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.