by Tim Butcher
The foursome worked in harmony, with just the faintest of deliberate lags between the actions of the two up front and the two behind. Standing upright they would lean forward to plunge the blade into the water, before heaving it backwards with a dip of the shoulders and a shimmy of the hips. The deft, feathering flick at the end of the stroke to clear the blade from the water would have impressed the most skilful Oxbridge oarsman and each time they did it I felt a faint surge in the pirogue as it inched forward.
My pirogue was about ten metres long and was nothing but a tree trunk, halved and hollowed out, completely bare, without shelving, seats or compartments. Someone had scratched the name ‘Sandoka’ at the stern, but when I asked the four paddlers what it meant, they shrugged their shoulders and said it was not normal for pirogues to have a name. Many different types of tree are used to make pirogues, but some have wood that is so heavy the pirogues sink if they are overturned. I did not want to put the Sandoka to the test, so every time I clambered aboard I squatted as low as possible and mentally rehearsed how I would grab my small camera bag if the boat tipped.
I did not have many other possessions to worry about. Apart from the camera bag, all I had was my rucksack and the yellow, plastic jerrycan of boiled water. Someone had stolen the can’s stopper, so I had made a botched repair with a piece of plastic and an elastic band. I could not afford to fall ill out here. The paddlers watched me in polite silence as I drank from the jerrycan only after wiping the spout with one of my sterile baby-wipes.
At twenty-seven, Malike was the oldest of the four paddlers and clearly the leader of the group. He had enough French to communicate with me as the three others looked on unknowingly, and it was through him that requests for cigarettes and food were channelled.
I had so much time to myself that I actually measured their stroke rate. Every thirty seconds they averaged twelve to fourteen strokes. They kept this up for hours at a time, but when the rate began to fall Malike would suddenly declaim, ‘We must stop, we must eat.’
And with that they would head to the next village for a fuel stop.
To drink they would squat down while we were out in midstream, lower their faces over the edge of the pirogue until their lips were suspended maybe ten centimetres above the river and literally throw the water into their mouths with their hands. They peed over the edge of the boat and were as sure-footed as if they were standing on terra firma. I was more ungainly, so when I tried, the effort of standing up and keeping my balance made me way too tense. Only after hours of discomfort could I build up the pressure required to overcome my nerves, and then only if I kneeled on my rucksack. Standing on the wobbly pirogue was much too nerve-racking ever to enable me to pee.
As the stern paddler, Malike could control the pirogue’s steering and at one point he veered us towards the river bank where I could see nothing but dense jungle. He must have spotted something because, as we approached the shore, the trees opened up and there was the village of Babundu.
Tying up alongside one of the village pirogues, Malike disappeared with his three mates up a four-metre-high sandy bank, leaving me to get my breath back in the shade of a tree. I was finding the heat and humidity difficult to bear, and the suddenness of standing up after so long made me giddy. I panted heavily as my breathing settled back down again and plucked the sweat-sodden clothes from my skin.
Venturing out of the shade, I faced the same dilemma that I encountered in every place I visited in the Congo. I wanted to nose around, ask questions and take photographs, but I did not want to catch the attention of the local authorities with all the attendant hassle of having to explain who I was, pay bribes and beg not to be arrested as a spy. Also, I was feeling so enervated that I was happy to skulk into the same hut where the crew were restoking and simply avoid the midday heat.
They ate in silence. Without cutlery, they skilfully set about a lump of cassava bread the size of a rugby ball delivered on a broad, glossy banana leaf. In turn they would pinch enough for a mouthful and roll it into a ball, which they would then dimple with their thumbs. Into the cavity they popped the garnish – fried river fish, no bigger than a stickleback, coloured red by hot palm oil – before eating it eagerly.
‘Are you hungry?’ Malike offered me the remains of the lump. I toyed with a marble-sized piece, struggling to overcome a gag reflex brought on by the rotting cheese smell and wallpaper-paste texture.
There is something primordial about Congolese villages. The villagers themselves wear modern clothes, often in tatters, but modern nevertheless in that they are factory-made and delivered by the occasional trader who ventures along the river. But the houses are at the base level of simplicity. There is not a single pane of glass, metal hinge, cement plinth or fitting that connects this place with the modern era. There is no litter, no plastic bags, empty cans or cigarette butts. Without any painted signs, it is a place of browns, greens and duns, a settlement built in the jungle and out of the jungle, utterly separate from the modern world.
The doors are made of split cane, held together by a rope of woven vines and kept in place by wooden sticks. The walls are mud thrown against a cane trellis, baked hard by the sun and fissured with a crazy paving of cracks so intricate it looks almost man-made. And the roofs consist of layers of wide, dry banana leaves held down by lengths of split bamboo.
This region is one of the rare places in the world that fails what I called the Coca-Cola test. The test is simple: can you buy a Coke? I have been to many remote places where Coke is an expensive and rare luxury, but it is still almost always possible to find a trader who, for a price, can procure me a Coke. Out here on the upper Congo River, where a hundred years ago a Belgian hunter could buy ferry tickets, I could no more buy a Coke in 2004 than fly to the moon.
Back on the river I tried in vain to spot the remnants of the paddle steamer that the river pilot had told me about back in Kindu, the one that had been sunk during early post-independence fighting. His story echoed a terrifying account of the 1964 rebellion written by an American teenager, Murray Taylor, whose father had lived his own Poisonwood Bible existence, working for twenty years as a missionary near this section of the upper Congo. In his account of the incident, Murray described how the local tribe that his father had sought to convert to Christianity, the Mitukus, tried to defend his family when the Mulele Mai rebels approached and how scared his family had been when the rebels chugged into view on the river on a boat stolen just before Mike Hoare’s mercenary force reached Kindu:
Soon a rebel steamer came up the river from Kindu and began shelling the main river settlements. I was really scared. This was the first time in my life I’d heard big guns. Besides, we weren’t sure who the rebels were firing at. We prayed that God would protect us. Later we learned that the guns were aimed at the Mitukus on the other bank of the river.
Murray went on to describe how he saw two warplanes as they flew over the mission station searching for the rebels’ boat:
I heard what I thought was thunder. Suddenly it dawned on me that it wasn’t thunder; it was the explosion of bombs hitting their target! Little did I realise then what effect those bombs would have on our family. But that air attack proved to be the beginning of our trouble with the rebels, for they suspected that my parents had called the planes!
That afternoon, some rebels arrived at our mission station. They told us that the planes had sunk one of their riverboats. Soon more rebels came and confiscated our two ordinary radios. Later, more rebels returned to the mission. Their faces were ghastly and frightening and they were very hostile. Again they searched our house for the transmitter they were sure we had. They threatened to kill us if we didn’t reveal it.
The Taylor family was eventually moved by the rebels to Kisangani, the large port downstream, where the Mulele Mai rebellion reached a bloody conclusion in late November 1964. Murray was lined up against a wall with his father and various other male prisoners. A guard opened fire with a machine-gun, killing Murray’s father.
The boy described how he survived by ducking behind an arch. When the rebels came to remove the bodies, one took pity on the fourteen-year-old boy and he was ordered downstairs to join his mother and sisters.
I must have passed the spot where the boat was sunk, but I had missed seeing any remains.
After their fuel stops, my crew would return to the water at full power and full voice. Their Swahili harmonies reached from bank to bank as Malike led his colleagues in song. He would begin and then the refrain would be picked up in turn by the others, with choruses and verses lasting hours.
As my pirogue journey went on, my sense of unease began to build as I neared my next ordeal. The river was navigable only as far as Ubundu, at which point I would have to continue overland for 100 kilometres around a series of rapids and cataracts, still commonly referred to as the Stanley Falls, until I reached Kisangani, the large port city built at the bottom of the seventh and final set of rapids and the model for Conrad’s Inner Station in the Heart of Darkness. In the early twentieth century the Belgians had built a railway around this unnavigable reach, although when I researched my trip I discovered it had not run in years. Worse still, the road between Ubundu and Kisangani had disappeared into the equatorial forest, and peacekeepers from the large UN base in Kisangani never ventured this way.
I knew Ubundu had witnessed some of the worst fighting in the region during the war. In the forest between Ubundu and Kisangani, there had been clashes between Hutu refugees, who had made their way here for sanctuary in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and Congolese militiamen backed by the now Tutsi-dominated regime in Rwanda, seeking revenge against the Hutus. And its local mai-mai home guard had then clashed with Ugandan troops sent to secure Kisangani and its lucrative diamond trade. All in all, I knew Ubundu was always going to be one of the major troublespots on my journey, far removed from its more genteel days during Belgian rule when it was known as Ponthierville.
In 1951 Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and a forty-strong Hollywood film crew arrived in Ponthierville by train. They were on their way to the jungle, riverine set for the filming of The African Queen, the story of two colonial misfits taking an old boat down a river to attack a German warship. In the actress’s diary she describes a charming railway town where the local missionaries enthusiastically helped in the filming, showing the crew the best spots along the nearby cataracts from where to capture shots of models of the African Queen being pounded and battered by the white water. The book, written by the pre-First World War Belgian hunter, described the town as a pretty colonial outpost.
My main hope for getting through Ubundu lay with a team of motorcylists from an American aid group based in Kisangani, whom I had contacted by satellite phone from Kindu. They told me they would be making a rare visit to deliver vaccines to a field clinic in the town. Towards my second evening on the pirogue I began to fret, because I knew that if we did not make Ubundu that night I would miss the bikers, when they headed back to Kisangani early the following morning.
Malike could tell I was becoming more worried and kept reassuring me: ‘Don’t worry, we will get to Ubundu by nightfall.’
He was utterly unfazed when one of the other paddlers quietly lay down at my feet and went to sleep. Kago Arubu was the thinnest of the team, but had given no sign of being unwell before he stopped paddling, let his paddle clatter to the floor of the pirogue and collapsed.
I looked round anxiously at Malike. ‘He has fever. He will be all right.’ There was no shade for Kago to lie under. He did not drink any water. He just lay down out in the baking sun and within seconds was fast asleep. Malike would not even let me try to paddle as I would mess up the balance and the rhythm. So effectively we had now lost an engine and with it, I believed, all hope of making Ubundu that night.
As the sun began to sink, the river bank came alive with other river travellers. I started to make out dozens of pirogues making their way back upstream, clinging to the bank where the current was weakest and the shadows longest. Our progress downstream was slow – I reckoned we were making only ten kilometres an hour – but at least we had the current with us. The pirogues heading upstream could not have been going faster then five kilometres an hour, and in many places the paddlers were using their paddles in the shallow water to punt the pirogues.
One pirogue passed us going upstream and I saw a small dog asleep on the bow. ‘Hunters,’ whispered Malike. I looked further down the river bank and the other members of the hunting pack were running along the foreshore yapping and frolicking. Their muzzles were covered with blood and then I could see why. In the pirogue behind the sleeping dog was a butchered antelope with soft Bambi-style white spots on its russet coat.
The hunter saw me reach for my camera and then put on his own danse macabre, enacting the hunt that had taken place earlier that afternoon. In his tattered clothes he jigged about on the water’s edge, barking like a dog to show how his pack had chased the animal down before he had dispatched it with a spear. As a grand finale he posed dramatically with his spear and the antelope’s head.
I don’t know if it was the smell of the recently killed meat that stirred him, but the feverish Kago suddenly arose. A discussion between the paddlers then ensued, followed by negotiations with the hunter. Within minutes one of the blood-soaked quarters was onboard the Sandoka wrapped in leaves and ready for cooking once we reached Ubundu.
The presence of the meat seemed to energise all four paddlers. They worked their blades with added vigour, churning up the river water into small mocha whirls, inching us closer and closer to Ubundu. For the first time in days, I started to look at my watch, anxiously calculating and recalculating how long it might take, but Malike kept on reassuring me we would make it.
Almost astride the Equator, night fell like a portcullis. The sun dropped below the horizon and suddenly all was dark. My arms and face had been cruelly sunburned out on the river and I convinced myself I could actually see my skin glowing, as I peered into the gloom, anxious to spot the first sign of the town.
Ubundu is a large town and a strategic port, so I was expecting to see at least a few lights from the shoreline. I was wrong. The first evidence I had that we had reached Ubundu was the sound of the rapids. For hundreds of kilometres the Congo River had been mute and yet suddenly, as we rounded a headland, I could make out the sound of rushing water. It was terrifying.
‘There is Ubundu,’ Malike pointed over to the left bank.
‘I see nothing. Are you sure?’ My voice quavered.
‘You cannot see anything at night, but it is there.’ With that he spun the head of the pirogue towards the right bank and prepared to tie up for the night.
‘It is too dangerous to cross above the rapids during the dark and there are soldiers over there too. We will stay the night here.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I must get there tonight. The motorbikes leave early in the morning, we have to cross now.’
I heard Malike negotiating with his three colleagues in Swahili. In the darkness I could not read their faces, but I could tell the other three were not happy with the idea of the night-time crossing. The debate continued for minutes and then I thought of the dollars hidden in my boots.
‘If you get me there tonight, I will double the pay.’ My offer was desperate, but effective. Malike translated and suddenly the pirogue was spinning round through 180 degrees and darting out into the open river.
The noise of the cataracts grew. Somewhere out there to our right was the start of the Stanley Falls. When Stanley encountered these rapids for the first time he tried to shoot them. Various members of his expedition drowned and he ended up dragging his canoes around each dangerous section of water. The sound had a dramatic effect on the paddlers. They dug their blades in the water with studied effort and I sensed that on each stroke they looked out right, peering for the first signs of white water.
We surged across the river. In the darkness I could not tell how quickly we were being washed
downstream, but my legs were tense, my heart racing, anticipating what I would do if the pirogue toppled. Peering forward, I was desperate to make out the first signs of the opposite bank and suddenly, as an almost full moon emerged from behind the clouds, I started to make out some dark shapes up ahead.
‘This is the harbour of Ubundu,’ Malike whispered. All I could make out was a jumble of broken concrete from an old slipway. ‘And that … is a soldier,’ he added in a voice trailing into silence.
I looked up. A dark figure was moving towards us and the gun-metal grey of his rifle had a pale moonlit sheen.
He was small, only a boy to be honest, and I did something completely unplanned. I jumped onto the broken jetty and began to bark orders.
‘Who are you? Where is your commanding officer?’ My voice was firm. It was meant to camouflage my terror and could have backfired horribly. No white man had arrived here for years, let alone by pirogue in the middle of the night, and the soldier had every reason to treat me with suspicion.
I could not believe what happened then. The gunman shuffled respectfully to attention and saluted me.
9.
The Equator Express
I KNEW MY bravado to be a fragile thing with an unreliably short half-life. I also knew it would not be long before the Congolese gunman worked this out. Stomping off purposefully through the undergrowth, I was desperate to maintain the illusion of control. Thankfully the darkness hid the fear in my eyes. Days earlier I had tried to relay a message through the closest major town, Kisangani, 140 kilometres to the north, to the last remaining Catholic priest in Ubundu, that I might pass this way. My best hope for sanctuary was to make it to the priest’s house and pray my message had got through.