The End, Don’t Rock My Boat and Don’t Worry, Be Happy
I flew from Windhoek, Namibia to Jo’Burg Airport where I was met by Rod and Tam Cassidy. Rod is the guide that was chartered with getting eight of us into the far reaches of the Congo Basin and more importantly responsible for getting us back out. We also met Troy Inman who is working with Rod and arrived from Durban. After a night at the Cassidy residence (thanks Rod and Tam), we headed back to the airport for an Inter Air flight to Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. The flight was a couple of hours late – a first for me in Africa – but won’t be the last! ROC is a country that has emerged from civil war. It used to be a communist country and I guess the money from the northern motherland dried up. It doesn’t seem like a stable country or at least not as stable as others that I visited. ROC is French speaking. It presented the first time that I was hampered by verbal communication – something I will need to get used to.
Brazzaville is an interesting city of three million. No high-rises so it is spread out over a large area. Actually, there are a couple of tall buildings, but they are either bombed out or being rehabbed. The architecture left by the French is very art deco. It was fascinating to walk around and look at the strange designs which have been reshaped by war and neglect. Bullet holes and larger adorned many of the buildings. A fitting place to watch and listen to AK47 and mortar rounds in Kinshasa, DRC which is a mere three kilometers across the Congo River. Our flight into the Sangha River area in the northern part of the country was canceled so we gained an extra day in Brazzaville. We visited the rapids separating the western portions of Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The power of one of the world’s greatest rivers was quite evident from an island that we visited by pirogue taxi. We watched a fisherman jump into a “calm” area of the rapids to tend to his line. It was a classic display of African lack of safety. He survived.
We also visited curio shops where I scoped out masks which I had seen all over Africa and waited to purchase in Congo. The best part of Brazzaville, though, was just walking around and seeing the city in action. I once again did not feel any threat from this impoverished metropolis. My favorite site is a memorial. Basically, it is a tiled arch which depicts the history of the Congo featuring the raping of the land and resources, the enslaving and murder of its peoples, the wrath of the missionaries, the warring between tribes – all topped by a “we shall overcome” socialist/communist happy ending. Well, not so much of a happy ending since the memorial’s beautiful tiles show damage from bullets! The best part of this complex mural is the depiction of the European monsters carving up Africa in the 1885 Conference of Berlin. For all the good and bad present in Africa today and in the past, I can’t think of anything that has had a more profound effect on the continent than what the Western nations did to it at that conference.
In front of the monument, there is a garish Egyptian sculpture which was given to ROC this past April. This past April?! I wondered what the hell the statue had to do with the memorial behind it and why the Egyptian government would think that ROC needed a statue. Understand that while looking at this memorial with its own war damage, you are surrounded by many wasting buildings. Even if they felt compelled to offer such a poor country something useless for their people, I wonder why they did not offer to replace or repair the damaged memorial tiles? Since Egyptian pharoahs were some of the first peoples to rape the Congo (they wanted pygmies to entertain their courts), I found it a bit insane, but I guess one only sees that when you know a little history. Worse yet is a large memorial building with a six meter high statue in front for de Brazza being donated by the French and Gabon nations. de Brazza was a French explorer who convinced tribes in ROC area to hand over their lands to the French – basically the ROC’s equivalent to DRC’s Stanley. The memorial building which I understand will become a library (what do you bet the bookshelves will be empty and the building falling apart in a few years) will be celebrated this October. Another great photo opportunity for the ROC leadership, UN folks and the donating nations’ muckety-mucks. The statue of de Brazza was wrapped in tarps awaiting its big day to shine. If I was Congolese and I knew my history, I would be absolutely appalled that France could give a large statue of a past rapist of my land and people. It would be worse than giving a Native American tribe a statue of Columbus! At least Columbus was just exploring? Hopefully, someone there will know their history and topple that damn thing like the Saddam Hussein statues. We can’t turn back the clock, but maybe there should be a bit more humility when it comes to the great discoverers and what they often did to the peoples that they “discovered”. Don’t get me wrong… as a whitey, I’m a big fan of Columbus…
So, a day late we get back to the lousy Brazzaville airport and start waiting for our flight to Ouesso, ROC. Over two hours late (make that number two delay!) we are taken out to the tarmac to look at the strangest plane I have ever seen. It is Ukranian and definitely military in purpose. I figure it was an electronics surveillance plane from forty or more years ago. It had this glass front end and the forward fuselage was much larger than the passenger area. I think it probably contained computers and other equipment in its heyday. The pilots were outside “helping” load the passengers. Something was wrong with them – maniacal looks – disheveled hair and shirts half unbuttoned. The side of the plane had English and Russian (Ukranian?) words that told you where to use the “crash axe”. Between the pilots and the disconcerting message, Business Aero Fret (yes, Don’t Worry Fret, Be Happy) had my attention. A Congolese man in a suit and tie who is a legend in is own mind decided to cut into the line near the stairs. Everyone seemed fine with him – I have seen this before in Africa – he is a big man (nothing to do with physical size) and people around him seem to agree. He was nothing other than an African in a crappy suit.
We get on the plane and battle for some seats. John, John and I got on first and we were worried that the rest of our group would not make it since the plane couldn’t possibly hold everyone in line. We find seats and start watching the unfolding show. The first act had the flight attendant telling people that something was not possible and they all stood there for at least ten minutes preventing anyone from sitting. In the end, she relented and they sat down. I have no idea why a flight attendant was impeding customers from finding seats. Second act had bags getting stored in the aisle. People were jumping over them to get to seats. The passenger is told that he cannot put bags in the aisle and an argument breaks out. I told John that the idiot thinks he is on an African bus where bags can be stored in the aisle. Yo, you’re not on a bus! Then the bags are placed on folks’ laps. Oh sure! Finally, they are moved up front behind the curtain separating us from the giant cockpit area where they are placed… of course, in the aisle! And then the surge of passengers who could not possibly fit in the seats got on board and I swear fifty of them walked through the curtain into the cockpit. Where are they all going? we kept wondering. Later, we saw past the curtain and they were standing! For the whole flight!
The plane included an escape door. It had a rope (a nice, solid rope) running from its handle to the fuselage. A sign next to the door instructed people not to hold onto the rope and to use it in case an escape is needed. The sign is in English and Ukranian. Once again, absolutely useless for the French-speaking Congolese. That door terrified me. But not as much as the crazed pilots flying out from the curtained cockpit area over the stored luggage. Only one word came to mind when I saw that act… VODKA! Then I realized that these dinosaurs traveled with the plane (we understand that it returns to Ukraine for maintenance work) because it is the only plane they could ever fly. I hypothesize that this plane started in the Ukraine back in the good ole days and then went to North Vietnam and then Cuba before landing in ROC. One of the pilots was too young for that storied career and I wondered what he did to earn such duty. I swear there was a time when all three pilots were out of the cockpit and I envisioned them telling one of the standees to hold the wheel while they went to the back of the plane to have a few shots of vodka. The interior of the plane was “natural” naugahyde which had mold growing in its “grooves”. When they turned on the air conditioner, the mist from condensation poured out and soon it was building up on the naugahyde ceiling. It took a while before we had our own rainforest with drops raining down on the passengers. Nice touch, Aero Fret! Everything was nervous funny until we hit turbulence half way into the flight. Then it wasn’t so funny and I closed my eyes. I don’t scare on airplanes. I was scared.
We landed at the Ouesso “Airport” and were greeted on the tarmac by a horde of people that wanted to get on and military personnel with AK47s who surrounded the plane. A look over at the facilities and there is a half-done building with no roof and plants growing up in it for a terminal. It may have been bombed out in war or maybe it was never built. Either way, there have been no improvements in years and it is not used for anything. The armed soldiers and useless terminal were more charming than the Aero Fret pilots and plane and we were all grateful to have survived. We “joked” about the plane ride for the rest of the trip (I think some of the group did not like the humor which just fueled others – me! – to keep discussing it) dreading that we would be on it again in two weeks.
Now the real fun begins! Our next vehicle after a quick ride to the Ouesso dock on the Sangha River is a motorized pirogue large enough to hold all of us and our possessions. The skies were getting dark from an approaching storm. Maybe we can skirt by it. The ride is over five hours to Carbo – a logging village. Unfortunately, the first two hours are spent in a downpour – tropical rainforest downpour. The engine stopped about a half hour into the trip and I was sure we were going to turn around and call it a day. Amazingly, the pilot continued on and he got us there safely albeit in the dark. I listened to the Doors Greatest Hits which ended at dusk with the apocalyptic theme song to Apocalypse Now fittingly called The End. Although Apocalypse Now is a Vietnam War movie, it is based on Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its Marlow and Kurtz characters. I can tell you that listening to this song while traversing Congo rivers through mist and setting sun is extremely moving. After getting to Carbo in the dark, we were driven to Bomassa where the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) research center exists. This was an extremely long day of travel.
We finally arrive at our Central African Republic location the following day after spending the night in Bomassa, taking another pirogue ride for hours further north on the Sangha, passing through CAR customs (yes, I entered a country via canoe) and driving two hours further to Doli Lodge near the Dzanga-Sangha National Park in southern CAR. The day was beautiful and the pirogue trip was much better albeit still too long to be a great time. Cameroon was on the western bank of the river. Highlights of these pirogue rides include spotting monkeys and birds in the dense forest, watching locals ply the waters in their pirogues while standing and viewing the few and far between tiny villages on the shore and islands. While the river is beautiful, a second whole day of watching green foliage and brown water slip by was more than a bit monotonous. I listened to a lot of Bob Marley to keep my spirits high and I played my favorite song Satisfy My Soul with its appropriate “don’t rock my boat” chorus a few times. Let’s just say that this day was a bit more uplifting compared to the day before and Aero Fret and the downpours were almost a distant memory.
So why am I three long travel days from Johannesburg, you might ask? I’ll save that for the next post. Let’s just say that at this point I am at a lodge on the Sangha River in one of the remotest places on Earth and the fun is just about to begin. Although I doubt I will ever get to this location again, I have to say that the next couple of weeks more than makes up for the difficult travel. The raised pavilion where we ate meals and drank beers sat on the river’s edge and I saw some of the best sunrises and sunsets of my life. And the Congo rainforest is the most beautiful and diverse forest that I have seen.
Tags: Africa, Travel
vagabondrick
egyptian statue
Interesting post. I came across this blog by accident, but it was a good accident. I have now bookmarked your blog for future use. Best wishes. Tamer Hosny.
Dear CAR man,
I’m glad I was able to obtain a “second-hand” glimpse at Brazzaville via a first-hand account. Have you read Redmond O’Hanlon’s work, “No Mercy,” which details his travels in ROC, his illuminating encounters with Babinga pygmies, his spiritual “awakenings,” and his fondness for baby gorillas? You would enjoy it, especially if you’re a naturalist, you love birds, and you’re an anthropologist appreciative of past efforts.
Best wishes in your future endeavours. They say you should laugh if you bump your head on top of a minivan.
Hi
Indeed your blog was very helpful …as I am planning to travel your same route to Bayanga.
Looks Fett Air very scary …
Are they still flying and on which days do they fly Brazza to Ouesso.