Monthly Archives: July 2012

Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Epulu, DRC

Adventures,

The Okapi Wildlife Reserve is a magical, magical place. It sits in the middle of the world’s second-largest rainforests, which, like the Amazon rainforests, hide weird and wonderful creatures, so crazy many people have a hard time believing they exist.

We arrive on a Saturday afternoon, after a long and miserable bus trip from Bunia. The guard meets us at the registration office and checks us in. We have booked months earlier, via email and fax. A letter from the reserve confirming our booking was necessary to apply for our visas.

Two twin rooms, one single room. He leads us off to the accommodation. We’re staying right on the Epulu River. The river is huge – a wide, rushing world of water, with birds fishing and islands in the middle. We discover later that what we’re looking at is only half the stream; the river here is split into two. Epulu River is a tributary of the Congo River. The seed is planted of dream of travelling on a boat up that mightiest of African waterways.

We’re staying in one main house and one rondavel. It seems no-one else is here. We let the guys stay in the house and the two girls take the rondavel. It’s perfect. Three windows look out towards the river, maybe 10m from our door. Inside, the two single beds sit comfortably under a huge mosquito net, one that doesn’t have holes in it. There is a bookcase and a desk and three chairs with a coffee table. Outside, in the impossibly tall trees, monkey chatter and leap and play.

The main stone house has a covered veranda looking out at the river and a lounge and dining room where we gather for meals and in the evenings. The place has electricity some of the time, so computers and mobile phones can be charged in the lounge. Not that phones are important – there is no mobile phone reception at Epulu.

There is also, to our great joy, a block with toilets and showers and running water. The window of one of the showers looks out at the river. The kind of luxury for which you would pay thousands of rands in most places. We all feel very lucky to be here.

For the first time in days, we spend an evening together, just us, at the place we are staying. We take pictures of the river at sunset. A lady from the village, organised through the reserve, comes in to make us dinner. Bush meat, rice and vegetables, washed down with the inevitable Primus.

After dinner, we sit outside on the veranda and watch the river and chat. We have the music on in the background. At about 10pm, the electricity goes out and we light the lamps instead. Someone gets out the fiery poi. Later, when the stars are out, we walk up to the bridge to take pictures and simply enjoy the beauty of the night-time river. The stars are amazing, the night is beautiful, the river sounds are lovely. It is humid and warm and peaceful. A group of people walk past us on their way home from church and greet us cheerfully.

I wake the next morning just as the sun begins to peak through the early morning mists. Outside I can hear the rushing river. By the riverside, two bright green tropical parrots leap from branch to branch. Monkeys came down from the ancient trees to see what is happening. The air was rich with the sounds of birds. One, I still wish I knew which, sounds like liquid music. It is exquisite. There is a thorn tree, an acacia like those at home, but this tree’s yellow flowers all look like they were wearing pink feathered head-dresses.

Breakfast is omlettes and bread and we open the cheese we have brought from Bunia. Cheese for Christmas. The morning is lazy and peaceful. At about 11am, we go up to the gate and get the guards, with their machine guns, to pose for a Christmas picture with us and the blow-up Santa Clause we’d picked up in Bunia. The guards were wonderfully friendly and more than willing to be in our picture.

Around lunchtime, we wander along, across the bridge where we’d been the night before and across the second bridge, towards the dense rainforests. We are about to venture into the forest, in search of the old broken wooden bridge we could see from the road when the local people stop us. We would learn later that they did this entirely for our own good – we would have been lost in those forests within a few minutes and quite possibly never found again.

Instead, they lead us through an open gate and down to the rocks by the river, near the second bridge, to a spot where the pygmy children like to play. We sit on the rocks and watch the local children. Several of the elders sit with us, although age is so difficult to determine when the people are all smaller. I’ve never seen pygmy people before. It’s odd. It’s a little like walking into a history book to meet a people who are almost gone. But also seeing that they are ordinary people.

Sitting quietly on the rocks, I am so aware of the river. Down here, we are looking across the water at the forests rising from the river’s edge. One tree grows in the middle of the river, white-water rapids visible through a hole in its roots. Near to where I sat, navy blue and red dragon flies hover and flit across the water. Young pygmy men fish in this river. We see them one morning casting their nets in the river outside our rondavel. Another time we watch them barter, negotiating the value of their fish.

It is blisteringly hot and humid when we go back to our house to rest and get ready for an afternoon of adventure.

The days pass slowly here, filled with so much and yet somehow restful. One afternoon one of our group spends hours sitting under the trees near the okapi enclosures, recording the sounds and the light of the forest. I find a million chances to use my new binoculars and see all the birds and the creatures around the river. We rest, sometimes together, sometimes alone. All of us spend time writing, capturing thinking. It is as if we have found a secret safe space, away from the rush and the cellphones and the constant edge of danger that permeates everything in the Congo. Months later the park is attacked by rebels but those days we spent by the river were peaceful and happy, unexpectedly perfect.

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.