Sean's Congo travelogue 2014

[Sean]

Part one

DR Congo travelogue, October-November 2014

I'm looking in this trip to deepen my understanding of the heart of Africa. DRC has a self-sufficient culture relying on no one else while surrounding countries rely on it, similar to India's position in Asia; these countries are the world centres prioritizing primary holistic, undifferentiated and Dionysian modes of thought in distinction to the secondary linear, conceptual and Apollonian West.

I've attempted DRC several times before including Kinshasa in 2005, denied entry from the Rwanda borders in 2011 after waiting a week in Kampala for an inauthentic visa, and Bukavu via Goma to Rutshuru in 2012, having to turn back for employment reasons. This time I get a two month visa from the London embassy after some hassle including a required visit there, most of the staff having little conception of anyone going without a very good reason, or even of leisure time generally. One official however is helpful and gets requirements about itinerary, hotels and other nonsense waived for me as a longer term independent traveller.

The famous Congo River boat journey from Kisangani to Kinshasa is becoming increasingly practical again after two decades of regional disturbance, despite still having the highest security warnings on foreign office websites with their political posturing, lies and rubbish. There remains very limited guidebook information, Lonely Planet having suspended its Central Africa book in 1994, and I only take a few maps.

It's a distance of about 1750km although the river extends the same again south as the Lualaba River, through unnavigable cataracts and rapids beginning with the Boyoma Falls visible from Kisangani. It flows to the Atlantic and journeying upstream eastwards from Kinshasa can take twice the time; it's Africa's second longest river, has the world's second largest discharge, and though often shallow parts become the world's deepest at 220 metres.

As the West's self-alienation has increased and its community declined a monstrous electronics industry has developed to sell people's relations back to themselves as twisted commercial products. Telephones to walk around with all the time and messages on neurotic little screens pass for a sense of inclusion while increasing isolation and feeding the desire for further bits of fake reassurance. Much of the world's stock of precious metals essential for so-called communication technology is then in eastern and southern DRC, the resulting conflicts being proxy expressions of the West's own tensions and inhumanity.

These conflicts have been the world's worst since World War Two with over five million killed by starvation and disease from displacement by foreign and local claims to the fabulous mineral wealth; this of course was hardly reported by the Western mass media with its majority-rule democratic customers and their limited moral capacity who don't want to know. The UN peacekeepers only arrived after the worst of the troubles, their huge military power standing down as lightly armed militias freed up the mineral access, and they still refuse to mop up the remaining bandits. The point of the instability is to keep the cobalt and cassiterite prices at small change by having no effective government to negotiate them with, while mass media when it must mention the situation at all brushes it off as some confused local dispute between subhuman blacks and the sheeple quietly buy their shiny phones.

DRC is where humanity is really at. It's perfectly visible that none of the money has reached the Congolese and they remain either at subsistence village level or in urban areas often in some of the world's most abject and disturbing poverty. The country has a history of being subverted and looted by foreigners and the structures for it seem still to be in place; the Congo River hydroelectric potential alone could power not just DRC but the entire African continent, and a developed and competitive Africa would mean fewer natural world resources, including Congo's, for the developed countries.

So instead of one of the world's richest places it's one of its poorest, and no matter what inherent characteristics the Congolese may have there's no doubt that they could to do materially better, indeed showing Western style linear mentality alongside splayed out holism and disinclination to attend exclusively to discrete issues. Perhaps China's current presence with its socialist values is less dubious than the West's more straightforward exploitation but instead of the Congolese doing their own mining and selling the produce on the international market at the right price, they remain so incompetent in terms of the profit-making process and rationality involved that they choose to sell entire mines and whatever astronomical value they may really have.

Independence from Belgium was gained in 1960 and from 1965-71 it had its present name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then becoming Zaire, the Portuguese word for the river, before changing back in 1997 after the fall of President Mobutu. The river's name is taken from a 14th-20th century local kingdom and indeed provides the best name for the country with the river's tremendous character and vast network, almost all contained within DRC to form its main transport system and much of the population's livelihood.

However the Republic of the Congo or Congo-Brazzaville to the west has also used the river's name since its independence from France in the same year, requiring Congo-Kinshasa to be referred to as DR Congo or DRC. The river never passes into its territory and only forms the central section of the border with DRC, the northeast being the Ubangui River tributary, and the far south being a land border partly with Angola. The Ubangui also passes into the Central African Republic and its capital Bangui, forming the border between DRC and CAR north of Congo-Brazzaville. Confusion could be removed if Congo-Brazzaville was to change its name.

With my 5kg shoulder bag and small tent I get a flight from Birmingham to Brussels to sleep through a lengthy connection in a quiet part of the airport, having brought an old blanket, before checking in the tent my for the flight to Kigali. On arrival I change $30 at the airport and find there's no minibus to town as two years ago but walk to the road and get a motorcycle taxi to the bus station a few kilometres away. Buy a ticket for the border town Cyangugu to the southwest in the morning and get a budget hotel nearby that I've used before; Kigali is the same dull and good-natured place with minimal bargaining trouble.

The 7am bus leaves as I get on as the last passenger, stops once for food and arrives six hours later, this time going all through the town and descending right to the border post at beautiful Lake Kivu with its convoluted jungle coastline. Change remaining Rwandan franks for Congolese franks, mindful not to change dollars on the Rwandan side at lower rates; get stamped out and walk to DRC immigration, pause a moment before I begin, and get stamped in smoothly. People speak Swahili in the east down to Lubumbashi and Lingala in the centre and west from Kisangani, these with rounded and bubbling visceral characters; French is a lingua franca with English a distant third.

I'd thought about skipping this northward part of the journey as I'd done the first section before and there are risks on the road after Rutshuru- DRC can be entered at Beni from Uganda, north of Rwanda. But Uganda is even more boring and I'd need another visa, unlike Rwanda for a British passport; there's also much interest in revisiting an area to broaden the experience, and the wider security situation has improved with disarmed rebel groups and fewer UN helicopters over the road or pick-up trucks with mounted machine guns that I saw in 2012. I further considered entering at Uvira from Burundi, the next main town south, but others say it's less interesting and from there both the road and security are bad, with a village massacre having taken place a few months prior just off the road; most vehicles also cross to Rwanda to avoid the area and I only have a single entry DRC visa.

Across the border on the road to Bukavu I change $100 at a table at an excellent rate but very carefully while soliciting police help, counting every note before handing over mine and rejecting a set offered with CF200s inside instead of 500s. The largest value banknote of CF1000 is currently worth just over a US dollar but by far the commonest is the 500, most of these and the other lower value notes being blackened and worn; you have to store both of these in your main bag not your body wallet as you get 90 or 180 or more per $100. As in other countries for some reason hard currency banknote edges must be smooth and intact to be accepted while small holes in them are okay, and denominations lower than $100 get lower rates.

Heavy rain, forked lighting and cold air blow over and I wait half an hour under the table umbrella with locals and shivering children in rags. I get a motorbike for a hotel I've stayed at a couple of times prior, short distances typically costing CF500 and without helmets of course; it's very basic and not worth the US $15 a night, dollars being used for such larger purchases, but I stay two nights and rest a little. When developing countries have established more infrastructure costs are low for the traveller but when they're so undeveloped that they produce little themselves and everything has to be imported or organized as external to the local economy and praxis, then prices can paradoxically approach developed world levels.

Bukavu is a colourful and bustling place if as throughout the country very run down with the poverty and decrepitude of everything shocking even by developing world standards. It's great to be away from choking Western social support and rely on personal organization, healthcare and thoroughness; I've also given up alcohol to stay sharp. Like Rwanda the atmosphere is positive and the people cheerful, and particularly concerned to be after the recent troubles; though there are no other whites to be seen I'm largely ignored, as usual in unperturbable Africa. Very hot in the direct sun, alternating with light cloud, but it goes cold at night.

I join a crown gathering to watch an earth mover incongruously begin demolishing an old petrol station then walk down to the port area, via a few cautious photo stops for the unique chaos and convulsion, to ask about a boat to Goma on the north side of the lake. Get to the landing I remember previously but there's only an old ferry with a few workers and no departure soon, so walk further on to find four others leaving 5 or 6pm they say, and each currently offloading maize sacks and other produce; previously there was a morning service. The ferries are smaller and larger and I choose a smaller quoting $10 for the 12 hour journey, hoping to get some sleep and skipping a hotel; they try to sell me the smaller upper deck room for $20, which I later find is no less crammed with people trying to sleep on the floor. I know a few French phrases and them a few English.

It's very edgy and less than safe walking the beach area but an experience with herds of cows, pigs and goats pushed around and a pork and fish market on collapsing platforms with flies everywhere; the earth banks up from the lake, covered in grimy activity. As in many parts of Africa there's a strong communal sense with strangers welcomed and people genuinely trying to be helpful. Men are masculine with occasional raised voices breaking out and women feminine and beautiful- many have long hair braided into various designs and thickness.

Police in a shack up the hill call me over, asking for a drink meaning money which I decline, but are friendly and tell me to watch out for thieving children. I sneak a few more pictures and go sit in the maize shelter opposite the ferry to a watch for a while, doing little in the luxurious warmth like some of the locals; I ask about the road north of Goma, which seems all safe now. An army contingent wearing bullet proof jackets arrive on trucks and mooches around.

At 6.15pm the ferry leaves, very full if not overfull, with hawkers seething all over the place trying to sell stuff up to the moment it moves away from the dock. It's slow moving but seems safe with very still water on the lake; I look at the coast in the moonlight noting that should it sink I could swim if I can get away from others quickly and let them drown. The 40 person cabin remains too hot however and I have to get out via the window next to me to cool down, then losing the seat to a woman with a couple of small children and being stuck outside; heat and sunlight of course is no problem for the locals with physiology and dark skin to deal with it. Every possible space on the boat to lie down is taken but I sleep a little sitting in my thermal sweater and cagoule against the breeze, while at other times standing around with people at the bow and watching other boats pass.

The night sky is most impressive with Orion at the zenith and thousands of fainter stars visible in the constellations, making them hard to recognize. At dawn on approach to Goma the wind increases a little and surface waves pick up; arrive 6.40 but wait offshore a while for the police and identity control called DGM to open up. The port is a confused riot of workers, taxi men, touts and officials with everything raw, rough and immediate; nice view of huge Mount Nyiragongo volcano which flooded much of Goma in 2002 to make it a particularly rubbly, grey and grim place.

The police find me and register my presence in their battered books- they're pleased to see a solo visitor, even encouraging me to take photos in this country of internal control concerns, and get me a motorbike with an agreed low price to this lovely small hotel in a quiet suburb, $15 again but nothing like the Bukavu dive. Later bike it back to the centre, finding an internet cafe and a little supermarket; much of the town is very rundown and streets are volatile and unruly but with caution and confidence fairly negotiable. There are a few white faces, Goma having a major UN presence with their various white jeeps and trucks around and the airport busy with small aircraft constantly taking off and landing, low in the air.

Get over early in the morning to the corner in town where transport heads out- no lorries unlike before and only a single minibus but going all the way to Butembo in one day, taking eleven hours. I loudly dispute the $25 asked for but after enquiries find that all aboard are paying it; it's also in proportion with the Bukavu-Goma boat ride distance, though not in terms of time. I arrived at the corner at 7am with the minibus almost full and ready go yet they wait until 9am for no discoverable reason, then having to drive in the dark for two hours at the other end.

It's a fascinating road with changing terrain and foliage every few kilometres including vast hazy plains, acacia trees, thick green jungle, and a family of gorillas crossing the road ahead in the Virunga National Park; it's a largely unsealed orange-yellow road but level enough for fast driving. Many trucks in these parts have armed guards on the back overlooking the cab while flat military ones have lines of soldiers sitting holding automatic guns.

Between Rutshuru and the Rwenzori Mountains for a couple of hours the risks of brigands stepping out are highest, there being much less traffic or buildings and just us and the bush; another minibus travels alternately close behind or in front though and we pass a few coming the other way, all loaded with baggage piled high on the roof. Just before the mountains rising abruptly out of the plains is a UN camp with barbed wire and huge artillery, but it looks apathetic.

Two thirds of the journey is through the hills, the road narrower, winding, sometimes muddy, and scattered with boulders and sharp rubble that wear the tires. Yet it's impressively constructed, set safely back from the edge with an ongoing row of large trees at the curb; not sure when it dates from but huge amounts of rock were moved for this. Great views of the DRC plains and it's cooler with a little light rain while the equatorial high ground clouds stack upwards in various unusual ways, sitting low in the sky.

The villages here are very clean and comprise buildings of wooden lattice with mud coverings for walls plus thatched or corrugated roofs, an example of people with little money but without poverty, having everything they basically need. They're happy to see me, wanting more visitors to their country and no more war, though reluctant to have photos taken and will quickly move off, perhaps with the idea that you're taking part of them away.

Pop music blasts for the whole journey and the passengers do a lot of joking while few stops are made, the driver as usual having little concept of passengers' comfort or safety, the Western passenger carrying vehicle driver's first concern. He stops at a village after my prompting to take a washroom and refreshments break but you have to think to take no drinks in the morning; also buy some great packets of hot fried potato from women vendors at the windows. Everything goes deep pink for a while at sunset as we cross the equator.

Everyone so far has said the road's security situation is fine but the man in the Butembo minibus office confides in me that yesterday four minibuses were stopped by armed robbers. If it had happened to me I'd likely have lost my several thousand dollars and euros and my trip, or my life; such level of risk isn't to be entertained yet there was no more advice to take. People perhaps are still afraid but not enough to stop travelling, or perhaps they just don't know; I also had the front seat which would be yet more dicey as a foreigner if robbers appeared, and perhaps the other passengers had been avoiding it this morning.

Guys from the office help me find an $8 hotel, I take two nights and rehydrate with lemonade in the little bar. It's a lovely ochre coloured town, completely safe and one of the nicest in the country; the British Foreign Office website of course has it in its most dangerous category, advising against all travel, what a hoot, they must want those minerals and hate the Africans so bad. Walk around the grid of streets for a few hours, this rusty dust covering roads, buildings, and people like I've never seen, and making my shirt subsequently uncleanable; no other foreigners.

Stalls sell a wide range of stuff and walking round is easy, there being few larger vehicles and mostly scooters and wooden goods bicycles; some lorries with Chinese characters on the sides are seen, indicating China's DRC presence. There's a big architectural Catholic church but it's locked; I get some fruit and bread, freshly baked as often in Africa; there's cooked fish around but less sure about it, displaced without covers on the sooty streets.

I get to three small transport set-ups to find the going rate west to Kisangani is about $50, but when I return to the more dependable looking of the bus ones to pay, after they said they were leaving in the morning, a senior man fortunately is there and advises that it won't be for three days, first trying to say in two days; I did well not to pay at first and to go and think about it or I'd very likely have never got the money back.

I find this minibus place, confirming which one is leaving tomorrow and arranging the seat, pay and arrive there 6.30 in the morning. Then the same guy tells me it's not running but that the place opposite has a large Landcruiser jeep going for another $10- I shout at him as he'd just lied and knew I'd have to transfer, and probably booked a seat in the jeep for me at the time, finally agreeing to $5 more. A jeep turns out to be better than a minibus though for some of the roads with its higher clearance and larger wheels.

The crazier thing was that I came to the jeep place first yesterday, this helpful young man from the hotel walking me there, but the guy would hardly communicate in any language and when I asked 'Do you go today or tomorrow?' his sidekick says 'both today and tomorrow'. With this vagueness and what looked like a kind of private jeep half loaded up that may be more expensive I wanted to find other prices first.

The jeep boss had also come over to me in the street later and taken me to the bus depots but I hadn't recognized him nor expected someone to take time away from their desk to guide a customer to one of their competitors. People tell half-truths of course to get your money but after the merry-go-round and remembering to listen to the little voice to be extra thorough it seems the jeep guys are more meek and dreamy than particularly unreliable.

It takes over three hours to load the roof rack and I buy a couple of cleaning cloths for the windows, which everyone finds humorous, so that I can see better while they don't care about the views; neither do the drivers give a banana about the murky windscreen they have to peer through. People pile in at 10am and I get the front seat again, as usual getting priority treatment as a visitor, if shared with this fat guy; not sure why they took so long, maybe waiting for passengers but most were there same time as me.

The jeep however only drives round the corner for a little more cargo then comes back with everyone on board, not much fun for them squashed in the back when they could have been told to wait. Then a noisy argument breaks out with a dozen gesticulating men and everyone gets off again while they offload some suitcases, all a bit mysterious but something has taken them by surprise. They're big hearted though and soon laughing again and it makes my own chaotic dealings seem a little better; the engine is turned off again after running for 40 minutes.

They take off the tarp and well secured ropes, move baggage, find the cases and redo the coverings, all slowly with lots of stopping and talking. They try hard but haven't so much developed long-term strategy or conceptualization of what they're doing, or even the notion that time is money; in the meantime it occurs to them to put some oil in the engine and replace the battery. Immigration officials twice roll up asking to see my identification and money for soda, and talking to them it seems there's an issue with documentation required; army men also drive around every few hours on open trucks with guns pointing. I go buy a bag of potato chips and a little beef, also noticing cans of 12% imported beers to keep the Congolese drunk.

We get in and drive around the corner again for another enigmatic 30 minute wait, during which there's another row, something about passengers' kilograms of baggage; my small bag stays by my feet and never leaves my sight. The boss didn't insist on weight limits even though he has a crude set of scales at the office- he walks round to us but is too feckless to sort it out. The locals despite being larger on average than Caucasians appear to have discomfort as well as heat tolerance, sitting there in cramped conditions while Westerners would be jumping out right away; in developing countries things happen only when they do and the attitude is just to be there and wait. The jeep finally leaves at 2.20pm but first to the petrol station for a leisurely fill up, at $1.5 per litre for 74 litres.

However there's a worrying off-centre balance towards my side and 20 minutes down the road the spare wheel on top slides off down the side, followed by the whole overloaded load shifting dangerously against the ropes. We pull over and over the next hour and a half the whole lot is taken off and retied on once again, assisted by this lithe local man who seems to know what he's doing more than the drivers and using better knots; plenty of camaraderie and I help a little with the sacks. At least they recognised there was a problem and despite the delays already they took the necessary time. Standing around I see that the lattice for buildings is from the narrow trunks of trees growing dead straight upwards, the top third or so having thin branches to cut off then heaped up and split along their lengths.

We set off again at 5.35pm with sunset starting ten minutes later at this latitude and dusk ending only about half an hour after, due to the sun's vertical angle of approach. The moon and stars rise visibly close to the horizon in a clear sky with no pollution, another unusual sight. At 8pm arrive a Beni and a small hotel, $7 for a room but most passengers roughing it outside in a porch area; Beni is spread out with paved roads on approach and departing north, a rather ordinary place unlike Butembo.

Leave 6.40am, stopping after two hours to change a puncture, the new tire being narrower and topped up with an air pump. It's another somewhat risky road and before I can wonder off to take photos of a set of empty thatch huts nearby they say to stay close as rebels here caused an evacuation and my presence brings extra danger; take photos with the group and give them my email address.

Numerous police and identity checkpoints follow, almost all of which as ever are only familiar with local picture cards and have absolutely no idea how to read or check a passport, find a their own country's visa or entry stamp, or even find the information page. They know what none of these look like and can rarely distinguish the visa from others for completely different countries many years ago, often starting to write down details from Russia or Nepal and so on, or at least get deeply confused by previous DRC visas on other pages. Neither can they ever understand my name and take the middle name as the surname, despite the indications also in French on the page; some officials can hold the passport the right way round but little more. Sometimes they ask to see my yellow fever vaccination certificate, hoping I don't have one and will pay a fine-bribe instead.

Police checks bring conversations about payments not being provided for and cause lengthy waits- DRC has its concerns over troublesome people but its bureaucracy is essentially in the mode of extortion, hindrance, time wasting and slowing the country down. At one such place meanwhile, although late afternoon I ask for a bucket of water to pour over my head and all down my shirt, helping the cooling breeze at the window. The police all stare, stopping their chatting for a moment, sitting happily in the horrific sun that would burn my skin in minutes, send my temperature out of control and kill me. Locals don't understand Caucasian differences and you have to be ready to put yourself first and deal with issues arising.

Make a lunch stop at a nice straggly roadside town again drenched in the sun at the zenith with shadows underfoot, yet being at elevation also with a relatively cool breeze; UN vehicles loiter and a mosque wails. At another police check here after getting out several documents I'm rushed by the driver with me to leave the office, the extent of his conception of baggage being a sack of corn or bag mangoes or old clothes, and nothing with complexity involving attention to detail or having particular value. I have to insist on putting away passport and health certificates carefully in the right places with my other valuables, without distractions either unwitting or deliberate and leaving when I'm ready. Developing world peoples indeed are often fascinated by foreigner's bag contents.

We arrive late at a little place called Bandingaidu which has only one hotel already full and offers me a hut with a grubby bench inside and totally crawling with insects and spiders visible in the torchlight- I give it a miss. Walking back to the jeep with four others we find it's disappeared and surmise it's been reparked in a queue of vehicles a couple of kilometres away approaching a broken bridge over a river; word is that the bridge was dismantled by the authorities two days before because unsafe. Take cassava and tea at a little restaurant before one of them buys our own torch and we walk down the road in the blackness between tall jungle on each side, though with a full moon behind thin cloud.

We find the jeep and I get some sleep with the others, though the slob next to me takes up too much room; was worried about mosquitoes here but despite the bush and river I don't seem to get bitten. Everyone's up at dawn as usual; people know how to live, eat, sleep and deal with things in practical ways that many Westerners have lost sight of. Some have set up a few tables to cook a great sweet porridge for breakfast and stuff everywhere is being carried on heads or in sacks, the frequent way alarmingly being on the backs of men's necks with the head bent forward. The area is a great hubbub abounding with arguments and the drivers likewise are soon in hot dispute with each other and the passengers over whatever, ignored by all in the mud and confusion. But there's inclusivity too with bon jours and ca vas between strangers; there are also smaller pygmy types around.

There's some work going on at the other side with second hand parts for another bridge but nowhere near enough is happening to deal with the situation's demands. A work team is busy building a raft for vehicles to use, though I struggle with the physics of how this great plywood shoe box lid with taped joints will support such weights; the water is only about a metre or more deep though, and twenty wide. During the morning a gang of men waist deep somehow manage to shuffle two cars across using planks while rafts have been built for people to stand on, pulled across by others in the water.

I take a shave with the river water but at first resist wading in to bathe and cool off, worried about schistosomiasis, the microscopic parasites causing serious illness and infecting fresh water across Africa. They like slow moving water and there's a still section here with a fallen tree trunk that I keep well away from, though later see a group of women in an attempt at modesty bathing there, and indeed one of them from the jeep then complaining about an insect bite from the water on her arm, showing the worm's characteristic blister and inflamed ring entry point. More people go in the river with some having fun jumping in off leaning branches, and with the temperature soaring again I have to join them, keeping most clothes on- a man kindly lends me his sandals to get in over the rocks after he's finished washing, and it's cool.

Happily an agreement is made with a minibus in the queue on the opposite side and baggage and passengers are exchanged. Others get the raft but I give great amusement by the sight of a Caucasian crossing the river with bag on shoulder before submerging down to my wrists with it overhead, being asked to wait while they take photos. I exchange a few words with Chinese construction workers standing nearby observing the state of things.

The minibus is parked by a police roadblock and I watch the occupants of another one who've had to pay bribes to be let past shouting extended abuse and derision as they drive away; the policeman just waves his hands at them to clear off and puts his finger to his lips to say keep quiet about it. The great Congolese slouch is also in evidence, expressive of masculine unruffled ease and assurance but in contrast to the attention needed for efficiency.

Huge long complicated conversations and cluelessness again before we depart- you might think they'd be pleased to get away after the delay but no, more and more talking. Everyone gets in and waits and when I get out to stand in the shade on the one side they tell me to get in, always a rush for nothing in place of planning or system. There's a big altercation between one of the jeep drivers and a broad tough woman passenger, something to do with swapping the vehicles- at one comic point of intransigence he runs off down the road and her after him then both of them back, out of breath. No doubts about DRC having the world's worst transport system but by the time we leave at 5pm it's been a rich experience at the bridge area with order of a kind lurching out of the chaos.

Ten minutes down the road there's a lengthy identification check then just five minutes after that another police stop for no apparent reason, consuming another half hour. Shortly after this we arrive at another roadside town where we stay for another full hour for no reason anyone understands, not that many of them feel that questioning what's happening is worth it, and this followed by another petrol station stop for a lengthy process there.

One explanation might be so that much of the rest of the driving will be at night when some of the police checks will be closed and hassles and bribes at a minimum, but the Butembo to Kisangani trip is one long exercise in lateral and opaque thought; the natural and interesting tendency for any thinking of course is for interconnections to spread outwards but linearity is also needed to secure goals.

While waiting I buy a plain omelette and flat bread but the vendor cannot follow very simple orders and instead turns to other customers to begin a serious in-depth conversation about it all. However you have to learn how to respond to specific instructions and they're just not used to it; the food presently makes me sick despite being piping hot, probably from something added after cooking- need to be more careful with the nutters and take a note of the vendor's confidence.

The single driver is then dangerously tired and pulls over for sleep several times best he can through the night, instead of finding a place to stop for everyone and doing things properly. We park outside little villages with people singing in huts and also jogging down roads chanting; they're suited to their environment as they are and as they've been happily for tens of thousands of years, without the often dubious Western sense of striving for anything more. Shortly before Kisangani cross a Congo River tributary, an amazing sight with huge rainforest trees right up to the edges on both sides of a smooth but swirling surface, primordial and magnificent. Arrive 8am having been with the jeep over three days.

Get a bike to a dismal $15 hotel with an attached if wrecked bathroom for the first time, along with a net over the bed- mosquitoes are heard swarming overhead at night here, coming and going at different hours, knowing I'm there and trying to get in. The risk time is usually between dusk and sleep time while you're still up so it's best instead to spend the twelve hour dawn-dusk period in the net, reading when awake; with almost no bites so far I'm not taking my malaria tablets.

A budget hotel room is also often a distinctly relaxing experience, having the basics of lockable door, bucket of water and lighting at times, free of the fetishized and warped ideas about material necessities of Western sales culture. I get the required rest and recuperation despite the management being dumb enough to give me tap water when I asked for hot water for my instant coffee, and roughing me up.

Kisangani is gentle, sprawling, few people on most of the streets, and colonial with some Belgian palm tree boulevards, not the worst place to be stuck if I have to wait for a boat to Kinshasa. As throughout most of the country these are people with an element of self-confidence and contentment from being the heart of Africa. Again there's a wide difference in temperature between sunny conditions and thick cloud and rain; DRC has the world's highest incidence of thunder storms, often a welcome thing.

I find a sizable internet cafe with newer computers also for charging camera and e-book reader but with a slow connection; over at the market area I get a hat with a wider brim than I have, most guys wearing caps. There's a restaurant with a nice interior and air conditioning but they struggle and don't know what they're doing, then try overcharging on their already high prices- a restaurant like this is a foreign import beyond their understanding while everyone buys and cooks their own food at home.

Street food in DRC when you can find it includes fish, chicken, pork, grubs, spinach, omelette, cooking bananas, bread, red beans, cassava, rice and corn on the cob, plus pineapples, bananas, oranges, rather expensive apples that don't grow here, and peanuts; there's soft processed cheese and sardines are among dubious old stock tinned food. The chewy grubs are bought writhing live then cooked and often mixed with vegetables.

Down along the port area I find a series of very grotty flat fronted engine ferries plus ugly rusting cargo barges, which I later work out are pushed and not pulled by the ferries. Many have gangs of men offloading from their holds, oblivious to the sun that makes all surfaces roasting hot; there are pirogues around and a mass of them together at the crossing point to Wagenia village on the other side. I'm looking for a passenger barge as in pre-war photos on which I can set up my one-person tent, but in fact I'm never to see one anywhere on the river in the coming journey.

One of the ferries is said to be leaving for Kinshasa in a few days but to my surprise there is also a much larger and quality three deck one at the far end of the road that has cabins with little attached bathrooms, offered for $200 and $300 to Kinshasa and departing in 10-14 days they say. It's called the MB Ville de Mbandaka after the large town midway down the river and in fact it looks so good it takes me a while to work out that it's the same class of vessel doing the same thing as the smaller ones.

Its three barges are positioned parallel to the shore with the ferry beyond them and provide an obstacle course of stuff, rubble, planks, old lorries, labourers in flip-flops, fat guys with worksheets and two way radios, and police who want to see my passport; as I walk across I get out the way of a fight between one disgruntled labourer and a bunch of others. It looks like it's recently arrived from Kinshasa with cargo- I tell them I'm interested and will come back.

Questions about departure times are quite outside developing world terms of reference- they assume a background of predictability, regularity and social contract with the individual that isn't at all there, and thus it's a case of ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. This is either what they think you might want to hear, as though you're asking a pleasantry, or just the first thing that comes into their heads because they don't know how to deal with you; people almost never say that they don't know, this being in the same way far too specific and Western, presupposing that such far-out and weird things indeed be known. At one point the owner, who's not taking the ferry this trip flies in from Kinshasa for formalities that are holding departure up, after a football game that he wanted to see first, and I ask him when departure may be- even he just gives me a day out of the air, three days before it actually leaves. It'll leave when they've done their stuff and when the crew feels like it.

A couple of days later another boat arrives and I get a look at how things are when one of these things is ready to leave, packed with people trying to live in an atrocious environment of cargo, vehicles, makeshift tarpaulins and no guardrails- it's a heaving warren of uncleanliness and risk in blazing heat and torrential rain. I take a few soda drinks for the Mbandaka crew who show me the cabins again, encourage me to pay and indicate that I can move aboard for the days before departure for no further charge; I agree. In actuality this will be 16 days, followed by 21 on the river and two in Kinshasa also free, a total of 39 for $200; before taking the cabin I'll have seven days at the hotel, meaning the boat departure was a 23 day wait for me in town and 22 after I asked the crew.

[Sean]

Part two

At market stalls I change money cautiously and buy a bed sheet, insect spray, plastic mug, jar of coffee, light sandals, door padlock, and a bucket for bathing when the cabin shower, using river water, doesn't work. This is most of the time so you take your bucket round the side and lean over, schistosomiasis or not; cut your ladle from the end of a water bottle. Congo River water is very muddy throughout its length with a visibility of a few centimetres yet clothes washing can still be done- the detergent doesn't lather up but a long soak works well enough.

At the port however I find a mains tap across the road, after being taken to a place with a water tank used only by men undressing for clothes washing, but which was still unclean. I also buy enough 1.5 litre drinking water bottles for a three week journey based on my drinking between one and a half to two per day; they're hard or impossible to find anywhere downstream before Kinshasa.

There are eight passenger cabins on either side of the middle deck, five others like mine and two a little larger, each with a new three-quarter bed and some nice fittings in the main room; about half of these were taken by crew. The top deck has the bridge, lavish owner's quarters, store rooms and a pleasant lookout canopy with tables and chairs; the bottom has a dining room, tiny kitchen, an extremely noisy twin engine room extending below deck, four small cabins next to that, washrooms, and working spaces at both ends; there's also a room above the hull at the front.

Ferries have the designation MB before their name, are roughly white with blue edging, and usually filthy and noisy such that the trip would be hard to recommend even with a cabin available. Their brown metal barges typically have deep holds plus a small block of rooms or mezzanine at one end comprising offices and washrooms but no engines; occasionally though these also have a couple of cabins.

I set up my mosquito net, stick my Central Africa map on the wall, and am given a fan with the electricity working after sunset and when it's totally black for sleep; rubbish is tossed in the river. Sit on the upper decks watching the sunset while the coming and going continues, but the main unloading seems to be done. The crew are kind and people generally concerned about what I think, acknowledging that they don't know how to turn their country's opportunities to their advantage. With all the jotting down I do in the journal and elsewhere they can also see I'm making a report of some kind, but don't really seem to understand the possibility of future travellers like me and how I can recommend the boat. Having good jobs they show alacrity for the managers, and two of them plus a few passengers on the barges speak some English.

I discover that the Mbandaka is on its first voyage, having begun in Kinshasa and now to return, and that there's nothing better or larger on the river- during the trip I see a few other ferries approaching the size but most older or apparently without cabins. Its longest stops are at the two terminal towns for sorting cargo but by my estimate it departs from any one point only every 15 weeks, the journey upstream also taking much longer than down. So I was fortunate enough to wait little more than three weeks and in fact if I'd arrived any later all the cabins may have gone.

Some days I take the 50 minute walk to the market from the boat but only with thick cloud, the sun burning your face despite positioning your head to keep it in your hat's shadow, due to the glare bouncing off the ground. I walk up to a small national flag raising ceremony just off the road where those passing are required to halt for a couple of minutes, all good patriotism despite governmental uselessness; the market and much of the town shuts down on Sundays in this Christian and largely Catholic country.

When the motorbike taxis I'm reminded how developing world people lack the conceptuality to receive or give directions or read a map of any complexity- drivers don't understand instructions like 'next left' because it's applying a concept to reality and will either take you to mean pull over on the left now, or just ignore you and drive straight on; they live in the Dionysian moment only.

I spend time under the canopy, or when the sun falls into it somewhere else on the perimeter walkways, reading Congo topics and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an analysis of the Dionysiac set on this river; sometimes I'm asked if I'm reading a Bible, the limits of their idea of a book. There's talk of departure days from time to time but they come and go and people accept the bureaucracy and nonsense, carrying on cooking, washing, bathing, sleeping as though there's little more to life than dealing with the basics, and while such hanging around drives Westerners mad. Passengers already on the barges don't care when it leaves and if you ask will blithely repeat your words back to you, yet some self-consciousness and uncomfortable feelings are detectable. Passport checking officials then come aboard however, suggesting that they've heard something reliable about departure; at least it's free accommodation now.

Checking as best I can that there's no departure today I do the pirogue trip across the river, maybe 700 metres to the other side. The boatmen try selling me a private pirogue of course but I get in one with the locals; it splashes out a few metres then comes back as some argument starts, everyone sitting around waiting for it to blow over, and it does. These pirogues are large enough for a few dozen people plus motorbikes and goods but still wobble from side to side and need to keep balanced. They get CF500 off me on the way over though on return I watch more carefully and pay the local CF200 price, causing some chuckles as the man tries and fails to hide the notes given him by others from my sight.

Wagenia is pleasant, just one step above a subsistence village, mostly the lath and mud buildings with a few brick, all spaced out; I stroll down roads with long grass to a small market area, people curious to see me but it's very relaxed here. The sun unfortunately comes out, as often in mid-morning, and I stand under a tree watching the road with its walkers and bikers, and family living nearby who presently find me a plastic chair; women and men here occupy traditional roles. One guy comes over with a pouch of shining metal rocks, one of the precious minerals mined, asking me furtively about it but I only laugh and say they're big trouble, and he goes off. Before I know it my face gets burnt again from the glare and my nose peels for days.

I also walk the streets further from the port road, being likewise pleasant, sleepy and safe. Sauntering back to the boat I find to my surprise the engines are running and as I jump on it starts to move and shuffle the barges around. It then takes one of them and sails into the river to another point at the docks a few hundred metres upstream- it's refreshing that things are happening at last and everyone stands on the walkways watching the shore pass by. There's a fine sense of power when the glossy new engines fire up, with everything depending on them, and the engine squad pose for a photo.

More maize or other corn sacks from a ramshackle warehouse here are loaded down into the barge hold, and another lorry rolls up with the same. An official then intervenes and indignantly handcuffs a wrist of one of the scruffy workers who tried to ignore him- he laughs it off and squabbles and slow-downs ensue. Sail back later in the day, and the next day make the same journey bringing the second and then third barges.

Near the warehouse another police office grabs me for a stream of dumb questions followed by a 30 minute conversation in French between the chief and another guy about me, all the time clutching my passport, insisting on my patience and deference and stressing me out. He knows something and is concerned about my general visa rather than one against a specific itinerary and documentation, which indeed embassies usually issue.

There's no DRC tourist visa at present and I'm thinking of the trouble I had three years ago when my visa was rejected at both Rwanda borders. They struggle with protocol and again instead of following sets of established rules everything slides into arbitrary views, discussion and conflict. They look at my camera photos on its display and remind me none are allowed in Kinshasa, then at last let me go.

Sometimes a stereo is set up to play garbled obnoxious pop music, as throughout Africa; as a cultural product it's of some interest but as basically simplistic it gets moronic after a short while, and they like to play it for hours with no variation on the genera. It reflects messy thought and a culture stuck on one level, repeating forever. Football is popular and often played on open ground, and on one day there's a great commotion in the mezzanine on one of the barges as a national football match is watched and won. Board and card games are other pastimes.

Another couple of trucks amble their way over for more laidback unloading, this time with wrapped packages of unknown and varied contents. You'd think the ferry with its engines would be working non-stop up and down the river moving cargo but indeed not, it just sits there for weeks doing sweet nothing. Moreover while I've been here I've only seen one other ferry with a set of barges depart, though there are boats of several kinds around. A crescent moon sets horizontal over the river to the west, its corners facing up at this latitude, half a degree north.

Then with the weight finally in the hold the barges are manoeuvred a little further down to a great grey tripod crane where two articulated lorries are lifted and placed on top, first the trailers then the cabs, then some minibuses; there are already a few vehicles that have driven themselves on, some of which also have to be taken off and repositioned, but perhaps the lorries are too heavy to approach the sides. There are several such contraptions along dilapidated rails that they may once have moved on, in places completely buried by the ground, but only one is operational, using electricity; they're like something diabolical out of HG Wells' War of the Worlds, with plenty of menace. Plaques up by their one-man control hoods are dated 1955 in Belgian days, 59 years old.

With some clanking and the workers experimenting with how to place the supporting bands the massive weights are successfully lifted; police and armed personnel attend while they work until light falls, then finish the next day. I keep well out of range of the crane if it was to fall, and likewise stay off the ferry as it was moving above it. Once a vehicle leaves the ground on the single rope it begins perilously to revolve in the air and with the second lorry the operator fails to wait for it to slow down enough and instead tries to time it and lower it suddenly into a gap remaining on the barge with other vehicles on all sides. First he smashes the bottom front on one side onto other vehicles, then not satisfied smashes the other side; men get up close and hold it still as it's lowered.

At dawn the three barges are moved back down the port, reshuffled alongside each other to form a square and all attached with the ferry pushing the middle one; there's a buzz in the air with passengers setting up home around the vehicles with all their stuff, and at a memorable moment the boat then really does leave Kisangani. I sit on the top deck by the bridge overlooking the barges while passing by impenetrable bush on both sides, with reflections of the trees in the still water.

The Congo has endless tear shaped islands that for most of its length make it impossible to see the whole width or get a full grasp of its scale, but with its character and immense reach it's the heart of DRC; great to be doing this famous trip at last, in the vulnerable middle of nowhere far even from Congolese towns. There are regular tiny bamboo hut settlements on stilts in the water's edges for a family or two in entirely subsistence lifestyles untouched by world history, and isolated pirogues are seen around no matter how remote the location. Some come alongside to sell the barges a range of food and goods including fish, fruit, sugarcane, cooking oil and stools while others travelling in our direction hold on for a while to save them paddling, usually to be ignored but occasionally shouted off or poled off by the crew.

The jungle gliding by hypnotizes and I hope to see to see a crocodile or hippopotamus, the boat often approaching 20 metres from the sides, but I never do; large birds of prey however sometimes spiral down before picking fish out with their talons and flying up to the trees. Barge livestock includes goats, chickens and turtles while one man keeps a monkey and another a couple of parrots.

There are little spiders like robots with these rapid jagged movements too fast for the eye, plus a range of insects including moths, beetles and intermittent mass gnat infestations that fill the air like snow and penetrate my mosquito net. The boat is steered zigzag over the river to keep to the deeper water using a simple map book that covers the entire journey, and when necessary men stand with poles at the front left and right corners to check the depth. On the roof is a moveable searchlight to see the banks of the river and navigate in the dark, although they tend to avoid night sailing.

Drink coffee after getting water heated from one of the ubiquitous small charcoal stoves but within a few days give up on that and take it cold, becoming like a narcotic to sip all day. There are two girls connected with the owner using his quarters who sometimes cook for the dining room on sailing days but otherwise there's a very limited amount of purchasable food on the boat. The crew seem to have their own arrangements; women are competent cooks, the passengers know what they're doing and one man manages to open a general stall, his ware strewn over baggage.

Extreme care is needed taking each step forward on the barges, avoiding the metal surfaces' numerous protrusions and metal ropes, along with stuff of every kind, hot stoves, poles at head level, animals, and hazards everywhere; sometimes you have to make your way under a lorry trailer, looking above and around very carefully. There seems to be little sense of precaution against danger as a principle.

The barge passengers however have to exist in severe conditions and at one point a young man comes to the deck with a badly cut foot after wearing open sandals, which gets treated with clean water and iodine antiseptic before being painfully sewn up with cord. Another time the speedboat that's towed alongside takes a sick man to a town to see a doctor before rejoining us; moreover some drink water direct from the river, not a great idea whether Caucasian or African constitution.

Passengers make do with plastic tarpaulins which get a battering in wind and rain, and no one has a tent; there would have been no room for mine, as well as being difficult to set up with strings somehow from the perimeter instead of pegs to the ground, and the metal getting too hot to touch from the sun and radiating heat after. Beneath one of the barge's mezzanine might have been suitable but it was taken by families before the first day I got to the boat.

Barge passengers aren't allowed on the ferry. Risks here however include three extremely hot metal exhaust pipes without protection from the engine passing through the two upper decks, ready to cause horrendous burns if touched- you need to remember to think about what you're doing as you walk right past. And the sun's reflection off the water burns white skin even if you're in the shade and it's thin cloud, the discomfort at the time masked by the breeze as the boat moves; the heat generally is a harassment and wears you out.

First stop is at Isangi, a few grassy roads where people are surprised and glad to see me, and have great fun watching me make the jump from boat to shore. The real Africa, it's an old place, not with rich architecture of course but has its own strong character here in the middle of DRC in the middle of Africa. The police come for me, wasting my time as the sun sets so I can't go and see the place any better and thence asking for money, which I shrug off okay; we leave at dawn the next day.

Some of the crew wander around the boat wearing fluorescent tops with security printed on, providing a little extra reassurance. Waving and cheers are exchanged on the occasions we pass other large boats, almost all of which are our type. Spend time on the bridge with its simple wheel and engine controls; on a couple of occasions we slow right down before the ferry lists to one side, sliding over sand banks but not stopping.

At the front end of the barges the water and clumps of plant life glide quietly underneath, far from the engine noise. I'm offered a relaxing seat under tarpaulins for a while and next time I bring my cabin chair, though with great difficulty through the chaos; people stare at me blankly. Passengers occupy every possible space on top of and underneath cargo in a mass of basic human needs, providing some invigorating culture shock; it's very contrasting to watch the activity and everywhere is a picture, if you didn't feel so bad about taking one and going back to the land of plenty to point at and talk about poor people elsewhere.

Travel brings ongoing concerns over your awareness levels being less than full, and having to be aware of that situation to take the rest needed before problems occur- but this involving that good judgement and decision making that the lower awareness undermines. And after I'd had a small accident and needed to rest I got distracted by a man showing me a huge fish caught from the river- I take out my camera, fumble and drop it, and though only from hip height and doesn't hit so hard it stops working for the rest of the journey.

The boat moors at a hamlet for a few hours after sailing late but sets off early again, heading for Bumba the next main stop, a pleasant little town again with only a hint of any development- shacks stalls, muddy overgrown roads, everything innocent and harmless with people calling out mundele, Lingala for white man. I find an internet cafe but there's no meaningful connection and I just type up some notes to my memory stick; there's also some sort of Islamic presentation going on at the little centre with speakers and an audience. The barges are manoeuvred, room is made for doors to be opened, lorries dawdle up and more maize and stuff goes in, carried by three or four workers while two hundred look on; I talk to a few passengers on the roadside going to town to find casual work for the day to earn some money.

From the ferry I see a Mediterranean-looking man briefly asking questions about the boat and I wonder if he's a traveller on another boat also moored here that left Kisangani a week before us; I don't see him again though, or any other travellers. A further two lorry fulls appear and sacks get strewn all down the road but work stops, there are no managers to be seen, and sacks become seats; it looks like it being as much a hassle getting out of Bumba as out of Kisangani and indeed we end up stuck there for five and a half days.

I talk with a good English speaking passenger living in his car on the barge who points out that the boat may get a reputation for tardiness, though some of the delays may be down to this being its first voyage and the crew may gain more familiarity with procedures and officialese next time; Kisangani to Kinshasa can take under two weeks but this is going to be more. Psychologically a moving vehicle gives contentment, not waiting for one.

People are unused to procedure or the idea of a background system understood by a manager to streamline their efforts, everyone instead giving each other their opinion and arguing over nothing. On day four here for several hours bicycles bring one sack at a time followed by cartloads trundled along by teams of men- they could have got this ready and stacked before now, the crew also having been in touch with people in town by phone well in advance to say when we're coming.

The ferry horn is blown by mouth into a tube for a departure this evening, the barges are shifted around and roped up, two of them now only half a metre out of the water with the weight, and indeed we leave at sunset. An hour and a half later moor at Ebonda for the night, a small place again with mostly natural building materials. I go ashore for a CF1000 pineapple and these deep fried sugary bread balls, which as ever need to be seen cooked and served to be sure they haven't been around too long or at some point all knocked on the floor and picked up. A charmed crowd of locals gathers to see us leave in the morning.

Next stop is Lisala, another thatched village with a scattering of old brick buildings and a few short streets in the centre selling bits of stuff, here surrounded by low hills without jungle; it starts to rain as we arrive but people on the boat to depart here dance to music in celebration. I go ashore and stand around for the police to find me and take me to their usual dingy scary office; I find the passport's relevant pages for them and they huffily shut it to read at pompous leisure, without the slightest clue about any of it or even the idea that there are particular pages to be read. I don't correct them when they write my name wrong, it's far too complicated, and just split out of there, politely refusing soda money.

I meet two young men in the village who take me to a defunct cyber cafe then to good buildings in a compound next to a large Catholic church, where they have a few old computers but no electricity and anyway want too much money. Back at the boat they have some cargo doors open with men arguing about documents and three more days pass with the usual scenes of a few labourers moving sacks from lorries and pirogues alongside, the chaos of the barges slowing access to the holds further as well as adding danger for the workers. At one point a maize sack falls into the water between the pirogue and barge and fills with water, giving them a huge job to get it out the river again.

We're taking an extra but smaller barge from here, heaped with sacks on top all tarped up. The horn sounds for departure but nothing happens and to my disbelief they instead take off the tarpaulins and start more slow addition of yet more sacks to that barge, again moved by just a few guys- it's been waiting here weeks but somehow it's still not ready. I'm among several complaining and indeed one of the crew had mentioned previously that if the barge wasn't ready we wouldn't take it- he seemed to have seen this coming but of course they wait for it. For the first time I begin to worry about getting out of the country inside my two month visa and its 18 remaining days.

The ferry moves the four barges into two rows of two and we leave after the best part of five days at Lisala; pass by lovely tiny settlements, humbling but exquisite, and learn to peel and eat sugarcane without bend teeth out of place. More passengers have joined here to take up remaining unsuspected pockets of space and the barges are now almost impossible to walk down; an Indian businessman who speaks English well also gets on, taking one of the cabins.

There are some dark clouds ahead with lightning and the wind strikes up to make the river choppy for the first time; the air goes cold and the only warm place is under the canopy near the hot pipes, where I sit and philosophize over the past and future while they sail efficiently all day and into the night, mooring at another hamlet. In the morning they offload some stuff from the hold into pirogues, messing about with local trade for a few silly francs when they have thousands of dollars of cargo for Kinshasa and the best boat on the river to take it.

About midday four connected pirogues piled high with goods and their edges centimetres from the water glide up and hand over their stuff to another part of the barges, something that could have been done simultaneous with the work this morning. We depart but shortly after another pirogue comes alongside and a bunch of people and their luggage get on, despite there being no room anywhere for them. In the evening someone unsurprisingly falls off the edge and the ferry slows down to get them back- at least they could swim. We sail all night for the first time.

Buy the simple doughnuts for breakfast from cookers on the barge plus tea and sugar, if you can trust it, and sit watching the human an animal anarchy from a small oasis of space with a low chair, next to a bunch of children. The fish cooked straight from the river however is great when you can get it. The men all have very short haircuts, a barber or friend regularly keeping it down with a blade; I buy two disposable razors from the store and have great pleasure shaving off all my hair, nice and cool. Termite mounds appear in these parts and progressing west the clocks go back one hour.

Pass an extended settlement of hundreds of thatched buildings regularly positioned together, all in the water with people using boats between them. Rain comes in again reducing visibility to a few tens of metres but we arrive at Mbandaka, exactly on the equator; it's a provincial capital but the port area is merely a scattering of wrecked filthy huts on a muddy bank. The town seems to have one paved road, a few dishevelled buildings and then just decrepit stalls and straw hovels, all extremely poor and chaotic.

By the port I buy some bread and tinned fish- the crazies can't do proper street food, bar some dodgy barbeque stands of unspecified bush meat, even for all these people bringing money. There's a restaurant with a useless vaguely exclusive air asking a stupid ten dollars and more for simple dishes- I get irritable with the staff and walk off. The middle ground is unknown, development just isn't part of the culture and they have no clear idea how to run a restaurant beyond a street shed.

I go with the Indian to the police. They begin writing details into their book from my visa of three years before that looks nothing like the visa today and at length I manage to redirect them to the right page. Then in further ignorant condescension the guy makes a lunatic phone call to his boss saying that my visa is expired, because he's only looking at the dates for the allowed entry period, but which admittedly aren't as clear as they could be and have been a worry.

I get angry and try to intervene in the call as the boss then wants to see me and the Indian. We hang around for him to arrive then instead take two motorbikes with one of the officials to another office at another port where eventually this fat ball turns up. Fortunately he's reassured by the official that our documents are in order but then pretends to look at them and foolishly jots a few details on his pad already covered in scribble; I give him nothing but as we leave the Indian smooths his way out with a couple of dollars. We walk back managing to find an internet cafe, sending a few brief emails.

A great deal of manoeuvring of barges takes place here for cryptic purposes, involving several other boats with barges large and small and providing some great views of myriad paraphernalia, people and beasts including cows, particularly when barges tied together are temporarily separated- I'm missing my camera. Two dozen guys push a car off and another on but only after crunching them both against the metal upstands. Again the question is why a local service can't see to this and instead a major goods and passenger vessel is ready to stop for a car or two; pirogue activity of all sizes stirs the water while birds circle above.

Early in the morning before we can depart there's a meeting at the tables under the canopy with the crew and two army types with guns, becoming a shouting match I can hear from my cabin, no doubt trying to deal with another way of being stopped and extorted; crew say different documents are required for each of the four provinces in the journey. Once they're gone we get out of there prior to further trouble, the horn being blown only once this time and giving passengers ashore little time to return- a few minutes later on the river a couple of engine pirogues bring out latecomers, who shout scorn and shake fists at the bridge.

We're into the second and faster half of the journey and as another Kinshasa-bound boat sails slightly faster past us big cheers go up on both sides, people standing precariously on top of vehicles to wave and holler ecstatically at the sense of shared achievement. I give away my tent to a delighted crewman who's particularly helpful, and stick up my Africa map from the cabin on the bridge. I'm also more than pleased to be offered the use of the cabin for a further few nights on arrival in Kinshasa while I book a flight, so I don't have to find a hotel, most of which are rather expensive.

We pass a couple of 40 metre square trellises of logs and bamboo lying in the water with two or three dirty straw shacks on and a few people and chickens carefully walking round, drifting their slow way down to Kinshasa. Meanwhile I nearly have a serious accident slipping on stairs to get a bucket of water while I'm clothes washing due to detergent underfoot, but hold the rail and I'm okay- careful and careful again.

We pass the Ubangui River joining from the right, from now onwards the Congo River forming the border with Congo-Brazzaville on the opposite bank. We make a decorum stop at Loukolela for four hours and pull away again, pursued by a whole flock of the mean-looking birds of prey. Heading south now the sun sets to the right and vistas widen into many kilometres of lake-like water and islands with more grass than jungle, becoming great green carpets; the ground gets hilly and the jungle breaks up into immense tracts of low lying reeds.

There's another storm in the evening with lightning falling all across the scene, and in many forms and intensities including sheet, forked, explosive balls with streaks, and snowflake-like shapes. We pause at the riverside while the rough conditions subside but restart after midnight; pirogues come alongside selling charcoal although this is a cargo item above deck. Sailing most of the night we arrive at dejected Maluku near Kinshasa; I didn't step ashore hoping to avoid the police but one spied me on the deck and comes aboard after me with the same psychotic routine and leaving me wondering if these people have ever learnt to read. At 2pm after another spell of uncertainty and nothingness we leave again, now regularly passing boats going both ways and seeing occasional modern buildings on the hills including some luxury homes.

The penultimate stop is Kinkole where a more reassuring modern crane gets busy offloading many of the vehicles and stuff, and most people disembark, welcomed by excited friends on the dock. Take a short bike ride with the Indian and an owner's girl for cooked fish pieces wrapped in banana leaves, walking it back as the sun sets; nice to see some civilization again if only relatively speaking.

In the morning I try to confirm that the boat is remaining here all day, leaving my bag in the cabin and walking back to the town, getting a shack fry up and hot tea on the way; it chucks it down so I also have to shelter there for a couple of hours as the flooding and sludge creep halfway inside. Find an internet cafe and I try at great and unsuccessful length to book a flight- it may be the bad connection not supporting the sites but more likely both my debit and credit cards being rejected because of the suspect geographical region, the banks just not wanting to know.

A couple of hours down the left-hand side banks from Kinkole in the morning brings the boat finally to the forbidding industrial docks in Kinshasa; we left Kisangani early Tuesday 4th November and arrived downtown here exactly three weeks later, early Tuesday 25th. A short taxi ride up the road gets me to another internet place where I waste a further three hours selecting flights, filling in forms and being rejected; at least the electricity supply holds up. So I find the Kenya Airways office nearby with its most direct routes to my next destination of Mumbai in India, where as expected they only accept dollars cash; I get a ticket luckily for a flight in two days.

Kinshasa is the descent into the Dionysian maelstrom, having a powerful aesthetic quality and making an extremely interesting place- I'm very pleased to be back after nine years to take another look and go walking to see how far I can get without being murdered and robbed. It's a very downtrodden and angry place where the more holistic mentality is taken advantage of by foreign interests, but the main street opposite Brazzaville for a few hundred metres is kept for show and looks half-sensible as a token offset for the country's massive looting and corruption.

It has a few tall buildings, street lights, bus shelters, fair buses, a proportion of roadworthy vehicles, road sweepers, and a police presence- it's something approaching safe. There's even an attempt at a supermarket, with limited stuff and much of it twice the Western price, the stock being so far from the society's ability to provide it itself. The rest of the city is nothing like this, but seething chaotic interaction like nowhere else. One street back is a transition zone, a convulsive market area with stalls and solo traders strewn everywhere, swarms of people and a special intensity and energy, and beyond this there are only shattered buildings, torn up streets, stagnation, mess, atrocious living conditions, fewer people, and rapidly deteriorating security.

The government can't even pave its own capital's moonscape roads, yet there's something else going on, a rumbling inward interconnection between everything in place of linear attention to specifics; the mangled and dark multi-facetted vistas are some of the most memorable of all sights. And if this was tweaked rather than just being subject to Western Apollonian profiteering then things could be transformed. I make it back to the port by crowded minibus, finding offloading going on in the dark with labourers unable even to see where they're putting their feet in the debris. The ferry is already being boxed into a vast tangle of other arriving vessels.

I take another walk past the market frenzy, in one side street a group of men calling out to me in wrath and confrontation; you could only walk a few blocks before being dispatched in the big raw and ungoverned no-go zone. Then on the way back on the main road this man comes up to me showing some identification card and accusing me in French of taking photos and walking round suspiciously.

I get annoyed and walk off, but then he gets the nearby police involved, lying his head off to them- I interrupt and bark furiously back at the bastard, giving him more than he bargained for. To his surprise I'm able to show the police I'm carrying neither phone nor camera and say that whoever he was he's just on the make for money. I walk off again, they recall me and check my passport, and say they have to be careful with security while trying to excuse their accomplice. They let me go but handcuffs were out and they were going to throw me in their blackened window truck, as indeed per incidents with cameras that others describe.

I've asked two of the crew to help me get a taxi to the airport that isn't going to rob me, and at a local price, but they don't show up. Instead another gives me a hand in heavy rain and wind with borrowed umbrellas- taxis are unmarked and at this hour all full and going into town rather than out. So we jump in a minibus, get out at a junction and with some bouncing around I find a taxi; I try to pay $30 to the airport but as I've already read it's an organized cartel and they won't go for less than $50, although I do pay a little less, getting rid of the last of my Congolese money.

It's 35 minutes down a desolate road; on arrival there's an attempt to defraud me out of $5 to drive the taxi past the gate and up to the entrance a few metres away but I get out and put a stop to it, pay him, thank the ferry man and walk past the barriers in the rain. It'd have been interesting to have had more of a journey through the city as I did last time I flew out, with the driver looking ahead carefully in order never to stop and risk windows being smashed in by gangs for daylight mugging.

The airport is the same decaying building as last time, if a bit smartened up inside. The security personnel searching you are only interested in you giving them money and haven't the slightest idea what they're doing, but are more ignorable than they were; elsewhere in Africa I've seen airlines bring their own security personnel and detection machines to the ground by the stairs before the plane to do it themselves, regardless of what goes on in the airport. If you want to get guns or drugs onto a plane, here's the place.

More annoying is that the bribes situation at the airport has been organized by the authorities. Whereas previously all personnel were openly holding you up for your cash now you only have to be fleeced once- you need to pay $50 for a pathetic extra boarding pass at a window outside. The voucher is then only checked while you're standing by the plane outside, officials ready for the tremendous fun of getting hundreds of dollars fine out of you if you haven't bought it, you being unable to go back to the window then and only metres away from your plane and getting the hell out of there. Most enterprising of them.

I get through immigration without issue, having had eight weeks in DRC. The flight is then delayed by three hours however so that I'll miss my connection from Nairobi to Mumbai, but I don't mind as I'd rather see the weather improve first. On arrival in Nairobi I narrowly escape being stopped at a medical checkpoint set up for the latest political posturing health scare of Ebola virus- I have the high temperature they're looking for, from an unpleasant cold virus from Kinshasa, and walk through quickly as possible while being stared at; I took an anti-inflammatory on the plane to help this.

To my great pleasure there's an announcement saying are no further flights to Mumbai today and the airline puts the dozen affected passengers in an international standard hotel in town for the night, providing transit Kenyan visas and bus transfers. I have my own fine room to rest plus dinner, breakfast and lunch, in each case unlimited quality buffets; the hotel is in one of the better districts but still takes serious security precautions including a huge barbed fence all around, a very heavy duty vehicles barrier, and lots of personnel. The bill for Kenya airways that I get a look at is about $140.

[Sean]

[arkiv]

Thanks for sharing. Personally I know nothing about Congo nor I have had contact with an African.
Hope you have expanded the non-materialist impression of the 3rd world.

[Sean]

Thanks pal.

[jochanaan]

I can't say I've ever met anyone from either country called Congo, but I've met folks from elsewhere in Africa.  I always like them; they're genuine people, often very direct and willing to talk about real issues at once.  (None of this inane talk about weather and gossip that forms so much of our conversation here in the US.)  It must be a very different world there...

[Sean]

Sure thing, the Congolese have the same set of human concerns, but in a different environment. It seemed to me that they're people with a lot of potential and can think with similar rationality to westerners.

Westerners struggle with the beginnings and endings of conversations, not entirely sure why.

[ibanezmonster]

I can't say I've ever met anyone from either country called Congo, but I've met folks from elsewhere in Africa.  I always like them; they're genuine people, often very direct and willing to talk about real issues at once.  (None of this inane talk about weather and gossip that forms so much of our conversation here in the US.)  It must be a very different world there...

Now that's what I like, as long as it's not intensely opinionated in-your-face stuff. I get so tired of hearing comments about the weather 20 times a day. Maybe I'm just not clever enough to come up with 20 different creative responses to "It's cold, isn't it?" or "It's hot!" while they stare at you, expecting some sort of response. 

[Florestan]

"It's cold, isn't it?"

At least it´s not hot. 

"It's hot!"

It´ll be hotter in Hell. 

[Sean]

It´ll be hotter in Hell.

Not a great conversation starter.

[Florestan]

Not a great conversation starter.

It might lead to Dante. Or to some hottie / one helluva babe. So I´d say it´s just as good (or bad) as any other. 

[drogulus]

     People should just put down their smartphones and talk to each other about their new smartphones.

[Sean]

Or the minerals in them indeed.