The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  The previous evening we had hoped to see a dancing competition between various tribes and villages but we caught the performance only at a half time interlude when we were ‘entertained’ by several of the local talent. It was unfortunate that the best of these, a slim hipped, long haired heartthrob in jeans and a leather jacket, was so enveloped by his smoke machine with its green and yellow lights that it looked as though he was struggling to find his way out of an old-fashioned pea souper. The firework finale was enlivened by the exploding rockets which only reached 40 ft (12m) and set off the alarms of the parked cars.

  One evening we searched out the weaving district for which Mykitina is well known. We heard the racket a couple of streets away. The slap, crack, snap of the hand looms and the whirr, crash, slam and rattle of the mechanical looms – 100 or more of each. The handlooms were all worked by young girls nicely dressed and sporting lipstick and eyeliner: they seemed to enjoy the camaraderie. They wove fabric of great complexity with astonishing skill and slowly, very slowly, a party longyi appeared. The machines wove the everyday stuff of green and purple and where grease had not congealed with dust and cobwebs, they spurted oil into glistening and slippery puddles. They looked as though they were the cast offs of a Liverpool industrialist in the ’30s. At any rate, in dim light with their flapping belt drives and little space between them, they were horribly hazardous to the dogs and small children that played amongst them.

  Burmese rubies are prized worldwide and in Rangoon I searched for one, with a picture in my mind of a stone the size of a pigeon’s egg, the colour of its blood and all for the price of a squab. I was much mistaken but U Win, whose day job was Professor of Geology at Rangoon University, was clearly the man to set me on the path to reality. So late one evening we went to ‘an associate’s’ house in Rangoon. This was how the trade operated, I thought: a furtive guard at the gate, a whispered password in the shadows and precious stones unwrapped from a clandestine hiding place. I was wrong. A middle-aged couple welcomed us with charm and English fluency to their large, brightly lit new house and spread out a great array of stones, precious and not so precious, on a sheet of black velvet. The largest ruby weighed in at about a carat and a half and about the size of two grains of rice. So much for romanticising. I eventually settled for something blood red, flawless and fingernail sized that seemed to me (and I hoped to M) good enough for a princess. Before we left, our dealer host brought out a pair of sensational diamond earrings. “At $44,000, who can afford those?” I asked. “Oh, a general or two,” he replied. In Bangkok or Singapore they would be half as much again and in London or New York, double.

  In the great cities of Rangoon and Mandalay, a pot of dissent may well be bubbling but in the backwoods areas of our travels the controlling hand of government was apparent but not oppressive. In Kentung the public right to fish the lake had been arbitrarily removed in favour of a military owned company. In Mykitina, the cost of taxi permits had doubled and doubled again and all tourist guides were licensed and had to file a report as to their proposed programme and later, whether it had been carried out. I was sure that the same man was on every plane we travelled in. All our guides spoke of stricter controls in all parts of daily life. The national exchequer spent extravagantly on prestige projects of high visibility so that the international arrival halls at Rangoon and Mandalay were clean, sanitised, huge and empty; domestic departures was dirty, cramped, overflowing and chaotic. ‘Technical colleges’ sat unused in the countryside, too far from town for a reasonable bicycle ride and lacking any supporting community. A 750 mile (1,200kms) dual carriageway was almost completed between Rangoon and Mandalay. “It will be empty of cars but clear for the military,” said our guide.

  The Buddhist temple on the east bank of the Irrawaddy trumpeted its presence at 4.30 am and then, like an alarm clock, continued intermittently for another half hour. This irritation was no doubt tolerated by the Hindus, Baptists, Catholics, the Bethesda Church, Our Lady Queen of Heaven and the other evangelist churches sprinkled around since this is a land of equanimity and toleration. I never once saw a hand raised in anger, a dog kicked, neither a shouting match nor an angry gesture. In the crowded buses and in the paddy fields, the jokes seemed to start at first light and end with the last flickering candle. Whether this is the antidote to oppression, the healing salve of Buddhism or the stoicism of a people who for centuries have been the pawns of power struggles, invasion and persecution, is hard to tell. All are probably linked but against all odds, on the surface (albeit a thin and polished surface), this is a land of laughter.

  Postcard Home

  The skin of the Chin is a web of tattoo,

  To the ways of the Wa this is par to taboo.

  Among the Hmong, striped sarongs strike a pose

  But a Naga’s content with a bone through his nose.

  I’ve travelled by jeep, cart, train, plane and boat

  To hills, shores and cities and places remote.

  It’s sad for the people of beautiful Burma

  That unrest is suppressed and now only a murmur.

  Gabon

  August 2007

  ‘One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it is left behind’ – Charles Dickens

  No, I was not sure where it was either but it came with good credentials. A stable ex-French colony, the third highest income per person in Africa (oil and timber), 35,000 lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), a sub species of elephant that live in the forests, troupes of mandrills 1,000 strong, hippos that surf in the sea and humpback whales in the Gulf of Guinea. The country has the largest intact forest area in all Africa (covering 80 percent of the country) and has the greatest diversity of birds and plants on the continent. Its forest is part of the Central African rainforest which, aged 60 million years, is probably the oldest in the world and the River Ogooue delta is the second largest in Africa. On the practical side, the country was due South (so due south that the Greenwich meridian almost touched its western coast), so no jet lag. Its capital, Libreville, sat on the equator and is the nearest town to that topographically mystic spot where zero degrees longitude meets zero degrees latitude. All in all, worth a look.

  The new French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, had left the morning I arrived and huge posters showing him shoulder to shoulder with President Omar Bongo were at every crossroads. The reflected glory was obvious but it seemed strange that Sarkozy should have chosen Gabon (population 1.2 m) for a second foreign state visit (Germany had been the first); no doubt the oil pumped offshore by Elf had something to do with it. O. Bongo’s presidential palace was in the worst possible taste and its two shades of brown were overdue for repainting. Considering that the national exchequer had been badly dented by its construction, its interior must be top heavy with glitz to compensate for its bland but crenellated exterior. The Hotel Meridian ran the palace a close second in size and brashness and in the huge entrance lobby the Libreville Gospel Choir, all in grey suits and flashy ties, was belting out Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory – it sounded strange in French. The restaurant was empty but here the evangelical harmonies were replaced by a trio of elderly, spectacled and greying locals who ran through a repertoire of Charles Trenet and Dusty Springfield on an unlikely combo of guitar, panpipes and tom-toms.

  My homework on the country was limited to the flight out and the only published guide book by Bradt but it was enough and there were some entertaining snippets of history. It was only in 1839 that a French naval lieutenant named Bouet-Willaumez obtained a large tract of coastal land from a native chief in return for two sacks of tobacco and ten white hats. Fifteen years later Paul Belloni du Chaillu mounted a three year expedition into the interior, survived 50 separate attacks of malaria and wrote a book describing 2,000 different birds and 200 different mammals (if you want to sell, think big and lie). Forty years after this, the formidable Mary Kingsley (she of Travels in Africa) made her own explorations. The natives addressed her as ‘Sir’-entirely apt considering her fortitud
e. A passage from her book runs:

  ‘Falling into a wild game pit I found myself sitting on nine ebony spikes. It is on occasions such as this that you realise the blessing of a good thick skirt.’

  Spending the night in a Fang chief ’s house she recalls opening a putrid bag that disturbed her sleep.

  ‘...there was a human hand, three big toes and two ears. The hand was fresh.’

  She explained to her readers that human flesh was nutritious and a good food source. As a colony, the French did nothing except sell concessions for rubber plantations. Death, disease and hatred for whites were rife. They eventually gave up in 1960. El Hadj Omar Albert Bernard Bongo (names that seem to cover most of the useful nations and religions) was elected with a 99.9% majority a few years later and he and his majority have been there ever since.

  There was alarming confusion for the flight to Port Gentil. The queue was long and largely comprised huge women in extravagantly patterned robes with matching turbans pushing forward great parcels of cardboard and string. The policeman did not like my visa, the clerk did not like my ticket (I did not like it either – a single, flimsy piece of paper with details of the flight scribbled on it) and worse, this was the last flight for three days. It was overbooked and certainly overloaded. But suddenly I had a more convincing ticket – No.1 and a boarding pass for Air Gabon flight 202 and found that there were only five others on it. These included a young European couple so amorously engaged in thoroughly getting to know each other that I was sweating too.

  And then it was by open boat. Powered by three Evinrude 200 HP outboards, we twisted and turned down countless watery paths beset with mangrove, palms and papyrus, sometimes doubling back to find a shorter route, sometimes zooming across an inland lagoon. Every mile looked the same but every inch was different. The helmsman handled his 600 horses with nonchalance and skill and how he found his way amongst the myriad streams seemed a miracle but perhaps that is said of a London cabbie too. My fellow passenger carried an impressive metal-bound suitcase, strengthened at all corners and secured by a small bolt and a huge padlock. It turned out that he was delivering the monthly wages, in cash, for 70 employees at the lodge where I was going. He did the same trip at the same time on the first of each month. Slight of frame with a thin moustache and mock croc shoes he was the double of the accountant in The Untouchables. Had we been ambushed, and it was a miracle that we were not, I would have been left to fight the bandits while he handed over the cash. After the lagoons came the open sea and with it, spray, rain and skies as grey as a Welsh slate quarry. I had come prepared for malaria, dengue, yellow fever and encephalitis but not pneumonia; we were on the equator and this was the dry season for heavens’ sake! Berthing at Omboue, cold and shivering, I sought refuge in the waterfront hotel where the patron, a greying French roué who was finishing a fishy lunch in the company of a local lass talented in all the right places, offered me a mouldy bathroom, a tepid shower and a threadbare towel.

  Loango Lodge sat on the edge of an inland lagoon which was open to the sea. Conceived by a millionaire Dutchman, Rambout Swanborn, as a place for scientific research and conservation, he was the sole source of finance. Recognising that the Gabon infrastructure was not up to the requirements of the well-heeled traveller, he set up his own internal airline and fleet of Landcruisers. Back unexpectedly for lunch one day and as the only diner, the cook appeared looking mournful.

  “Je regrette mais j’ai seulment un filet mignon, des haricots verts et de la salade. Preferez-vous de la sauce béarnaise ou des champignons?”

  Hurrah for French colonialism and rich Dutchmen. The lodge was kept in tip top working order by a human dynamo named Phillipe du Plessis de Grenedan. On the last day of my stay he twice reorganised a complicated rescheduling of jeeps, boats and planes as though that was what contemporary French aristocracy was best at.

  The River Mkita, as black as the mud beneath it, snaked through banks of papyrus, rubbed up against patches of forest where sometimes a tree of great age and presence dominated its local kingdom and meandered over flooded grasslands. It seemed as if we were slowly sliding over glass, so still and placid was the water in the quiet of the evening and in that suspension of time that comes just before dusk and the anticipation of the drawn curtain of darkness. All that broke the surface of the water and the surrounding silence was an occasional fish rising to a mosquito. Under a benign moon and an indigo sky, it was if earth was drawing up its duvet. Dawn seemed almost indistinguishable from dusk except that breakfast was clearly on the menu. A profusion of fish eating birds from fish eagles to pygmy kingfishers were busy, hadeda ibis and wood storks foraged for frogs and herons took off in languid resignation as we passed by. Only hammerkops remained imperturbable. Solitary forest elephants, smaller and darker than their east African cousins, slowly munched their way through reed and papyrus without so much as raising a trunk in recognition of our pontoon.

  Later, back beside the sea, I went in search of humpback whales. The helmsman of the rigid inflatable was securely strapped as if in an acrobatic aircraft but the passengers were left to their muscles and the realisation that a relaxed grip meant a catapulted push overboard. Two marine biologists came along for the ride and what a ride it was. We bumped and slammed our way through the waves, turning 90 degrees in as many milliseconds and careering from crest to trough. My stomach tightened to snapping point, my arms ached and my fingers were white from immersion and strain. I found myself screaming from pain and exhilaration as the laughing steersman tried to anticipate the next breaching. We were saturated with warm tropical salt water and exhausted by the need to survive. All the while, I was gripping a camera for the shot of the year but the whales seemed to be resting under the restless sea. But suddenly, one breached magnificently off the port side. It was enough; 40 tons of barnacled blubber leapt out of the sea streaming spray from fins and flukes, crashed back in to the salty turmoil and vanished.

  On the Isle de Petit Evengue there was a gorilla sanctuary built and financed by the ever benevolent M. Swanborn. As usual in this area of lagoons and waterways, our journey was by boat and I was handed a life jacket.

  “Nagez-vous?” the boatman enquired. Answering, “Qui,” the jacket was abruptly taken back; perhaps it was felt wise not to test it too far. Gabon’s gorillas are slowly being reduced by disease (ebola), loss of habitat (oil and logging) and hunting (bush meat) but disappointingly, this sanctuary of three acres held only two orphaned boys and an old man of 27. The old man and I looked at each other through the electrified fence but his expression showed no sign of interest in life. He was magnificent with vast shoulders and arms of formidable power and his body was solid muscle under its silver hair. Too old to be habituated to the forest he would spend his remaining years, 20 at least, as a lonely lord in a pint sized kingdom.

  The German Pilatus pilot, with a baseball cap that said ‘Butch Cassidy’ and aviator dark glasses of the type favoured by James Dean in the ’50s, flew so low up the sinuous River Lope that we scared the birds roosting in the forest canopy and banked left and right in almost equal turns in the two hour flight from Ombroue to Lope. “Shall we have a little fun?” he had asked. I was not sure that I wanted any fun in a small plane flying into the interior of a country with wall to wall primary rain forest. He had come from Cameroon and was off to a logging concession in Congo after dropping me, so I smiled weakly hoping that these journeys indicated a long established skill rather than a wish to show off and the twisting flight did in fact turn out to be fun. We landed on a grass strip the length of a cricket pitch and as I recovered on the veranda of my chalet with a double malt whisky, a six strong squad of grass-cropping black and white goats (or they may have been sheep) came by. Their chums were six black and white cats that hung about the dining room and putting their heads through the timber fence, they went muzzle to muzzle in friendly conversation.

  The lie of the land was different here with rolling savannah, small sharp hills and paltry patches of
forest. In two safaris, each of half a day, I saw little except for two groups of forest elephants. My companion, a Dutchman with hands like hams and a face to match, kept up a commentary of all the animal encounters he had had since arriving three days ago. It seemed that he had been within a few feet of buffalo, red river hogs, hippos, fishing owls and elephants. I wished him dead. I moaned to my guide that luck was not on my side. He replied, “On safari, you may see nothing the first day and again, nothing on the second day. On the third day all the animals come out in large numbers but by then you have left!”

  At dinner I ordered a bottle of Baron de Listrac 2002 in compensation and fed the black and white cats my gristly lamb chop. The garish paper flowers on the table and the raffia bread basket were made in China, the tinned pineapple came from Cameroon and so did the morning’s cornflakes and yoghurt. Here were the consequences of a country resting on its oil wealth and a people too lazy, or perhaps simply too African, to make any effort themselves. When the oil dries up and Bongo is dead, both likely in the next ten years, where will the entrepreneurs be? Sadly, they may be back to swinging in their hammocks on their front porch.