by Dom Joly
I got an Ngok beer that had a very familiar crocodile on the label. Later, I asked Jean-Pierre what type of crocodile it was and he told me it was called a Lacoste. You couldn’t make it up.
I sat on the terrace by the pool. For about the first time ever I was by a pool where swimmers weren’t treated like retards. There were no signs anywhere telling you there was no lifeguard around. Nobody was telling you that you couldn’t heavy pet should you fancy it. There was not even an indication of depth or the almost compulsory ‘No Diving’ sign that seems to be on every public pool in the world. Not here. The Congo is a place that relies on you to make your own decisions. It’s somewhere that allows you to be a grown-up. It was hot – very hot – and the water looked inviting. I stripped off to my swimming trunks and dived into the cooling water. I hit my hands on the bottom of the pool so hard that it partially dislocated my right wrist. The pool was only three feet deep. It appeared that I had stupidly dived into the shallow end. I swam to the other end only to find, to my astonishment, that it was about a foot and a half deep. Had I dived in there (and it had been 50:50) I would have broken my neck for sure.
Three young and coquettishly beautiful African girls appeared and started swimming hesitantly. They had clearly been there before as they eased themselves in feet first. The only other people by the pool, an elderly Belgian couple, looked on rather disapprovingly. They were clearly locals and I couldn’t help thinking that things must have certainly changed since the days when this area was the ‘European district’ and Africans swimming in their pools would have been punishable with the dreaded chicotte, a nasty leather whip.
Jean-Pierre came round and suggested a little tour of the capital. We grabbed a taxi and rented him for two hours. We drove slowly through Poto-Poto, the old ‘native area’ and now a bustling market full of life. Then Jean-Pierre showed me the Basilique – an extraordinarily modern church built by the French in 1943. The green malachite roof can be seen from most of the city and is a very useful landmark. We popped inside. I’m not a churchy person but this is a remarkable building: one vast, vaulted space with not a single column for support. Two Congolese choristers were practising and their haunting voices echoed beautifully around the space. It was an unexpected moment of serene calm in this most un-calm of countries.
Next we visited the artisans’ market. I was after Tintin stuff for a souvenir but was unsure whether there would be any. Tintin in the Congo is now widely acknowledged as a very racist tome full of negative stereotyping, where every Congolese is represented in an overly caricatured manner as either evil or very dim and almost childlike, needing the wise assistance of their Belgian colonial overlords (not to mention that, in the spirit of the era, Tintin blasted away at about 200 animals, including a rhino he drilled a hole into then blew up with dynamite).
Hergé was simply of his time but I wondered what the actual Congolese made of it all. I presumed that Tintin had visited the Belgian Congo and not the French one but I was still curious to see what they might have. The moment I entered the little market I was faced with walls of scary tribal masks and figurines. Nestled in between these, however, were what I was after. In the same style as the masks and figurines were depictions of Tintin (almost always tied up) as well as Snowy and Professor Calculus. I spotted a particularly rubbish attempt at the moon rocket that I fell instantly in love with. The best, though, was yet to come. The ultimate Tintin/racist/tourist trophy was a gloriously bad version of the Tintin in the Congo book cover. The name Tintin had been left blank and the guy offered me the opportunity to own this artwork replete with my name on it instead of Tintin. I was hooked and haggled him half-heartedly down to about six quid. The deal done, he shuffled off to get the artist to do my name. I left thrilled with my booty.
Back in the car we went past the old president’s house, the scene of much fighting. Cameras had to be put away as stern-looking soldiers with mirror shades and mean faces tracked us with their machine guns. They were used to trouble here. Here is my attempt at a potted history of the place:
The Republic of Congo used to be the French region of Middle Congo. King Leopold II of Belgium had been desperate for a colony for his little country and, by fooling the great explorer Henry Morton Stanley into helping him, he created a huge private fiefdom in 1877. Instead of this being the philanthropic exercise he had promised the world, however, Leopold turned the whole area into a horrific slaughterhouse. Estimates go up to ten million Congolese killed as they were forced to produce first ivory and then rubber for the coffers of the big-nosed Belgian king.
The reason that France got this part of the Congo was that the Italian-born French explorer Brazza claimed the northern bank of the Congo for his country from right under the nose of Stanley.
The Republic of Congo became the present-day country upon independence from France in 1960. There was a coup in 1968 and the country turned into a fully fledged Marxist experiment closely allied to the Soviet Union. The current leader, Denis Sassou Nguesso, took power in another coup in 1979. The country was oil rich, with the largest oilfields in Africa lying off her coast, and predatory foreign com panies were quick to exploit this.
Under heavy pressure Nguesso finally introduced multiparty politics in 1990 and was subsequently defeated in the 1992 elections by Pascal Lissouba.
In 1997 things really came to a head when Lissouba’s men (the Ninjas) engaged Nguesso’s private militia (the Cobras). Lissouba accused Nguesso of trying to stage a coup. A devastating four-month civil war ensued, which tore Brazzaville apart. Finally with the help of socialist Angolan troops, Lissouba was unseated and Nguesso reinstated. He has been in power ever since. Confused? Welcome to the ‘good’ Congo.
The local theories are that everything was about oil. Lissouba had done a deal with the American company Occidental Petroleum and the French oil companies that Nguesso was in bed with weren’t happy about this.
Back on our tour of the city and we’d reached the banks of the Congo, where thin dugout canoes (pirogues) supported precariously balanced fishermen. Little unofficial ferries constantly crossed the river to and from Kinshasa. This was the city where, in 1974, Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle.
‘Ali, boumbaye! Ali, boumbaye!’ the little kids had chanted over and over while they ran next to Ali as he jogged along the banks of the Congo. In English: Ali, kill him!’ They probably meant it literally.
Jean-Pierre got the car to stop at the edge of the city and we wandered down to the riverbank and on to a plastic-bag-strewn beach.
‘Plastique – c’est le nouveau SIDA [AIDS] d’Afrique,’ said Jean-Pierre sadly looking around us. We’d come there to see the rapids that turn this mighty river – beaten in tonnage of water only by the Amazon – into raging, angry foam. Most of the river is on an inland plateau but upon reaching Brazzaville it drops 1,000 feet to sea level in the space of about 200 miles. The water is forced through narrow canyons and more than thirty-two different ‘cataracts’ until it finally reaches the ocean, where its sheer force has carved out an enormous trench in the sea floor.
It was this final stretch of water that prevented early explorers from sailing up the river. The mouth of the Congo was discovered in 1482 but it was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that Stanley managed to navigate the whole length of the river, crossing the continent from East to West.
There are some islands just below the first rapids. One of them is called Devil’s Island. My cab driver told me that couples used to take pirogues out there to make love. Unfortunately peeping toms started to do the same, to pry on the passionate couples. To counter this, pirogue pilots now only take couples out to the islands. These days if you want to be a peeping tom in Brazzaville you need to get organized and pair up with someone who shares your interest.
Beyond Devil’s Island, across the river, is the Democratic Republic of Congo. We could just make out some figures on the other side.
‘You would be stripped naked in t
wo minutes over there,’ laughed the cabbie.
‘Two minutes? That’s in the good areas . . .’ laughed Jean-Pierre, a little too hard for my liking.
We drove back into town and changed some money, as this was probably the last place where we could do so. We were also taking food, drink . . . everything with us as we had no idea what was available where we were going. I started thinking about the fact that Jean-Pierre had never actually been to where we were going. This did seem to me to be a basic flaw in his role as a guide. He seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing so I rolled with it. After all, as the guy who’d recommended him to me back in the UK had said: ‘Listen, he has a satellite phone and with that you can get help wherever you are if it all goes tits-up.’
I asked Jean-Pierre how long the battery on his sat phone lasted and how he powered it up in the middle of nowhere.
He smiled ruefully. ‘I have no sat phone any more – the humidity steams up the screen and I break three in three years – so now I just pray to God that all goes well.’
This was not the most comforting news to an awkward atheist but I tried to remember how I ‘rolled’ and attempted to laugh in what I took to be an overly manly fashion. In reality I felt a bit sick.
I’d been rather hoping that a shopping list for a monster-hunting trip into the African heartland might include:
A gun
A bigger gun
A big net of some sort
Machetes
A helicopter
A really stupidly big gun just to be sure
Sadly none of these seemed to be on JP’s list. It was more like water, corned beef and rice: slightly less glamorous.
We popped into a supermarket, the biggest in Brazzaville, to do our shopping. It was a Casino, like the ones in France. Well, sort of like the ones in France – if the ones in France had gone back to 1820. Just to be a 100 per cent certain, I scoured the shelves for any sign of Um Bongo but there was none. Jean-Pierre asked me what I was looking for but I was too embarrassed to explain.
What I definitely needed was sunblock. Casino didn’t have any.
‘There is not much call for it here,’ laughed Jean-Pierre, pointing at his jet-black skin. ‘Is too late . . .’
We walked through town trying to avoid being run over by the relentless stream of green and white taxis. I noticed a couple of signs on the walls: ‘Il est interdit d’uriner ici.’ I wondered whether there were pee police to enforce this rule.
Finally we got to a tiny chemist. I asked the chemist for sunblock and he appeared to be totally bemused. He looked around slightly randomly before pulling something off a shelf. It was a cream used to prevent brown blotches appearing on the skin. I looked around myself and finally found a cream that was to protect babies from the sun. I bought it and the chemist looked at me as though serving a paedophile.
I was now as ready as I could ever be. My only other problem was power. I’d bought a little folding solar panel with a USB outlet but it turned out not to be supported by either my iPhone or iPad. I’d also bought two USB-powered batteries that could recharge my iPhone. I plugged them into my laptop and charged them up as much as possible.
I headed for the hotel restaurant, where I joined a group of tables full of rather depressed-looking white men drinking beer way too early in the day. We all sat drinking Ngok beer and smoking cigarettes, each one of us quietly wondering what strange twist of fate had brought us here.
We had our last supper in Brazzaville on a terrace overlooking Kinshasa at Mami Water, a French-themed restaurant in a kind of marina.
‘It’s for the Brazzaville jet set,’ said JP, pointing to various speedboats and jet skis lying around. We ate pizza served by a very grumpy waitress who brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘couldn’t give a shit’. Out on the river fishermen floated by in their pirogues as the lights of Kinshasa twinkled gently over the water.
JP told me about sitting where we were five years ago and watching tracer bullets arc over the river from fighting in Kinshasa. It made me think of Beirut.
We started talking about the trip and for the first time I realized that I was quite scared. The Congo is a creepy enough place, even in the capital. I had no sense of intuition in how to judge whether something was safe or not. I couldn’t read people’s faces as I could in more familiar surroundings. At first glance everybody looked rather intimidating and unfriendly. Also where we were going there are enough scientifically validated ‘monsters’ without worrying about a Mokèlé-mbèmbé: leopards, crocodiles, pythons, chimps, hippos, elephants, wild dogs, green mambas, black mambas, scorpions . . .
JP started talking about wading through waist-high swamps and all the things that could slip into various orifices but he ended on a positive note: there were no lions in the area.
I asked him what antidote he used for snakebites.
‘Pray God,’ he said in English.
Jean-Pierre was a most relaxed individual – a little too relaxed for my liking, but I didn’t want to judge until we saw what happened up north. He went through our plan. We would fly to Impfondo and meet members of the WCS (the Wildlife Conservation Society), who had a base somewhere near the river we needed to go down. We would then find a boat and head off towards the village of Boha, whose inhabitants ‘own’ Lake Tele – the lake where the Mokèlé-mbèmbé is supposed to live. In the village we’d have to negotiate access, then get porters, a guide and then hike for two days to the lake. That was the plan. I was on a self-imposed tight timetable. I had exactly a week up north and had to be back to Impfondo in time to catch the weekly flight back to Brazzaville. This I needed to do because I had to be back in London for the most crucial meeting of my TV life. ITV would decide whether to go ahead with my new TV series or not. If they did, it was Saturday-night prime-time for me. If they didn’t . . . Well, maybe I could apply for a job reading the news on Congolese TV? I was pretty sure that this was not the normal type of problem that international monster-hunters faced. They were probably more worried about having contracted some hideous disease or smuggling unusual skulls across borders.
JP and I shook hands outside the hotel and agreed to meet the following morning at seven. As I walked into the building I spotted a pack of wild dogs taking it in turns to pee into the hotel’s main air-con vent . . . Which was nice.
The following morning, on the way to Maya-Maya, the airport from which our EU-blacklisted plane was to depart, the cab took us down a long wooded avenue bordered by desolate concrete buildings.
‘This used to be the zoo but they shot all the animals and ate them during the civil war,’ said JP ruefully.
The Chinese were building an extension at the airport but for the moment it looked like total chaos, despite JP assuring me that it was ‘the best airport in Central Africa’.
Nevertheless, if you are of a nervous disposition then the domestic-departures area of Maya-Maya Airport is most def initely not for you. It was like a huge mosh-pit. People queue-barged from so many sides that the queue itself became non-existent. A lone Lebanese man who seemed to be nominally in charge hurled abuse at every passenger, flatly refusing their demands to have everything from huge fridges to flat-screen televisions, all wrapped in brown cardboard, allowed on board. One man ignored the Lebanese man and simply tried to hurl his cardboard box through the flap at the end of the conveyor belt. The Lebanese man did not hesitate: he punched the offender hard in the face and the guy went down like a sack of potatoes. The Lebanese man looked around triumphantly, as though daring anyone else to try something. The tide was stemmed for a minute or so but the battle was soon back on as the unconscious man was dragged away by a relative. To my great surprise we appeared to be flying ‘Canadian Air’. I was pretty certain that Canada had very little to do with this outfit but what could I do?
The Lebanese man seemed almost shocked at how little luggage we were taking with us and he looked around suspiciously as though smelling a rat. He gave me my boarding pass with some hesitancy
and snarled at JP, who gave him one of his beaming smiles.
While waiting at the departure gate I started re-reading the notes I had on the Mokèlé-mbèmbé.
The earliest reference to the creature seemed to be in a book by the nearly appropriately named Abbé Bonaventure in 1776. Bonaventure was an early French missionary in the Congo and wrote about seeing ‘huge footprints, about three feet in circumference’.
In 1909 the famous big-game hunter Carl Hagenbeck wrote in his autobiography, Beasts and Men, about hearing from several independent sources of a creature living in the Congo described as ‘half elephant, half dragon’. Meanwhile the naturalist Joseph Menges told him about an animal that was ‘some kind of dinosaur, akin to the brontosaurus’.
In 1913 German Captain Freiherr von Stein was asked to do a report on German colonies and wrote about what was now Cameroon, just on the other side of the border from where we were headed. He too described reports of a mys terious creature:
The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and applelike fruits. At the Ssombo River I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food. The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby. But since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals it was impossible to make out a particular spoor with any amount of certainty.