure from boiled cassava and soggy river fish.
They totally removed the financial stress of remaining in Libreville for so much longer than we had planned and we enjoyed the added benefit of getting along excellently with Dean, who moved to Gabon five years ago. Dean is a former paratrooper from Windsor who is also experienced in driving hearses, cleaning up human remains, bouncing for ruckus nightclubs, sculpting with wood and defending himself. He showed us sides of Libreville that we could neither have found nor afforded, brought our knowledge of military history up to date, called me "Custer", let us watch Star Wars 3, played with us on his playstation 2 and woke me up one morning with a flash bang. He and Crystal helped Gabon to become yet another of the countries that I hope to revisit. When we arrived at the embassy of DRC early Monday morning of our second week only to learn that they would be closed for two days to celebrate Cabila's rise to power, I was almost glad. By that point I was enjoying Libreville.
The embassy of Angola disappointed us early Monday morning with the news that they would be processing our visas for a full week. There was no way, official or otherwise, to accelerate this process. The embassy of DRC was also going to take a minimum of three days to issue our visas so we were suddenly confronted with two full weeks in Libreville as compared to our expected six days in Gabon. There is nothing to be done in such situations. We hung around our neighborhood, occasionally cooked our own food, caught up with the internet, and looked around for people doing work on HIV/AIDS.
In contrast to the rest of the country, Libreville is full of posters and billboards with messages about AIDS. Bongo, the man just "re-elected" to serve his fifth decade as head of state, has his face all over them. That doesn't make them special. Bongo's face is on everything. I would estimate-conservatively-that at any given moment five percent of Gabon's adult population are wearing a Bongo t-shirt, of which there are more than fifteen varieties. Those not wearing his t-shirt might be wearing dresses made of fabric printed with dozens of his smiling faces or even serving up the family's dinner in special Bongo cooking pots. This does not necessarily indicate his level of popularity; very few people living on or below the edge of poverty will refuse a free shirt and fewer will choose to wear something tatty and old when a respectable replacement is on hand.
Bongo likes control. Everybody working on HIV/AIDS is working under the Projet National Lutte Contre le SIDA (PNLS); their materials and promotions conform to his wishes. Details on his PNLS and a fragmentary overview of the state of HIV/AIDS in Gabon will shortly be available on the HIV/AIDS section of the website.
Our first week in Libreville passed quickly. After collecting our passports on Friday morning, we intended to pack the car and drive to Coco Beach where we could spend the weekend camping and spending no money. We got as far as packing the car. During this procedure, a friendly young French woman named Crystal approached us, since she had been informed by the people on her street that we were English speaking travelers. She has lived in Gabon for nearly thirty years and was quick to inform us that Coco Beach is completely unworth visiting. She shared a considerable amount of valuable information with us and learned a bit about our travels. Then she offered to help. She operates a small hotel behind a large French military base and her English husband, Dean, operates the adjacent restaurant-where they make the best pizza I have tasted in Africa. They opened La Catalina to us, essentially giving us free room and board for five days. Their establishment was comfortable and the food was a much needed and delicious departure from boiled cassava and soggy river fish.
They totally removed the financial stress of remaining in Libreville for so much longer than we had planned and we enjoyed the added benefit of getting along excellently with Dean, who moved to Gabon five years ago. Dean is a former paratrooper from Windsor who is also experienced in driving hearses, cleaning up human remains, bouncing for ruckus nightclubs, sculpting with wood and defending himself. He showed us sides of Libreville that we could neither have found nor afforded, brought our knowledge of military history up to date, called me "Custer", let us watch Star Wars 3, played with us on his playstation 2 and woke me up one morning with a flash bang. He and Crystal helped Gabon to become yet another of the countries that I hope to revisit. When we arrived at the embassy of DRC early Monday morning of our second week only to learn that they would be closed for two days to celebrate Cabila's rise to power, I was almost glad. By that point I was enjoying Libreville.
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