Nathaniel's Blog
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
The Mixed Blessing of Arriving in Namibia.
This is just a quick note to alert the reading public that we have safely reached Namibia. From this point onward, road conditions are wonderful and infrastructure works--at least until East Africa. We have a telephone number: 081 209 0469 and hope to hear from anyone who wants to remind us of family or friendship.
Tomorrow or the next day I'll try to post something that gives a vague idea of what Angolans are dealing with and the shockingly abrupt rather ugly transition into Namibia, which looks, at least in the north, exactly like a flat middle western American suburb. Exactly: brand names, bland shop fronts, nothing made of corrugate or burlap international aid sacks, clothing that appears to have been owned only once, well fed white people, cars with nothing tied to the roof (except for ours) and expensive things. I doubt that there is more culture shock available anywhere in the diverse world of African overland border crossings.
This is just a quick note to alert the reading public that we have safely reached Namibia. From this point onward, road conditions are wonderful and infrastructure works--at least until East Africa. We have a telephone number: 081 209 0469 and hope to hear from anyone who wants to remind us of family or friendship.
Tomorrow or the next day I'll try to post something that gives a vague idea of what Angolans are dealing with and the shockingly abrupt rather ugly transition into Namibia, which looks, at least in the north, exactly like a flat middle western American suburb. Exactly: brand names, bland shop fronts, nothing made of corrugate or burlap international aid sacks, clothing that appears to have been owned only once, well fed white people, cars with nothing tied to the roof (except for ours) and expensive things. I doubt that there is more culture shock available anywhere in the diverse world of African overland border crossings.
Delightful Formalities at the DRC/Angola border.
Our visas for DRC only permit seven days, so we needed to hustle out. It took most of Tuesday morning to track down a new battery, several fuses, a new (and equally aggravating) jack and our lucky third spare tire. Tcheke's brother accompanied us through the confusing outskirts of the enormous city until we were clearly headed for the border town with Angola. Then he returned.
Things went swimmingly for about two hours until we found ourselves in a sprawling line of parked trucks, walking people and armed men. Drivers sitting beneath their trailers told us we would probably be passing the night where we'd parked. Great. It felt like a refugee scenario; so we started speculating about guard duty and rationing.
At the front of this congestion was an obstructive truck, abandoned by its driver who was unprepared or unwilling to pay the massive sixty dollar road toll demand by the booths at the center of the two sided mangle. Tons of police and military sat around looking bored with their automatic weapons, solving no problems, but suggesting, with their presence, that everyone should remain patient.
Somehow, after two hours or so, the congestion was relieved and we made our way forward. We reached the border on the following evening and were informed that our visas for Angola, which cost $120 each and a week's worth of waiting in Libreville, would not be honored. The cockroach imbecile functionary who hastily changed the dates of validity to cover his incompetent clerical error had falsified and annulled the costly stickers. In order to make Sean and Tuuli accept these muddled visas, he equipped them with some important looking photocopied documents, which upon closer inspection proved to be neither dated nor signed.
The helpful Chief Kapi on the DRC side tried calling his Angolan counterpart, Chief Noe, to arrange for our safe passage. Everything seemed diplomatically facilitated until the Angolan saw how our papers had been modified-it was a graver problem than Chief Kapi had explained. Chief Noe expressed a willingness to admit us in order to avoid a high level diplomatic problem; but he informed us that we would probably be harassed or arrested at the first of many thorough immigration check points that we would pass through en route. He advised us to return to DRC the next morning to consult the Consular Officer of Angola in a nearby town. We spent the night legally nowhere, unofficially denied entry to Angola, under the watchful eyes of the Angolan border patrol-one of whom taught us a four person card game somewhat like simple bridge.
The next day was stressful, expensive, endless, vexing and busy. I called the US embassy to request their pressure on Angola's representative and their efforts may indeed have expedited the reissuing of visas, which we obtained at exactly four o’clock that afternoon. Their intervention did not, however, make the bloated Consular Officer refrain from charging us $80 each for the new visas, nor does it seem like the thieving cretin in Libreville will suffer for his unauthorized nonsense-despite the fact that the money swallowing Consul in DRC swore to have him sent to prison.
The secretaries added a fee for the great effort it took them to be totally brusque and unpleasant and we were charged a foolish amount of money for the unexpected passport photographs that became necessary. Despite all of this rigmarole, we were in Angola, legally, by 5:30pm and with two visas-since nobody was willing to officially cancel the former, which makes it nearly impossible for us to ever seek reimbursement.
As we began to crawl along degraded mountain roads toward Luanda, we understood nothing of the relentless length of Angola. We even looked forward to a point just a few hundred kilometers down on our Michelin map where the white unfinished road became demarcated as a red well-finished central artery.
Our visas for DRC only permit seven days, so we needed to hustle out. It took most of Tuesday morning to track down a new battery, several fuses, a new (and equally aggravating) jack and our lucky third spare tire. Tcheke's brother accompanied us through the confusing outskirts of the enormous city until we were clearly headed for the border town with Angola. Then he returned.
Things went swimmingly for about two hours until we found ourselves in a sprawling line of parked trucks, walking people and armed men. Drivers sitting beneath their trailers told us we would probably be passing the night where we'd parked. Great. It felt like a refugee scenario; so we started speculating about guard duty and rationing.
At the front of this congestion was an obstructive truck, abandoned by its driver who was unprepared or unwilling to pay the massive sixty dollar road toll demand by the booths at the center of the two sided mangle. Tons of police and military sat around looking bored with their automatic weapons, solving no problems, but suggesting, with their presence, that everyone should remain patient.
Somehow, after two hours or so, the congestion was relieved and we made our way forward. We reached the border on the following evening and were informed that our visas for Angola, which cost $120 each and a week's worth of waiting in Libreville, would not be honored. The cockroach imbecile functionary who hastily changed the dates of validity to cover his incompetent clerical error had falsified and annulled the costly stickers. In order to make Sean and Tuuli accept these muddled visas, he equipped them with some important looking photocopied documents, which upon closer inspection proved to be neither dated nor signed.
The helpful Chief Kapi on the DRC side tried calling his Angolan counterpart, Chief Noe, to arrange for our safe passage. Everything seemed diplomatically facilitated until the Angolan saw how our papers had been modified-it was a graver problem than Chief Kapi had explained. Chief Noe expressed a willingness to admit us in order to avoid a high level diplomatic problem; but he informed us that we would probably be harassed or arrested at the first of many thorough immigration check points that we would pass through en route. He advised us to return to DRC the next morning to consult the Consular Officer of Angola in a nearby town. We spent the night legally nowhere, unofficially denied entry to Angola, under the watchful eyes of the Angolan border patrol-one of whom taught us a four person card game somewhat like simple bridge.
The next day was stressful, expensive, endless, vexing and busy. I called the US embassy to request their pressure on Angola's representative and their efforts may indeed have expedited the reissuing of visas, which we obtained at exactly four o’clock that afternoon. Their intervention did not, however, make the bloated Consular Officer refrain from charging us $80 each for the new visas, nor does it seem like the thieving cretin in Libreville will suffer for his unauthorized nonsense-despite the fact that the money swallowing Consul in DRC swore to have him sent to prison.
The secretaries added a fee for the great effort it took them to be totally brusque and unpleasant and we were charged a foolish amount of money for the unexpected passport photographs that became necessary. Despite all of this rigmarole, we were in Angola, legally, by 5:30pm and with two visas-since nobody was willing to officially cancel the former, which makes it nearly impossible for us to ever seek reimbursement.
As we began to crawl along degraded mountain roads toward Luanda, we understood nothing of the relentless length of Angola. We even looked forward to a point just a few hundred kilometers down on our Michelin map where the white unfinished road became demarcated as a red well-finished central artery.
The Traffic Cop is a Limpet Fish.
On Monday we drove back into town to visit the professional friend of a journalist who Tuuli and I met at a ceremony of thanks to the World Bank in a swanky Brazzaville hotel. We attended that bizarre lightning fast consumption of free food and beverage in the hopes of meeting the chairman of Brazzaville's association of homosexuals living with AIDS-the first association of its kind that we have encountered in Africa. But, as the National Coordinator of all projects against HIV/AIDS in the Republic of Congo explained to us, the association is still essentially in the closet and tends to be camera shy. We were lucky to come out of the event with the contact information for Mr. Serge, the managing director of RTG@, an internationally broadcast, Kinshasa based television station.
Mr. Serge connected us with Nelly, his health correspondent and a beautiful woman. She agreed to show us to an exemplary HIV/AIDS organization and she was in the process of doing so when a pushy and corrupt traffic cop blocked our way and then jumped into her lap, demanding that we pull off of the road. He directed Sean to the hang out of his obnoxious uniformed henchmen and began trying to extort money from us under the pretense that Sean was not respecting the necessary distance between the Stingray and the vehicle before it. Nelly took the first round of debate; Tuuli and I attempted a second and third. Our miserly offering of money for soft drinks was accepted and promptly forgotten until, eventually, Mr. Serge was driven over from the station in suit and S.U.V. to ameliorate the situation. His gracious behavior unhooked us and somehow simultaneously equipped us with a personal police escort for the rest of the day.
The Stingray has three seats. We subjected Nelly to the shared indignation of the back seat/pantry/closet and I sat behind the gear stick on the tape containing divider hump to avoid sitting on our adversary's lap. He barked directions at Sean and interrogated us on our backgrounds and marital status. Nelly turned the tables and we learned that he has no wife but five children, some of them in school. Our interview and site visit lasted a few hours, during which our bright blue and yellow helmeted limpet fish sat awkwardly in the background witnessing how a woman roughly his own age living with AIDS organizes a school and skill training center for hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children. As we walked to the second branch of her project, the policeman stopped traffic for us whenever we crossed a street; he also yelled at any motorist whose conduct displeased him.
On the way back, I asked him if this was his first time conducting journalistic research. He answered, in good faith, that it was and that he understood for the first time that you actually need an education to perform work of this variety. He was contemplative for a while; then I tried making him feel awe of and admiration for his altruistic fellow city-dwellers. Then I got him to admit that Sean is a good driver. Then he started yelling at people again. That lasted until one in a group of students passing on foot bopped Sean in the face through the open window. The policeman seemed to miss that particular infraction and begged Nelly, after we were clear of the group, which could have ripped him in half, to explain for us why the students were so "naughty." Their anger, she said, stems from the government's failure to assist them with costs, especially the costs of transportation. As a result of this, many thousands of them must walk long dirty distances at least twice a day. They have grown to resent motorists, and, apparently, Sean's face.
On Monday we drove back into town to visit the professional friend of a journalist who Tuuli and I met at a ceremony of thanks to the World Bank in a swanky Brazzaville hotel. We attended that bizarre lightning fast consumption of free food and beverage in the hopes of meeting the chairman of Brazzaville's association of homosexuals living with AIDS-the first association of its kind that we have encountered in Africa. But, as the National Coordinator of all projects against HIV/AIDS in the Republic of Congo explained to us, the association is still essentially in the closet and tends to be camera shy. We were lucky to come out of the event with the contact information for Mr. Serge, the managing director of RTG@, an internationally broadcast, Kinshasa based television station.
Mr. Serge connected us with Nelly, his health correspondent and a beautiful woman. She agreed to show us to an exemplary HIV/AIDS organization and she was in the process of doing so when a pushy and corrupt traffic cop blocked our way and then jumped into her lap, demanding that we pull off of the road. He directed Sean to the hang out of his obnoxious uniformed henchmen and began trying to extort money from us under the pretense that Sean was not respecting the necessary distance between the Stingray and the vehicle before it. Nelly took the first round of debate; Tuuli and I attempted a second and third. Our miserly offering of money for soft drinks was accepted and promptly forgotten until, eventually, Mr. Serge was driven over from the station in suit and S.U.V. to ameliorate the situation. His gracious behavior unhooked us and somehow simultaneously equipped us with a personal police escort for the rest of the day.
The Stingray has three seats. We subjected Nelly to the shared indignation of the back seat/pantry/closet and I sat behind the gear stick on the tape containing divider hump to avoid sitting on our adversary's lap. He barked directions at Sean and interrogated us on our backgrounds and marital status. Nelly turned the tables and we learned that he has no wife but five children, some of them in school. Our interview and site visit lasted a few hours, during which our bright blue and yellow helmeted limpet fish sat awkwardly in the background witnessing how a woman roughly his own age living with AIDS organizes a school and skill training center for hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children. As we walked to the second branch of her project, the policeman stopped traffic for us whenever we crossed a street; he also yelled at any motorist whose conduct displeased him.
On the way back, I asked him if this was his first time conducting journalistic research. He answered, in good faith, that it was and that he understood for the first time that you actually need an education to perform work of this variety. He was contemplative for a while; then I tried making him feel awe of and admiration for his altruistic fellow city-dwellers. Then I got him to admit that Sean is a good driver. Then he started yelling at people again. That lasted until one in a group of students passing on foot bopped Sean in the face through the open window. The policeman seemed to miss that particular infraction and begged Nelly, after we were clear of the group, which could have ripped him in half, to explain for us why the students were so "naughty." Their anger, she said, stems from the government's failure to assist them with costs, especially the costs of transportation. As a result of this, many thousands of them must walk long dirty distances at least twice a day. They have grown to resent motorists, and, apparently, Sean's face.
The Cold War in Kinshasa, Saturday Night.
The next morning a hotel worker named Armand was sympathetic to our unwillingness to pay the hotel’s inflated breakfast prices. He walked us to a two table broad plank café where everything was one tenth the price. We just happened to fill the four remaining chairs around a man reading an artsy French hardbound cartoon book. He turned out to be a journalist for the society section of Le Phare, one of DRC's quotidian newspapers. Tcheke turned out to be a good friend and a wonderful host. He and Armand took turns showing us through Lemba and Super Lemba-the young and lively neighborhood into which the old man had guided us. It was home to both men from their infancy and both were especially fond of it. I hadn’t expected to see nearly this much of Kinshasa by foot. There was no noticeable police or military presence, despite the huge traffic and tens or hundreds of thousands of people, so I asked about security in the neighborhood and for us specifically. Armand laughed. That is not a problem. If any one comes to make a problem with you, others will stop them. There are many sportive people here who are studying karate and martial arts. When somebody makes trouble, those men stop them. I looked around trying to spot the administers of this justice.
That evening we met up with Tcheke and his friends who were ready to show us Kinshasa on Saturday night. The country's most famous singer is the spokesperson for Primus, the country's most popular beer. He was performing a free concert at an outdoor city park in another section of town. Approximately five thousand people crowded in front of his stage, at least 95% of them were men. Thankfully, few of them were drinking the beer that was flowing at promotional rates. Djibili, the musician, dressed like a pudgy, flamboyant ninja in flowy black MC Hammer pants with red sashes over his loose black top. He accompanied his monochromatic and edgeless, bouncy, percussive dance music with a strong voice and cookie cutter lyrics. The performative highlight was definitely his synchronized rump shaking lady dancers. When they returned the stage to Djibili and his line of dancing men, hundreds of people loudly booed. I may, in fact, have been one of them.
When I was beginning to feel safe in the 1am downtown Kinshasa semi-circle of my new friends, Djibili interrupted one of his songs to sound the alarm: Armee Rouge. Armee Rouge, a cry picked up by a crowd suddenly frantic and pushy. Tough and fully matured men squirreled into the crowd and away from the five meter swath carved by the Red Army's early departure. The Red Army hardly filled its corridor of deference; two or three dozen young men and boys swaggered, quickly, through the cowering audience and into the dark. They wore no colors. Some members must have been twelve or thirteen years old. None appeared to be over twenty-two. Nevertheless, one of the most famous men in the DRC had to warn a mob of thousands to get the hell out of their way. I was not waiting eagerly for crowded panic; so I remained in flight or flight mode for the next hour. I can't imagine any gang in the United States commanding that degree of dreadful respect.
Twenty minutes later people were yelling—Dragons Dragons—and pushing in the opposite direction. (Both times our hosts corralled us protectively away.) We left before the KGB and the CIA, gangs that apparently enjoyed the show enough to see it through. Tcheke's friend, Joe, explained that the gangs were able to come to this show without great violence by agreeing, in advance, on which distinct areas they would occupy while spectating. They simply need to throw a few punches for the red exit carpet to roll out.
We left when it became particularly obvious that about two dozen people were gradually closing in around our group, dancing into a bizarre clump well behind the thick packed fans. We all felt it at nearly the same time. When Joe said, I think its time to go, we all filed out, smushed into the little sedan and drove to an open air dance club within our price range. That means we encountered a sleepy crowd of sad looking men watching a handful of the city's less florid night walkers dance with themselves in the mirror. On the bright side, my Turbo Kings ("An Affair of Men"-a billboard slogan that can put Tuuli in a bad mood for nearly thirty minutes) were cheap and it was calm enough to converse with our friends.
We spent Sunday with Tcheke's pleasant family, eating the delicious home cooking of his mother, who is widely known as Mama Tcheke, despite her healthy quantity of other children.
The next morning a hotel worker named Armand was sympathetic to our unwillingness to pay the hotel’s inflated breakfast prices. He walked us to a two table broad plank café where everything was one tenth the price. We just happened to fill the four remaining chairs around a man reading an artsy French hardbound cartoon book. He turned out to be a journalist for the society section of Le Phare, one of DRC's quotidian newspapers. Tcheke turned out to be a good friend and a wonderful host. He and Armand took turns showing us through Lemba and Super Lemba-the young and lively neighborhood into which the old man had guided us. It was home to both men from their infancy and both were especially fond of it. I hadn’t expected to see nearly this much of Kinshasa by foot. There was no noticeable police or military presence, despite the huge traffic and tens or hundreds of thousands of people, so I asked about security in the neighborhood and for us specifically. Armand laughed. That is not a problem. If any one comes to make a problem with you, others will stop them. There are many sportive people here who are studying karate and martial arts. When somebody makes trouble, those men stop them. I looked around trying to spot the administers of this justice.
That evening we met up with Tcheke and his friends who were ready to show us Kinshasa on Saturday night. The country's most famous singer is the spokesperson for Primus, the country's most popular beer. He was performing a free concert at an outdoor city park in another section of town. Approximately five thousand people crowded in front of his stage, at least 95% of them were men. Thankfully, few of them were drinking the beer that was flowing at promotional rates. Djibili, the musician, dressed like a pudgy, flamboyant ninja in flowy black MC Hammer pants with red sashes over his loose black top. He accompanied his monochromatic and edgeless, bouncy, percussive dance music with a strong voice and cookie cutter lyrics. The performative highlight was definitely his synchronized rump shaking lady dancers. When they returned the stage to Djibili and his line of dancing men, hundreds of people loudly booed. I may, in fact, have been one of them.
When I was beginning to feel safe in the 1am downtown Kinshasa semi-circle of my new friends, Djibili interrupted one of his songs to sound the alarm: Armee Rouge. Armee Rouge, a cry picked up by a crowd suddenly frantic and pushy. Tough and fully matured men squirreled into the crowd and away from the five meter swath carved by the Red Army's early departure. The Red Army hardly filled its corridor of deference; two or three dozen young men and boys swaggered, quickly, through the cowering audience and into the dark. They wore no colors. Some members must have been twelve or thirteen years old. None appeared to be over twenty-two. Nevertheless, one of the most famous men in the DRC had to warn a mob of thousands to get the hell out of their way. I was not waiting eagerly for crowded panic; so I remained in flight or flight mode for the next hour. I can't imagine any gang in the United States commanding that degree of dreadful respect.
Twenty minutes later people were yelling—Dragons Dragons—and pushing in the opposite direction. (Both times our hosts corralled us protectively away.) We left before the KGB and the CIA, gangs that apparently enjoyed the show enough to see it through. Tcheke's friend, Joe, explained that the gangs were able to come to this show without great violence by agreeing, in advance, on which distinct areas they would occupy while spectating. They simply need to throw a few punches for the red exit carpet to roll out.
We left when it became particularly obvious that about two dozen people were gradually closing in around our group, dancing into a bizarre clump well behind the thick packed fans. We all felt it at nearly the same time. When Joe said, I think its time to go, we all filed out, smushed into the little sedan and drove to an open air dance club within our price range. That means we encountered a sleepy crowd of sad looking men watching a handful of the city's less florid night walkers dance with themselves in the mirror. On the bright side, my Turbo Kings ("An Affair of Men"-a billboard slogan that can put Tuuli in a bad mood for nearly thirty minutes) were cheap and it was calm enough to converse with our friends.
We spent Sunday with Tcheke's pleasant family, eating the delicious home cooking of his mother, who is widely known as Mama Tcheke, despite her healthy quantity of other children.
We are a danger to the Democratic Republic of Congo
The Kinshasa side of the border crossing seemed much tidier, more like an airport. Within minutes our car was stamped in and so were we. Immigration and customs washed their hands of us and stood by as the ministry of health stepped in. This affable man was clearly not heartbroken to inform us that our car would have to be disinfected at a cost to us of forty American dollars. All the other cars rolled on by; his accomplice in CDC jumpsuit and surgeon's mask prepared his bogus canister of Stingray disinfectant. Come on, I said, I work with doctors in the Gambia; I scrub the car with detol every week; it is not "a danger to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo." He assured me that I did not understand microbes and then he agreed not to disinfect the interior. If the microbes are on the outside, I argued, then it is too late. The whole ferry boat is already infected; the people sitting on our car, the people touching it, the three of us! We are already infected. So, this disinfection is useless. He assured me that I did not understand microbes. He refused a gift of ten dollars and dropped his price to twenty. I offered to disinfect the car myself to save money; I volunteered to wear the suit. He assured me that this was not an option, produced a lengthy legal document with scores of clauses about foreign disease, obligatory sanitation and deportation. Then he began to lament how he would have to send us back across the river and started walking away.
As his minion approached our vehicle, a crowd gathered to watch the disinfection, some of them cautioning others to stay away from us. I asked the contented pigswine with our twenty dollar bill if this was our welcome to the DRC. I asked if he was happy to embarrass us in front of one hundred of his countrymen. I asked him if we were disgusting. I asked him if he thought that I was an animal. All affability and apology, so sincerely saddened by the necessity of his duty, he embraced me. He squeezed me tight for too long while explaining that he would not hug me if he thought that I was infected with disease. He begged us not to think he wanted our humiliation; he asked for our phone number so that he could prove to us what a stand up con artist he was. Thanks. We left and tried to reach the US Embassy before their lazy time closing hours-we figured that they would have a real map of Kinshasa and advice about where not to stay or walk around. Friday 1pm. Of course they are all closed up, cell phones off—it can be a cushy job. The marine on the other side of the you-can't-break-into-America-in-fact-you-can't-even-smell-America unbreakable glass photocopied a decent map for us and advised us under no circumstances to show our original passports to DRC officials. I imagine that it must be easy to do that if you are a marine.
We grabbed an old man (old is good) who was selling a collapsing well carved wooden stool. He was willing to show us the way to cheap accommodation. Now that it was essential to drive with the windows down, the Stingray was kind enough to sabotage its fan and ventilation system. The old man took us to a swanky Protestant mission. A room was going to cost fifty dollars a night (absolutely not); but they couldn't make one available. Could we set up our tents? Sure, at twenty dollars per person, yes we could. Thanks. I guess we'll just go find a manger. An earnest appeal to their sympathy for under-resourced much harried, recently disinfected and totally disoriented travelers yielded smirks. Cheers. We found in our guide book from 1989 that this hostel is notorious for trying to rip off travelers.
It had already been a slow going, hard sweating hour in our company, but the old man was patient and hospitable. On the six lane main street of Kinshasa a car was stopped near the center. Three people were leaning into the back seat beating a well dressed black passenger in the face. He appeared to be losing consciousness. Two young men ran in front of our car, gesturing for us to slow; they smiled at Sean, crossed two lanes of traffic and joined in the lopsided broad daylight beating. A crowd surrounded all the other doors. The cops at the intersection 150 meters ahead were doing nothing. It was probably safer that way. Windows up, doors locked, tire iron, sweat soaked, following the old man’s lead far out of the city, past the industrial zone, by the port, the university and the airport. The place that he brought us looked too expensive and we began to fear the long crowded ride back into town. But the price was right. We dropped the old fellow some gratitude and chipped away at our stress behind the bars of the hotel's second story beer veranda. I have never derived more enjoyment from being caged.
The Kinshasa side of the border crossing seemed much tidier, more like an airport. Within minutes our car was stamped in and so were we. Immigration and customs washed their hands of us and stood by as the ministry of health stepped in. This affable man was clearly not heartbroken to inform us that our car would have to be disinfected at a cost to us of forty American dollars. All the other cars rolled on by; his accomplice in CDC jumpsuit and surgeon's mask prepared his bogus canister of Stingray disinfectant. Come on, I said, I work with doctors in the Gambia; I scrub the car with detol every week; it is not "a danger to the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo." He assured me that I did not understand microbes and then he agreed not to disinfect the interior. If the microbes are on the outside, I argued, then it is too late. The whole ferry boat is already infected; the people sitting on our car, the people touching it, the three of us! We are already infected. So, this disinfection is useless. He assured me that I did not understand microbes. He refused a gift of ten dollars and dropped his price to twenty. I offered to disinfect the car myself to save money; I volunteered to wear the suit. He assured me that this was not an option, produced a lengthy legal document with scores of clauses about foreign disease, obligatory sanitation and deportation. Then he began to lament how he would have to send us back across the river and started walking away.
As his minion approached our vehicle, a crowd gathered to watch the disinfection, some of them cautioning others to stay away from us. I asked the contented pigswine with our twenty dollar bill if this was our welcome to the DRC. I asked if he was happy to embarrass us in front of one hundred of his countrymen. I asked him if we were disgusting. I asked him if he thought that I was an animal. All affability and apology, so sincerely saddened by the necessity of his duty, he embraced me. He squeezed me tight for too long while explaining that he would not hug me if he thought that I was infected with disease. He begged us not to think he wanted our humiliation; he asked for our phone number so that he could prove to us what a stand up con artist he was. Thanks. We left and tried to reach the US Embassy before their lazy time closing hours-we figured that they would have a real map of Kinshasa and advice about where not to stay or walk around. Friday 1pm. Of course they are all closed up, cell phones off—it can be a cushy job. The marine on the other side of the you-can't-break-into-America-in-fact-you-can't-even-smell-America unbreakable glass photocopied a decent map for us and advised us under no circumstances to show our original passports to DRC officials. I imagine that it must be easy to do that if you are a marine.
We grabbed an old man (old is good) who was selling a collapsing well carved wooden stool. He was willing to show us the way to cheap accommodation. Now that it was essential to drive with the windows down, the Stingray was kind enough to sabotage its fan and ventilation system. The old man took us to a swanky Protestant mission. A room was going to cost fifty dollars a night (absolutely not); but they couldn't make one available. Could we set up our tents? Sure, at twenty dollars per person, yes we could. Thanks. I guess we'll just go find a manger. An earnest appeal to their sympathy for under-resourced much harried, recently disinfected and totally disoriented travelers yielded smirks. Cheers. We found in our guide book from 1989 that this hostel is notorious for trying to rip off travelers.
It had already been a slow going, hard sweating hour in our company, but the old man was patient and hospitable. On the six lane main street of Kinshasa a car was stopped near the center. Three people were leaning into the back seat beating a well dressed black passenger in the face. He appeared to be losing consciousness. Two young men ran in front of our car, gesturing for us to slow; they smiled at Sean, crossed two lanes of traffic and joined in the lopsided broad daylight beating. A crowd surrounded all the other doors. The cops at the intersection 150 meters ahead were doing nothing. It was probably safer that way. Windows up, doors locked, tire iron, sweat soaked, following the old man’s lead far out of the city, past the industrial zone, by the port, the university and the airport. The place that he brought us looked too expensive and we began to fear the long crowded ride back into town. But the price was right. We dropped the old fellow some gratitude and chipped away at our stress behind the bars of the hotel's second story beer veranda. I have never derived more enjoyment from being caged.
Transitioning From Gabon through Brazzaville and into Kinshasa.
Bongo, the ruler of Gabon has been uniting Central Africa the old fashioned way. He married the daughter of the president of Congo Brazzaville-a well calculated move when you consider that Sessou now leads the African Union. Bongo's marriage, in the short run, seems to benefit Congo more; her citizens are allowed to enter Gabon and seek employment there. Other Africans are taxed well over one thousand US Dollars (ten times as heavily as Westerners) for this lucrative opportunity; the Gabonese are not lining up to enter Congo. Good relations with Bongoland have likely assisted Congo’s move towards stability and they are also helpful to the Gabonese people in Bongo’s native region near the border of Northern Congo, where cultural similarities and a huge shared frontier legitimize porous borders.
The Congolese have every right to be proud of Brazzaville. The principal routes are driveable, the street lights work, the water is safe to drink and opportunists are moving in. I have never seen more Asian businesses in an African city; our hotel’s street felt like China town. The Lebanese have established their inevitable presence and all sorts of entrepreneurial West Africans-Malians, Burkinabe, Guineans-are doing business. The market, in general, felt West African: stall keepers prayed to Allah by piles of counterfeit athletic wear, Salif Keita and Kora music vied with Koranic recordings, people spoke Bambara and Puular, there were not that many plantains around.
We stayed in Brazzaville for four days, preparing to cross the underwhelming section of the Congo river that keeps Kinshasa from ruining everything laid back and workable about its neighbor. People from this side of the river repeatedly warned us: on the other side, they are not like us; they will fight for no reason; they are angry. Be careful. The only person we know personally who has made this crossing hired several guards with assault rifles to accompany him and his vehicle across the river. He advised us to avoid the ferry at all costs. But, all costs were paid and insufficient. Tuuli and I went to the port a day in advance to do some reconnaissance.
The Brazza Congolese had erected a repetitive and parasitic maze of bogus taxation and revenue collection that will certainly ruin anyone's experience there; but they seem to have brought unofficial theft under control; so it was less menacing than tedious.
The boat itself was a bit more thuggish. We canned ourselves up in the Stingray like coward fish and sweat uncontrollably while several policemen used substantial whips made of rolled brown paper and packing tape to keep people a few centimeters away from our car. I tapped my hand with the tire iron in the backseat while Sean and Tuuli tried to ignore everyone making the hand-to-mouth feed me gesture. People peered under, into and over the car. Everything was wrapped up, not like a present.
I expected dangerous jostling and insistent challenging behavior on the other side. I expected a city that would finally feel universally dangerous-Kinshasa is one of the three most dangerous cities in the planet. It has held that honor for years.
Bongo, the ruler of Gabon has been uniting Central Africa the old fashioned way. He married the daughter of the president of Congo Brazzaville-a well calculated move when you consider that Sessou now leads the African Union. Bongo's marriage, in the short run, seems to benefit Congo more; her citizens are allowed to enter Gabon and seek employment there. Other Africans are taxed well over one thousand US Dollars (ten times as heavily as Westerners) for this lucrative opportunity; the Gabonese are not lining up to enter Congo. Good relations with Bongoland have likely assisted Congo’s move towards stability and they are also helpful to the Gabonese people in Bongo’s native region near the border of Northern Congo, where cultural similarities and a huge shared frontier legitimize porous borders.
The Congolese have every right to be proud of Brazzaville. The principal routes are driveable, the street lights work, the water is safe to drink and opportunists are moving in. I have never seen more Asian businesses in an African city; our hotel’s street felt like China town. The Lebanese have established their inevitable presence and all sorts of entrepreneurial West Africans-Malians, Burkinabe, Guineans-are doing business. The market, in general, felt West African: stall keepers prayed to Allah by piles of counterfeit athletic wear, Salif Keita and Kora music vied with Koranic recordings, people spoke Bambara and Puular, there were not that many plantains around.
We stayed in Brazzaville for four days, preparing to cross the underwhelming section of the Congo river that keeps Kinshasa from ruining everything laid back and workable about its neighbor. People from this side of the river repeatedly warned us: on the other side, they are not like us; they will fight for no reason; they are angry. Be careful. The only person we know personally who has made this crossing hired several guards with assault rifles to accompany him and his vehicle across the river. He advised us to avoid the ferry at all costs. But, all costs were paid and insufficient. Tuuli and I went to the port a day in advance to do some reconnaissance.
The Brazza Congolese had erected a repetitive and parasitic maze of bogus taxation and revenue collection that will certainly ruin anyone's experience there; but they seem to have brought unofficial theft under control; so it was less menacing than tedious.
The boat itself was a bit more thuggish. We canned ourselves up in the Stingray like coward fish and sweat uncontrollably while several policemen used substantial whips made of rolled brown paper and packing tape to keep people a few centimeters away from our car. I tapped my hand with the tire iron in the backseat while Sean and Tuuli tried to ignore everyone making the hand-to-mouth feed me gesture. People peered under, into and over the car. Everything was wrapped up, not like a present.
I expected dangerous jostling and insistent challenging behavior on the other side. I expected a city that would finally feel universally dangerous-Kinshasa is one of the three most dangerous cities in the planet. It has held that honor for years.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Passing Thru Luanda, Angola
There will be blogs and articles from both Congos and Angola in probably ten days. Since we left Kinshasa we have not had electricity or roads that are flat and even enough to allow for back seat writing. We have also been waking at 630am and driving until 700pm. That puts us asleep by 9pm after cooking and cleaning. It is an exhausting routine, but necessary if we are to cover Angola in the limited time offered by our (second) transit visa. If, by some fluke, the roads or internet options improve ahead of schedule, the delay should be less significant and we can shed some light on the more threatening Central African cities and the shelled out, tsetse fly infested occasional mine fields of Angola.
Thanks for your patience and support.
There will be blogs and articles from both Congos and Angola in probably ten days. Since we left Kinshasa we have not had electricity or roads that are flat and even enough to allow for back seat writing. We have also been waking at 630am and driving until 700pm. That puts us asleep by 9pm after cooking and cleaning. It is an exhausting routine, but necessary if we are to cover Angola in the limited time offered by our (second) transit visa. If, by some fluke, the roads or internet options improve ahead of schedule, the delay should be less significant and we can shed some light on the more threatening Central African cities and the shelled out, tsetse fly infested occasional mine fields of Angola.
Thanks for your patience and support.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
The Mistaken Impression that Alfred is Evil (Last week of January 2006)
The heat wakes us up in the afternoon; we seek food in the village and play poker to kill time, expecting to hear word from Alfred at any moment. 11pm rolls around; we are tired again; there is no word from the truck, so we sleep. Very early in the morning, before our brains are functional, Alfred shows up asking to borrow our battery. He needs a quick jump that will help him to bring the truck back to our location so that we can carry on. This all sounds reasonable so we let him charge his machine and disappear, realizing only later that the truck is still stuck far behind us and that we have just lost the only possible leverage with which we could have bargained. This sours the afternoon and forces us to say many terrible things about Alfred and what should be done to him. We start making plans with the road construction company to have Alfred's cable clipped from our car and to seek the assistance of anyone else.
But Alfred reappears during the afternoon downpour to relieve our exasperation. He is ready to continue; but from here on out, the petrol leaking, two wheel drive, vegetable driven truck will not have the assistance of the Caterpillar; Alfred will be managing us both. We travel twenty kilometers and the truck gets stuck. The cabbage headed driver keeps making the most obvious errors and compounding their effects with the most impatient and ill advised efforts at self-extrication. We hate the truck. I like that small village boys run off with sardine cans full of the petrol that is leaking from the wounded rear of this huge inconvenience. It is 8pm; everyone in the truck wants to sleep, so we camp in front of the police check point and wait for morning-a handful of trucks pile up on either side of the blockage our convoy has made; their drivers descend and curse, setting camps of their own. We have drinks with Alfred and get to know his background; our viewpoint begins to soften. For the first seven hours of the following day the truck is pulled and pushed up a hill with an incline of less than six degrees. Villagers chop down young trees and long grasses to throw beneath the wheels of the tractor and the lump it drags behind. Our car is forgotten in this struggle, though it should have been towed ahead so that it would not later be necessary to pull us through the log strewn carnage that they are making of this simple hill.
Eventually, this, too, passes and we are dragged onward. A convoy of large trucks offers to tow us the rest of the way; but at this point, Alfred and Sean have worked out their umbilical chemistry and the car is suffering as little as possible. Achieving this careful balance was punishing; the car cannot afford someone else's learning curve, which commits us to Alfred's patient advancing. In the end, five days later, we arrive in Oyo where the paved road begins.
The heat wakes us up in the afternoon; we seek food in the village and play poker to kill time, expecting to hear word from Alfred at any moment. 11pm rolls around; we are tired again; there is no word from the truck, so we sleep. Very early in the morning, before our brains are functional, Alfred shows up asking to borrow our battery. He needs a quick jump that will help him to bring the truck back to our location so that we can carry on. This all sounds reasonable so we let him charge his machine and disappear, realizing only later that the truck is still stuck far behind us and that we have just lost the only possible leverage with which we could have bargained. This sours the afternoon and forces us to say many terrible things about Alfred and what should be done to him. We start making plans with the road construction company to have Alfred's cable clipped from our car and to seek the assistance of anyone else.
But Alfred reappears during the afternoon downpour to relieve our exasperation. He is ready to continue; but from here on out, the petrol leaking, two wheel drive, vegetable driven truck will not have the assistance of the Caterpillar; Alfred will be managing us both. We travel twenty kilometers and the truck gets stuck. The cabbage headed driver keeps making the most obvious errors and compounding their effects with the most impatient and ill advised efforts at self-extrication. We hate the truck. I like that small village boys run off with sardine cans full of the petrol that is leaking from the wounded rear of this huge inconvenience. It is 8pm; everyone in the truck wants to sleep, so we camp in front of the police check point and wait for morning-a handful of trucks pile up on either side of the blockage our convoy has made; their drivers descend and curse, setting camps of their own. We have drinks with Alfred and get to know his background; our viewpoint begins to soften. For the first seven hours of the following day the truck is pulled and pushed up a hill with an incline of less than six degrees. Villagers chop down young trees and long grasses to throw beneath the wheels of the tractor and the lump it drags behind. Our car is forgotten in this struggle, though it should have been towed ahead so that it would not later be necessary to pull us through the log strewn carnage that they are making of this simple hill.
Eventually, this, too, passes and we are dragged onward. A convoy of large trucks offers to tow us the rest of the way; but at this point, Alfred and Sean have worked out their umbilical chemistry and the car is suffering as little as possible. Achieving this careful balance was punishing; the car cannot afford someone else's learning curve, which commits us to Alfred's patient advancing. In the end, five days later, we arrive in Oyo where the paved road begins.
The Providential Appearance of Alfred (Third Week of January 2006)
Walking down the hill from its summit, struggling to discern whether or not some enormously circular detour can be arranged, we hear the welcome noise of industrial machinery. Sean is cooking pasta behind the Stingray when an old school John Deer tractor pulls into sight with five or six village men hanging from its sides. They are offering to tract us to Oyo more than two hundred kilometers away. Our original plan had been to make our own way to Congo's border town and then to stash the car in the back of a powerful truck; but the delegates of the tractor assure us that we will get no further and that we will find no truck. Naturally, this is what any shrewd businessman would say; but we have just seen the impossible and just run half a marathon and we like the idea of being helped. We agree to pay about $170 for this service, which is less than what we were told to expect.
In convoy with Alfred, the tractor's captain, is yesterday's Caterpillar with a different driver and an eighteen wheel truck full of petrol that is also making its way towards Oyo. This truck is two wheel drive, piloted by a disagreeable vegetable and the total responsibility of Alfred. We do not know any of these things. It looks like this truck is with the powerful machine and Alfred does not mention his other yoke. Within seventy meters our only tow rope snaps in half where it was conjoined with the frayed metal chord of our deliverers. Alfred's strong desire to drive at top speed results in several sudden jerks to the Stingray that snap the cable another three times and bend the tow loop of our frame straight forward.
In the darkness, stressed out of our minds by the blind luck involved in being swung around slippery corners, over devastating rocks and into vegetation by a powerful speed freak, we arrive at the border of Congo, expecting a mountain of nonsense and hard to get stamps. The crossing guards are friendly and informal. Quickly enough, all in a lantern lit woven hut half the size of a one car garage, we have our personal and automotive papers properly and effortlessly processed. It is around 9pm by the time we cross this border, trailing behind the truck and its Caterpillar, destined for the sleeping spot of Lekety. After several hours we overtake the truck which has driven completely off the road and begun to jackknife itself. The Caterpillar has obviously been working hard to create new roads and facilitate the movement of the truck; but these efforts have not succeeded. We are uncabled and made to wait.
This is the same day that we woke in the dark and ran for miles. I ask Alfred if we will have time to cook ourselves some dinner. He says it will be just a few minutes, which estimate is incorrect by more than twenty-four hours. John Deere and the Caterpillar strain and toil over the idiot truck with increasing desperation. The tractor punches a hole in the trailer's stern and it is now leaking fuel that is being collected in a bucket. The driver of the Caterpillar gets vertigo and starts vomiting, Alfred tries pulling the trailer in a way that is likely to cause the whole thing to tip over, which would destroy the Stingray, which is senselessly parked in the middle of the commotion. I have stayed out of all of the nonsense up until this point; but nobody seems ready to stop and the driver of the Caterpillar is actually passed out in his driving chair.
After a few rounds of debate, it is settled that Alfred and the Caterpillar will travel with us to Lekety, where we will be deposited to wait for the truck and where they can possibly find a bulldozer to assist them. We arrive in Lekety around 7am; having traveled for twenty six hours straight; somewhere along the way the speedometer and odometer cease functioning. There is some formal chattering to be done with the village chief, who is Alfred's older brother, but I excuse myself and collapse into my tent until early afternoon.
Walking down the hill from its summit, struggling to discern whether or not some enormously circular detour can be arranged, we hear the welcome noise of industrial machinery. Sean is cooking pasta behind the Stingray when an old school John Deer tractor pulls into sight with five or six village men hanging from its sides. They are offering to tract us to Oyo more than two hundred kilometers away. Our original plan had been to make our own way to Congo's border town and then to stash the car in the back of a powerful truck; but the delegates of the tractor assure us that we will get no further and that we will find no truck. Naturally, this is what any shrewd businessman would say; but we have just seen the impossible and just run half a marathon and we like the idea of being helped. We agree to pay about $170 for this service, which is less than what we were told to expect.
In convoy with Alfred, the tractor's captain, is yesterday's Caterpillar with a different driver and an eighteen wheel truck full of petrol that is also making its way towards Oyo. This truck is two wheel drive, piloted by a disagreeable vegetable and the total responsibility of Alfred. We do not know any of these things. It looks like this truck is with the powerful machine and Alfred does not mention his other yoke. Within seventy meters our only tow rope snaps in half where it was conjoined with the frayed metal chord of our deliverers. Alfred's strong desire to drive at top speed results in several sudden jerks to the Stingray that snap the cable another three times and bend the tow loop of our frame straight forward.
In the darkness, stressed out of our minds by the blind luck involved in being swung around slippery corners, over devastating rocks and into vegetation by a powerful speed freak, we arrive at the border of Congo, expecting a mountain of nonsense and hard to get stamps. The crossing guards are friendly and informal. Quickly enough, all in a lantern lit woven hut half the size of a one car garage, we have our personal and automotive papers properly and effortlessly processed. It is around 9pm by the time we cross this border, trailing behind the truck and its Caterpillar, destined for the sleeping spot of Lekety. After several hours we overtake the truck which has driven completely off the road and begun to jackknife itself. The Caterpillar has obviously been working hard to create new roads and facilitate the movement of the truck; but these efforts have not succeeded. We are uncabled and made to wait.
This is the same day that we woke in the dark and ran for miles. I ask Alfred if we will have time to cook ourselves some dinner. He says it will be just a few minutes, which estimate is incorrect by more than twenty-four hours. John Deere and the Caterpillar strain and toil over the idiot truck with increasing desperation. The tractor punches a hole in the trailer's stern and it is now leaking fuel that is being collected in a bucket. The driver of the Caterpillar gets vertigo and starts vomiting, Alfred tries pulling the trailer in a way that is likely to cause the whole thing to tip over, which would destroy the Stingray, which is senselessly parked in the middle of the commotion. I have stayed out of all of the nonsense up until this point; but nobody seems ready to stop and the driver of the Caterpillar is actually passed out in his driving chair.
After a few rounds of debate, it is settled that Alfred and the Caterpillar will travel with us to Lekety, where we will be deposited to wait for the truck and where they can possibly find a bulldozer to assist them. We arrive in Lekety around 7am; having traveled for twenty six hours straight; somewhere along the way the speedometer and odometer cease functioning. There is some formal chattering to be done with the village chief, who is Alfred's older brother, but I excuse myself and collapse into my tent until early afternoon.
The Stingray's Horizon (Third Week of January 2006)
Gazoil draws us a map from the Gabonese bordertown of Lekoni to the Congolese border town of Mbie. This map includes two possible junctions and at least three unindicated, radically different scales of distance. Since none of the towns that he uses as points of reference are included on any of our other maps, we do not know, as we begin this journey, that this postcard sized child's map represents hundreds of square kilometers, fails to mention dozens of large intersections and is functionally useless.
We stamp out of Gabon into nowhere and thank Gazoil for his assistance with a couple of dollars; then we speed into a sparsely populated semi-desert of weed tufted sandhills. At our first unanticipated major intersection we stop and look around for some indication of where to go. We are on a hilltop that commands an impressive view; no sign of habitation or vehicular traffic presents itself. Tuuli runs in search of an old lady that we passed half a kilometer behind and I walk ahead to scout the road, encountering, hidden by the tall grasses, a second old lady, laden, like them all, with an overloaded woven stick back pack that curls over her head and stoops her low. She doesn't speak a lick of French. I have never heard of or encountered her language before and we both play miserable charades. I understand that the Congolese town that I am seeking can be found to the right; but that Congo is to the left. Tuuli gathers little more. We head right and are quickly mired in sand less than half way up a hill we have little chance of surmounting.
We work at removing ourselves, get soaked by the daily thunderstorm and roll back down the hill to inaugurate our essential strategy of driving completely offroad through waist high grasses. When we try to rejoin the road later on, we get stuck on the towering central divider-nemesis of low lying cars. We are growing more skillful at extrication techniques: jack and push, dig and pull, winch and curse. It is an unprecedented opportunity for strenuous daily exercise.
After freeing the car from its second spot of trouble we adopt the exhausting strategy of jogging ahead of the cautiously advancing Stingray while shouting warnings and directions to the driver. This enables us to safely advance at approximately two miles per hour and it makes short stretches of semi-improved road much more tempting. The strategy does not work when laziness causes a scout to give the all clear on a long curving road that devolves into a trough of deep soft sand nearly fifty meters long. Such behavior results in a Stingray as useful as a grounded sea turtle flipped on its back.
We use the complete stories of Evelyn Waugh to jack the car up so that we can remove hundreds of pounds of sand from beneath it; we use a small shovel to create an offramp through the wall of sand preventing our escape to the weedy tufted area where we at least have a sliver of traction. I use a machete to cut down a twenty-five foot tree and make two ramps that tuck into the roofrack like battering rams. After nearly three hours of toil, when we are about to put our road construction to the test, a convoy of trucks belonging to a road construction company discovers us. They are traveling with an enormous Caterpillar that wields the power to construct roads. It instantly demolishes our handiwork and replaces it with a bypass of superior quality: a special road just for us.
Every one of the drivers tells us that we will be unable to reach the next village and that it would be better for us to turn around. The Caterpillar is returning the following day and can help us along. We say we'll forge ahead and be grateful for his help whenever he catches up with us. As far as the governments of Central Africa are concerned, this night we do not exist. This is far more thrilling than the temporary nationlessness of air travel because it is obvious as we eat instant mashed potatoes, franks and beans and hide our lantern from the two passing trucks that we are on land and out of anyone's sight. It feels fugitive good. As we contemplate the big dipper turned upside down and Orion on his side like a butterfly (I have never been in the Southern Hemisphere before), Sean tries to spread fear of lions and horned Gabonese vipers of extraordinary venom; but Tuuli and I are too tired to care.
We set the alarm for a dark hour and rise with the intention of outpacing the incredible machine and arriving in Congo unassisted. This nearly comes to pass. Tuuli and I run for a combined twenty kilometers, at most one of which is actually on the road. We dodge termite mounds, trees, ditches, ponds and the ruts of heavier off roading vehicles. By approximately one pm we arrive at Kabala, the final stationing point of Gabonese authority and begin to tackle the most impressive obstacle that we have faced so far. This mountain of sand seems doable at first and we burst upwards in calculated, cleared and memorized hundred meter sprints. However, the second half of the hill is going to be impossible, a word that I have never before applied to any road that we hoped to take. All of the deviant avoidance tracks converge between dense forest into a rut dug two to three meters deep into the soft earth (from the roadside, you wouldn't see the Stingray passing). At the bottom of this trench are tracks that only the strongest 4x4 trucks could hope to traverse.
Gazoil draws us a map from the Gabonese bordertown of Lekoni to the Congolese border town of Mbie. This map includes two possible junctions and at least three unindicated, radically different scales of distance. Since none of the towns that he uses as points of reference are included on any of our other maps, we do not know, as we begin this journey, that this postcard sized child's map represents hundreds of square kilometers, fails to mention dozens of large intersections and is functionally useless.
We stamp out of Gabon into nowhere and thank Gazoil for his assistance with a couple of dollars; then we speed into a sparsely populated semi-desert of weed tufted sandhills. At our first unanticipated major intersection we stop and look around for some indication of where to go. We are on a hilltop that commands an impressive view; no sign of habitation or vehicular traffic presents itself. Tuuli runs in search of an old lady that we passed half a kilometer behind and I walk ahead to scout the road, encountering, hidden by the tall grasses, a second old lady, laden, like them all, with an overloaded woven stick back pack that curls over her head and stoops her low. She doesn't speak a lick of French. I have never heard of or encountered her language before and we both play miserable charades. I understand that the Congolese town that I am seeking can be found to the right; but that Congo is to the left. Tuuli gathers little more. We head right and are quickly mired in sand less than half way up a hill we have little chance of surmounting.
We work at removing ourselves, get soaked by the daily thunderstorm and roll back down the hill to inaugurate our essential strategy of driving completely offroad through waist high grasses. When we try to rejoin the road later on, we get stuck on the towering central divider-nemesis of low lying cars. We are growing more skillful at extrication techniques: jack and push, dig and pull, winch and curse. It is an unprecedented opportunity for strenuous daily exercise.
After freeing the car from its second spot of trouble we adopt the exhausting strategy of jogging ahead of the cautiously advancing Stingray while shouting warnings and directions to the driver. This enables us to safely advance at approximately two miles per hour and it makes short stretches of semi-improved road much more tempting. The strategy does not work when laziness causes a scout to give the all clear on a long curving road that devolves into a trough of deep soft sand nearly fifty meters long. Such behavior results in a Stingray as useful as a grounded sea turtle flipped on its back.
We use the complete stories of Evelyn Waugh to jack the car up so that we can remove hundreds of pounds of sand from beneath it; we use a small shovel to create an offramp through the wall of sand preventing our escape to the weedy tufted area where we at least have a sliver of traction. I use a machete to cut down a twenty-five foot tree and make two ramps that tuck into the roofrack like battering rams. After nearly three hours of toil, when we are about to put our road construction to the test, a convoy of trucks belonging to a road construction company discovers us. They are traveling with an enormous Caterpillar that wields the power to construct roads. It instantly demolishes our handiwork and replaces it with a bypass of superior quality: a special road just for us.
Every one of the drivers tells us that we will be unable to reach the next village and that it would be better for us to turn around. The Caterpillar is returning the following day and can help us along. We say we'll forge ahead and be grateful for his help whenever he catches up with us. As far as the governments of Central Africa are concerned, this night we do not exist. This is far more thrilling than the temporary nationlessness of air travel because it is obvious as we eat instant mashed potatoes, franks and beans and hide our lantern from the two passing trucks that we are on land and out of anyone's sight. It feels fugitive good. As we contemplate the big dipper turned upside down and Orion on his side like a butterfly (I have never been in the Southern Hemisphere before), Sean tries to spread fear of lions and horned Gabonese vipers of extraordinary venom; but Tuuli and I are too tired to care.
We set the alarm for a dark hour and rise with the intention of outpacing the incredible machine and arriving in Congo unassisted. This nearly comes to pass. Tuuli and I run for a combined twenty kilometers, at most one of which is actually on the road. We dodge termite mounds, trees, ditches, ponds and the ruts of heavier off roading vehicles. By approximately one pm we arrive at Kabala, the final stationing point of Gabonese authority and begin to tackle the most impressive obstacle that we have faced so far. This mountain of sand seems doable at first and we burst upwards in calculated, cleared and memorized hundred meter sprints. However, the second half of the hill is going to be impossible, a word that I have never before applied to any road that we hoped to take. All of the deviant avoidance tracks converge between dense forest into a rut dug two to three meters deep into the soft earth (from the roadside, you wouldn't see the Stingray passing). At the bottom of this trench are tracks that only the strongest 4x4 trucks could hope to traverse.
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