I got to quite enjoy being in Brazzaville, despite the lack of budget accomodation everything else is pretty cheap. Taxis are cheap but require allot of haggling to get the correct price. I took a taxi down to Les Rapides (the rapids) which are just west of the city.
…Time for a short history and geography lesson. Congo Brazzavile was the french colony and Congo Kinshasa the Belguim (although initially owned solely by King Leopold himself), both were absolutely trashed by their colonial masters for slaves, and then later natural resources, they probably suffered the worse treatment in the whole of colonial africa. The Congo river is navigable from Brazzaville/Kinshasa all the way to Kinsangani which isn’t too far from east africa. Unfortunately the afore-mentioned rapids stop river travel to the coast. To truly exploit their territories the colonial powers had to each build a railroad to the coast, which cost the lives of thousands in forced labour schemes. A transit station was built on either side of the river to load the goods from boat to train. These transit stations grew up to become Kinshasa and Brazzaville, hence why the two cities face each other…
The rapids are huge, and apparently when I was there they were pretty slow. It creates a great water park for the kids who play around near the shores riding the rapids. I was tempted to join in but watched over a nice cold beer.
Eventually I decided it was about time I went over to Kinshasa. The ferry port is called ‘The Beach’ which is funny because it should be ‘Le Plage’, I went down the day before my departure on a bit of a reccy mission. On the Brazzaville side it proved to be a pretty civilsed affair, I changed a bit of local money in preparation for formalities. The Congolese Franc (Zairie) is pretty devalued and so you get a huge sack of cash in return for a few notes. Another interesting point was the army of cripples that hang around the Beach, disabled people get a 40% discount on a ferry ticket, and so for this reason they are often used as couriers for small goods, it certainly makes for an interesting sight.
Feeling a little bit nervous about tomorrow I went for an evening stroll to find dinner, and ended up stumbling on the Brazzaville art school which I had been looking for previously. They had some really good work in there, which made a nice change from the tourist tat you see in most of Africa. I decided to buy a small painting which is my first real souvenir. I chatted with the artist and he offered me a drink (I could hardly refuse), after a bit of chatting he suggested we go and see his Belgique(?) friend who owns a small restaurant.
The restaurant owner turned out to be a complete nut case with a slight alcohol problem, he had a real film character style about him, the way he was sat cross legged on a bar stool wearing some flowing colourful robe, and a long straggly grey hair and beard. He was just about capable of talking and when we got on the subject of my travels through the next country (DRC), he told me ‘do not be afraid, do not be afraid, is that good english?, I could say don’t be afraid, but I say, do not be afraid!’
We didn’t stay too long and I left, feeling kind of afraid, but also excited. The artist had an uncle who worked in the ticket office at the beach. So before heading of to the hotel we popped in to see Uncle and arranged to meet at 8am the next morning to take a taxi to ‘The Beach’.
