If anyone would have ever told me " One day, you will go to the Congo" I would have thought they were crazy! But here I am, having my very own "voyage au Congo". The day we crossed the border was extremely hot and humid! ( March 5th) we waited forever to leave Gabon as some military officials hand wrote all the details of our passports into his logbook. While eavesdropping on the other soldiers I heard them say " Sucks to be them, turning up here today!" That was the understatement of the year! Arriving at the border post and road block into the Congo we spotted a bar with cold drinks across the road and were quick to race over for something refreshing! Almost immediately we noticed we were back in warm and welcoming territory. Everyone seemed so happy to see us. One of the main ways we can tell we have crossed a border is by what the children scream at us as we drive by! Here, they want soccer balls and scream "ballon, ballon" while pretending to kick. The landscape also changed from dense jungle forests to an African version of prairie scrubland. Long grasses, some trees and rolling hills. Like "the hills" section of my uncle Harry's farm! We also noticed we were back on poor, narrow pothole-ridden dirt roads.
We found a little bush camp and set up for the night. The mood in the group was one of extreme excitement. None of us know anyone who has ever been here and most of us are certain we never will. Unchartered territory. Some locals turned up and told us there was a bar with cold drinks just up the road in the next village! Eager to celebrate, we forgot everything we have learned about African time and set out for some drinks before dinner. Well, "just up the road" was actually six and a half kilometers away and took us a full hour to get there! ( Sometimes what is supposed to be "far" is very close and what is "close" is FAR!) Now this little village called Nyang-Pont was full of life and everybody was so excited to see us! Unfortunately given that we needed to get back for dinner I spent most of my time trying to organize a MACHINE of some sort to take use back to camp. ( You all know that 12km in one day is just not okay with me!) Funny though, how do you get a taxi back to the middle of nowhere? I tried explaining, we would see the lights of the truck from the road and the locals thought I was crazy! In the end, the chief of the border post ( who was at the bar) stuck us in a local transport truck and told us to yell when we saw our lights in the bush. So off we went back to camp down the bumpy dirt road. In the truck we met teachers, farmers, policemen everyone just on their way home to the next village! We also met a pharmaceutical salesman. With a pail full of pills like ibuprofen and amoxicillin, he walks from village to village selling medicine! What an amazing evening!
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