Zaire - part 1

I crossed the river border from the Central African Republic into Zaire at Mobaye, near a modern-looking hydroelectric dam. Whether it generated any electricity I was unable to discover; at no point during my time in Zaire did I encounter any functioning facility powered by mains electricity, although many buildings were optimistically equipped with fittings.

On the same ferry was a Landrover driven by a group of Australians. They were in desperate need of both fuel and the French vocabulary necessary to purchase some. The latter deficiency had apparently defeated them throughout the Central African Republic and their petrol shortage was now acute. They offered me a lift to the nearest town on their roof-rack in exchange for my services as an interpreter.

We arrived in Gbadolite, the hometown of President Mobutu, then still firmly in power. According to the locals, he maintained a substantial palace nearby, and ran the satellite settlement as a kind of show town. Amazingly, there was a supermarket. It stocked only Worcester Sauce. We changed some money with the manager. Zaire was suffering from the gradual onset of hyperinflation – the exchange rate to the dollar doubled during my month there. I received a large wad of impressively clean and new 50,000 Zaires notes, bearing Mobutu’s face on one side and a picture of mountain gorillas on the reverse. “Monkey money,” I was told later. “Look, you see, it has a monkey on both sides.”

 After a lengthy and complex negotiation including the tasting of both the surface and depths of the petrol to verify that it was not watered down, gasoline was successfully purchased and the Australians dropped me off on the track south. Northern Zaire has no useful road transport system, and in anyway no roads for it to use. I enquired why not: “A fellow dictator is overthrown by rebels and rings to ask Mobutu for help. ‘How did they come and get you?’ asks Mobutu. ‘They came by road,’ replies the fallen despot. ‘Ah well, I told you not to build roads,’ says Mobutu sagely.”

The only semi-reliable means of travel apart from the Congo river itself is to ride in/on goods trucks, not in the cabin of course, but as part of the load. Even this is hampered by whole towns being without fuel for days on end, disabling all trucks. However, my luck was in, and I was able to purchase a ride in the back of an empty truck bound for Bumba.

Situated on the northern bank of the Congo, Bumba is as attractive a town as its name implies, with nearly as much to do. It was in Bumba that I encountered “The Belgians”. The Belgians were an Explore/Encounter-overland type holiday operator, driving a rather splendid bright-orange truck with cutaway sides and throne-like seats for the tourists aboard. As I was to discover in subsequent conversations with other travellers, they enjoyed a legendary reputation.

The Belgians’ trip had, according to the stories, started in Ghana. Their tour was led by a charming husband and wife team. On the day their new party were due to land in Accra, Ghana’s capital, they had set out for the airport to meet their guests when they were stopped by the police. In common with many African countries, Ghanaian law requires that one carries ID documents – a passport for foreigners – with one at all times. The husband and wife had left theirs in the hotel. The normal procedure throughout the continent in such situations is simply then to negotiate an appropriate ‘fee’ with the police – “il faut discuter un peut” in francophone lands -, whose size is inversely proportional to how long you are prepared to hang around, and then everybody proceeds on their way. The husband and wife took umbrage, and so, therefore, did the police, resulting in a night in the local jail and their tour guests with no previous experience of Africa having to find their way to an unknown hotel in an unfamiliar city in a foreign language.

Neither husband nor wife could cook. Accordingly, they had hired a Ghanaian to carry out this very necessary duty in a land where restaurants can be few and far between and the food inedible even when there is an eatery. The Ghanaian had no papers, but somehow made it through Togo and Benin as far as the Nigerian frontier, where he was forced to leave their expedition. I crossed paths frequently with The Belgians over the next few weeks. “Monsieur Chris, we have some food spare,” was the usual greeting from the tour guests. Of course I was not about to pass up such free delights as tinned ravioli (prepared by the wife) accompanied by cream crackers (prepared by the husband). One day, I know not how, they offered me lumpy blancmange.

Much later, I heard that The Belgians had embarked their guests on the ferry up the Congo, but taken their vehicle by the overland route, where it became stuck in one of the coach-sized potholes which can obstruct travel along jungle mud-tracks for days on end when it rains. The grand finale of The Belgians’ trip was to be visiting a mountain-gorilla sanctuary near the Rwandan border (the troubles in Rwanda were not yet serious in early 1991). They never made it, and eventually had to fly home at great expense from a bush airstrip.

I first met The Belgians when they drove their truck very hard into the gatepost of my hotel.

The Belgians: whoops, missed

Central African Republic - part 2

I was dropped off at Sibut, a small town of low, brown-white houses set around a patch of red-earth mud, sleepy in the noon sun. Three ragged girls came to stare at me, the eldest, aged perhaps seven, clutching a large blunt knife. Their mother, arriving to chase them away, asked what I wanted and showed me the track to Mobaye. “You can wait here, the van will come soon,” she said, pointing to a welcome patch of shade under a broad tree.

Villagers at Sibut

To my surprise, the van did come soon, and passengers appeared as if summoned by a witchdoctor from the silent houses. The van itself was a small Toyota pickup of great antiquity designed to carry three people and perhaps a couple of goats in the back. There were more than twenty passengers in addition to the driver and his teenage son, so adding my rucksack to the great pile of luggage, I stood on the footplate at the back. There was little danger in this, for the Toyota could manage barely quicker than walking pace downhill. Uphill the younger men took turns to stroll to ease the load, and easily outpaced the van.

The Sibut bus service

 We had travelled maybe four miles of earthen road when something snapped inside the engine and we ground to a halt. Undisturbed, we dismounted while the driver and his son, after inspecting the damage, cut long strips of bark and set about tying back together whatever had broken. Someone plucked ripe wild avocados from plants growing near the track, and offered them around. I was the subject of many curious stares but no one ventured into conversation except to borrow my penknife for their avocado. It was very peaceful with barely even the hum of insects from the brushland through the hot, humid air to disturb the silence. The vast blue sky, the red-brown earth, the tall green of the plants, the battered Toyota a dazzling white in the vertical sun, the vivid costumes of the women: it was Africa painted by Van Gogh. Half an hour later we were on our way again, bumping sedately over the mud.

Perhaps five miles later, the engine gave out again, and we freewheeled downhill into a small village. There was more agitation this time, which was calmed only by the reappearance of the driver’s son with a villager holding a pair of two-litre plastic oil cans. They proved to contain not oil for the van but palm wine for the passengers. I was invited to join them, – “you have also paid your fare Monsieur” – rusted tins were handed round to drink from and a measure of thin yellow-white liquid poured into each.

The drink tasted largely of tin can  (I tried some elsewhere from a plastic cup and it still tasted metallic) but it was potent stuff; tongues were loosened enough to permit a detailed interrogation to begin. After some while we arrived at the inevitable “how much do you earn Monsieur?” I reduced the real figure by a factor of three, but it still brought envious looks. Of course I had to pay a great deal in taxes, probably more than half, I offered in mitigation of my unreasonable wealth. “Taxes are just theft by the government, to pay for guns and soldiers.” Maybe so in the Central African Republic, I agreed, but in England they pay for schools and unemployment benefit. This last concept fascinated them and I explained further under detailed questioning. There was much discussion in their native tongues before the follow up “what else do your taxes pay for?” I told them about the National Health Service, back home not necessarily a topic of great British pride. Out here it was a source of wonder. They listened, questioned, talked heatedly amongst themselves: was I really telling the truth? “C’est une vie sans peur!” – it is a life without fear -, cried one man in the end, convinced but amazed.

The van was mended, a state which lasted approximately five minutes, just far enough to be within pushing distance of the next village. The sound of women beating wooden pestles with giant wooden mortars pulsated through perfectly round mud-brick houses with straw roofs; coffee I was told on enquiry, grown further up in the hills. This time the passengers, sour with palm wine were less easily mollified. It was evening, we would have to stay in the village, our van driver should pay for our dinner. He was not in agreement, but twenty to one was difficult odds to overcome. Village children chased a pair of chickens down the track which, after much shouting and clucking, reappeared in our stew as night fell. After dinner we were shown to a pair of empty huts and fell rapidly into palm-wine induced stupor.

In the morning our van was, allegedly, mechanically sound once more, the driver and some villagers having worked all evening. It would not, however, start. The solution was apparently to roast the battery over a fire, which rather surprisingly did the trick. It stalled a couple more times on the way, and each time the lengthy roasting process resolved matters. About ten kilometres from Mobaye something else went wrong in the innards of the Toyota. We gave up and walked the rest of the way. A journey of twenty-five miles had taken twenty-eight hours.