The next morning we drove a short while to the next slightly larger village where I had to go through the neccessary formalities. The Police and Gendarmerie were pretty surprised to see a ‘mendele’ (white man), and forgot to demand any bribe money. The immigration however never miss a trick and some pretty vocal arguing got me the next stamp in the passport.
I’d only paid the guys in the pick-up to take me this far, but by now they were pretty good friends so we went looking for transport to the next town which was apparently pretty infrequent. We heard that the only truck had just left and there wouldn’t be another for a few days. Not wanting to be defeated we head out on the road and pretty quickly came across the truck stranded on a hill in some deep mud, a price was agreed and I jumped in the back with the livestock, produce and a couple of farmers. The guys got the truck going buy felling a few trees for grip on the road. The road was really slow going and the rainy season was in full swing so we weren’t travelling anywhere to fast.
We picked up a big group of farm workers on the way, and everyone had a good sing song in the back, water containers for drums that kind of thing. The Congolese certainly seem to very in touch with their roots out in the wilderness, and allot of singing goes on. Unfortunately it all turned a bit sour when we dropped the farmers off, who refused to pay anything towards petrol. It got pretty vocal and eventually a few fists were thrown. It looked like it may get out of hand so me and another farmer in the back gathered our valuables and got ready to run, should it escalate.
After a while the driver was persuaded to drive on much to everyones relief. The road didn’t get any better, just before we got to Boundji there were a series of four very bad looking bridges. All the passengers and crew got out and walked to the other side, leaving the driver to take his chances. To say these bridges were bad is an understatement, they were a few precarious logs and branches dropping about 10ft into a river. I felt unsafe walking across them, but sure enough the truck made it through at a very frightening angle.
In Boundji I brought the driver a pint, then found a hotel for the night. The town was a pretty laid back place and the Congolese generally a friendly bunch. I heard rumours of a bus leaving for Brazzaville tomorrow, which wasn’t hard to find in a one street town so I booked myself a place.
