Category Archives: Adventures

Public transport, DRC style – Bunia to Epulu

Adventures, bus, drc, Travelling in Africa

One of the best things about living in South Korea was the public transport system. Anywhere you wanted to go, you could get there. Public transport is wide-spread, reliable, efficient and reasonably priced. Small villages have train stations and bus stations serviced once or twice a day. Busses run everywhere. Larger cities have subways and high-speed trains. Of course, for anyone travelling a little further afield, there are ferries and planes. Incheon airport (near Seoul) is a major international transport hub.

But for all the high-speed trains and fancy airports – which are great, don’t get me wrong – it is the fact that day-to-day travel is so easy that makes the real difference to quality of life. It’s something I miss in Africa. What public transport does exist here tends to take the form of mini-bus taxis (also called matatus) or, for those with a taste for adventure, boda-bodas. Buses are few and far between and tend to be both expensive and reserved for longer trips. On a visit to Mozambique a few years back, we took a bus from Vilanculos to Maputo. Nine hours of broken seats and overcrowding in what looked like it might once have been a Greyhound bus from South Africa. We decided then that Mozambique must be where buses went to die once they were no longer considered roadworthy in SA.

If that is true, then the eastern DRC is where buses go when Mozambique no longer allows them on the road. At least that is what we thought, although one of our group swears that the awful bus we took had a manufacturing date of 2005.

We were up early the morning we left Bunia. We had bought tickets the day before but you can never be entirely sure in the Congo, particularly on Christmas Eve when an awful lot of people are desperate to get home to their families on what limited public transport is available. By 6am, we were all up and ready to leave Hotel A Cote for the last time ever. We left our keys with the smiley man who had cleaned up and brought us buckets of water.

Off to the bus station. It was an overcast, hazy day. There were some people on the streets but the world wasn’t properly awake yet. We walked past a dog determinedly still asleep on a pile of sawdust. The sight of the bus was a little daunting. We’d seen it yesterday, but there was always the vain hope that it might somehow have improved overnight. Next to our bus were several other buses, perhaps left there to make ours look good because at least it had wheels and an engine.

When we arrived, people were loading large white sacks onto the bus. One of our group, Jon, tried to climb on board but was hastily chased away. No-one showed any interest in loading our luggage. 6:30am – the departure time – came and went. Some of the others went off to search for a restroom. We found a lady selling sweet, hot tea. After a while, someone came around selling cooldrinks. We finally tried strawberry-flavoured Fanta; it tasted like Red Sparletta.

All this time, the bus people continued to load white sacks onto the bus. They also loaded fuel. Refuelling here seems largely to consist of siphoning petrol or diesel from large, slightly dented metal barrels into whatever vehicle needs it at the time. It is entertaining to watch.

Clouds began to gather, promising to rain on all the people and all their luggage, which still hadn’t made it onto the bus. Eventually a sudden panic of people suggested we may be moving. We clambered and pushed and rushed our way onto the bus, scrambling over the huge white sacks filling the aisle. White sacks full of plastic Chinese flip-flops. Or perhaps not.

The seats were uncomfortable and crowded and there was nowhere to put our luggage, so we had no choice but to keep it with us – not the most comfortable way to travel. Overhead luggage compartments were full of cargo and the aisles filled with the white sacks.

Eventually, around 8:45am, we left. The bus was most definitely overloaded and swayed from side to side but once we got out of town, at least it felt like we were moving. The trip was hot and smelly and crowded. The bus lurched and bounced along ill-kept dusty roads. At some point (was it at Komanda?) we stopped and picked up more passengers, passengers who had been stranded when their own bus broke down. The climbed into the bus and took up their seats on top of the huge white sacks. In Mambasa, we ate stale chapattis, the first food we’d seen all day. It seemed impossible to fit any more people on the bus, but that, of course, didn’t stop anyone from trying.

By the time we reached the last leg of the bus trip, everyone was fairly miserable. By then, however, we had begun to pass through forests. The bus dipped and wobbled across swift streams passing across the road. The streams and the dappled forest light were beautiful but the mud puddles threatened to leave us stuck and the bus crawled along, still overcrowded, still hot and still miserable. We kept looking, kept searching for Epulu town and Epulu river, where we could finally get off.

After what felt like an age, we saw the river. The bus rumbled across one river bridge and then another and finally stopped at a guarded boom gate. We climbed out and passed our bags out of the window and joyously watched the horrible Nile Coaches bus disappear. It had taken us approximately eight hours to travel something like 200km in perhaps the worst looking bus any of us had ever seen.

Now, the horrible bus was gone and we stood at the gate of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, that magical, wonderful, peaceful corner of the magnificent Congolese rainforests where we would spend several incredible days.

You can check out any time you want but you can never leave

Adventures, drc, Travelling in Africa,

That hotel in Bunia became more and more unbearable as the days went by. It was hot and unpleasant and it smelled. I used to think indoor plumbing was a necessity. Then I stayed in places where the water no longer works. I’ll take outdoor sanitation over indoor toilets with no running water any day. The nights dragged. The days were hot and dusty. We kept trying to leave and it kept falling through.

So we stayed in Bunia and played journalist. Or to be fair some of the group spent the days being journalists. I spent the time remembering why am not a journalist. We met with NGOs and aid workers. I like talking with people who work in development and aid but instead of talking with them, we interviewed them. We visited NGO projects. It felt too much like work for a holiday. I was restless. I wanted to be gone.

There were high points in Bunia, too, of course. One morning we found a place called Cafe de la Paix. The building is old and the walls are painted apple-green. The cafe has been open since 1956. Chairs and tables sit on a little covered veranda, protected from the prying eyes of passers-by by wooden lattice-work over the windows. In the dark little shop itself are clusters of old couches and coffee tables. On the sheves are rows of coffee and tea, tinned foods, porridge and mazena. On the wall is an old moth-eaten impala head. Behind the counter stand a young, beautiful black woman and an older lady who doesn’t look like she is from here. We learn later that she is part Congolese, the descendent of an Iranian who came to Bunia many years ago and married a local beauty. She has come back all these years, all this time, through the wars: Bunia is her home. Cafe de la Paix serves Nescafé coffee and fresh chapatis and toast and cheese omelettes. It’s one of the best breakfasts I’ve eaten in ages and ages.

One evening we found a cafe for dinner and had Talapia and chips. It was delicous. Talapia is my new favourite fish. Although probably a good thing I’m not easily scared off, because the fish comes whole, complete with eyes. The little cafe, near the post office, also served a buffet which others in the group seemed to like. We wondered if the post office still works. We went back there several times and it was there that we made perhaps the most important discovery of our time in Bunia: chocolate spread and cheese.

Another afternoon, on our way back to Bunia, we stopped at an old abandoned colonial house. The house stood, roofless and empty, on the top of a ridge, looking out into the distance towards Lake Albert. The view was beautiful. The house was solid. Built in so much the same style as the familiar colonial farmhouses of South Africa. The linoleum kitchen floor. The huge windows. The red-polished steps, now faded for lack of polish. The house has been there since Belgian times. One of the ex-pats we met came here to Bunia because this is where his grandparents were missionaries for many, many years. They were people like those who lived in this house. The recent history of the Congo makes it difficult to see the complexity of the local history. This house is abandoned now. When we there, people were talking about rebuilding it, reoccupying. It makes sense – it is a beautiful spot. And so the history moves on.

There is a university in Bunia. When we stayed there on our way back, we met someone who is studying there. It’s on the main street, opposite the tax office. The student we met is studying agriculture. He tells us that the area around Bunia used to be prime cattle country. I can well believe it. Rolling hills flowing with grass blowing in the breeze. It’s not hard to imagine richly-fed, healthy, hearty cattle. The young man we talk with plans to become a farmer and bring back the area’s most important industry.

Ultimately, Bunia is just another town. With quirks and character, but just a town. There is traffic on the main road. There is a China shop where we bought pens and a blow-up Santa. There is a second-hand shop that sells hats and another with baby prams and handbags. There are cafes and restaurants and bars. There is a hotel balcony where you can sip tea while typing an email and looking out over the rooves of the town. One afternoon, sitting at Hotel Moscou while people checked email, I sat looking out over the rooves at a helicopter flew over, looking for all the world like a traffic chopper over a hazy, hot summer Joburg afternoon.

Welcome to Bunia, aid capital of Ituri

Adventures, drc, Travelling in Africa,

Some stories take longer to tell. Longer to share. Every time I open a newspaper now, I read about the Congo. This story begins to feel like I need to pin it to the page quickly before it is gone.

Our arrival in Bunia was not auspicious. Five people on the back of five not particularly powerful motorbikes with all of our luggage, 40km away from where we’d started. Who knew holding onto the back of a motorbike could be so tiring. Especially when you are not sure you trust the drivers. The drivers were quite keen to get this over with as quickly as possible, even if that meant driving quite fast (or what seemed fast to us) over a dirt road gone down to bedrock through the hills. A road also used by large trucks. The boda-boda drivers also had a particularly special strategy for dealing with FARDC (army) roadblocks. They would speed up just as they came to the roadblock and wave and race through quickly before anyone noticed they were carrying mzungus.

The views were beautiful – this really is a beautiful, beautiful country – but my legs had cramps and my feet went to sleep. My hands and back were aching and legs shaking when we finally got off the bikes in Bunia. In the bar/restaurant of the place we were, was a man who works for the UN in some capacity. What capacity was never established. He tried, or at least claimed to try, to be helpful when our boda-boda (motorbike) drivers decided they wanted more money. It was the first time someone tried to rip us off in the DRC and, to be honest, one of the only times. Our group was split down the middle in terms of how we should reacted. Half of us were keen to write it off as someone trying to rip us off and walk away. The rest felt that these might be useful contacts one day so we had to pay them extra. At the time, I just wanted them all to go away. We were tired and dusty and just a little bit miserable. Too tired, at least me, to appreciate that this is what happens when there is no reliable system of law and order. People wonder why things take so long to happen in not-particularly stable states. Part of the reason is that, without law and order, painfully slow negotiations are the only way to keep things functioning. We paid half of the extra they wanted and went on our way.

We went with the UN guy who knew a guy who knew a place we could stay. Hotel A Cote. A dump: no running water, stinking toilets, torn mosquito nets and tiny rooms, all for just $25 per night. Unfortunately, between NGO money distorting the local economy and the basic law of supply and demand – in a place people are scared to visit – that seemed pretty reasonable. The main hotel, we were told, was $65 a night.

Things improved after that. For all my years working in African development, I haven’t spent a lot of time in NGO-compound land. This was an aid worker world. We wandered down dusty streets, populated by local people selling fruit door-to-door – like the ladies with their brooms and feather dusters in the Joburg suburbs. Fruit sellers and branded landcruisers. On all sides high walls and security-guard-controlled metal gates carried the brands of the major NGOs. I played NGO bingo when we were in Gulu – making notes of every NGO we saw to try and come up with a total. There were even more here. Too many for the game. Some of them were different ones; more serious NGOs. Gulu is safe and settled. Bunia is more risky. OCHA and ECHO Flight and all the UN agencies share the streets with international NGO compounds.

We went in search of an NGO Richard has made contact with. Confused directions along footpaths and dirt tracks later, we found outside a different compound. The guards didn’t know the place we were looking for but they called someone from inside. His name wes Antonio. He invited us in. It feels like an important moment, visiting an NGO compound. People live here. Aid worker people. The old house. The rooms out back. The radios. Antonio works for an Italian NGO, doing water and sanitation work in a little place further north. He was there on his way home for Christmas. He was friendly and talkative and said he’d see us later at MONUSCO house. As we left, I notice they were growing herbs and chillies in their garden.

Much later, after visiting Moscou Hotel to check email (yes, they have internet in Bunia), we headed to MONUSCO house. They say that aid workers in far flung places eventually discover that they have more in common with the soldiers in those places, also far from home, than they do with their own colleagues at headquarters (except that aid workers generally trust their head offices less than the soldiers do). In Bunia, MONUSCO house is where the expat aid workers and foreign peacekeepers meet. There is a gym and tennis courts and an outside meeting area and a restaurant and pool table. We left our passports (only expats allowed here) and walked into what felt like an old-fashioned small town club in SA. A bar, tables, a christmas tree, a TV showing South African soccer (Chiefs vs Amazulu) and two or three men watching intently.

We were informed, apologetically, that the chef who does the Indian and Pakistani menus was away for the holidays, so they’d only be able to offer us the western menu. The food turned out to be excellent. The company, too. We met up with expat NGO types that one of our group had made contact with via the internet. Then we met their expat aid worker and UN friends. People came over and chatted. We drank Congolese beer (Primus) and terrible box wine. The Italians arrived and played pool with the guys in our group.

Around nine or nine-thirty, the place cleared out. Aid workers have curfews, even in Bunia. We wrapped up the evening and got a ride home with a security guy from the UN peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO. Probably unnecessary, as we would realise later, but it felt safer on that first night in Bunia.