One of the many Chinese complexes springing up all over the Congo.

As it turned out, the immigration office was not our last stop in the Congo. We missed the next hut up the street, the gendarmerie. As soon as we approached, the officer begins speaking not with a greeting but with a demand of who speaks French. I barely respond and he starts ranting at me, “when did we arrive?”, “why did we not immediately present ourselves to him then” “How could we be here with out checking in with the police” (which we did, just the other office).

I started to feel shaky, not sure if it showed. We were so close to getting out with no problems and the people so far have been so lovely. It would be a shame to ruin our now positive perception with another bribe or overall problems now.

I just explained to the man that we thought we were finished last night, it was dark (there is no electricity in the village) and we didn’t see or even know that the straw hut that was the gendarmerie office even existed. The kind immigration officer just mentioned to me that we had to stop here as we were packing up the car to leave again. There was a nice Ghanaian man, Yosuf, listening in and told me that this officer is crazy. The officer storms off into his hut and Bobby coaxes me to go in after him. I ask to enter and then hand the officer our carnet for the car and all the passports. Yosuf comes in chats with us, which helped ease the tension. This grumpy officer was by far the quickest stop we had the entire time and we were soon on our way. Thank god.

By the time I got back to the car for us to go, the sweet immigration man had rounded up the village president and head minister to see us off. As we crossed into the netherworld between Congo and Gabon we came across a big truck stuck in the sand. He had apparently been stuck there for a week and still has not had any luck getting out. We tried with the little Landrover to get him out but it was like a flea trying to pull a dog out of a hole. Passed Yosuf along the road also, he showed us the stop for the gendarmerie on the Gabonese side. All of the procedures on the Gabon side were extremely quick and efficient.

We drove straight on the freshly paved asphalt all the way to Franceville. The Chinese have been buying up every bit of Africa that they can and put in the roads so that they can export the oil, lumber, rubber, etc more easily to themselves. In the middle of NO WHERE in Congo we would come across Chinese driving huge trucks down the sandy roads and brand new gleaming complexes with Chinese writing on it. It is a pity because they are taking all the raw materials and importing all of their own workers to do it. So it isn’t even like any of the local people get a chance for employment or any part in the vast amounts of money changing hands between the governments. But as I’m learning, this is the way it is in Africa.

The saintly immigration officer tending to his chickens.

We woke up with the sunrise and started to pack up camp to make our final run for the border. Our 72 hours courtesy of our dear friends at immigration was ticking away. All along the road people would smile and wave at us. Some little kids would excitedly run out from their baths just to wave at us.

The road was very good for the start of the journey and then turned to sand for the remainder. We stopped in Gamboma to go to the market and buy some fresh baguettes, vegetables and freshly pounded peanut butter. A little while later, we stopped for a picnic. David and Peta had a little miracle of a freezer attached to the back seat. We enjoyed our baguettes with some butter and sandwich meat brought over from South Africa!

We got to the immigration office a little later than expected. We had spent a lot of time at the customs office, which was our first stop along the way. There were some cute kids marching and chanting army tunes. They even made their own hats and belts out of some leaves. From customs, we then had to check in with the police. They handwrote all sorts of information in their book, I’m not even really sure what it was all for but hey, procedure is procedure. We heard the bongo drums and chanting coming from the church nearby so it just added to the ambiance of the straw police hut. Once they were satisfied with the information they gathered, we moved across the street to the next hut to finally meet the immigration man.

This man was possibly the sweetest person I have ever met. No need to worry about corruption with this guy, he had posters of Jesus all over his hut. He proceeded to handwrite all the information that the police officers just took shortly before and would ask all sorts of questions. He was eager to hear about Obama and asked if it is true that a man who looks like him could be president. It is nice to talk about the US with excitement again. I don’t have to try to justify or apologize for anything. Especially here in Africa, people are very excited about the election and are very proud that a man whose father is from Kenya is in the running. They feel like it is too good to be true. We sat chatting with the lovely immigration man for a bit too long, he already had to light his kerosene lamp. We had to ask for permission to set up camp on their grounds, once it is dark it is really difficult to find a camping spot. He was very pleased to have us camp on the grounds and promised that we would rest their undisturbed. Fantastic!

Dinner: Pork & butternut squash in a Thai red curry sauce

My very first campsite in the bush!

David and Peta arrived in the afternoon yesterday and decided to stay also at the Hippo Camp. Had a late night with all the great people there the night before and had to be back at 7 am to get the car ready for the trip. Did some small errands like going to the post office, supermarket and bank before leaving. If not for the airport incident, I would have had nothing but glowing things to say about the Congo.

We got lost heading out, worse still we were stuck in traffic. We asked for directions every few feet it seemed. Ask a hundred people for directions and get a hundred different answers. Old people seemed to be the most knowledgeable and helpful. With the help of some of the older people we got on the right path.

We’ve set up camp for the night in the bush. This is my first night camping in Africa. Nothing like what I expected. We’ve got a little shower booth, kitchen area, dining area and fantastic food to boot! Not at all how I pictured it to be! Tomorrow we should cross the border and been just in time for our quickly expiring visa.

Dinner: Fried eggplant, Cabbage salad, sea bass grilled over onions and mashed potatoes.

Free goodies thanks to the friendly locals.

We woke up very early this morning, the time change threw us off. We went to the US Embassy first thing. We walked around for a bit and couldn’t find it and finally ended up taking a taxi. It took us to a construction sight for a huge new compound they are building for the new site, that explains why we couldn’t find the old one. Ironically, when we spoke to the person at the embassy, he had actually heard about us over dinner. Small world.

We went straight over to the Gabonese embassy and were the first ones there. The consular officer there was a lovely woman, we ended up chatting with her for quite a while. She heard our whole story about our arrival in the Congo and we all had a good laugh about it. She was extremely helpful and was going to issue our visas all in the same day luckily.

Next mission was to purchase a phone card so that we can try to track down David and Peta. We couldn’t believe our luck, they were on the ferry from Kinshasa to Brazzaville just as we called and will arrive in Brazzaville in a few hours. We had run into the couple from the airport on the street and were invited to join them for dinner at the Hippo Camp tonight.

All of the people that we have met today have been fantastic, it is actually a shame that we only have 72 hours in the country. The people are really warm and friendly. Even just walking down the streets in Brazzaville we are greeted with smiles and “bonjour”. It looks like we will start our trip out to Gabon first thing in the morning.

Welcome to Congo. This is all perfectly acceptable here.

We arrived in the airport proudly presenting our passports with our lovely Congolese visas already in inside. We were immediately told to step aside and wait. They pulled all of the foreigners over. 5 foreigners, 5 chairs (one was free because one lucky man passed through quickly). We sat calmly and quietly keeping pleasant looks on our faces. We don’t want them to think that they are intimidating us. I should have brushed up on my French before we came because it has been an endless tirade. I tried giving one of the men food, in most countries this would have gotten me adopted. This prick just shrugs his shoulders, takes it and walks away. We spent hours waiting and waiting. Every man that we talk to seem to find a different problem with our visa and still offers no solution. The solution was obviously money, we just wanted them to bring it up and specify how much will buy our freedom.

The other woman being held up with us and Bobby were both giving me tips since I was the one dealing with the officials. The first suggestion was to try to share our food. Obviously didn’t work. Then it was decided that I was being too nice and that I should be more tough… tough yet respectful. I tried being tough, I even tried crying! That succeeded only in brining me a higher level official who found a new, more creative problem with our situation all together.

A couple had passed through in minutes on the 2nd flight that came in after ours, they had given them $50 USD for each passport and they didn’t even have any visas! They had already been in Congo so they knew what to expect. But then the immigration man is holding their passports with a wad of money sticking out of it and shows it to me saying, “look, no problems for them, they have all their papers in order”.

A nice man who does charter runs for the UN tried to help us by getting the documents that the immigration officials insisted we were missing. Once they got those documents the official said “no, we don’t want that, they need to PAY!” They wanted 50,000 francs total. That is nearly the price we already paid for the damn visas in the states. We weren’t allowed to leave until we paid. After 7 hours or so they finally named their price, in good time, we had run out of water.

Bobby goes off to change our dollars and the immigration ring leader walks up to me all smiles, I wanted to throw something I was so angry. He CANCELLED our one month visa and issued us a 72 HOUR visa to justify the new price that we had to pay them. I wasn’t even so upset about paying, I’m more worried about getting out of the country in 72 hours. We don’t know when David and Peta are arriving, we don’t know how the roads will be going into Gabon. I’m just worried how much more money we may need to pay to get back out! I just don’t want to give these crooks any more of our hard saved money!!