Blood River

by Tim Butcher

  Benoit and Odimba were clearly a team. While Odimba dried and prepared the inner-tube hole, Benoit cut an appropriately sized patch from his store of old, recycled tubes, the same ones he used as luggage straps. Having cut the right shape, he used a file to scour the surface of the patch so that it would grip glue.

  ‘It will take twelve minutes for the glue to be ready,’ Benoit announced with typical exactness.

  I turned back to the feathery grasslands and listened for the sound of any birdlife. There was almost none. Georges explained that hunger drove local villagers to trap and kill birds as a source of meat. Exactly on cue, twelve minutes after administering the glue, Benoit and Odimba replaced the tyre and we were off again. And exactly twenty minutes later we had our first encounter with the mai-mai.

  The track had narrowed to a thin file between dense undergrowth and I saw Benoit slow to negotiate a tricky bit of ground. All of a sudden he braked and flung his weight to the left, desperate to avoid something. Slowly from the bush on the right side of the track emerged two gun barrels – rusting Kalashnikovs – held in the bony, dirty hands of two anxious-looking people, a teenage girl and a man old enough to be her grandfather.

  I swallowed drily. Meekly dropping my gaze to the ground, all I could see were Georges’s feet as he slipped off his bike and walked forward, talking all the time in a reassuring tone. He spoke in a blend of Swahili and a tribal language. Calmly, Georges turned back towards me and asked me quietly for cigarettes. I had a couple of packets on me, but they were crushed in the pocket of my trousers. This did not bother the mai-mai. I handed over two particularly mangled-looking specimens and watched as they delicately stroked them back into shape, licked one side to slow the burn rate and lit them. I had stolen a better look as I handed them over. What I saw were the modern descendants of the African tribesmen met by both Stanley and Cameron. They were wearing the same necklaces of feathers, bones, and fetishes described by the two nineteenth-century explorers, but their clothes were more modern – unmatching khaki trousers and ragged T-shirts – and they had nothing on their feet.

  I watched Georges rummage in his shoulder bag and produce a wad of pamphlets. I recognised them as publications from the MONUC base back in Kalemie, a sort of local newsletter with photographs of UN-sponsored events and good-news stories about the peacekeeping mission. These seemed to have a magical effect on our two armed interrogators and they immediately lowered their weapons and began to laugh and relax. With colour photographs and print, these magazines were evidence of a modern world and here in the Congolese bush they clearly had some status.

  Through Georges’s smiles, he calmly told me what was going on. ‘They are guarding their village. It’s just a few hundred metres over there in the bush, but they know that if trouble comes, it comes along this track. They told me there is a bigger mai-mai group in the area, and they have heard of villages being attacked and people killed. But as far as they know, this other mai-mai group is around the village of Mulolwa up ahead on this track. There is no problem with these guys, but we must be aware of the other group. They will definitely give us more trouble.’

  Growing in confidence, I asked the old man his name. ‘Mikejo,’ he said, pulling heavily on a second cigarette I had given him. He had red-rimmed eyes from a night’s guard duty and his skin was pale from the thinnest coating of dust and fissured with age. He was the same small, pygmy build as Georges. Mixing between pygmies, central Africa’s oldest indigenous people, who lived in the central region’s forests as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, and Bantu tribes, who arrived here about 1,000 years ago before persecuting and subjugating the pygmies, blurred what had once been a clear distinction. I could not tell if Mikejo was a pygmy proper, or the offspring of some ancient merging of central Africa’s oldest and newest bloodlines.

  The mai-mai of eastern Congo are known for their cruelty, violence, even cannibalism, but in this old man defending his village I saw something less threatening. With his venerable gun – it was highly unlikely he actually had any live rounds – he was simply defending his bush home. He belonged to mai-mai who act like a Congolese version of Dad’s Army, trying to protect their villages from armed attack by the many outsiders who have run amok here for the last forty years. These local mai-mai do not cause major problems because they rarely move far from their home villages. It is the ones who wander who cause the chaos. The nomads survive by plundering whatever they can find. It is these mai-mai marauders who are responsible for the lawless cycle of murder and reprisal that has paralysed this region for so long.

  Benoit was anxious to get on and, with a nod from Georges that indicated the danger had passed, he restarted his bike and careered off down the track. We followed, but we had not got far when we had our second flat tyre, this time on Fiston’s bike where I was riding pillion. I felt the rear go soggy, causing us to slew to one side, and then we were down to the hard rim, bumping to a halt.

  After the calm of the first repair, this second one was much more tense. Fiston showed no knowledge about how to repair his bike and had no tools or repair kit. Benoit and Odimba took control. But when they opened up the rear wheel of Fiston’s bike, they lost their cool.

  ‘Look at this inner tube, Fiston,’ Benoit said sharply.

  ‘There are more patches on this tube than the original tube. It must have been mended twenty times. And look here at the side of the tyre. It is worn away from being pulled on and off the wheel. It’s almost useless.’

  As Benoit tried to work out how to stick a patch on an existing patch, Fiston stood in glum silence. It was clear he did not really care. All he wanted to do was get back safely to Kalemie, and a flat tyre was no bad thing as it would bring about his return journey quicker.

  I found the whole situation bewildering. I had been planning this journey in my head for years, trying to anticipate and deal with every conceivable problem. I had never thought that the success of the whole trip might turn on a perforated inner tube.

  It was the first time I had heard a tone of anger in Benoit’s voice. It was contagious and I began to fret. My early morning excitement had long gone and I was trying to calculate the impact of these delays on our journey. After Kalemie, my next safe haven was in the town of Kasongo, where Benoit’s Care International colleagues were based, but that was still almost 500 kilometres away. With marauding mai-mai in the area, Benoit knew that to dawdle was dangerous. He had hoped that if we got away early enough we could possibly reach a ruined mining town called Kabambarre, 300 kilometres from Kalemie, tonight. Benoit was confident he could find somewhere safe there to spend the night. With these breakdowns, it was looking increasingly likely we would have to overnight in the bush.

  There was now one other thing to consider. Georges said the news about the mai-mai group at Mulolwa chimed with what he had already heard on the rumour mill back in Kalemie. This group had some ruthless, godless gunmen and he was anxious that if we were to get through safely, it would be important to catch them at the right time of day.

  ‘These guys get drunk and stoned by the afternoon, and you don’t want to be negotiating with them in that state. We must get there as early in the morning as possible for the best chance of getting through,’ was his advice.

  Staring at Odimba as he mended the second puncture, I started doing the mental calculation. We could only make Kabambarre in one day if we averaged 20–25 kph and so far we had covered about thirty kilometres in more than two hours. And the precious protection of morning from the mai-mai of Mulolwa was fast disappearing.

  By the time we got going for the third time, my stomach was knotted and my knees were beginning to ache again.

  Five kilometres later we had our third flat tyre. The rear on Fiston’s bike had gone down again.

  Benoit was getting agitated. He discussed options with Odimba and decided what we needed was some water to check out exactly how bad Fiston’s troublesome inner tube was. After botching an emergency repair and pumping up Fiston’s
rear, we scooted on a kilometre or so until we reached a village, where Benoit stopped and started talking to a group of children. Like the pygmy community I had seen on the track up to Mtowa a few days earlier, this village was a collection of small huts, made with materials from the bush – frames of branches covered with grass. The only remotely modern thing in the entire village was an old, rusting wheel hub, a relic of the days when normal road traffic passed this way. Benoit decided this was a suitable receptacle to carry out the repair and while he filled it with dirty stream water and began working on Fiston’s lacerated inner tube, Georges beckoned me over to a small boy wearing rags.

  ‘He says this village is called Ngenzeka and that there was fighting here a few years back. He asked if you want to see the bones.’

  The boy had the expression of an old man on his ten-year-old face. It was care-worn, cold and unsmiling. The arrival of our small convoy must have been the most interesting thing to happen in Ngenzeka for months, but there was no sparkle of excitement in his expression. I soon found out why.

  He took me a few paces off the track. The bush was thick, but he skilfully slipped through the branches. He was wearing nothing but some grubby brown shorts, several sizes too big for him, but he twisted and shimmied without getting snagged on thorns that teased out my hair and scratched my skin. After a few minutes I emerged from a thicket to find him standing over a human skull, bleached on the ground. There was no lower jaw, the front teeth were missing and I could see a web of cracks in the cranium. The boy spoke quietly.

  ‘There was fighting here one day. We do not know who was fighting who. We just ran away into the bush. But when we came back there were too many bodies for us to bury. Some of them were left out in the sun like this.’ The boy’s description was as matter-of-fact as a news reporter. As we walked back to the track he pointed to other human bones lying white among the green undergrowth.

  Benoit was not interested in old bones. Shaking his head he announced that the inner tube on Fiston’s rear wheel was, basically, ruined. He said he had repaired it properly for the second time, but could not guarantee it would work and suggested that as we were already way behind our safe schedule, Georges should set off back towards Kalemie with Fiston, leaving Odimba and him to carry on with me.

  This prompted an animated discussion with Georges. Georges insisted that we all continue together, as he could walk back to Kalemie if necessary. It boiled down to this: Georges felt as if he had not done his job; he had not talked us past the Mulolwa rebels; and he was reluctant to head home before he had earned his fee. It was an astonishing display of duty.

  Benoit finally issued an ultimatum. ‘Okay, we will carry on, but if the tyre goes down again, that will be it.’

  We did not have to wait long to face the ultimatum. Less then five kilometres from skull village, Fiston’s rear wheel was flat again. The morning had been wasted and we were not even halfway to Mulolwa, the village rumoured to be a mai-mai stronghold.

  Benoit was angry, I was jumpy and Georges was apologetic.

  ‘I want to help you, but I know you have a long way to go and you cannot keep stopping like this.’ Georges tried to sound positive.

  I was sad to say goodbye, but I gave him the donation I had promised for his pygmy group and posed for a photograph. It shows me lowering over his tiny form. I am wearing grubby trousers and a polo shirt with a faded sunhat crammed on my head. Georges is much smarter with a fresh-looking long-sleeved shirt, belt and pleated trousers. Pygmies have been stigmatised over the centuries for being primitive and backward. I know who looks more backward in that photograph.

  ‘The parting of good friends,’ Georges said shaking my hand and smiling, after Benoit had fixed Fiston’s wheel for a final time. Georges jumped up behind Fiston and the pair set off back in the direction we had just come from. I feared they would have a grim trip home. The tyre on Fiston’s bike would most probably go down again, and they had no tools to repair it.

  Georges had behaved impeccably towards me. He had been willing to risk his life for a stranger, and there was genuine regret that we could not complete our journey together. His behaviour contrasted with Stanley’s account of the unreliability of his expedition members during his trip through this same territory in September 1876:

  Unless the traveller in Africa exerts himself to keep his force intact, he cannot hope to perform satisfactory service. If he relaxes his watchfulness, it is instantly taken advantage of by the weak-minded and the indolent … their general infidelity and instability arises, in great part, from their weak minds becoming prey to terror of imaginary dangers … my runaways fled from the danger of being eaten.

  I did not have to worry about Benoit and Odimba’s ‘infidelity and instability’. After the departure of Georges, they were desperate to get on with the journey. Benoit did not waste another second. He rejigged the luggage, ordered me to ride pillion behind Odimba and jumped back on his bike.

  Without Fiston and his faulty bike, our progress improved and my spirits picked up. The kilometres began to slip by and within an hour we had covered as much ground as in the first five hours of the day. Benoit seemed to be almost enjoying himself, attacking the track with his bike, flicking branches out of the way and jumping over divots. Behind him the emotionless Odimba just quietly got on with the task in hand.

  Since leaving Kalemie, we had been running due west, following a ridge line above the north bank of the Lukuga River. I had been told we would turn due north near the village of Niemba, a tiny place memorable only because it was the site of an important bridge on the old railway – the one used, at various times through the twentieth century, by my mother, Evelyn Waugh and the swashbuckling gunboat crews from the Royal Navy. Come the twenty-first century and the railway has been forgotten as a means of travel, mainly because the bridge at Niemba had been washed away by floods. But it was still strategic enough to attract the attention of warring factions and for two years, around 2001, there had been a great deal of fighting in the area.

  This explained why, when we arrived at a fork in the track – the first junction we had seen in eighty kilometres since Kalemie – we found a soldier in the uniform of the Congolese army sitting under a tree. I have no idea how long he had been there, how he was resupplied or how he protected himself. The Congolese army has no aircraft or helicopters, and so he must have made his way there on foot along the same awful track we had used. I did not get the chance to find out, because Benoit clearly saw in the uniformed soldier the potential for problems. Gunning the engine on his bike, he swept past the soldier before he could gather his wits and try to stop us. Benoit was sticking to the tactic of only stopping to explain yourself if you really have to. He chose the right-hand, northward track and accelerated. Odimba stuck close enough behind to be whipped in the face by branches dislodged by Benoit. I looked over my shoulder just as the bush enveloped us once more, to see the soldier hopping up and down shouting and waving his gun.

  Grinning like a naughty schoolchild who has got away with a prank, I began to feel more comfortable. Bumping along on the back of Odimba’s bike, I noticed the landscape begin to change. After the ups and downs of the earlier ridge track, we were now crossing flatter savannah. The track was just wide enough for people to walk single file, but the ground was beaten hard and flat, so we scooted along faster than at any stage during the journey so far.

  For tens of kilometres we saw no villages or signs of life, slowing only when the track crossed a stream or river. These crossings became the curse of the journey because no sooner had we picked up speed than we had to slow, stop and pick our route over the waterway. There were scores of them. In some places branches had been felled to form a primitive bridge, but each crossing was hazardous, and countless times I had to jump off the back of the bike and help drag the two bikes across. I saw why any bike bigger than 100cc would be too cumbersome and heavy to manhandle through the eastern Congo.

  The journey settled into this routine, allowing me
to think about the next hazard, Mulolwa and its mai-mai. I kept looking over Odimba’s shoulder to anticipate the moment when we reached the village and had to start negotiations.

  Suddenly, I saw Benoit slow as he rode into a clearing in the bush. His helmeted head swung from side to side as he took in the scene. We were up alongside him in an instant and I could see what he was looking at. There were the burned remains of dozens and dozens of huts. The outline of each dwelling was marked in a ring of black ash and charred thatch around soil beaten hard and flat. In between the ruins there was nothing – no furniture, no pots, no possessions, nothing.

  It would be an exaggeration to say the ruins were still smouldering, but the air still had a tang of acrid smoke. Whatever happened here had not happened a very long time ago. I looked at Benoit and saw his eyes stretched wide-open behind his goggles. He was in shock.

  ‘Let’s not wait around here. Let’s go,’ he said.

  The village was huge, running alongside the track for at least a kilometre. Stanley had described villages in this area as big as British towns, made up of scores of simple huts arranged around the brown, beaten-earth version of an English town square. Mulolwa was one of the largest bush settlements I had seen, but there was not a soul around. We hurried past as fast as we could, through a forest void now occupied by nothing but ash circles. Finally we plunged back into the bush on the far side of the village. It felt like sanctuary.

  For several hours we continued to make good time. The bush level was steadily being raised by taller and taller trees as we approached the northern edge of Katanga province and prepared to enter Maniema province. Maniema’s reputation for cannibalism, which Stanley noted repeatedly in his writings, continued to the modern era. In the 1960s it was in Maniema that thirteen Italian airmen of the United Nations were killed and eaten, their body parts smoked and made available at local markets for weeks after the slaughter. Benoit assured me that we would be safe, if we made it in one piece to Maniema. It was Katanga that scared Benoit.