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Diary This is Jan's diary. If you want to receive this diary by mail, write your mail on the contact form.
‹ Previous (06/05/2007) MONTH Next (2007-07-05)› ‹ Previous (2007-05-15 - Nigeria) COUNTRY Next (2007-06-14 - Gabon)› Cameroon Bafang (see on map) 06/06/2007:
Sunday, when we met Mar and the other two Catalan girls, we also met, Michel Djaba, a man that the ONG ARSIS had also asked us to visit. We decided that Tuesday he will come to search for us in Bafang (or like this we believed it), but in the end it worked out that we had remained on Wednesday. Anyway, it happened that on Tuesday in the morning there was the last day school below the mission and I attended with Frederick. As it already becomes a habit, they made me sit in the best sofa, next to the father Frederick who inaugurated the manifestations with a prayer. Immediately after, the children from about two to four years, sang the National hymn, continuing with theatre representation , continued by dancing, reciting poems, proving their knowledge of English, simulating a wedding... In the representation of the wedding a proof of the AIDS was done by both couples before accepting the marriage. Afterwards the children recited a poem in which the chastity was suggested to fight against the AIDS, if the chastity was not possible, the faithfulness and the use of condoms. Later I questioned Frederick on the subject and contradicting the doctrine of the Vatican he declared that he gave support to the message recited by the children. The holiday finished, as always, with another prayer and with a community meal. Alexandra had not eaten anything in all day, because according to her there was nothing to eat in the auto caravan, so in the afternoon, I had to walk up to the big town to buy the required products. Bafang is a long town situated on a main street with every type of shops behind the pavements of mud. I had to walk up to the end of the town to find all the required ingredients. I returned full with a motorcycle-taxi. At night we went to the town, with Frederick and the nurse, because Mar had invited us to the office of the association Kentaja, which is directed by father Michel. We bought some drinks in the bar below and Mar started to explain the work of the Association Kentaja, which has three orphanages for children between 6 and 18 years. In the middle of the explanation, Frederick arrived with some food and gave us a bad news, a professor of Spanish that Mar knew, had died leaving his widow and his four children in the misery. The woman worked selling peanuts in the street, totally insufficient activity to pay the rent of the house that they occupied and for the food of the children. Somebody asked: - And how will they be able to survive? Sea answered: - The association Kentaja will probably have to see about two or three children so that the mother can get through. Today in the morning Michel came to take us to visit the orphanage that the association Kentaja has created and maintains now in Badzuidjong. During the road, Michel has explained us with words that were touching us that before creating the association he was receiving orphan children in the parish, afterwards he created the association Kentaja with the help of two European entities that sponsor the monthly expenses of salaries, food, health and education for 130 children that live in the three created centers. Anyway, they also receive help from other ONGs and entities, for example, some years ago the firemen of Barcelona posed naked in a calendar to collect money to build a maternal clinic in the village called Baku, another rich woman from Barcelona financed the construction of one of the centers with individual beds for 64 children. Anyway, they are now trying to initiate projects for self-financing. The head of the village of Badzuidjong has given three hectares to the association that are destined for the crop and the production of meat, with two goals: feeding the children and teaching them how is to work the field. In this point I have shown interest on the leaders of the villages and Michel has explained to me that they enjoy a great power on the villagers and on the financial resources of the government destined to the village. Then I have explained the case of potable water in Mbouassu, where Frederick took us and after Michel has commented. - There are good leaders and interested with the progress of the village, as the one from Badzuidjong, but also there are bad ones, as the one from Mbouassu who has cut the access to the potable water and the inhabitants do not dare to denounce him for fear or respect. The road towards Badzuidjong was bad, impassable with the auto caravan. Little before arriving we have listened a noise under a wheel. We have gone down and Michel has observed with worry that two crossbows of the suspension were broken. We have just reached Badzuidjong, but the damaged suspension has obliged us to leave right after visiting the facilities and the fields of corn of the association, the school of the village and the river where the children finished washing the clothes. When returning to Bafang, Michel has explained us that he remembered when he was 10 years old, about 40 years ago, he had to run away from his village because the Frenchmen set it on fire, partially due to the air of independence that was breathed and for those of communism that were infiltrated. Arriving to Bafang, I interviewed Michel and in the middle of this he has mentioned that he was orphan from the age of 10, but I have not dared to ask whether his fathers were killed by the Frenchmen. -- I had the occasion to interview Michel who opined that the main problem of the world is the ambition of the men who sometimes makes others happy and sometimes they create clashes between each other . The dialogue should be encouraged to solve these problems. The main problem of Cameroon is the lack of development, a change of mentality is necessary, and that should be of interest and responsibility of every individual. He tries, through the faith and hospitality, to teach the youth to take more initiatives in the direction of development. Michel is happy because he became what he dreamed ( being priest). The secret of happiness is to be friend with God and with man. Douala (see on map) 08/06/2007:
On the way to Douala, Michel had already informed us that in Nkonbsamba they had the modern and biggest orphanage, financed by the rich woman from Barcelona, but we did not know that the village was on the way to Douala. That's why, when Alexandra observed a poster of Kentaja next to a building of the European community, we decided to go back and to visit the centre. Most of the children were at school but there were two educators who were preparing the food. I presented myself and I asked them to make some photo if they could show me the orphanage, but they were not informed about my arrival and a call to Michel was necessary. Afterwards, the two girls, very nice, showed me the solid building of two plants with rooms and luxury equipment according to the rural standards of Cameroon. From the terrace they surprised me explaining that nearby another building financed by another ONG is being built in order to receive many more children. At noon we arrived in the centre of Douala, advancing through a street with broken and perforated asphalt and with a traffic that had us stopped a good while. It seems weird that being a city bigger than Yaundé the capital and the economic engine of Cameroon, Douala is a city with forgotten infrastructures, although it is also true that some streets controlled by Asians were being fixed. Apart from that, Douala is a city without any grace and there is nothing that worth’s the visit. Therefore, we have made use of these two days in the city to relax, to buy in the supermarket, to redraw money and to walk between the big buildings and small trades. Kribi (see on map) 11/06/2007:
Yesterday it has past one year since me and Alexandra met in Romania, while I was carrying out the first European stage of the journey. Immediately we attracted ourselves and enchant and fortunately, few months later, Alexandra had the courage of abandoning her friends, family, work and studies to accompany me in this journey around the world. Good, at first she was not used to the idea of traveling so much, that's why she did not renew in time her passport and now she has no blank pages. But now she says that she would not abandon the travel for anything in the world, because the goal - according to her - is to make my like difficult. And sometimes she manages, especially when she acts as a spoiled girl or when she turns hysterical and paranoid. The problem is that Africa is not her continent: too many different people interested in us, too many hypothetical dangers, too much indecipherable food, too many insects of films of terror, too many impassable roads... Anyway, she seems that she keeps getting used to these vicissitudes and she starts to enjoy this fantastic journey, although it still lacks a lot till she will fall in love with this land. In any case, what is important is that we follow enchanted and enjoying our company. Kribi is one of the best places in Cameroon to celebrate our anniversary. It is a town soaked by the Atlantic Ocean, and soaked also by the rains. Kribi is a paradise, but not in this period in which the rains start. But we have had luck that has been raining during the night and during the day the sun was up shining, so I could swim in the ocean and taste the delicious shellfish and fish that is caught - Alexandra, who does not eat fish nor wants to be touched by fish, has only enjoyed herself observing how I was delighted. Anyway, yes we marveled together with the large cascades of Lobé, there are not many in the world that jump directly into the ocean. In any case, we have not come to Kribi to celebrate our anniversary. The ONG Lanzarote Help had invited us to visit the hospital that they had built near Kribi two years ago. On Saturday at midday we were received by Dr. Samuel, originary from Equatorial Guinea, the surgeons volunteer Sílvia from Mexico, and also the voluntary manager that came from Italy, Luciano. We decided to take advantage of the good company of Luciano and Sílvia and to share the weekend with them and to visit the hospital on Monday in the morning. Luciano has explained to us how the hospital is managed and controled, a work that can not be assigned to a local person because - according to him - they move too much for economic interests and are too much accustomed to the corruption. And today in the morning, Dr Samuel has described the functioning of the hospital to us: the patients pay 50% less for the consultations, treatments and operations than in the public hospitals, the patients arrive o seasons, n because they have to compile the money, and the most severe cases only arrive, because the people prefer self-administering medication . In any case, the hospital has 20 beds that sometimes are insufficient for all the ill people, that’s why, Lanzarote Help is financing the construction of a new building that will double the services and beds of the current hospital. The hospital, apart from offering attention to the delivery, receives many cases of malaria, which normally heals up unless the illness is in a very advanced state or else the patient has caught endurance with the self-medication; many gastrointestinal problems caused by the undrinkable water or bad hygiene, breathing problems because of the dust of the summer, and curiously also cardiovascular problems, depressions, insomnia, anxiety, are also treated... - "the globalization has arrived to Africa", has expressed Samuel; the public health offers almost freely the medicines to deal with AIDS, although in the hospital many cases are diagnosed, according to Samuel, the great sanitary problem Africa is not the AIDS, is the malaria. In the afternoon, Samuel came at the house of Luciano and Sílvia and we have continued the conversation that we had begun in the morning. Slowly Samuel has kept explaining his interesting life: the exit of Equatorial Guinea to go to study Medicine in the former Soviet Union, the work as doctor in the occidental Berlin before and, after the fall of the wall, and the return to Africa working in the hospital of Kribi, near his country and facing the impossibility of returning, since for all this time that has been abroad he has also been a key man of the opposition in the dictatorial regime of Equatorial Guinea, a regime with the hands full of blood, with the 500.000 controlled inhabitants, with the opponents in prison and tortured and supported by the European governments thanks to the oil resources. Anyway, Samuel still has expectations of a political change in his country. in the hospital he receives many Guinean patients and who knows whether little by little he is giving them the force to scream its sufficient". --- I interviewed Samuel who thought that the main problem of the world is the lack of freedom, for example in dictatorships. The solution is in thinking that we deserve the freedom. At personal level Samuel is doctor and he helps his patients that are released of the illnesses and also fight so that his country is released. The main problem in Equatorial Guinea is the lack of freedom, "a shame that in the 21st century still there is " dictatorships", like the one in his own country. The change can come of in the regime but with the exterior pressure. Samuel is happy but would be happier returning to his country in peace and to go to the river of the village where he had been born. The secret of happiness is the expectation to have the total happiness. Ambam (see on map) 12/06/2007:
Today in the morning we have received very bad news in an e-mail. Ben, the Australian that we had known in Yaunde, wrote to us. he and Maria were in Congo and informed us about being imposible to get the Angolan visa both in LibreVille (Gabon) and in Cabinda (small territory of Angola between both Congos), although they thought that from Kinshasa (capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo) it could be obtained. On the other hand, they informed us that the roads of the south of Gabon and of the Congo are not asphalted, and are full of mud and with deep holes and rut created by the trucks. They explained to us that they thought that it would be impossible to go with our self caravan without destroying it. To finish, Alexandra has read some news in Internet that yesterday they had killed a Volunteer of Doctors without Borders in the Central African Republic. We have left Kribi with the pessimism drawn on our faces, circulating to the North, afterwards towards East to Yaoundé, to return towards the south, with Gabon as destination. But as we went down towards the south through a good road, a single radiant thought appeared and we entered in the country of the Pygmies (men and women of normal proportions but two or three palms lower than the rest, that they looked us with the same curiosity as us to them), my optimism returned. In some point or another we should be able to obtain the visa for Angola, even if it is with the help of the Spanish embassy. On the other hand, now it starts the dry season in Gabon and in Congo, expecting that these 3 or 4 weeks of delay that we have on Ben and Maria to be sufficient so that they authorities improve the communications, or perhaps can find an alternative route, or can load the selfcaravan in a lorry, or to embark it on a boat... It is necessary to be positive and to think that if we have managed to arrive up to here, nothing else will stop us. Gabon Libreville (see on map) 14/06/2007:
Yesterday we crossed the border with Gabon trouble free, it would have taken less than an hour if it wasn’t for the chiefs of two check points, which had left (one to the market and the other one at home) and we had to wait for them a good while. In Gabon the road followed in good state, better that in Cameroon. We thought that it was normal, after all Gabon is a rich country (financed thanks to the oil) where - according to our travel guide - the entire world has money to pay for a beer at least. Anyway, today at noon, the road has worsened very much, with some enormous craters in half of the asphalt or in the earth and sometimes was impossible to cross. Only the full trucks with heavy trunks of great dimensions seemed not to be affected by the state of the road and followed the inscrutable course, lifting dust and increasing the measure of the craters. As the car raised one of these enormous holes, a front wheel has skidded and a click and a strong hiss have instantaneously been listened. We have stopped a little further on and observed how the wheel had just deflated. It was the first puncture that we had, but it has not been a problem and we changed the wheel with efficiency ( thanks to the invaluable help of Alexandra). Anyway, the puncture was an expected signal. Ben and Maria had not told us about this road, therefore, the roads on the exit of Libreville will be much worse and according to them impracticable for us. To see whether from Libreville we can find any other solution... On the other hand, we have today crossed the equator. All the world thinks that in the equator it always does a lot of heat, but it is not like this, now that we are close to the summer solstice, the sun is closer to Barcelona than to the equator. That's why it is not surprising that the Gabonese use long sleeve when the sun sets down, to isolate from the cold, and also from the mosquitoes. 17/06/2007:
On Friday in the morning we went to the embassy of Angola, and as Ben and Maria had explained to us it was not possible to obtain the visa from Libreville, they did not have the adhesives for the visa" gave us as excuse. The boy of reception informed me that from Point-noire, in Congo, we could carry out the visas, but according to Ben and Maria it was not possible from there either. Added to the problem of the visa there was the bad state of the roads. That's why, after the embassy we went towards the port with the intention of looking for a boat to embark the auto caravan to South Africa. In the port we found an office of the maritime transport where a couple of very nice boys did some calls and they finally informed us about the fact that the day after a boat is leaving. We were all the Friday in the afternoon and on Saturday in the morning pending of this boat, but in the end it didn’t work out because it was too small and it went too full and the auto caravan did not fit any way (morning, Monday, we will keep searching). Later, we studied another alternative. We went to the bus station and I asked a truck driver about the state of the roads towards Congo. His opinion was not catastrophic as Ben and Maria were, although he also informed us about an alternative path, a section circulating in train (we will keep investigating tomorrow). On Saturday in the afternoon, after the stress of Friday and of the previous hours, we went to relax at the beach, where there were some other whites surfing with the help of paragliding. Today on Sunday we have returned to the beach. In comparison with the two previous days, the city was deserted and all the shops closed. It has been a big surprise, for in all the previous countries the Sundays did not differ too much from the other days of the week. That confirmed an aspect that they had explained to us: the Gabonese are lazy, probably because of the wealth of the country. When arriving to the beach we have run into some of the inhabitants who had emptied the city: boys playing soccer, girls jumping in front of the waves, even conversing under the palm trees, white and black young men sat in the improvised bars of the beach... 20/06/2007:
On Monday the adventure to discover which the best option was - if there was any- to continue the journey up to south Africa. We went to the embassy of this country to know if we needed visa to entry if we arrived by boat (Alexandra needed), we went to the train station to ask for the cost of loading the car up to Franceville (about 400 € including the thicket for us), we went with one of the boys from the maritime transport to all the naval companies (there was only one boat towards Cape Town with a cost superior to 3000 € to load the car). Facing the economic impossibility to arrive to south Africa on sea we had the only option of continuing overland passing for R Congo and RD Congo and trying to obtain the visa of Angola in one of these two countries, if we did not obtain it we would find ourselves caught and could only keep going ahead all the south of RD Congo, that it did not seem such a good idea. Luckily, yesterday Ben and Maria wrote us an e-mail and reported us that a visa of 5 days for Angola could be obtained from Matadi, in RD Congo. 5 days were insufficient, because Alexandra has only one blank page in the passport; at the embassy of Romania in Lunada they commented that they could solve the problem from there, but not in 5 days. Anyway we have the expectation to obtain a visa of 30 days or to extend it from Luanda. So, we would follow the way on road, but these days Alexandra was exhausted. She was saying that she cannot deal anymore with the corrupt police and with the terrible African roads; that she did not want to pass through Congo where the police would rob us and kill us afterwards; that if they did not kill us we could not enter Angola, the pages of the passport would be finished for her and she would end up being illegal in some country... We visited some air companies to know which had flights to Europe and Alexandra seemed decided to take one, but spent all the days crying that she did not want to leave me alone. In the end, yesterday on the beach, while meditating about the situation she found a coin and she thought: - When one has to take an important decision and finds a coin, he has to trust with the luck and the destiny - she explained me afterwards. She threw the coin two times and both times it came that she should stay. Having decided to follow the journey overland, we only had to know which was the best route to reach R Congo. I asked to the boys of the office of the maritime transport if they knew where the ministry of transport was, perhaps they could inform about the state of the roads, but they started to laugh, those of the ministry would be the most misinformed. This morning we have gone to ask the embassy of R Congo, and a very nice consul has recommended me to go for Franceville, because afterwards, in the Congo the roads were much better. Afterwards, Alexandra has left to connect Internet and I have taken advantage to fix the wheel. When I have gone to look for Alexandra in the cibercafé, a man has stopped us and started to talk with Alexandra in Romanian. The man has explained us that he was Romanian architect and it’s already five years since he is working in Gabon, although for him its all a vacation due to the paused working rhythm. We have been conversing in a very expensive bar, he has led us afterwards to visit a centre of craftsmanship and he has finally suggested us to meet and dine in a Romanian restaurant. But at night he didn’t come, although the restaurant was worthed. I have asked for sarmale, some Romanian specialty wrapped in cabbage, but Alexandra has stolen them from me because she said that they were almost as good as those that her grandmother cooks. A good way of celebrating the departure from Libreville, a rich and expensive city, with high buildings along a big avenue that passes in front of the Atlantic Ocean; a city with a lot of white or expatriates that observed our caravan with curiosity from their powerful 4x4; a city with a lot of traffic in the rush hours or at every hour, because the trades closed at noon with the most different timetables; also a city with many police controls that have annoyed Alexandra more than once, although we have been informed by other travellers that the police of Gabon is the most corrupt in Africa. Franceville (see on map) 23/06/2007:
We initiated the road towards Franceville moving back through the road that we had done to arrive to Libreville, but at mid-afternoon we had to divert to the right, and the fears started to appear. In front of us we had an unknown track of about 500 kilometres, which some sources defined it as impassable with our auto caravan. Anyway, the only option seemed to arrive to Congo and therefore, i was ready to risk the integrity of the auto caravan and to leave it destroyed in the middle of the road in exchange of being able to continue with our journey. The small track seemed that it had to end in the middle of the jungle. We found some difficult parts that we passed circulating very slowly and we made the idea of covering the 500 kilometres in about four days. When it started to darken, we found a home next to the track and asked if we could park there and to be able to spend the night with them. They gave me licence without any type of problem. Hanging from a tree they had a gigantic rat and a small deer which for sure they wanted to sell to the non-existent drivers of the track. After a while two men arrived from the forest each with a shotgun. One of them had a small monkey hanging from a hand and the other one was loaded with a big packet. When passing for my side I realised that the packet was a boa trapped among lianas. They unloaded the dead animals in front of the house and extended the boa of about four meters. The man who took it started to relate how they had hunted it while the others were dying laughing as they heard the second have run away when he saw the boa. But they still laughed more when I called Alexandra so that she can see the boa. She thought that it was a joke and she walked with confidence towards the house but I told her to stop when she was about to tread on the dead tail. For little she didn’t revive the boa with the shout and the jump that she did situating herself behind me. The day after we continued for the track that followed with complicated crossings, touching the ground from time to time and losing the tap that i had repaired in Niger. In other sectors the wrinkled track shook with violence the auto caravan if we did not circulate slowly, but even then, on half of the way Alexandra smelt an unbreathable gas that pricked us in the eyes. We stopped and we went out running from the auto caravan and I then discovered that a tube of the refrigerating gas of the fridge had an escape. Alexandra was desperate and told me that the car would break in a complete way if we did not move back and that otherwise she will leave me with the first ocasion. I also thought that the track towards Franceville would still worsen more, but after eating,the road turned less complicated, and we found at mid-afternoon a new track built after the rains. It did not stop being a great luck that we had arrived to the south hemisphere when the rains had finished and lowered through Cameroon when these started and they were not very intense yet. Today we have continued for the new track. After about eighty kilometres the track has worsened, it seemed to have a year, but even then was much better that the section of the first day and we have been able to reach Franceville mid-afternoon. It has been much simpler than we imagined and to celebrate it - and to celebrate also the solstice of summer, the day in which the sun is further from the equator - we have dined in the hotel "Beverly Hills", managed by a Moroccan that we have met and he has invited us to camp in his parking place. 24/06/2007:
Franceville is a developed town, with pretty homes and street lights, situated on some hills. Through the surroundings there are other hills with a lot of lawn and fields that do not seem cultivated. It is only a landscape very different to the typical impenetrable jungle that you can find normally in Gabon, although to reach Franceville also we crossed similar ecosystems, in one of which there was a nature reserve with elephants that hid from us, we just saw the big shit on the track. The three previous days we had been circulating for the track with the windows opened - we will not do it ever again- so, today in the morning we have spent it four hours cleaning in depth the auto caravan to take about three or four kilos of dust. In the afternoon to look for the reward, we circulated for a pretty track - with the windows closed – and we saw a bridge made of lianas (some of the few touristy attractions of Gabon). It is interesting because the structure of about twenty or thirty meters long seems quite firm. But we have not enjoyed it in a complete way because when crossing they have informed us that we had to pay a ridiculously high fee and we have said no returning followed by the shouts of the guardian. Congo Mbie (see on map) 27/06/2007:
The guardian at the border of Gabon informed us: - With your car you will not be able to arrive to Congo, no car without full traction dares to cross this track of sand, except in rainy season, when the sand is compact. - We have arrived from Spain till here and this road is the only one that allows us to continue. - And I thought: "50 or 100 kilometres of sand will not be able to stop us in a journey of 300.000 kilometres". We followed the tarred road but we arrive to some military barracks. There they informed us again about not being able to cross to Congo, but anyway they told us to try the new road that the Chinese were building. We followed a car that kept distributing food among the shy Chinese workers and we arrived at the border of Congo where a track of sand continued surrounded of a savannah of dry and low grass. We went on the track that little by little was becoming more complicated with deep crossings of sand in one of which we got stuck. It took about two hours to go out using the irons that i had bought in Mali and a shovel that my mother had given me. When going out of the soft sand we realised that there was a protection of the engine that fell off and that it had entered quite a lot of sand in the engine. I fixed the protection of plastic with a wire and we follow the course with a new tactic: not to get stuck when the rut was deep again we had to slide at a speed the sand raised above until the wheels had traction again. And like this we did it during some kilometres, skidding above the sand and Alexandra being very scared. But we found a big section of deep rut and heard a strange noise of the engine and we stopped to evaluate the situation. The protection of the engine was pulled out with the sand jumping among the drive belts, some of which had just been disintegrated, completely. The engine stopped alone without being able to start it again. Then I was conscious that I need help to repair it. We were in the middle of nothing and without having crossed any car in three hours. We made about 10 or 20 kilometres circulating for the track and at the border they had told us that the first village of Congo is found at about 25 kilometres. Alexandra, whom the previous time we had blocked in the sand, had cried that we would not go out of there, now she was quite serene and before I took any decision she commented: - You should go to the first village in Congo to ask for help. I did not have too much time to think about the best option. It was three and a half in the afternoon and was not safe to arrive at night to the next village. I took a rucksack and we load it with water, food, a bit of the disintegrated belt, a machete, a torch, repellent for mosquitoes, money and the passport. I started to walk through the deserted path, trying to guess what there was beyond the wavy and sterile horizon. But behind every hill the dusty path followed tireless in front of me. After an hour I started to think that maybe the village was at more than 25 kilometres, but I then started to distinguish marks in the sand and i imagined that perhaps i am near. In spite of everything, after another hour the marks kept accompanying me and I already invented names to make the difference between them: "the mule", the bare foot", "the print of panther"... Perhaps it was not of a panther but it seemed bigger than the mark of a dog and I took the machete out of the rucksack just in case and I kept walking prepared to give a mortal knock in any moment. The sun started to set and I started to worry in the face of the perspective of passing the night outside. Suddenly, in a small forest, the marks gave up the track of sand and were lost on a small road on my right. I was meditating a while and decided to continue the course for the small road where probably there would be some village where I could protect myself during the night. I kept going down for the road but this did not arrive to any place, it was darkening and i could hardly distinguish the marks. I feared of the wild animals and of the poisonous snakes but I had no option but to follow or to return to the autocaravan. Finally, when it was already lacking little for the black night, the little road arrived again into the track of sand. I was about to return behind through the track of sand but I then distinguished the beginning of some village on my right. In front of me there was a barrier of the customs and on its side a guard that me asked when I approached: - Have you had a breakdown to the car? - Yes - and I next explained the situation, i had walked for three hours, i have my woman waiting in the car and i came to them village to look for some mechanic. But there were not any, however he commented me that after little it would pass a 4x4 on the way to Gabon that could get me back to my wife and that the day after probably would pass some trucks that could drag us up to the village or further on. As the guard predicted, a 4x4 passed as was going to buy gas oil in Gabon and after negotiating the price I went in the back among the bottles. When it first shake I almost fell off, but holding as strong as possible we arrived at last where there was the auto caravan. Alexandra did not seem to be there, but when I called her and she appeared from the bushes with two bags we have embraced as if we had not seen each other for a long time. While i had been outside she had caught all the valuable things and taken them outside for whether bandits appeared. At night we woke up to the minimum noise, although the guard of the border had assured me that there were neither wild animals nor bandits through the area. The day after, as they had predicted, some trucks passed on the way to Congo. We asked them to drag us out of the sand and they accepted after negotiating the price. I took and held a special rope between both vehicles but the first time that we enter in a hole of sand it broke. The rope broke about five times more, but I finally managed to get along with the driver of the truck so that he drove slower. They left us in Mbie, in the frontier village, and the head of the truck drivers told us that he would try to find the belt that had disintegrated and that he would bring it to us the following day - but he did not appear again. Anyway, while we waited, I dismantled a wheel and loosened the other belt to prepare the installation of the new one. I also had time to discover new problems: the starting system of the engine did not work and the alternator was blocked (probably due to the crumbled belt). Today I have worked a little at the car, put a protection of clothes in the engine that will probably break the next time that we block, pricked softly the alternator with a hammer making come out all of the sand that had entered until it has unblocked, and made the same with the starting system but I have not obtained the same result. Afterwards a big truck has passed towards Gabon that has told us that tomorrow will return and will be able to drag us. And finally it has passed a 4x4 that has sold me a belt, which despite being long will be able to be cut back if i don’t find another. In any case, Alexandra believed that next morning the truck will take us out of this small populated village and she did not let me work more. At noon we have passed a good while with Anton, the guard of the border that was alone because it comes from another area of the country and does not speak the language of the people up in the north. he explained to us that the Gabonese look for the prestige and do not want to work, because of that, the Congolese of the border are going to work in Gabon sporadically, they return afterwards and they rest until the money is finished. Anyway, the women work a lot all the day, at home and in the field. Next he has explained us that in Congo there is democracy just with the word, if the army does not like the elected president they put another. Anyway, at present the president is a general that organised the election in his favour and it seems that that he gives stability to the country, although it also seems to be a good president and he is also talking with the opposition. Finally he complained about Mbie where the people live as in the old times, grungy and jealous, and not wanting for others to prosper... so, the people do not invert money to prosper and they simply hide the money. Anyway, in other towns of Congo it doesn’t seem to be the same. Perhaps when the road of the Chinese is completed in 2009 the mentality of the people will change, although some villages without telephone and light will keep being poor and they will keep living in the misery. In the afternoon we went to the river through the village, where some inhabitants are going to bath almost every day, meeting on the way there very open and nice people. 30/06/2007:
We waited for the truck that had to turn back from Gabon and drag us out of this small, isolated and non-communicated village called Mbie. We waited for it on Wednesday, on Thursday and also today. On Wednesday, despite having expectations that the truck arrived, I asked a man of the village to adapt the belt that I bought on the previous day. I took action and we cut the belt and the man sewed it on the other end joining them to great firmness. We assembled the belt and started off the car pushing it (the starting system kept not working). The belt lasted and the battery loaded up. It seemed that our purgatory in Mbie was finally approaching the end, by that, in the afternoon i encouraged myself to try to fix the starting system. I unscrewed the starting electric motor and a lot of sand that was blocking it came out. When getting on again it, the engine started off correctly and I communicated to the sceptical Alexandra that the day after we could leave. Anyway, we supposed that the continuation of the track of sand would be complicated and we kept expecting for a truck to pass and drag us. But did not pass any truck in all the night - curiously the vehicles circulate more in the night(one per night in average) that in the daytime - and the day after in the morning we prepared the auto caravan to go. I pulled the engine, we went a hundred meters and in accelerating a little the light of the battery went on. The belt broke down again. We were still trapped in Mbie. Discouraged but still hoping in the arrival of the truck, we spent the rest of the day conversing with Anton (the guard of the border). Anton was explaining to us how the combats between lions and elephants or among panthers and wild boars were produced gesticulating with great expressivity; he also told us that the boas pass a lot of hunger and that they can be a month in a point expecting for an antelope to pass; however, other snakes have it easier, because they can throw poison. In any case - he kept explaining - the wild animals rarely attack the man, who is sacred because he talks. Later, Anton told us that his father died at the age of 112 and that he fought with the Frenchmen during the second world war. When the General de Gaulle ran away to Congo, Brazaville (the capital of the free France), the same did father. Years later,his father took again the weapons, this time to fight against the Frenchmen and to release the country. With the truck driver that was going to Gabon we were conversing shortly although he criticised the lack of development in central Africa caused by the corrupt governments that are supported by France. During the night we were more pending than ever whether a truck was coming, listening between the sounds of crickets and the far away songs of children . I felt as a shipwrecked sailor expecting a boat to cross the horizon. We fall asleep, but we heard the noise of an engine, a truck at midnight, I dressed as quickly as possible and I went towards the truck that was waiting on the border. I asked the truck driver whether he could pull us and he answered that he was loaded with two containers and that he could not drag more. Today we have been all the day loosing time, without desires of making use of it or to enjoy the passing seconds. i did not had the desire to talk with Anton, nor to walk again or making photos to the nice people of the village, nor carrying about the children who always surrounded us interested and which from time to time brought fruits to sell us or to give us for free. I have been most of the day doing competitions of sudoku with Alexandra. Only in a moment in the afternoon I decided I am not able just to sit and wait. I have taken the broken belt and returned to the man who had joined it to ask him to try it in another way, but he has not seen it clear and I have been discouraged again. We did not have potable water and we were drinking from the deposit of the auto caravan and the food was also about to finish, and in the village there was no shops nor agriculture, that's why yesterday we decided that I would take the first car that passed and go to look for help in the following village, Leketi, where there was a company directed by an Italian with different trucks under his command. But it has not passed any car in all the day until the night again when the noise of an engine has woken me up. I have dressed myself with haste but I was still sleepy. I have left with the eyes barely open towards the 4x4 and I have asked them whether they could take me up to Leketi. They have said yes, but that i should go in the back, with four more people, balancing on the boxes of drinks. I was too tired for such an adventure but fortunately, before going i have joined the little energy that I had and have gone straight to the 4x4. The track of sand was in better state that the previous section, even then I had to grab strongly the belts that sustained the boxes. When we reached Leketi it was half past eleven, and I did not know where i would spend the night, maybe in the police control where there was a mattress shared by three people, but one of those that had come with the 4x4 accompanied me up to the company of the Italian assuring me that i could sleep there. The guardian of the enclosure woke up Mafi, the Italian that had heard about our situation in Mbie. He told me that that same night he planned on leaving to Brazaville until Tuesday and that therefore he could not send any truck to Mbie. Anyway, he suggested coming with Alexandra and sleep in a room for guests that the company owned and he will try to find the belt in Brazaville. Leketi (see on map) 03/07/2007:
Alexandra was happy when I arrived on Sunday in the morning with a 4x4 of the company of Mafi and I informed that we would pass some days in Leketi expecting a new belt to arrive. We prepared the bags and after expecting the driver to finish drinking two beers in the only bar of the village we left Mbie. About five women made use of the journey to go to the place where they had mobile coverage at about five kilometres away from the village. Mafi had assigned us a comfortable room and in the living room of the company there was television with satellite channels, but Alexandra immediately found the inconveniences: the room was crossed through a path of small ants and in the village of Leketi it was not possible either to obtain food. Although Stevy, the cook and responsible for the home of guests, tried to make our lives easier , Alexandra has spent the three days behaving as a neurotic wild animal locked up among fences. Despite preferring continuing the journey I have tried to make use of the stay in Leketi to know a little the village and its people. Stevy showed me the project of the company: the construction of a port next to a large river. Anyway, the government had stopped financing the project and this was dying slowly, in the same way that the construction of a small hotel that another white had projected in the area. So, Leketi was just as non-communicated as Mbie, except for the telephonic antenna that gave coverage to the mobile telephones, and we took advantage to phone our parents and communicate them that everything is fine. The people of Leketi also had a character similar to those of Mbie, nice and greeting with charisma when i walked with Stevy. Stevy is a calm and serene young man, but exalted and mischievous when he drinks a few beers. Despite depending on his hospitality, Stevy did not take advantage of our situation and behave as a real friend, inviting the first round of beer, offering to show me the village, obtaining food when it was possible, providing us with bottles of water of the company or sharing interesting conversations or relaxed moments of silence. The same uninterested character seemed to maintain with the animals, taking care of a cub that he fed with pasta, rice and banana and of a young eagle that he fed when he had meat or raw fish. But these days there was no meat, because since this evening, saddened by the fact that the eagle hadn’t been eating for three days and he was pitifully asking for food, I have made the impossible to hunt a small lizard that the eagle has eaten up with great avidity. Walking through the meadows of high grass that grew on the sand around the village, I asked Stevy why there were no flocks of goats grazing. Stevy explained me that the men in Leketi - of the bateke tribe, insisted - do not feel like working (the women yes they work hard), they neither want foreigners to arrive and to make use of the resources of the village and in that way to become rich. In the same way, even if they do not usually hunt nor fish, they hate the foreigners coming and doing it. That's why Dany, a gardener that we visited and from whom I bought some eggplants, did not have it easy to start to cultivate his small land and to initiate a business selling plants and legumes. On the other hand, Stevy explained to me that among the people of the village there are not thefts because they would kill the thief using voodoo or "cric-cric", however if they can rob the foreigners, because their magic or "fetish" can not affect the village. In Brazaville it is different - he kept talking -, because there are many weapons from the last civil war and if they want to kill somebody they prefer taking the shotgun or a grenade. Today, Stevy has explained to me that he has a girlfriend in Leketi and another one in Brazaville, and he plans on marrying once he has brought a dowry together to pay the fathers of the future wife. The dowry is costly but has its positive part for the man, because in the event of divorce provoked by the woman, the man recovers the dowry, this way the wife is more docile not to create problems to her parents. Oyo (see on map) 05/07/2007: i had just read a book about travellers that encounter difficulties along the yoyage and who are helped with kindness and altruism by unknown people and I myself could today write another chapter of the book. Yesterday in the morning Mafi arrived from Brazaville with the belt and before midday he organised a small team to go and rescue the autocaravan. Mafi drove a big machine that cleared the track of the dunes of sand and I and two other boys followed him with a 4x4. In Mbie we assemble the belt while Mafi worked with the machine on the track to Gabon. When we finished with the belt and the broken protection of the engine we started off towards Lekety. But after going five hundred meters I stopped to look if there was any problem and I found that both belts were breaking on the side. Mafi arrived and told us that we had put both in an incorrect position and we dismantled again everything and reassembled. The protection was half broken but we continued the road. But as we crossed the first village I blocked in the soft sand. Then Mafi pulled me out with the machine and from here we continued the road with Mafi leveling the ground all the time. Like this we reached the base of Leketi after 5 hours and 50 covered kilometres. Alexandra was very happy to see her small home again and I was very happy that Stevy had cooked a delicious dinner with ingredients that Mafi had bought in Brazaville. We dined (just the three whites) drinking a good French wine and conversing - mainly Alex and Mafi - on how little work the blacks and the consequent underdevelopment of Africa. Today we have put the auto caravan in service and two mechanics of the company have tightened the belts correctly, they have covered up a hole of the engine where the sand entered sand and they have improved the protection and also they made a shovel for me just in case. Afterwards we have filled the deposit of the auto caravan with diesel from the company and as i knew that Mafi would not accept money for all the help I have given him a pretty volcanic stone that we had bought in Morocco. At ten in the morning we have started off. We had 150 kilometres of track of sand in front. Mafi had told us that there were complicated parts but that if we circulated with calm we would get through. Anyway, a 4x4 of the company would pass in the afternoon and one on the following day, therefore they could help us if we remained blocked. It hasn’t been easy, not even close to easy, but we have done it. i tried always to circulate through the high places but it was not always possible and the protection of the engine often came off and I had to find new systems to hold it. There were deep crossings of sand that could only be passed if the car had sufficient speed. Anyway, we got stuck in five points. The first time it has taken us an hour to go out, having to use about three or four times the irons. The second time we have blocked at the entry of some village, the children and adults came together around the car, they have helped us pushing but we also had to use the irons. The third time we have used the irons again and levelled about forty meters of track with the shovels. The technique improved because we have been just half an hour taking out sand but we were out of power. Alexandra could not do it anymore and I continued with signs of fainting although from time to time i stopped. Not to get stuck again we have stopped a couple of times to level the track when there was deep rut. But it was too exhausting and in a point where we should have done the same we got stuck again. We have taken again the irons but for luck, after little passed the 4x4 of the company from Leketi and we were finally out of sand. We have kept following it and he has taken us out of the last hole. Anyway, the 4x4 circulated rapidly in front and I had to disregard the protection and to cross over in a fast way sliding on the difficult crossings. But finally, at five in the afternoon we have arrived to the tarred road. I was singing with Alexandra "We are the champions" of Fredy Mercury and then we have reached Oyo. we have parked in front of a hotel and we have tried to sleep, but even if we were dead tired it has taken us a while to come to relax cause all the images of the track were coming in our head and the muscles were still contracted. ‹ Previous (06/05/2007) MONTH Next (2007-07-05)› ‹ Previous (2007-05-15 - Nigeria) COUNTRY Next (2007-06-14 - Gabon)› |
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