Category Archives: Travelling in Africa

The last journey: Epulu to Bunia

Adventures, bus, drc, Travelling in Africa, ,

It’s been more than six months since we returned from that crazy, whirlwind three week trip to Uganda and the Eastern DRC. The whole trip lasted less than 21 days but it’s taken all this time to process, to remember, to understand what was crammed into that short space. I could tell more tales of more journeys – car, ferry, bus, plane – but this is the last story of the trip. The last piece of remembering pinned to the page.

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We woke early that morning, two days after Christmas, packed and went to wait by the road. Unlike our outbound trip, we were unsure what kind of transport we’d get. After all, hopping a bus where the route started in Bunia was likely to be far easier than cramming a spot on an overcrowded skorokoro already full from its starting point in Kisengani.

So we waited. The guards, who knew us of old by now, brought us blue plastic chairs to sit on. Five travellers, with their bags, by the side of the road. We took bets on how long it would take us to get a ride. We took bets on what kind of vehicle we’d end up catching. We contemplated playing cards.

Two vehicles arrived. One was an NGO landcruiser. The other was a Nile Coaches bus. After the misery of the trip here, we were reluctant even to consider another eight hours on one of those busses. Extremely reluctant. This one, however, turned out to be a semi-out-of-service bus, which, crucially, meant that it was empty. No millions of people, no masses of luggage, no white sacks, no Chinese flip-flops. An empty bus would be far better able to navigate the potholes. And it could move faster. We were sold. We climbed on board. Most people headed for the front. I found myself a seat further back. This trip I wanted quiet, to be by myself, to watch the world go by.

The world was beautiful. We passed homesteads and households. People sitting outside. Children playing. Forests. Streams. At Mambasa, we stopped for breakfast of stale chapatti and cake. Chapati – the one food I’d rather eat in Uganda.

Back on the road. Run-down vehicles-that-never-die passed us. We passed pedestrians – how far were they walking? Ituri River Bridge (Pont Ituri 22m), donated by the British government and assembled by MONUC Nepalese troops. More homesteads, more huts, more contrasts with the Southern African rural areas.

The bus took us as far as Komanda, where we’d find other transport. We sat on the side of the road, leaning against a fence. Komanda, 2pm. Dusty. Hot. Waiting for transport of any kind. The two people in our group who speak French and Swahili had wandered off. A storm was building up in the distance. We waited. Patiently. Peacefully. We weren’t rushing to be anywhere, anymore. There was an ease to the afternoon. Travelling in Africa teaches you patience. Richard dozed in the reccie hat he bought in Bunia, with his army bag, by the dusty road.

A truck passed by but they said they weren’t going to Bunia. A man offered his car for $90. We countered with $60 but he refused. Two boys came by selling hard-boiled eggs. We bought one. Then another. And another. Boiled eggs with salt on the roadside in Komanda. That’s a good memory. Someone went off and bought more stale chapati and some water. We eat more eggs.

After a time, a mini-bus taxi came past. We wandered over to find out if they were going back to Bunia tomorrow, mostly at peace now with spending the night in Komanda. It turned out they were travelling back that day. A price is negotiated, the taxi headed to town to collect other passengers while we settle back into the shade of our tin-sheeting fence, to wait.

The taxi ride was hair-raising. The driver narrowly avoided a head-on collision more than once. To be fair, this was generally the result of a car in our lane refusing to move till the last minute but still a little terrifying. The poultry were in grave danger of death-by-taxi, too. Chickens who sauntered across the road in front of oncoming traffic. Ducks who refuse to move so the driver literally had to go around. Pigeons who waddled away at the last minute, far too lazy to fly.

In between worrying about cars and poultry, we watched the gorgeous stormlight. Dark clouds across grassland with stretched-out rays creating spotlights of contrast. A relief, as always, to get back to grassland. The forests had been beautiful but the grasslands of the world will always be my heart and my home.

Back in Bunia, the taxi stopped outside MONUSCO house. What a different arrival to the first time, just a week before. We wandered down to Mama Tamara’s, where the boda-bodas had first dropped us, and booked rooms at $10 per night. Way more pleasant than the other place, even if it turned out, maybe, possibly, to be something of a brothel. The doors had locks. The rooms were clean. It was a good place to stay.

A good place to end the journey. The eastern DRC is an amazing place. Just getting there, just being there, had taken months of planning and research, plucking up courage and calming down anxious relatives and friends. I doubt it would have happened if it hadn’t been for Richard. I owe him a debt of gratitude. Him and the others who travelled with us. The people who shared the frustration of getting stuck in that horrible hotel in Bunia and the joy of discovering Epulu and Kisenyi, and the magic of movement and travel and going, just going, not to discover something new and world-changing but just to see.

In 2008, I travelled into Africa for the first time, with an amazing group of people. Since then I have been to two other continents and seven more African countries. I have learnt that the end of one journey is invariably the beginning of another and that journeys start and end far beyond the actual days of travel; the anticipation, the remembering are part of it too.

That last morning in Bunia, I sit on a cement ledge and watch a little microcosm of this foreign-familiar world. Men and boys fetch water in yellow gerry-cans. A woman in a black dress and gold hairnet washes shoes in a bucket. Crows come to rest in the tree next door. A white rooster wanders around, contemplating crowing. A boy teaches his sister French counting words outside a wooden shed. Someone is sweeping the yard. It starts to rain. The camera pulls back and the shot fades out. It’s time for the planning, the anticipation of the next adventure to begin.

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.