Brazzaville to Kinshasa

Sooner or later, I had to cross the river.

The mighty Congo River separates Congo from Congo. And if you're confused, you're not alone. Big Congo has been called one or another variation on the name Congo since 1885, except for 1971-1997, when it was called Zaire. Meanwhile, Little Congo has been both Middle Congo and Republic of Congo during that time.

We differentiate like this: Congo-Kinshasa (or DRC for Democratic Republic of Congo) and Congo-Brazzaville. But not everyone in Congo-Brazzaville does this. I heard many people describe their larger neighbor like this:

Zaire.

And it was frequently said with a bit of disdain. Could it be that not all Congolese from Congo-Brazzaville are happy to share their name? And yet, to the rest of the world, the whole region is just the Congo, a big area on the map that represents war and poverty to us, along with the minerals that make our cell phones.

We all know that this is a gross oversimplification. But as people battle through their days, putting out proverbial fires in their local lives, there ends up not being so much time left for understanding far-away lands.

Souvenir Hunting in Brazzaville

I relished the strong morning coffee at Brazzaville's Hippocampe, which showed up in an individual-sized French press.

Mmmmm, what could be better than a French-Vietnamese hotel-restaurant? Besides one that has less buggy wi-fi, I mean. But that's regional, the same across the Congos and much of central Africa.

"Where do you think I can get good souvenirs," I asked Olivier, who runs the lodge along with his wife for his Vietnamese in-laws. I love Congolese textiles—I have a few at home and also a carving of a Belgian policeman—and my dark secret about why I'd been so desperate to get to Brazzaville and Kinshasa is that I wanted to buy some of those for people who click on the "Souvenir" link above and send in fifty bucks.

"Try the Marche Touristique," he said. "They'll have exactly what you need."

I trusted his judgement—Olivier was an overlander himself, having ridden his bicycle all around the world, which is why he lets overlanders camp for free—so after a quick walking trip down to the ATM that works with my Citibank Mastercard-branded card, I hailed a taxi and went straight to the March Touristique.

The taxi overshot and left me in front of a large vegetable stand.

Happy Mother's Day

"You're going to fly from Pointe-Noire to Brazzaville?" The oil guy from Queens had been incredulous last night. "Don't you know that planes here have a terrible safety record? One in three has a problem."

I don't believe that one in three planes has a problem in Congo. Three planes left the hour I was sitting in the airport, and they left on time. But anyway, I think I convinced him of my point a moment later.

"What do you think are the safety records of the trucks and buses I've been traveling on?"

He laughed, seeing my point.

"Still, you have balls."

Turning Pointe

Need coffee.

Food.

Mostly coffee.

8:30 a.m. and I was doing a Groundhog Day-like repeat of yesterday. I woke up in an air-conditioned concrete square in Hotel Gabrielle in Dolisie, Republic of Congo. Hadn't I checked out of here? I pulled on all my clothes and padded down the hall to the toilet block.

There, that's the one with paper. 

I needed to figure out what to do, now that I'd fled the train to Brazzaville. Did I want to fly? I knew I didn't want to embark on a two-day hellish overland truck journey through the mud. Or did I want to go to Pointe-Noire on the coast? From there, lots of planes flew to Brazzaville, or I could apply for an Angola visa and transit the Angolan enclave of Cabinda to Democratic Republic of Congo. But tourists were struggling to get Angolan visas at the moment, and if I managed to get one, I'd be using a day of a five-day transit visa in Cabinda, which meant having four days to cross all of Angola.

The Ninja Express

I awoke to the sound of a terrific hawking and spitting down the hall.

I peeked out of my room at Hotel Gabrielle, which I'd crawled into late last night, after the long day's truck journey from the Congo-Gabon border to here in Dolisie. I vaguely remembered the night clerk being hopelessly inept. He'd taken a basket of keys, then counted the room doors. There were no numbers on the doors, so he had to count from left to right to figure out which door was which.

"Un, deux, trois..."

I wanted to tell him the rooms hadn't moved. Hadn't he done this before? But I didn't dare interrupt as he kept having to start over as it was.

By Road Through Congo

From Mali to Gabon, so many travel days had been relentless tests of endurance, the kind of days that left me grateful that most of my commutes involve 17 minutes on the subway. I'd heard the phrase "Now you are learning about transportation in Africa" more than once, which always made me wonder exactly how many lessons I really needed to be convinced that the roads could bear a bit of improvement.

But Congo...this was bad roads on a whole new level. Bad roads on a level I'd barely seen, and believe me, I've seen some bad roads. Congo roads make the legendary (and now repaired) Cambodian "road" from the Thai border to Siem Reap look like a suburban driveway. That's not because you couldn't park a truck in the potholes in Cambodia. No, there comes a point where one bad road can't be any worse than another bad road, and that point is once it's a mini-Grand Canyon, and all of those roads are equally horrific. No, what makes Congo stand out in the annals of legendary bad roads is the rainy season mixed with the mini-Grand Canyons.

A Slow Start

When my little travel alarm went off at 3:45 a.m., I felt for the clock next to me on the bed and hit "snooze." Why is it that now I wanted to sleep, after barely sleeping throughout the night? I'd woken up constantly—what if I missed the blaring horn of the truck that was going to take me through the mud away from the border?

There was really no chance of that. I was in rural Congo, in a tiny border village where almost no one had a car or even a television, where a goat's sneeze would probably have woken me up. Aside from the crickets and frogs, nothing stirred.

I pulled on the clothes I'd placed next to me under the mosquito net, unlocked the door, and went out into the dark night.

No truck.

Hmmm.

I went back inside until 4, then checked again.

Still no truck.

Into the Unknown

The omelet I was served at Hotel du la Lac in Mouila wasn't greasy. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen an omelet this well-cooked. Maybe at that amazing hotel I'd been to in Djenne.

Wow. More reason to love the cook, the grandma who'd startled me last night with the offer of antelope.

I was slack about getting out of my hotel on time. The food was great, the wi-fi good. Who knew when I'd next have a reliable connection? Certainly I'd have no access for the next few days, as I rolled with the peanut butter and mud into Republic of Congo.

Still, in spite of meandering, I got to the rendezvous point for Ndende-bound transport by nine.

Plenty of time, I thought, to make the two-hour drive to Ndende—where I needed to be stamped out of Gabon—and be there by noon before the police left for their three-hour lunch break. But an hour is never enough leeway in this part of Africa. I should know that by now.

At a dusty roundabout in the center of Mouila, two kids motioned for me to put my bag into the back of the next available transport for Ndende, a white Mitsubishi pickup truck covered in drying orange mud. I wrapped my bag in a plastic cover that I carry around, and then searched the nearby Lebanese-owned shops for a garbage bag (double protection!) with no success.