100 km trek (3) – The Ruwenzori mountains
Zaïre 1984
I awoke at dawn to the rustling of two rats running across the beams above my head. One nearly fell but caught itself — just.
I was up to an early start to cover as much distance as possible as it was clear that there would be no transport. No vehicle had come through the village in a week. I would have to walk all the way to Beni.
However, I had reckoned without my rucksack. It was not getting any more comfortable to carry. After one hour, I rested, grateful for the tin of condensed milk I had received as a present the previous evening.
Just before noon I came to a murmuring stream of clear, fresh water. It was time for a very special treat: a cup of coffee. I lit the Esbit cooker and used the stream water to make the coffee, it tasted a little peaty, as if infused with the forest itself.
All-in-all my diet on this trip was well rounded, but I did miss vitamins. I had taken my last vitamin pill yesterday so, at the next village, I asked whether I could buy some fruit. Two boys took me to one of the houses, showed me a place in the shade to sit and disappeared to return soon afterwards with three huge yellow papayas. When I cut the fruits into segments to share among myself and the many gathered children, I noticed that several ridges had been cut through the peel. I asked why and one of the boys took me to a papaya tree where he cut a little scar into one of the fruits. A white latex-like liquid started to drip out.”That is papain,” he said: “You can use it to make plastics. Even this!” He showed me his Bic pen. The papain is brought to Kinshasa where there are factories. (papain, derived from papaya latex, has in fact a multitude of uses, although the manufacture of plastics is not one of them).
T
he kids told me that there was a Belgian logging company based 8 km further up the road. I was certain that I would find accommodation there but I had not planned on walking another 8 km. I had to draw on my last reserves, but visions of a shower and possibly Western food kept me going.
I arrived at the place shortly before sunset. It was unmissable, a big grey stone building in the middle of a field of cut-down trees. I introduced myself to the house-boy and just as I asked whether the owners were in, a thunderstorm broke over our heads. Within minutes it was pitch dark and bucketloads of water crashed onto the roof of the veranda. “My bosses are in Beni,” the boy shouted above the thunder. I cursed inwardly.
“When did they leave?!” I shouted back, thinking I may have had a lift if I had not stopped to eat papayas.
“Yesterday!” At least I wasn’t that badly out of luck. But I was stuck here. Where would I spend the night?
By now several people were sheltering under the roof. They told me there was a village nearby and invited me to come with them. When the rain quietened down a little, we walked over and they showed me to a hut where I could change my clothes. When I emerged they told me that Beni was still 50km away. This meant that I had only covered 27km that day — the distance from Mambasa to Beni was 138 km. And despite the hospitality I had received, my constitution was not improving. I was angy with myself. I rummaged in the rucksack for my pipe and the very last bit of tobacco. The little crowd that had gathered in the doorway stared open-mouthed as I lit my pipe.
“Please don’t think that this is typical for German women…” I explained, puffing away to get the thing to burn evenly: “But I need this right now!”
It was late and I doubted that there was any food, but after a while an old man asked whether I had any supplies.
“Finished,” I shrugged resignedly.
A few minutes later somebody brought me a bowl of Soubé and some fresh manioc root. I had already begun to eat with my fingers when someone came running across with a spoon. I was touched.
I asked why this particular root was fresh and not served as a paste as I had seen earlier. The guys told me that there are two kinds of manioc. The one with the dark leaves has poisonous roots which have to be flushed out in a stream for three days before being dried and worked into a powder. The second kind, with bright-green leaves, is not toxic and the roots can be boiled like potatoes. The leaves of both plants can be eaten as a vegetable.
The fresh root was delicious and I wondered why I had not encountered it before. The answer was perhaps that I got terrible hiccups from eating it so quickly.
The old man who had arranged for my dinner woke me up at 5 am. In the light of the petroleum lamp he carried I saw three rats scuttling down the mud walls of the hut. As soon as the first daylight filtered through the ridges in the roof, I was ready to go.
My feet were giving me grief. The walking shoes which had been comfortable at home turned out to be slightly too small and I had open blisters on my heels. For the past two days I had worn sandals made from old car tyres, known here as “million mile shoes”, but the rivets with which they were kept together caused the skin between my toes to bleed. I tried again with the shoes, attempted two hobbling steps and put the sandals back on.
In theory, I should be on peak-form. Uschi, who hikes for fun, told me that the second day is the worst, after that I would be used to the weight of the rucksack and the pace and walking would start to be fun. Instead it got harder with every day that passed.
For a while, I was distracted by a group of monkeys, watching them while resting by the roadside. But when I got to another stream, I had enough for the day and contemplated erecting the tent right there, away from the shelter of a village. However, this could be a really bad idea. Without the protection of a chief, I would be vulnerable.
Two boys walking past told me about large village just 7 km ahead where there was a mission with an Italian priest (‘…and a shower, a good meal, a soft bed’, I thought: ‘butseven km with feet that hurt as if walking on glass!’)
I pushed on. In a small settlement on the way I picked up a companion: a priest who wore jeans, a wide leather belt and a grey stetson. Only a large silver cross which dangled over his cotton shirt gave away his calling. He said the mission was still four kilometres away, although a man who had sold me some cake and dried fish had talked about 5 miles. Not only was it far, in either kilometres or miles, but the way led over a hill with a steep slope leading several hundred metres straight up and then straight down. I guess the guys who built this road had their reason not to circumnavigate the hill but I would dearly have liked to know what they were.
We passed two further settlements scattered among fields of sugarcane and banana plantations. The furthest one was our destination.
The track widened into a broad street and laughing children ran towards us, soon joined by about half the villagers. We walked up another slope and at the summit my companion pointed to a group of trees. “This is Mangua,” he said: “and over there is Magira and the mission!”
But there was something else. There, ahead, were the snow-tipped tops of the Ruwenzori mountains. The rainmakers. The mountains of the giant plants. And the border to Uganda.
I practically skipped down the slope, my goal in sight and comfortable accommodation just down the path.
Half the villagers were still trailing us as we walked into Magira but darkness had begun to creep up before the mission finally came into view. My companion bade me farewell. It turned out he was not going to the mission, but had merely shown me the way. He took me to a large hall of the “sisters’ house” where several women sat in a semicircle, showelling big bowls of Soubé and rice into their mouths. My heart sank. Ungrateful as this was, I could not face another meal of this after the thought of Western food, perhaps even Italian, had kept me going. However, the women were not the resident sisters, who had gone to Beni. They showed me to a chair and went to fetch the Padre who came over and shook my hands. Then he looked pensive.
“I am sorry, but we don’t have any room at the moment.”
I was disappointed.
“I have a tent,” I said, but before I had begun to plead for a patch in the garden he already continued with a smile: “However, I am sure we can put up a spare bed in the library, come along!”
I followed him into the house and he showed me to the lounge where a table was laid with bread and butter and fresh fruit, steamed fish and green salad. The Padre was somewhat hyperactive, jumping up in the middle of the meal to sort through his mail, but extremely friendly. This was the first mission I had come across where the house-boys were eating with us at the same table.
The padre approved of the way I was travelling and asked whether it was a holiday or an educational journey.
“Both,” I said.
He told me about a girl who had stayed at the mission after walking all the way from Algiers. It took her 2 years. I felt a little petty about my 100km trek.
When we had finished dinner, the Padre smirked and took two glasses from a cupboard which he filled with — beer. Then a bed was put up in the library and I enjoyed lying on the soft mattress even though I was kept awake by the burning of my feet and the howling of the mission’s white tom-cat below the window.
The sun was up when I walked into the lounge the next morning but it was only just after five. I could hear singing from the church, the Padre was holding early mass. I ponded whether to wait or write a note when one of the boys came in with a pot of coffee telling me to have a cup and to wait, there would be breakfast after the service.
Over breakfast the Padre said that it was still 30 km to Beni, did I really want to walk? There were cars going there every day. I told him I would walk on and try to catch a lift on the way, after 107 km another 30 hardly mattered.
Despite my shredded feet, I started to enjoy the walk. A radio in a hut by the wayside was playing music from an old American movie, it was still fresh and cool and I could see the Ruwenzori mountains ahead, so reminscent of the Alps. I thought back to the very beginning of the journey when Uschi and I stood by the windows in the youth hostel in Austria, looking out at the snowy landscape and the mountains. I missed the snow.
However, my good mood evaporated in the face of all the questions from the crowd following me. The worst were the people who wanted to have a discussion with me while I was dragging along with my heavy backpack. Thankfully, they remained behind after about an hour. Then a blue pick-up van stopped next to me. Did I want to go to Beni? My heart leapt. “Yes!” How much was I willing to pay? I told the driver to go to hell.
A few kilometres further on I encountered another van. This last stretch was a vertitable superhighway. The driver, a white man, asked whether I wanted to go to Beni and immediately offered to drive me, even though he had come from the opposite direction.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said: “I’ve still got business there. Get in.”
I was relieved. My unintended trek was at an end! We drove down the road a little then he got out to talk to workers on a coffee plantation that turned out to be his. Several of the men climbed into the back and off we went. Back to the city and civilisation.
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