Into Zaïre
Zaïre 1984
For once there was no hassle with emigration. A cop pointed the way to the river where a few dug-outs bobbed in the water. Next to them, some men were sitting drinking beer under a couple of straw roofs — it was after all nearly 8 am. As soon as I showed up with my rucksack, one of the boat owners came over and we haggled a fare. There was one other passenger, an elderly man wearing a straw hat.
He smiled benevolently at me during the crossing and after we had dis-embarked invited me for coffee in his house not far from the river. He offered me a seat on the shady verandah, placed a bowl of peanuts on the table and walked off. While I waited, a little crowd of women and children started to gather. I pushed the bowl towards the kids who smiled and squirmed shyly before taking a few handfulls. The man returned with coffee and bisquits. After I had smoked a pipe he offered to accompany me to immigration.
The IO checked my passport and asked whether I still had Central African francs. He signalled me to hand over the money to change into Zaïres. I was irritated because I would have to accept whatever rate he offered but I had no choice. I handed over the cash and he told me to see the customs officers.
The CO chatted happily with me and showed me photographs taken by other travellers then demanded to see my camera. He wrote out a chitty for the make, my name and the date saying that this was proof that the equipment had not been purchased in Zaïre. “Keep the paper,” he said: “Or you may be asked to pay tax on the camera.”
“Ah,” I said: “In that case I better show you my film-camera as well!”
I should have kept my mouth shut because two soldiers promptly appeared and started to search my luggage. I had changed some Zaïre across the border, at a hugely inflated rate — falling for an old scam — but had had the foresight to stuff the bills into my tent frame and they were not discovered.
After I was finished with customs, I went back to search for the CO who still hadn’t given me my money. He bade me to follow. We had only walked a short way down the road when an elderly lady ran towards us with cups of coffee. I was overwhelmed by the ready hospitality of the people here and began to get jittery from all the caffeine.
A few hundred metres on we came to a large house. “This is my home,” the IO said: “Please…” I followed his outstretched hand but stopped abruptlly when I was confronted by a soldier with a gun. The soldier shouldered the weapon and extended his hand in greeting. it turned out that the tiny border town of N’du had an important visitor. General N’wegba-Yen-Ngali was staying here and the soldier introduced himself as a member of his personal bodyguard. After a quick glance to check whether his boss was in the vicinity he asked me to take a photograph and posed proudly with his gun and his wife in front of a large mango tree. Afterwards we exchanged addresses.
Meanwhile, the IO had returned with a big stash of Zaïres in his hand. Once I had counted it (and became aware what a diabolical rate I had received in Central Africa) the soldier returned and invited me to lunch with them. In the shade under a round roof of palmfronds, we ate manioc paste with leaves cooked in palm oil. My first taste of Zaïre. It was a pleasant meal.
Back outside I was introduced to the general. I would not have recognized him as such had the soldier not snapped into a salute and, commanded by another officer in attendance, presented his gun. The general was a middle-aged, portly man with grey hair and an ivory staff in his hand. Everybody treated him with the utmost deferrence. He approached me, shook my hand and bade us to another pavillion where a boy served ice-cold beer.
I have a problem with drinking beer. The bitter taste makes me recoil. I would rather eat life termites. However, as the adventure writer Karl May put it: “If you want to travel like me…you must be able to sing with the nightingales and howl with the wolves” so I took the glass and downed it in big gulps without taking a breath so as not to taste the brew. The glass was promptly re-filled.
I grinned weakly and decided to wait before taking another “sip”. The general was chatting away about the excellent relations between his country and West Germany. I had noticed that the local currency was printed in Munich.
The general told me that I wasn’t the only white person in N’du. He left and returned shortly after with a Frenchman, a guy in his forties, who told me that a lorry would leave for Bondo in two days time. Bondo was 200 km from N’du, 600 km from Kisangani. It looked like I would be stranded for a while.
“200 km further into hell”, the Frenchman said. The savanna past N’du was allegedly full of man-eating lions and leopards who would occasionally enter the village. “See that tree? Not so long ago a goat tethered there was killed.” Without the safety of a lorry, according to him the chances to get to Bondo alive were about fifty-fifty.
I nodded while listening to his hair-rising accounts. I can’t recall planning to make the journey by foot.
The Frenchman had not finished with his tales. I ended up staying in his hut (sleeping on the floor, with my knife at the ready, but he left me alone) and he entertained me until late into the night with stories about leopard-men and creatures that were half crocodile half human living deep in the jungle and that could only be seen by the light of the first crescent-moon.
I was stranded in N’du for two days. I had tried for a lift on an Arab lorry destined for Buto but the departure had been put back for a few hours, then a day and eventually until “bukra, inshallah”.
The Bondo lorry left late in the afternoon, packed with people. I was hanging from the frame somewhere in the middle of the crush, my feet not touching the ground. I began to understand what the Frenchman meant by “hell”.
The noise was the worst, everybody was shouting at the top of their voice. The lorry stopped at a village on the way to take on a load of palm-matting. Everybody had to jump off and those not quick enough were hit by the driver who sat on top of the frame with a branch in his hand, barking at the passengers. I was one of the first ones to get off.
There was no savannah but green bush which gradually changed into dense forest. There was no sign of any man-eating cats. Overhanging branches whipped across the truck so those who had not already received a dose from the driver got their lashing now. The potholes were bigger than any I had encountered so far.
We arrived in Monda in the late evening. Here the palm matting was offloaded by one of the locals who jumped onto the lorry and chased off the passengers by throwing a furious fit. The load was emptied in no time.
I was dropped at the local mission and told to be ready for the onward journey to Bondo by seven the following morning. There were two women at the mission, one of whom spoke German. She had relatives in East Germany. They apologised for the lack of electricity (“The generator has broken down”) and took me to the priest’s house where I was shown to a comfortable room. I slept well and was woken up at six, as requested. There was not need to hurry. It was ten before the lorry finally left.
Progress was smooth and we reached Bondo by six that evening. The local mission ran a small hostel so accommodation was no problem.
The following day was a Friday the 13th, but luckily I did not find out about that until later. I spent the entire day by the banks of the Uele river waiting for a lift to Kisangani.
On the next day, I crossed the river hoping for better luck on the other side. There were a lorry and a bus, both destined for Kisangani. I found the lorry driver.
“OK, for you 500 Zaïre.”
“I can’t pay that, I don’t have that much money!”
“How much would you like to pay?”
I was hesitant. I had about 350 Z. The driver said he wanted to help.
“Can you manage 400?”
“Yes…it’s still a lot, but I might scrape it together. Do you take Central African francs?”
“If you have any, I’ll take them.”
I counted out the money from some of my pockets and then removed the frame of my tent and shook out the bills I had smuggled across the border. Then I dug into my jacket and took out a few more bills from another pocket which I proceeded to count out slowly in front of the driver. It was a whole pile of small denomination bills. By the time I had counted out 300Z, I started on the 1 Z bills (I must have had some from my diabolical exchange in Central Africa. They were worth 0.1 cent or so, but inflation soon wiped out even the paper value). The driver started laughing and waved me off: “Merci, merci. That is enough!” Accompanied by laughter and gentle teasing from the other passengers, I climbed onto the truck.
It might have been Easter because on this Sunday (April 15th) the churches were adorned with arches made from palm fronds. I stayed in accommodation provided by the lorry firm. Breakfast was antilope with a boiled banana, a fruit which was at least half a metre long, called “Makemba”. I ate with the women and two children in the kitchen, surrounded by dried meat which had been spread on the floor and was buzzing with flies. The women kept urging me on and my stomach felt bloated with food after I had only peanuts on the previous day.
The men ate some time after us, in the lounge. I guess they were fed on paltry left-overs after I had made a considerable dent in the meat.
A whole convoy seemed to be on the way to Kisangani and two more labourers joined us on the lorry: Mohamed and Mazoudi two brothers one of whom wore orange shorts with a white shirt, the other white shorts with an orange shirt. The reason for all the activity was plain when we stopped at every vilage on the way to load corn. I was often the centre of attention for the children who shouted “Mudele, mudele” (referring to a white person). I gave pens to some of the boys (I wish I had brought more) and they ran off and came back with a papaya and an egg — which promplty broke in my pocket.
Because of all the looading we did not get far and stopped at a camp in the forest. The mud huts had been covered with roofs made from dried leaves. I shared food with the men: boiled rice and sardines, but I slept on the lorry.
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