The truck was organised. It was organised. Our places had been arranged and we were ready to go. Dave had even gone all the way to the chaotic dusty parking area where the trucks left from with one of the guys who worked at our hotel to make sure he did it right. We had two seats booked next to the driver in the front. We were tired of jaw-clenching motorbike rides. We were in Kananga, the first large city we’d seen in the Congo on the trip so far. The roads to our next stop, the town of Ilebo, weren't so bad. You still needed a good vehicle or a motorbike but it wasn’t the mud-hole chaos of the roads we’d just travelled through. A truck ride would be a welcome change.
 |
| Grilled meat street food, Kananga, DRC |
It was Wednesday and the truck we’d arranged to travel with would be leaving on Friday morning. So we spent the Thursday on walkabouts in Kananga’s bustling markets and a rare delicious lunch of shawarmas at the Lebanese restaurant owned by actual Lebanese people. Kananga has a large main road – a tar road nogal – running through the town centre with a large grassy island with tattered gardens and monuments in the middle, between the lanes. The city centre had basic shops and government offices and in places fancy, newer looking government buildings built in recent years. While there was still some feeling of a city that had seen much better days, there were small, encouraging signs of investment and renewal. On the central grassy traffic island mentioned above, there were about 30 people hard at work slashing the already-fairly-short-grass even shorter as part of a public works project. One couldn’t help feeling that their efforts could be better spent fixing the horrific roads we’d just travelled. Here and there we saw abandoned petrol stations as the state of the roads leading to the city were too bad to allow trucks to transport fuel. So Kananga may well be the biggest city in the world supplied with fuel exclusively by the bicycle transporters we described in our last blog. In Kananga we saw some bicycle transporters loaded with 400kg of bricks which they were delivering to another part of town. An incredible feat of strength.
 |
| Our first tar road in over a month, Kananga, DRC |
Kananga’s main market was a colourful, heaving, bustling mass of small-scale traders selling anything and everything. Sadly Kananga’s infrastructure is still a bit of a mess with electricity on for just a few hours per day and water traders sitting on the side walks with buckets of clean-looking water for sale to the majority of households which have no accessible piped water. Every 100 metres, one would find a small ingenious “business bureau” where a group of young men and women would be busily typing on computers attached to printers. These were powered by a solar panel lying on the sidewalk and connected to a battery and inverter to allow them to work throughout the day. These bureaus seemed to have an endless supply of customers needing CVs, application forms, letters, university reports, business plans, invoices and funding proposals typed up and printed.
 |
Just to be double sure that our truck journey was still on track, we decided to do a quick turn at the truck parking, to confirm that all was in order. The problem is that it's crazy and confusing and so very hard to know where exactly you’ve been and who you spoke to and how it works and how it's supposed to work and how to do it all in French. Noone seemed to know who Dave had spoken to and which truck we were supposed to take and if there was a truck going and when...We waited for this person and that person to be called, other phone calls were made, some other people arrived. We sat. The original plan, the original guys... well who knew? We hadn’t paid for anything yet so there was nothing sinister going on, just plain old simple confusion. Now what? Aaarrghhh..motorbikes agaaaiiinnn??? We started walking back slowly to the hotel. Some guys called us over: what were we looking for? A truck? to Ilebo? Why don’t we take the train? A train? A train? A train! Where is the train?? We would definitely take a train!! We love trains, trains are safe and comfortable. There’s an actual real live train at the desolate old train station we’d passed on our walks? “Yes, there’s a train and it comes twice a week. It’ll arrive in Kananga tomorrow!”
At the rudimentary train station we found a smart looking older man who confirmed that there was indeed a train operational and that it was meant to arrive the following night. It was a cargo train though because all passenger trains were suspended due to Covid. So now everyone just gets on the cargo train with all the goods. There are no seats and everyone has to find a spot in the container carriages. The train is slow though. It takes 3 days for the train to cover the 400 kms to Ilebo. But you can talk to the conductor and see if you can pay for a spot in his carriage at the front which won’t be so crowded with people and will be more comfortable. So we tried that. Long talks and negotiations later, we needed to get ready and come back the next day when the train would arrive. The next morning Dave went off to check. Nothing yet. Come back later. That evening, nothing. Friday morning, nothing yet. Friday afternoon there was some hope: come back at 6pm. The train would arrive that evening and then we’d get going. We were ready. We had supplies for three days. We could cook on our alcohol stove. There should be lots of space to cook, it was a cargo train after-all. We arrived at 6pm ready to get going, excited about a train journey. And then... we waited. Just waited and watched passengers slowly arrive with blankets, charcoal cooking stoves and supplies for the journey. Everyone seemed to be inspecting the container cars and choosing their spot, getting their stuff organised and set up. It took hours. We waited on the platform, we needed to talk with the conductor/driver, hopefully we would get the better spot, upfront with him.
At about 9pm, the conductor came over. Yes we could have a space in his carriage. No problem. The price was low, very low. If the price was this low for us, everyone else must be paying practically nothing. What was the catch? Dave had a funny feeling, it just felt too cheap. Of course there were the long discussions about what we needed to pay the immigration officials who hung out at the train station but that was a separate issue to the train fare. As always, when it came to the immigration officials, we didn’t think that there was any service we needed from them that warranted payment, to their perpetual confusion. Just being an official was enough wasn’t it? We then watched the shake down of all the other passengers begin. Some meekly handing over cash, some roughly shaken about. So it wasn’t just all about us.
Anyway, never-mind the confusingly low price, we were excited. We were ready to go! No more motorbikes! There was no indication as to when we’d get going though, the train was being serviced. There was no scheduled leaving time. We were getting tired. Oh well, as soon as we could board, we’d be rocked to sleep by the gentle rhythms of the train. Around midnight there was movement. And suddenly it was all happening. We had to come down onto the tracks. A complex pantomime then began to unfold with train cars being hooked onto the locomotive, moving forward and switching rails, then being unhooked, moving back to hook onto another train of cars, switching lines and so on, back and forth for a while until all the carriages were in the correct sequence and we were finally ready. It was well after midnight and we were pretty tired now but we were ready to board!
So what were we hoping to find? We imagined that the driver might have a small room where he slept when his co-driver was driving, that we could share. Perhaps a small storage area with a plastic chair and a spot where we could lie down and sleep on the floor for the next three nights? Basically anything better than being crammed into a windowless cargo carriage with 30 people for three days during an airborne virus pandemic.
We walked to the locomotive at the front and climbed gingerly up the narrow ladder into the driver’s compartment with our loaded packs and grocery parcels. We blinked. Hard. Where was the space we imagined with a couple of seats at least and maybe even somewhere to recline? Literally, if you swung that cat, it would hit the side walls of the compartment. What we were looking at was a space about 2 metres by 1 meter with a seat for the driver/ conductor. Another seat for the second conductor. Both seats worn right down to the metal bars of the seat. Behind the driver’s seat was a woman sitting on her luggage, folded up and squashed in, dozing off. Behind the co-driver’s seat was merchandise packed to the roof and next to that another folded up person. We climbed over all the tightly packed parcels and in the one meter space left between the two driver seats we found two 20 liter jerrycans filled with fuel. Our backpacks were placed horizontally on top of one another and then on top of the jerrycans. The conductor patted the top of the backpacks and motioned for us to sit down. That was our spot. For. Three. Days. And. Nights. O.M.G. It is not often that we think that we’ve bitten off more than our hardened travel jaws can chew. This was a moment. And we took pause. We squashed in next to one another and tried to shove bits of clothing against the spiky metal bits poking us from the engine room which was up against our backs. As there was no way to lean back, we had to try and find ways to slump forward without falling off the perch on top of our backpacks which were balancing on the jerrycans. The train was still not moving. Something about not having authorisation to get going yet. So they were waiting. Everyone was busy going to sleep for the night. We tried, we really did... for about 2 hours. It was impossible. And we had to do this for 3 whole days and nights???
 |
| Trying to cool down in the shade while the train is being fixed, DRC |
We were so tired. We had to lie down - anywhere. We had to get out of the squashed space that was this conductor's compartment. Dave went out scouting. It was pitch dark, three o’clock in the morning. The driver bashed on the steel door of the first carriage which opened and we spotted an empty spot on the floor next to two women and a young child. We gratefully put down some black plastic and our backpack bag covers on the filthy floor, pulled out our camping pillows and went to sleep. At about 6am the train began to lurch forward out of the station and the train crew began bustling about. They were the mechanics and general working crew of the train and we were sleeping in their work space. We needed to move, we were in the way. There was a metal table and benches welded to the floor where everyone sat. We were completely exhausted. It started getting hot. The carriage was as greasy as a car mechanics’ workshop with tools everywhere, jerrycans of fuel, 200 litre water barrels slopping about as the train jerked along and extra railway sleepers piled up for fixing the train tracks along the way. As tired as we were, it was impossible to sleep sitting upright on a metal bench. If you tried to put your head down on your arm to sleep you poured with sweat from the heat of the metal table. Then the lunch cooking began. An elaborate affair on a coal burning stove which smoked up the carriage and made it even hotter. We just sat, our fatigued heads nodding and jerking, and tried to switch off our brains. The six mechanic staff and eight fellow passengers looked at our rather glum faces and must have wondered what the hell... We weren’t in a chatty mood. They passed sachets of rum amongst themselves, we were not in a party mood either. No masks in sight – for the first time on our trip we couldn’t give a fuck about Covid, we just wanted to make it through the next three days. Life felt like it had descended into a feral survival mode.
The train slowly, very slowly bashed through the thick forest at about 10 km per hour. The forest grows so quickly that the tree branches and long grass grow into its path and the train has to bash its way through. We felt tired, hot and even a bit ill. Desperately needing to sleep but just not being able to. There was no bathroom or toilet. You had to wait for the train to stop to go in the forest while trying to dodge the crowds of open-mouthed and staring kids from the village where we’d stopped. You might expect a bit of toilet-insecurity having to wait for the train to stop in order to go to the loo. Not on this train. At least every hour we would hear three loud toots and a shout would go up: “Boy-O, Boy-O” The train would come to a sudden halt and the mechanic crew would dash out to do something or other. After 30 minutes or so, the train would inch forward, halt, and then again three toots: “Poop, poop, poop” and the shouts “Boy-O, Boy-O” and then more running around and so forth until one long pooooop came and we would jerk forward to carry on our 10 km an hour slow bash through the forest. We would find out later that the ‘boy-o’ are a kind of rubber concertina pipe that connects the hydraulic brakes between the carriages. The pipes are old and so are the clamps holding them in place so they loosen and break every hour or so and the crew have to run down the length of the train to find which one has come loose so they can repair it Macgyver-style with wire and other pieces of pipe. As he moves the train forward, the driver can see from his gauge that the brakes have lost pressure but he has no idea where the problem is located.
 |
| Our train buddies, on the way to Ilebo, DRC |
We were so very tired, hot and uncomfortable that we even spoke about getting off in the village of Mweka. The train should reach there the next morning and then we’d then have two days of motorbiking ahead of us. The fact that we were even contemplating facing a motorbike again was clear evidence of the extent of our discomfort.
That night we had time to try and make a more comfortable sleeping spot. We managed to “book” the space underneath the metal table in the carriage. We used a thatch grass broom to sweep out as much of the dust, grass and general debris of the day's activity that we could. We laid down black bags, then our backpack covers, our sleeping bags (it was so hot that we didn’t need to sleep under them), and finally our blow-up camping mattresses. The train was on a long stop as there were some de-railed carriages ahead of us from when the train had passed in the opposite direction. Our mechanic team had off-loaded some giant wooden sleepers and a very large jack and rushed to the front of the train to get the derailed carriages back on track (literally) and then to repair the rails so that we didn’t derail in turn as we rode over the same section of rail.
 |
| Our train carriage kitchen, towards Ilebo, DRC |
But this was not our problem. We had a flat, soft place to sleep, and we rapidly began to sink into dark, beautiful sleep. A volley of machine gun fire nearby attempted to thwart our descent into blissful peace but after a sleepy thought as to whether this is the moment in DRC travel when one should grab ones valuables and run into the forest, we trusted that all would be well and fell into wonderful, deep, uninterrupted sleep. We slept like kings.
After a good rest, the next day didn’t feel like the extreme torture of the day before. The skies were a bit overcast and so it wasn’t quite as swelteringly hot. We started making friends with our crew. They all transported goods for sale in Ilebo, mostly maize that they bought from the small villages we passed en route. They got to transport their cargo at better rates as they were train employees – it seems that they earned more from the trading than they did from their salaries. The other guys in the carriage were family and friends who they took along and who were also running businesses transporting goods up and down. They all did this long slow journey a few times a month with their cargo. Some of them sported fat moonbags of cash around their waists. We couldn’t understand how they were making so much cash but couldn’t even organise a mattress or few cushions to sleep on. Especially if they did this regularly. Everyone just grabbed whatever space there was on the metal benches, the table or on top of a pile of goods without any comfort. At one of the stops the train security guard came to hang out too. A tall good looking guy with a huge machine gun and a balaklava who looked very scary until you made eye contact and realised that he was just painfully shy, practically blushing at the slightest bit of attention. We asked about the machine gun fire the night before and he said he was just shooting in the air to chase away the kids who were crowding the train. We spoke about the legendary, brutal Mai-mai militia warriors who were believed to be invincible from the strong medicine they use. They apparently can’t even be killed with RPG rockets. If you shoot a rocket at them, they can catch it in their hands.
 |
| It's cooler on the roof, train to Ilebo, DRC |
As we chugged past a village, we saw a whole crowd of people, men and women, walking together, the women carrying buckets and containers on their heads. They were walking in a type of serious, orderly formation, not walking and chatting to one another, as you would normally see a crowd of villagers do. Everyone in the train carriage leapt to their feet immediately to look. We found out that this village was in conflict with the neighbouring one. The chief of one village was demanding taxes from traders from other villages in order to trade in his market. There was also a ethnic dimension to the conflict as the villages were inhabited by different language groups (“tribes”). Some violence had broken out and now the women were in danger if they went alone to collect water down by the river. The previous night, 13 people were killed in a brutal attack. While the Congo is often synonymous with terrible violence, this is almost always in a relatively small region in the far east of the country - a world away from the Kasai province where we were travelling. When a state fails and the policing and justice systems seem to be focused more on extracting bribes/cadeaus from the population than providing a judicial service, then there is always the risk that people decide that they need to take the law into their own hands.
As the 2nd day progressed we got into the swing of train life and began to make friends and enjoy ourselves: wait for the poop poop poop “boy-o” drama so you can have toilet stop and hopefully find some hot dough balls (called vetkoek or amagwinya in South Africa) to have with peanut butter and the delicious Congolese filter coffee that we brewed on our little alcohol stove. At lunchtime, the team would get the coal burning stove going and make the best fufu we’d eaten with chopped cassava leaves and sauce made from tiny dried fish (like the kapenta of Tanganyika). The men and women each had their own communal plate. First you break off a piece of fufu with one hand, dip it in sauce, roll it around a few times into a fat sausage and then with your thumb push a bit into your mouth all the while rolling your fufu sausage, dipping it in sauce, collecting a bit more fufu from the communal plate and so on. For more entertainment you could climb on to the roof of the train with the crazy youngsters train surfing through the forest. One unusual thing we noted was the large number of people with albinism one sees in the villages of Kasai province. When we asked about this, we were told that Kasai province in particular was famous for this and that it was strongly believed that one should not mistreat albinos as they could curse you leading you to give birth to albino children.
 |
| The best view in the house, train to Ilebo, DRC |
In the afternoon we managed to organise a few buckets of water at one of the longer stops and find a somewhat private spot to have a bit of a wash. We also had to complete the obligatory visit to the train station immigration officials who needed to copy down all the details from our passports and march us off to pay for photocopies somewhere before going through their usual shakedown routine. This happened a few times on our way through the forest too with machine gun carrying soldiers in camouflage jumping on and off the train and also trying their luck with us. The Congolese official shakedown was always lurking: it could happen anywhere, at any time. Thus far we have always successfully refused and have yet to pay a cent.
In the evening we cooked noodles and bully beef sauce or canned sardines. As the days and nights passed we became firm friends with the crew and our fellow passengers. And we spent enjoyable hours sharing stories and learning how the ever-resourceful Congolese make a living under such challenging conditions. Some of the crew were eccentric characters who would have us all laughing as they dealt with the crazy train dramas that arose every few hours. Our 3rd night and the day that followed were filled with laughter and excited anticipation of arriving in Ilebo.
“Boy-O” depending, we hoped to arrive in Ilebo around lunchtime on the 3rd day. Every time we heard the poop-poop-poop going and the train pulling to a halt, there was a collective groan from crew and passengers. We slowly pushed forward: 60kms away, 50, 40... Lunchtime passed us by, we were now well into the afternoon. Slowly the day was slipping away. A few boy-o sessions later, it was starting to get dark but then suddenly we were only 2kms from Ilebo! We could see it on our google maps! But we were stopped, not moving. The boy-o repair was taking long. We were beginning to panic. This could take all night. We couldn’t possibly sleep another night on the filthy floor when there was a hotel within walking distance. But we were still in the forest and though the final stop was close, it wasn’t an easy walking path. Everyone just kept telling us to wait. It was excruciating. Then finally, the train moved a few hundred metres, shuddered to a stop next to a dirt crossroad and suddenly it was chaotic action – hurry, hurry – we grabbed our bags and jumped off the train, a couple of our crew helped push us through the thronging crowd, plopped us onto two motorbikes and we were whisked away along walking paths to the imposing Hotel des Palmes (The Palms Hotel).
 |
| Le Hotel des Palmes, Ilebo, DRC |
Le Hotel des Palmes is like a crumbling mini-Mount Nelson Hotel - an old colonial style building that has not seen repairs for perhaps 50 years. After the train, we’d have been grateful for merely a clean bed and a place to have a proper wash. Rejane ran up the grand staircase with her backpack strapped to her back, now filthy with train grease and all the dirt of the journey. The rooms were enormous with high ceilings and stylish black and white floor tiles. Much of the old dark wood furniture remains with huge double doors that lead onto an enormous wrap around a balcony. At night you could picture King Albert and Queen Elizabeth of Belgium sipping their cocktails when they came to stay in 1912. In the morning the birds tweeted from the surrounding trees while the cool morning air drifted in through the double doors. The morning light also uncovered the deep discolouration and cracks in the tiles, the leftover red speckles of stoop paint on the balcony, the useless wires of the aircon machines that went nowhere, the dark spots coming through the large mirrors, the rotten sagging parts of the ceiling and in parts completely broken through and the mould weaving through the intricate designs of the balustrades. The saggy bed and the buckets of water for the bath and for flushing the toilet could also not exactly be hidden (there was even a non-functioning bidet!) but we were in heaven.
 |
| Le Hotel des Palmes, Ilebo, DRC |
Having mentioned the King of Belgium, it’s perhaps appropriate to give a quick overview of the DRC’s history, where another, earlier King of Belgium, Leopold, stands out as one of the most ignoble characters in the country’s often sad and violent history.
*********** CONGO HISTORY ***********
The Congo forests have been inhabited by the AbaTwa (“Pygmies”) for perhaps ten thousand years. There are many AbaTwa in more remote parts of the forest to this day. A few thousand years ago Bantu tribes moved down from West Africa into the Congo with some moving through the forest and beyond ultimately populating Southern Africa. Perhaps the region’s most famous ancient civilisation was the Kingdom of the Kongo about 600 years ago. The Kongo traded with the first Portuguese ships that sailed down the West coast of Africa and one of the Kongo princes even studied in Portugal. Sadly one of the most traded “commodities” that the tribes sold to the Portuguese were enslaved people: the region that stretches from modern day Angola towards Gabon was one of the most heavily affected by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. When the trans-Atlantic slave trade was finally banned in 1808, many ships continued to smuggle enslaved people to the Americas. When these ships were intercepted by the British navy, the enslaved understandably didn’t want to be returned to the communities that had enslaved them in the first place so they were taken to Sierra Leone and Liberia where they became the new elite and their descendants are still referred to as Kongos to this day.
At the Berlin conferences in 1884 where Africa was disgracefully dissected and allocated to various European nations, the Congo – the least known region – was allocated to King Leopold II of Belgium who registered the country as his own private company. While the journey of Henry Morton Stanley and his African team from the source of the Congo river to its mouth is truly one of the most epic adventures any group of people have ever under-taken, the horrors and brutality they experienced along the way so coloured his view of the region that he seems to have been blinded to the even greater brutality that followed when his benefactor, King Leopold, unleashed a reign of terror on the people of Congo in his desperate quest for every greater quantities of valuable rubber. Leopold’s Congolese “Force Publique” were known to kill and disfigure villagers who didn’t meet their rubber collection quotas. To prevent wastage of bullets, amputated hands were required as proof of the number of bullets used. Perhaps as many as 10 million people died during this period – mostly from Sleeping Sickness – which spread rapidly along the newly created transport routes. So brutal was the King’s reign that the ensuing outrage in Europe led to the Belgium government being forced to remove the Congo as the King’s private possession, and to take control of the country as a Belgian colony in 1908.
For the next 52 years the Congo existed as a colony – with the Belgians regarded as rather unenlightened colonisers even by the absurd standards of the day. Much infrastructure was built and many successful industries created (Lever Brothers began in the Congo – making their first “Sunlight” soaps from Congolese palm oil) but the investment in the Congolese people themselves, while good at the primary school level, was close to non-existent when it came to tertiary education. By 1960 there was not a single qualified Congolese doctor, engineer, lawyer or economist. There was also not a single Congolese army officer. As the wave of activism for independence began to wash over the continent in the 1950’s, it seems that few people in Belgium and even within the Congo foresaw an independent African country in central Africa. When a Belgian journalist who had lived and worked in Congo proposed that the Congo undergo a 30 year process of handing over power to the Congolese, this was ridiculed as absurdly ambitious.
But after Ghana became independent in 1957 the Congolese independence movement was catalysed. Three charismatic Congolese leaders, Lumumba, Kasavubu and Tshombe, emerged and led the demands for Congolese independence. In the late 50’s a series of anti-Belgian riots broke out in Congo, and Belgium felt increasing pressure from other European countries to join in the wave of decolonisation sweeping the continent. Whereas just a few years before, it was unimaginable that Congo would be independent within 30 years, the Belgians now wanted to be rid of the colony as soon as possible. At the independence negotiations in Belgium in 1960, the Congolese found that instead of having to fight tooth and nail to win independence years into the future, the Belgians willingly said they would give up the country within 6 months. The Congolese negotiators were stunned by their good fortune.
 |
| Le Hotel des Palmes has seen better days, Ilebo, DRC |
But this proved a pyrrhic victory: almost immediately elections were held but conflict developed between the three Congolese leaders and the regions they represented. At the same time anti-Belgian violence erupted in the Congo and the ensuing killings caused the majority of Belgians, including almost the entire professional and commercial classes, to flee the country within a matter of months. Tshombe launched a war to force his mineral rich Katanga province to secede from the rest of the country and Prime Minister Lumumba and President Kasavubu fell out. Lumumba’s unorthodox behaviour in flying to the USA without invitation and demanding to meet the President created a negative image of his presidential suitability in the West. This being the time of the Cold War, his fate was soon afterwards tragically sealed when he naively made requests for help from the Soviet Union. Until then, the Cold War had mostly played out in Eastern Europe, but Lumumba had now inadvertently placed himself and his country right in the middle of a battle between the giant elephants of the West and the USSR, and like the saying goes, Lumumba was trampled underneath like grass. The USA feared that he may give the USSR and communism a foothold in Central Africa and as the country descended into chaos, the CIA and/or the Belgians, working with military rebels led by Colonel Mobutu, assassinated Lumumba in January 1961. While Lumumba has become an icon to many, interestingly within the country we encountered decidedly mixed feelings towards him. Many said that he rushed the transition to independence and failed to build unity between regional and ethnic factions which ultimately led to the governmental and economic collapse that followed. However, it seems fair to say that Kasavubu and Tshombe amongst others, share the blame for this too.
Mobutu became president through a coup in 1965 and his first years in power were seen as somewhat productive and constructive but during the 1970’s he began his descent into becoming a notorious kleptocrat who pillaged the country of billions of dollars. He bought a dozen castles in Europe and built his own opulent palace in his village deep in the jungle - it even had a landing strip to allow the Concorde to take him on shopping trips in Paris. He famously flew his tailor in from Belgium to visit him on a monthly basis - at the taxpayers’ expense - after all, Mrs Mobutu had a 50 metre long walk in closet to fill. Mobutu’s corruption and extravagance became so infamous that a little-used English word was resurrected to describe his leadership: a “kleptocracy”. Mobutu was also a brutal and violent dictator who tortured and executed opponents, sometimes publicly.
As part of his decolonisation/Africanisation policy, Mobutu renamed the country “Zaire” and himself as Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga meaning "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake." Every city and person was ordered to change their names from Western names to traditional African names - interestingly, the most prominent person to defy this rule was Mobutu’s wife, Marie-Antionette.
Despite his blatant thieving, Western powers saw him as a bulwark against the expansion of Soviet communism and he was invited as an honoured guest to all the world’s capitals on multiple occasions. He visited the White House many times, and President Reagan described him as the “voice of good sense and goodwill” in Africa. Much of the money he stole was loans and grants from Western governments and the IMF. France and Belgium both sent troops on a number of occasions to help keep him in power. His anti-Soviet stance also attracted support from Mao Zedong’s China and made him an ally of Apartheid South Africa and Israel.
As the Zairian economy imploded, both the funds and the skills required to maintain the country’s vast infrastructure evaporated. Road, railways, electricity infrastructure, water systems, buildings, school, hospitals all began to collapse. By the 1990’s things were so bad that Mobutu allowed the national army to “pay themselves” by looting shops and other businesses. These notorious pillaging sessions left the cities looking like they’d been ravaged by swarms of giant locusts. The collapse of the USSR and the ending of the Cold War meant that Mobutu’s erstwhile bankrollers in the West no longer needed him as a Cold War ally and were now too embarrassed to continue supporting him. As the country descended into hyper-inflation and total economic collapse, Mobutu began to engage with civil society and negotiate with political opponents, but there was little meaningful change.
Following the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 and the subsequent victory of Paul Kagame’s RPF movement, a million Hutu refugees and hundreds of thousands of the murderous Interahamwe militias fled to Eastern Zaire. The Interahamwe launched attacks on Rwanda from their bases in and around the refugee camps and it appeared as if Mobutu was either unwilling or unable to stop them. When Mobutu gave the order that all Zaireans of Tutsi ethnicity (known as the Banyamulenge) should either leave Zaire or be killed, this led Rwanda and Uganda to support a rebel group led by Laurent Kabila which entered the east of the country, emptied the refugees camps and within a matter of months had defeated the demoralised Zairean army. Mobutu fled to Morocco and died there a few months later from cancer. He was 66 years old.
President Laurent Kabila ruled a more or less stable country, renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for four years until he was assassinated by some of his own men, after which he was replaced by his son, Joseph Kabila, aged just 29 years old. During President Joseph Kabila’s 18 year reign, he was much criticised for stealing perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars and for not being able to stop the ongoing violence in the east of the country. Those who are more charitable might say that at the same time, the economy stabilised and began to grow. Foreign investors began to regard the DRC as an opportunity, rather than a chaotic basket-case, and investments in the country’s vast mineral wealth began to trickle, and later, rush in. He was elected for the maximum of two presidential terms in two somewhat “democratic” elections. At the end of his second term in 2018, and despite Kabila’s best efforts, the opposition leader Felix Tshishikedi (whose father was a famous opposition leader to Mobutu) defeated Kabila’s preferred candidate. The fact that Kabila was not able to rig the election is perhaps a backhanded compliment to his leadership.
President Tshishikedi was initially thought to have been subsequently “bought” by Kabila and many of Kabila’s allies appeared in important positions of power. But over the past year, President Tshishikedi has systematically sidelined Kabila’s allies and is now seen as his own man. The outlook for the country is looking more optimistic than it has for – perhaps – ever. The most powerful opposition figure is the much-loved Moise Katumbi, the Jewish former-governor of Katanga province who achieved some impressive results in improving the economy and expanding education and water services during his eight years in charge of the province. Thankfully neither Tshishikedi nor Katumbi have a history leading armed militias and both have shown a willingness to work together for the good of the country. So, whoever wins the next election, one can be hopeful of more years of relative political stability and economic growth and thus greater prosperity for the Congo’s long suffering population. While the horrific conflicts in the east remain a scar on the face of DRC and on all humanity, it is important to remember that this is a small region in a vast country. For the first time in a long time, there is reason to be optimistic about the DRC. (However, we will be watching closely the recent moves by Tshishikedi to ban presidential candidates whose parents were not both born in the DRC. A law aimed at one person: Katumbi).
*************** END OF HISTORY ***************
We spent almost a week in Ilebo at the Hotel Des Palmes overlooking the mighty Kasai river, the watery highway that leads all the way to Kinshasa. Our days were spent shopping for food in the markets where amazingly – despite the plethora of Ebola outbreaks as well as the small matter of a coronavirus pandemic – we found dead bats for sale in the bush meat market!
 |
| Bat is still on the menu, Ilebo market, DRC |
It was in Ilebo that we heard the happy news that The North Face was refunding the full cost of our leaky tent which we complained about bitterly in previous blogs. The matter had been resolved by our friends Heather Hope and Volkan Akkurt who doggedly harangued North Face and impressed upon them that we were important “influencers” (!) that deserved their attention and assistance. Thanks guys!!
Ilebo had some okay restaurant shacks and a bigger market than most towns to explore. The markets always present us with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, the common practice of doubling or tripling the price when a (very rare) “Mundele” (white person) appears is quite alienating and irritating. On the other hand – being good bargainers – means that we can often force the price down to the local price… but at what cost? Certainly the market woman needs those few extra cents she’s charging for her onion more than we do. But at the same time, if one just accepts absurdly inflated prices based on skin colour, one just perpetuates notions of the “other” and the acceptability of discrimination. As much as the market woman needs those few cents more than we do, those few extra cents will not change her reality one iota in the bigger scheme of things. In the end we generally just keep the negotiations fun and happy and ease off when we can see we are approaching a fair price. We may pay fractionally more but we don’t look like clueless suckers who don’t understand the value of things.
After a few walkabouts in Ilebo we noticed that there was a bit of an edge to the calls of “Mundele” (Lingala for “white person”) or “Chinois”. Many younger kids sounded like they were almost mocking us to our faces. A few times we took the time to engage the kids in the presence of adults and asked why they would disrespect strangers which made their eyes go wide and earn a rebuke from their parents. Sadly this habit of mocking Chinese people and other outsiders has seemingly offended the very small Chinese community in the town and one could sense they felt quite alienated from the Congolese. We too had felt that the atmosphere had become a bit more antagonistic since entering the Kasai province. When you were a stranger just walking about, a minority of people could be outright rude or mocking. But once you had made a connection and engaged with people, the atmosphere would change completely, and we made some very cool friends. Why the atmosphere should be so different between Lualaba province and Kasai province is a mystery. Whatever the reason, it is not the traditional friendliness that strangers and travellers like us love about our continent.
After a couple of days we made our way to the river harbour. Our next mission was to find a boat to get to Kinshasa. Down at the harbour we began our completely naive enquiries, trying to figure out how it all worked, who was in charge, who could give us info, who might just be bullshitting. After a few visits, we learned that there was indeed a boat going in a few days, a good boat. The “Mama Zalima”. There were definitely good boats and bad boats. A good boat could get you to Kinshasa in a week. A bad boat, well, that might take a month. We were lucky, the Mama Zalima was a good boat, it did this journey once every three months, and it was due to depart on Monday. It was Friday, we had time to meet the Captain and try and get a spot.
As is common in the DRC, one random guy emerged as the person who would be negotiating on our behalf and helping us get in front of the Captain. The next day we were told to come down to the harbour. There we sat waiting for a while. The usual wait-patiently-and-see move but the Captain wasn’t there so we’d have to come back. The next day we tried again. This time he was there. An entourage followed us. We sat down and the discussions began. We asked about the possibility of securing a cabin. It was a cargo ship, he explained. There was no accommodation for passengers. But there was a city of tents and makeshift shelters, cooking areas, sleeping areas, etc. couldn’t we just put up our tent somewhere in a corner? We would be no trouble at all. No, no, he said. These conditions were not for tourists. It rained a lot, at night sometimes. There weren’t any cabins. But we were tough, we protested, we just needed a spot and we would be fine in our tent. We asked very, very nicely. Okay, he said, they would think about a solution and our random guy would let us know.
The next day we contacted our random-guy. Sorry he said, it looked like the answer was a “no”. Now what? How the hell were we to get out of Ilebo? We wouldn’t get another boat as good as the Mama Zalima. We decided to bypass random-guy and appeal to the Captain directly ourselves, without a crowd tagging along.
Our long appeal to the Captain worked. It seemed that he had never said ‘no” to our random-guy. There was no way he was letting us camp in our tent along with the rest of the cargo and the city of people on the boat, but we could rent the cabin of the second in command for a reasonable sum. The cabin was a little 2m by 2m metal box with nothing inside but it was easy to clean properly - we were thrilled! At night we could lay down our inflatable mattresses and put up our mosquito net. During the day we could pack our “bed” away and had two plastic chairs to sit on and we could cook our meals on our little alcohol stove whenever we wanted.
 |
| The Mama Zalima, our boat to Kinshasa, DRC |
 |
| The Mama Zalima engine room, Kasai river, DRC |
The boat itself resembled a tug-boat and it pushed three large barges ahead of it which were filled with hundreds of tons in each of their holds while the barge decks were covered in a small tarpaulin city of people with their merchandise on their way to sell in Kinshasa.
There was a communal 1m x 1m bathroom on deck with a toilet that dropped through to the river and which you could stand over to have a bucket bath. During the day we would sit up on deck, read, eat snacks and chat to the other passengers. The gentle captain, Papa Gabi, and his crew were super kind and helpful and went out of their way to make sure we were as comfortable as possible. Fresh dough balls were made right on the ship and we had them hot with peanut butter and chocolate sauce. Every now and then we stopped at village ports to offload or onboard goods. We initially wondered how Papa Gabi would be able to weigh and thus calculate the transport cost for all the giant sacks being loaded onto the ship. It turned out that the calculation was straightforward: there was a flat rate of about US$10 per sack irrespective of how much it weighed. And what was stopping the passengers creating monster sacks weighing tons you may ask? Simple: the criteria was that one man must carry the sack alone from the river bank onto the ship. As a result, there was a thriving business on the river banks for the strongest men who could carry the heaviest sacks of maize and thus make a little extra money for the maize traders. The strongest men could carry a bag weighing as much as 150kg (the equivalent of 3 bags of cement!) on their shoulders as they walked along the narrow plank leading to the ship.
 |
| Our three barges that we were pushing to Kinshasa, DRC |
We could disembark on average once a day to buy fresh veggies, fruit and other general supplies at village ports. We also had lots of time to learn and practice French using the excellent Duolingo app. Duolingo has tons of languages on it and you learn with fun games and clever cartoon characters. Another very useful language learning tool is the free Coffee Break French podcast which is also available in a range of languages. In the evenings the boat would dock for the night and Dave would try to fish, with no luck.
 |
| Kasai river, DRC |
 |
| Arriving at a small river village to dock for the evening, DRC |
 |
| Sunset over the Kasai river, DRC |
We sailed steadily at about 12km/h passing slower, much less comfortable looking boats laden with cargo. We were definitely on one of the best boats on the river. For five days we sailed down the Kasai river with huge forests on either bank. Looking east, it was incredible to see the enormous, beautiful trees and think that the forest stretched unbroken for almost 1000km until near the Ugandan border.
After a while, the forest on the western bank suddenly gave way to what looked like kilometres and kilometres of plantations. Palm oil. This is the giant Brabanta plantation where Unilever (then known as Lever Brothers) was born, where William Lever invented Sunlight soap and where the soap cottage industry still thrives. You can buy crude bars of soap in every little village in the Congo. We stopped at a nearby village and dozens of jerrycans of palm oil were loaded onto our ship. When asked, some young guys smiled and said, “if you lived here you would also steal palm oil from the plantation.”
 |
| Fishing, Kasai river, DRC |
 |
| A less luxurious boat, Kasai river, DRC |
On one day there was a lengthy delay at one of the river ports. It turned out that our ship was getting a bit of a shakedown by the local Customs officials. The DRC might be the only country where one has to pay Customs Duties when you transport goods into another province of the same country. As with the more common “road checkpoints” that pollute the continent, the modus operandi is to threaten to spend days inspecting the ship and its cargo, or to pay a “fee” for instant processing. Things got quite heated for the Captain and his crew, but within a few hours we were on our way again.
 |
| Paying customs at this port to enter a new province took long, DRC |
On the fifth day, the large Kasai River began to mix with some clearer waters. We were heading west and were about to merge with the Congo. The river we’d been on was big, but this one was different; we were merging into a mighty one. Everyone was on deck appreciating the moment. These traders and sailors had done this journey many times but when we reached the Congo river, it was still a special moment and everyone stood in appreciation and awe. The Congo is ironically called “le Fleuve” (the Stream) while all other rivers are called “les rivieres” by the Congolese. There were huge kilometer countdown boards on the side of the river counting down the kilometres to Kinshasa. As we sailed the last couple of days down the Congo with the DRC on the left and the Republic of Congo on the right, it was noticeable how much better living conditions and infrastructure were on the Republic of Congo side. Oil riches, a small population and 22 years of peaceful, though authoritarian, rule make a big difference.
 |
| Doing laundery on the Mama Zalima, Kasai river, DRC |
 |
| Some of our friends on the Mama Zalima, DRC |
 |
| Our cabin on the riverboat, Kasai river, DRC |
On the eighth day tall buildings appeared in the distance, surrounded by the polluted haze of the big city. We were excited. We were ready to be off the boat, to see the legendary city of Kinshasa, the second biggest city in Sub-Saharan Africa (after Lagos).
 |
| Hooray! Kinshasa!!! DRC |
 |
| Captain Papa Gabi and his team, Mama Zalima, DRC |
For some reason our ship couldn’t dock when we arrived so we just had to wait. Everyone else seemed to be hopping across the barges and getting paddled across to the port in piroques. That was too risky for us, the crew said, and they tried to get us to be patient and wait till the boat could dock. We waited patiently for another couple of hours until we’d had enough. It was a five minute paddle in a piroque, we were made of sterner stuff, we would take the risk. So we ignored the concern and just took our things, hailed a piroque and bid a fond farewell to our boat family. After the necessary stops at the immigration office and the head of police, which was less painful than usual (no money requested), we were in the thick of Kinshasa’s traffic-jammed chaos.
We jumped into a taxi and headed for the area known as Ngiri Ngiri where we’d managed to find a little one bedroom flat, the cheapest accommodation on AirBnb. Every Congolese we spoke to raised their eyebrows when we said we were staying in Ngiri Ngiri – we were not sure why. The flat was comfortable enough and had some solar energy which was useful since the government electricity seemed to come on for just a few hours a day and often only in the middle of the night. You had to make sure that you had plugged your devices in before you went to sleep so that they could charge a bit overnight. While our flat was fairly unremarkable, the moment you stepped out the gate, it felt like you had entered another realm. Our street was dark and a little quieter than other parts of the city with only a few motorbike taxis racing up and down and a half-decent side-walk that we could walk along.
We were told to head for Assossa Avenue where all the action was. As we neared Assossa Ave the road disintegrated into giant pools of water and piles of plastic litter which you had to weave your way around. At the same time, motorbikes, cars and pedestrians materialised in their chaotic multitudes and you had to constantly swivel your head in every direction to make sure there wasn’t a motorbike hurtling towards you in an attempt to dodge a swamp, a pile of bricks, a car, another person. As we turned into Assossa we entered full Kinshasa chaos with music and heaving crowds of people everywhere. By chance or through planning genius, this part of Kinshasa has sidewalks on either side of the road as wide as the road itself. As a result, every sidewalk is filled with chairs and tables creating a wonderful atmosphere of restaurants, bars and street food. Many of the bars have set up giant flat screen TVs to attract patrons wanting to watch European football. We found a good spot in the thick of things, that became our “local”, where we ate delicious, huge chicken thighs with rice and veg for about $3 which we could wash down with a choice of Congo’s famous beers. People-watching paradise. Further explorations found a man and a soft serve machine making delicious ice creams. We would invariably hang out in this area for a few hours at night before braving the chaos and heading back home to our apartment.
The days that followed were spent wandering the streets of Kinshasa as if in a psychedelic fever dream. To walk from Ngiri Ngiri to the party capital of Matonge was… motorbikes rushing at you from behind and in front, side walk in OK condition, slabs of concrete above deep storm water drains with pitch black sludge, occasionally an island of thousands of empty plastic bottles in a drain, did they collect here by themselves or is someone collecting them, we are in the remote control section now, the next 50m of sidewalk is lined with traders selling used remotes for TVs, aircon, hifis – who buys these, how does it work, do you just ask if you have a remote for xyz TV and the guy digs through his pile, will the remote even work, how would you test it, can't stop and ask as there are people pushing from in front and behind and motorbikes hooting hooting, now we’re in the used furniture section, fancy coffee tables and TV tables, all glass and mirrors, where are these from, surely not used goods from within Kinshasa, do rich countries export old lounge furniture, my arm is grabbed, hey you show me your documents, the flash of some official looking ID card, my passport is in the hotel, ooohhh big problem, here’s a photocopy, nooo we need original, another man appears, smart but relaxed, what’s the problem here, they haven’t got their documents, where are they from, South Africa, but there’s no problem with South Africans, the officials begin to argue with the smart guy, we grab the passport copy and march off hoping not to be called back, and we’re back in the ceaseless flow of people on a mission, and now its old appliances, old washing machines and fridges, from where, is it worth the shipping from overseas, oh the musical instrument section, nice, brand new electric guitars, drum kits, monster speakers and amps, trombones, trumpets, wow the Congolese music industry is BIG, and the people know their equipment, none of those terrible distorted sounds from over-amplified speakers, crisp powerful music, whoa a soldier with a big gun in the road, standing in front of a small empty red car shouting and waving, what’s that about, why is the car in the middle of the road blocking everyone and where are the car people, baguettes, so many baguettes, broken computer and broken smartphone section, heaps of them, can they be fixed, hardware section, we need a washer for our water filter, no washers, just pieces of rubber to cut your own washer, beautiful Congolese women tall and thin with the cool spiky hairstyle, how does one look so elegant in this chaos, people walk fast here, no SA languid strolling here, minibuses have people riding on the back bumper as standard, do they pay or are they just hitching a lift, bike crashes into a car, the car driver doesn’t even bother to look, drives off, is this the only city where minor crashes and scratches are so frequent that people don’t even seem to notice, equal number of cars with steering wheels on the left as on the right, cheap imports, turn left, a backstreet, a road seemingly made from crushed plastic bottles, a layer of charcoal dust covers everything, fruit, veg, men coated in white powder, carrying sacks of manioc flower from the grinding machine, Mundele!, Chinois! a toxic sludge river hard to cross, what a mess, ooh beautiful fabrics, must buy, make a dress, turn again, back on the crazy road and oh, what’s this, the Matonge musical monument, the famous junction of Kasavubu and Victoire avenues, the party capital of Kinshasa, pumping music in all directions, people photographing themselves in front of the monument, nightclubs, hotels, lights, chaos, how to cross the street and not die, food stalls, roasted meat, manioc wrapped in leaves, a side street, traffic jam, an endless line of outdoor bars and clubs on either side of the road, each a different pumping beat, beer price signboards, people dancing, dancing, ”Ndombole!” cars and bikes squeezing through, beautiful people dressed up, looking chic in the chaos, music music from every direction, and then back to Ngiri Ngiri, dark, no lights, no electricity, the food stalls and shops lit with torches and candles, moving moving with the neverending flow of people, big river rushing straight across the road, in the middle of a giant city, the only way forward is along a narrow strip of concrete blocks, dozens of people balancing, moving in both directions, focus, don’t fall in the water, motorbikes and cars splashing as they pass, and then a left turn and the quiet road and our apartment, and you enter the silent calm space. And the fever breaks… Aaaahhhh….. until you venture outside again, into the throbbing, moving, noisy, sensual overload that is the crazy, chaotic, wonderful fever city of Kinshasa.
On our last day we got to see the other side of Kinshasa with a friend and his wife who work at the Reserve Bank. We got to see the university and the smart side of town and ate a delicious lunch at a restaurant overlooking the mighty fleuve. It was clear that money was being spent to upgrade the city, a monumental task considering the backlog but then the Congolese are not scared of a challenge. Some big thinkers and some big doers will be needed to imagine how this city can be transformed into a functional city while thousands flock there from the rural areas on a daily basis. Incremental, gradual change will not do. Boldness will be needed. But wow, what a city.
 |
| Central Kinshasa, looking good, DRC |
And then suddenly, finally it was time to leave the Congo. We would be flying out, the first flight on our trip. With most borders in West Africa closed, travelling all the way on land wouldn’t be possible. Flight and visa wise, Ghana turned out to be the easiest option to go to next. After all this crazy hard travel, a flight seemed like a portal into the organised world. Or so we thought. Not in Kinshasa. A blow by blow airport story could never do the stress and frustration justice so we won't even try. Suffice to say that at 1pm, when we should have been walking the streets of Accra, we were $500 poorer and in the air high above Nairobi with a full scale shouting conflict, flying shoes, and “angry” Congolese in their play-fight mode shouting at a Lebanese guy who had offended someone, the poor air-hostesses looking like they were going to faint and genuine concern that the pilot would do an emergency landing in Nairobi!
The only other thing we’ll say about that experience here is: never underestimate the ability of the Congo to suck you in her mighty jaw, swirl you around, chew you through and spit you out until you feel like someone grabbed you by the hands, spun you around until you’re dizzy and as you stumble and fall to the ground you find yourself giggling while you fall flat on your face.
Congo, thank you for a truly unforgettable adventure. What a country! We will be back.
Song of the month:
Newspaper article - Dave wrote this piece on the DRC for the Daily Maverick:
Time for SA to take a fresh look at the DRC
PS: If anyone of influence from the DRC reads this blog, PLEASE buy the Kananga SNCC train people some spares for their train. Just a few new rubber pipes and clamps would save a huge amount of time and suffering for the tens of thousands of people who use the train every month.
