by Dom Joly
I now just wanted to go to bed. I’d had enough of Boha politics. We were told that we could return for more stories the following day but both JP and I were reaching the end of our tether. The boat guy had set up our tents while we had been away. One was badly broken but the other one was OK save for a large hole in the roof. We ate a sullen meal with Snoop. His wife provided some smoked river fish with rice with peanuts. There was also a bowl of the local staple food, cassava. It’s very easy to grow but has little nutritional value. The leaves are edible and known as saka-saka but it’s the tubers on the roots that feed the Congo. First they’re soaked, then cut up and dried until they’re white and brittle and then they’re pounded into flour by the women and made into foo-foo, the bland dumplings on the table in front of us. It is extraordinary how little the Congolese grow for themselves. As we came down the Likouala aux Herbes JP had been marvelling at how perfect the swampy flatlands are for growing rice.
‘If the Chinese came they would be in rice heaven,’ he’d said.
Snoop started ranting again about Crazy but we’d had enough and called it a night. We got into our tents. It had got seriously cold and I had no warm clothes and no cover. I lay on a mat and stared at the stars through the hole in the roof. I could hear something slithering around just on the other side of the canvas. I became convinced that it was a python and stayed rigid in the middle of my mat for about an hour as whatever it was slithered all around the tent. Unable to sleep, I used my head torch to read the part in Redmond O’Hanlon’s book about when he visited Boha. This was a big mistake. There’s a particular passage where O’Hanlon asks his friend where they should pitch their tents. His friend replies that only a crazy man would camp in Boha. He insists that they sleep in a hut with someone guarding the door.
‘I’m not going to be axed through the canvas in the night . . .’ says the friend.
I started to imagine a spear suddenly slamming through the thin canvas into my sides. I wondered what it would feel like. Would it kill me immediately or would I go slowly, groaning, my lifeblood draining away into the sand?
As it so happened, I was neither speared to death nor bitten by snakes in the night but I was woken by the sound of terrible, terrible singing very close to me. It was worse than my mother-in-law on a road trip. (She is a wonderful woman who loves to sing but nature has blessed her with the voice of a tone-deaf hobo. It’s a cruel fate – like adoring animals but finding out that you’re allergic to them.) And, like my mother-in-law, the singer here was not going to stop.
I got up and clambered out of the tent. It was about five in the morning and the sun had just risen. I strolled down to the riverbank where villagers were already setting off for dawn fishing trips on their pirogues. A thin mist hung low over the water. Birds sang lustily and, for a moment, Boha was almost a pleasant place. I climbed up from the riverbank and walked down the dusty main drag. On a whim I turned left near Porte-Parole’s hut and followed a little track. To my astonishment and delight, the first hut I came to had the words ‘Boha – Pilote – Dinosaur’ daubed on the wall in fading white paint. I bumped into Porte-Parole on the way back and asked him about it. He said that the owner of the hut had done it about thirty years ago, when the first interest in the Mokèlé-mbèmbé had surfaced. He’d hoped that there would be a flood of visitors he could guide to the lake.
And what happened?’ I asked.
‘Nobody came,’ replied Porte-Parole ruefully.
I returned to the tents to find Crazy and Snoop standing outside Snoop’s hut and having a furious shouting match. It was seemingly never-ending, like being stuck in a nightmare loony council meeting. JP was up and we went for a little walk and decided that things were getting a little out of hand and we should probably beat a retreat back to Epema. Bulldog had turned up again and was looking like thunder at us.
We returned and interrupted Crazy and Snoop to let them know that we were leaving. They immediately stopped fighting and Snoop produced a bottle of jungle gin and announced that, before we left, we must drink to celebrate. If I was honest, it was perhaps not the ideal breakfast drink and it burned my throat quite badly.
As we sat, Bulldog started accusing us of all sorts of things and got quite nasty. JP whispered that we needed to get on the boat and fast. Suddenly there was a commotion beyond Snoop’s hut. A man appeared brandishing a machete. He was bare-chested and had cut himself all over his chest and arms and was approaching us fast and didn’t look friendly. Blood was pouring from his wounds and it looked like a scene from hell. I recognized the man as one of the porters assigned to us the previous day. Had we left yesterday we would be in the middle of the forest with this man going crazy. It didn’t bear thinking about.
He had an insane look in his eyes and they were focused right on me. Fortunately for me, two villagers grabbed him and there was quite a tussle with the man flailing away with his machete. He was eventually subdued and tied to a tree with rope.
We didn’t wait any longer. JP and I headed for the boat with the entire village following us, shouting and screaming at each other and at us. We didn’t hang about. Our boat guy was already in the boat with Sylvestre and JP shouted to him to turn on the engine, which he did. We hopped on and shouted ‘Go!’ to him. He needed no further urging: he’d been looking very uncomfortable throughout our stay. We pushed off and were soon free of the reeds and in deeper water. Back on the shore the crowd had got into a huge argument and were screaming at each other again. The whole thing was more Asterix than Tintin. As we left the reedy channel and joined the main river we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.
On the way upriver towards Epema we stopped at the village of Mohounda to get some more petrol for the boat. Despite the fact that a young thirty-five-year-old man had died of a heart attack in the night, they were very welcoming and petrol was provided and we were soon on our way. As we made our way upriver there were a lot of pirogues on their way down. Many were full and precarious with seven, eight, nine people in them.
They are all going for the funeral in Mohounda,’ said Sylvestre. I asked him how long the ceremony took.
Three days and three nights of dancing and then they bury the body and everyone goes home.’
I was astonished at how quickly the ‘grapevine’ had informed everyone, all the way up to Epema, about the death.
We finally got back to the WCS camp and went to see the Rwandan boss. He said that he’d known that there was a problem when the boat hadn’t come back. He didn’t seem at all surprised. Carefully ignoring his part in our delay, he started slagging off the villagers – saying that if they behaved like this they would lose their rights to control access to the lake and that he would find another way in. He then told us that, six years previously, four Americans went to the village but refused to pay the huge sum they were asking and came back. It was nice of him to tell us all this now.
JP and I didn’t want to be stuck in Epema. It was a total ghost town. Fortunately the director was embarrassed enough to offer to drive us to Impfondo himself. We were very grateful. After a minimal wait (in Congolese terms) of about two hours, while nothing seemed to happen, we were off.
The first part of the road out of Epema was in quite good nick and the director drove like a mentalist.
‘This is the only road in the whole province of Likouala –’ he said, half looking at the road and half at me – ‘twenty-three thousand square miles and only a hundred miles of road . . .’
Up here, of course, the rivers were the real roads and this was what first excited the French and the Belgians: a ready-made artery of infrastructure for them to transport first ivory and then rubber to the coast for transport to the West.
We eventually arrived in Impfondo after a long talk about Pygmy discrimination. They were seen by locals as ‘sous-humain’ and appallingly discriminated against.
We got dropped off at Tropicana and discovered that they had rooms as well as a restaurant. After Boha, it seemed like a five-star resort,
and we had a fabulous meal of lamb, potatoes, rice and a lot of ndongo. We passed on the sautéed antelope.
Everyone was much more relaxed and Sylvestre was like a new man. The director asked us our plans. We were uncertain but worried that we might bump into King, who would surely make us pay more money as we did not have a permis to not go to Lake Tele. Everyone laughed. If you can’t laugh, then Congo travel is very much not for you.
Sylvestre told me about a Swiss man who had come to Epema and wanted to see gorillas. They’d stayed in the forest for six days and didn’t see a single one. The Swiss man went totally mental and was blaming Sylvestre and threatening him.
‘I must make remote-controlled gorilla so I can control them,’ laughed Sylvestre.
Sylvestre and the director left to head back to Epema. We headed for our new rooms to chill out. They were much better than those at Le Rosier, which had felt like they were modelled on a prison exercise yard. Our new rooms had a TV, air con and a shower. I was excited. I turned on the air con as it was boiling hot – but there was no electricity. JP went and made enquiries and found out that it would come on between six and nine in the evening. It was four-thirty, so I lay on my bed in a pool of sweat and read a book. At six-forty-eight p.m., the electricity came on. I know this because there was a sudden violent flash and some smoke from two bare wires hanging out of the wall above the bed. I tried the lights and a light bulb turned on but I received a moderate electric shock as penance. I turned on the air con. There were no life signs: it didn’t work. I plugged in the TV very gingerly but that didn’t work either. I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower: a tiny trickle appeared and I stood under it, desperately trying to get wet. After two minutes I had enough water on me to start lathering up and I attempted to get the forest off me. Just as I’d covered myself in soap, the water stopped completely and the electricity went off. I was left stumbling around with foam all over me – this was not good. I managed to find a towel and wipe as much off as possible. I then felt my way to the bed and lay down on it, still soapy and wet. The electricity came back on and another small firework display burst from the wall wires. I was wet and that doesn’t mix well with electricity. I carefully returned to the shower but there was no more water. I gave up and lay back down on the bed. I was foamy and naked but I didn’t care any more.
I continued reading my book. For the next hour or so I could hear quite a commotion on the terrace that ran past my room. There was much laughing and shouts and it felt like there was quite a crowd out there. I ignored it and carried on reading. The man I called Crazy turned out to have been the chief of Boha when Redmond O’Hanlon visited in 1995. There was even a photo of him, bare-chested, clutching his favourite spear and looking quite the young warrior. He looked about forty and fit as a fiddle. There was simply no seeing him as the haggard, rotting old man we had been dealing with. Among its many other properties, it was clear that jungle gin was not good for eternal youth.
At eight-twenty there was a knock on the glass door of my room. Both the door and window of our rooms were mirrored, which was quite disconcerting. I caught a glimpse of myself in the door. I looked like I’d just been to a San Franciscan foam party. I opened the door an inch to find JP looking a bit embarrassed.
‘I think it’s best you close your curtains – you are becoming something of a town exhibit . . .’
I didn’t have the foggiest what he was talking about so I put on some shorts and stepped out on to the balcony. I looked at the window to my room which, in the daytime, had been mirrored and impossible to see in through. Now, however, with the lights on inside, the mirror had turned into a sheet of clear glass – as had my door. Unbeknown to me, for the last hour and a half I had become the equivalent of the women exposing themselves in windows in the Reeperbahn. The show, although catering to quite specialist tastes, had apparently been very popular. I was mortified and when I got dressed and entered the restaurant the whole place was awash with smirks, glances and laughter. I felt violated in a most curious manner. I ate an omelette and some ndongo as quickly as I could before heading off to bed. This time I closed the curtains – not that this mattered now, as the electricity had cut out again for good.
About an hour later I started to feel unwell – very unwell -and I spent the rest of the night sitting on the loo with a head torch while I shed half my bodyweight into the Impfondo sewage system (which I’m guessing meant the river just below the hotel).
The following morning at breakfast I was still feeling delicate and very, very drained. Fortunately I had thought to bring some Dioralytes and these helped a lot. JP said that if we didn’t make a journey it was because God didn’t want us to. I’m not a religious man but I thanked the Lord for not allowing me into the swamp forest with a man so crazy he had to be tied up while I was shitting my insides out over holy ground.
JP was trying to work out how we would get back to Brazzaville. We’d checked the two boats in town the night before, including the one owned by the Frenchman we had met previously. However, both boats were going upstream to Bangui, so this option was a no-no. JP needed to try to get some money from Moneyman as there were rumours of a rogue plane headed for Brazzaville the following day.
We said hello to Moneyman who explained that, sadly, he once again had no money – but that he was fairly confident he’d have some at one p.m. The most common phrase you hear in the Congo is this: ‘Vous savez, avec ça le grand probléme c’est . . .’ and then a reeling out of all the possible problems ahead of you in whatever you’re wishing to do. Actually scratch the word ‘possible’ – the problems will definitely happen . . .
Back in Tropicana I lay on my bed in the infernal midday heat. I would not have liked to be here in the wet season. Then, according to the Rwandan boss, the whole town – a grid of dirt tracks and shacks – becomes a mud bath and almost impenetrable.
At about two-thirty we got good news. JP had got money from Moneyman and thought he’d managed to swap our previous airline tickets for two on a flight to Brazzaville the following day. The man in question said that he would bring the air tickets to us at six that evening. If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t have put a single Congolese franc on this happening.
Come six p.m. we were seated in the Tropicana garden having a beer. Nobody showed up. There was, however, a bit of drama unfolding to keep us entertained. A little man in a shiny suit came in, surrounded by three bodyguards. The man was a caricature of a self-important African oligarch. He was on his mobile and very upset. He was talking so loudly that he made my Trigger Happy TV character look like an amateur. He was complaining to the local police inspector that he had just been beaten up by a crowd in the street. I knew nothing of the affair but my sympathies were almost immediately with the crowd. I tried to get some footage of this buffoon but one of the bodyguards spotted me and charged over to demand why I was filming. I professed total ignorance and claimed I was cleaning my camera. There was a brief stand-off but the guy backed off. Next, a large group of excitable youths entered the garden and surrounded the buffoon. I rather hoped that they were the crowd in question, here to finish him off, but he stood up and gave them a rousing speech at which they all roared their approval. His speech finished, he proceeded to lead the youths out of the garden as though to battle.
Suddenly a new character – a huge, fearsome-looking woman – entered the garden in a voluminous, multi-coloured, all-encompassing dress with a repeat pattern made of the colours of the Congolese flag and the face of the president. The woman squared up to the buffoon, right in his face, and started screaming that, if he wanted to cause problems, he should do so in parliament in Brazzaville – not here, where she had to live.
The waitress whispered to us that the buffoon was a senior member of the ruling party and this woman was his sister. He backed away as she continued her verbal assault. The buffoon was having a bad day. A policeman turned up but appeared to be nervous of both parties. He tried to separate them and they both turned on
him. Eventually the whole circus poured out into the street and marched off shouting at each other.
As if on cue a tall, thin Congolese man wearing a Pete Doherty cast-off hat pressed ‘play’ on a PA system that he had been setting up in the garden. A gritty rap song blared out. The hook phrase, endlessly repeated, was, ‘I know you niggazzzz wanna fuckkkkkk meeee . . .’ On the grass three five-year-old kids danced innocently a yard away from the speakers, apparently transfixed by the hypnotic groove of this appalling tune.
JP and I downed another Ngok and prayed that the plane would take us away from all this tomorrow.
The rap stopped and now Phil Collins’s Against All Odds’ polluted the African night. The girls looked disappointed and stopped dancing: some things have no frontiers. We called it a night at ten. There was still no sign of the airline-ticket man, whom I was now convinced was a close relative of Moneyman. Whatever, this was the Congo and tomorrow would be what it would be . . .
My stomach was feeling a little better, possibly because it could find little else other than my vital organs to get rid of. I had weird dreams about being on the shores of Lake Tele watching Motörhead playing ‘Ace of Spades’ on a floating platform before they were attacked by a Mokèlé-mbèmbé and drowned. The subconscious is a curious creature.
I awoke at eight a.m. and watched the fishermen out on the river. Lonely silhouettes on calm waters. JP was in the restaurant and he had still not heard from Ticketman but he was confident that we could get on the flight. The only thing I could be sure of was that you can’t be sure of anything in the Congo. We had a final ndongo-peppered omelette. The only other person in the restaurant was a rather shattered-looking man from Benin. He’d been on our flight up from Brazzaville and was supposed to stay for a week but, like us, was going back today (although, also like us, he had no ticket).
‘It is impossible to do business here – it is like the Stone Age. I have not managed one meeting, one discussion; nobody turns up for anything. It is beyond belief. This country is dead.’ He wandered off looking distraught and quite frazzled.