Congo Kinshasa: Planes and boats and corona tests

The weeks started to drag. Each time we submitted a document, there seemed to be another one I had to procure. “Go to the town hall, go to your doctor …” and so on. But eventually the day came when everything was accepted and submitted. Our charity for malnutrition would become national, and I would get a new 5-year visa. Now to travel back from Kinshasa to Basankusu. 

Francis & Judith after
their return to Basankusu. 

The day I set off for my Coronavirus test, followed a night of heavy rain and, therefore, in Kinshasa, some severe flooding. Taxis and minibuses were not only hard to come by, but the streets were almost gridlocked because of the standing water. I took a motor-bike taxi, being the second passenger after a young woman. When I finally arrived, he charged double the normal fare. Perhaps he knew that he wouldn’t make much today – he was quite bare-faced about it. I didn’t care – I was going back to Basankusu.

Mama Geraldine had kindly offered to buy my air-ticket to Mbandaka with Congo Airways and with that in mind, I entered the IRBN compound and was directed to a large building to the left for my Cornavirus test. After that – nothing. Two crowded halls, one of them with payment windows, had nobody at all to give directions. What do I do? Who can I ask? Everyone sat staring at their mobile phones. One the wall was a piece of paper: WiFi logon and a website address. I eventually worked out that the idea was to connect to the website and register my details. I sat down, and worrying about the passing time, tapped in my details and uploaded a photo of my passport. It crashed. I started again – and eventually, success. In the melee of perhaps 100 people, I plucked up the courage to sit at one of the windows, whereupon someone sat opposite me and half threw a piece of paper through the window. He was followed by his friend who remained standing. I asked the friend. What do I do next? Someone else jostled through the crowed and handed his phone through the payment window. The friend smiled, took my phone, clicked the last button on the screen and a q-code appeared. He told me to hand it through the window where it was duly scanned and I was allowed to pay my $30, before being passed on to the next window. Just as one of the operatives started putting a sticker on my form, Mama Geraldine phoned. 

“Don’t do the test! The plane’s not until Thursday!” she blurted.

Fortuntely, the staff behind the glass screen were able to reassure me that I would still be OK. Today was Monday, but the result would arrive at night, so it would still cover me for Thursday. Where to next? They pointed me in the direction of the second hall. The crowd had subsided now and there were only a few people there. Still nobody to give directions. I asked a man sitting with his phone on a bench. “Go into room 2” was his advice. The door of a small room in the corner had a number 2 printed on a piece of A4 on the door. I tried it. It appeared to be locked. “Push harder,” the advice came again. It opened and inside I saw a nurse just withdrawing the long probe from a man’s nose! 

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry!” I stammered. 

But the nurse gave me a smile and said that she’d be free in a minute. The test was what I expected: very professionally done and very quick. The nurse apologised for the lack of organisation and reassured me that my test would be valid well into Thursday evening. She said they’d email me the results and that I could collect them the next morning. Her instructions were less clear about where I would collect them, but I knew I could ask for directions when I arrived.
The next morning, I saw the email on my phone with the result – negative, thankfully. I realised that I didn’t need to go back to pick up the results – I just went to an internet café and printed them out.

I asked Gracia, our next-door neighbour, and Judith’s cousin, if she could drive me to the airport on the Thursday of my flight. Unfortunately, she was already committed to drive her children to their various schools, but she had a reliable taxi-driver who she could phone. Later on, Christiantus, our Nigerian friend, who is a diocesan priest in Basankusu Diocese, said he would drive me their – even at the early hour of 5 o’clock, as soon as the curfew finished.

 
In my life, it seems that if something can complicate the situation, it will.

Torrential rain pelted down all night.

That could mean more flooding. Congo gets 12 times the amount of rain Britain experiences each year. That means that a whole year’s worth of British rain falls in a single month – so you can imagine how heavily it must fall! Around 4 o’clock it started to lessen. The curfew would end at 6 am and really we needed to be on the road as soon as possible after that.

 
I attempted a few desperate phone calls to Christiantus and eventually got a reply. We set off at 6:20. The road was dark and wet; the headlights were remarkably dim. Here and there we encountered partially removed roadblocks, left like that after the night’s curfew.

 
Christiantus explained that he had to say mass later and wouldn’t be able to hang around to help me in the chaos of check-in. We came to a barrier and the soldiers who guard the gate to the airport. Chris wound down the window a little, cold splashes of rain helped to wake me up a bit more. 

“Catholic priest,” he told the soldiers. No reply. 

“I’m a Catholic priest,” he said again. Still no reply. 

“Francis, give them 4,000 congolese francs (£1.70)” 

The barrier rose.

 

Father Christiantus

I stepped out into a pool of water. A young man held an umbrella over my head as I took my suitcase from the back seat. Christiantus drove off. The umberella guy started to walk with me towards the airport buildings. 

“No, I didn’t call you,” I said firmly. 

He continued to walk with me. 

“No, I refuse! I don’t want you! Go away!” 

These people are opportunists. They say they’ll help you through check-in, but will often disappear with your case, your money, your passport – whatever!

Eventually, I was met by another man wearing a yellow day-glo vest and a name badge. These registered porters can also trick you, but are more likely to guard their reputation.

The plane was late. My fixer held my travel documents, paid my airport tax and so on, while I had an extra 2 hour wait. Oh, well, at least I wasn’t late. When we were finally called to move through check-in, he asked me for $10 so that I wouldn’t have to open my case. It’s a dreadful practice – the Congolese (at least the very small percentage who use airports) haven’t arrived yet at the seriousness of airport security. I accepted it because I was already weary from the whole process, that, and the fact that I had a 1 litre carton of South African red wine in my case, which, anywhere else in the world wouldn’t matter, but here they might decide to remove it.

 
I’m 100% sure the fixer didn’t hand over all of the $10, but suddenly I found myself at the boarding gate. I watched 12 noon approach and pass. Other passengers boarded their planes and departed. Eventually, two young women in the uniforms of another airline, CAA, walked by asking their passengers to group together in one area of seating. I told them that I was with Congo Airways. 

“No, no, you’re with us! Look at the tag on your bag!” 

I looked, and sure enough, it said CAA.

I’d asked Mama Geraldine to buy for Congo Airways – no wonder I had to change from Wednesday to Thursday!

The plane arrived, fairly small, two seats on the left and two on the right. A small plane takes longer, but, after following the River Congo for 2 hours and a half, I finally arrived in Mbandaka.

Judith had hired a dugout canoe outboard and driver; she’d come along with a young girl to help with cooking and our watchman to help with buying provisions for the malnutrition centre. 

Mbandaka is officially a town, but people still live as if they were in a village. Cooking is still done from raw ingredients, freshly caught fish, cooked on firewood or charcoal. I got to go out for a drink a couple of times with old Basankusu friends. We enjoyed the view from where we stayed because it was literally on the shore of the Congo River.

We set off to Basankusu at 6 am, 28 February, repleat in waterproofs and orange lifejackets. The river was calm.

 We gave places to Antoine Mbula, a former Mill Hill student whom I taught in the 1990s, and Moise Lofinda, who is the boss of the bonobos re-introduction project in Basankusu. The wife of one of the protestant pastors also joined the trip – she sat in the bow of the boat and cooked for us. The driver, who was owner of the boat and motor, asked if we could take a young couple and their 2 children. We reluctantly agreed because we were already full.

Cooking on board was done in a charcoal burner. They put the burners in the bow and in a plastic bowl and put a couple of inches of water into the bowl, so that the heat wouldn’t damage the boat. We brought some beer along and Judith and I shared a bottle during the first hour of the journey. The cool of the morning started to lift and I took off my raincoat.

It wasn’t long before we started seeing various river craft. A baleinier, literally, a whaling boat, is a barge or series of barges, or whatever might pass for a barge, being pushed by a small tug-like boat. They are often over laden with goods and people, who camp out on the deck and others on top of goods, or even felled trees. A masua is another type of boat, still over laden, still with people sleeping on deck – but also with the possibility of a cabin. River journeys can take weeks – Kinshasa to Basankusu can take between 3 and 5 weeks, for example.

We travelled north from Mbandaka, hard against the current. sitting in flimsy plastic chairs. Our canoe was about a metre across; Judith had paid for a cover to be erected with some bits of wood and some old roofing sheets, so that we wouldn’t be exposed to the blazing sun.

Then we came to the tributary of the Lulonga River, the river for Basankusu. We stopped after a couple more hours. The driver wanted to visit someone in a tiny fishing village. We took advantage and used it as a comfort stop. More beer was brought out and we each drank another bottle.

And so the journey continued. Now and then people would call out that they had fish to sell. They would come alongside and haggle over the price – but it was always cheaper than the price in town!
As evening came, so did the threat of rain. The river was very low and a few times we ran aground on sandbanks. The propeller on the outboard would sometimes get tangled in weeds or grass, and we would drift aimlessly while it was being sorted out.

The wind picked up and the sky turned grey. The calm river suddenly became like a choppy sea. Waves with sharp peaks appeared and it looked like we might have trouble. Fortunately, it all passed within 30 minutes and the water became calm again.

Night came. I tried to sleep in my chair. I regretted accepting the young family on board, because it gave us less room to spread out. I must’ve dozed now and then, and eventually the sun appeared again. I looked for Judith in the seat behind me – she wasn’t there! Then I saw her under the chair just waking up on the floor.

The pastor’s wife got the charcoal burner going and we were soon drinking coffee and eating bread and sardines!
We started to speculate on what time we would arrive in Basankusu. Originally, we thought that 24 hours would be enough. Failing that, surely we’d get there by 12 noon or perhaps 1 pm. During one of our stops, Antoine confided in me. 

“They’re not using the motor at full-throttle,” he said. “They want to go home with some fuel themselves. You paid a high price for this trip, but they’re trying to take advantage again!” 

I agreed and relayed the message to Judith. Judith didn’t want a fuss, but said she’d tell the driver. 

“Perhaps they want to conserve fuel to be sure of arriving,” she suggested. 

And so we continued.

As we got closer, we saw a huge masua, a really massive riverboat, with people looking out of windows down its side. It had run aground on a sand bank and seemed incapable of shifting itself. Perhaps they would sit there several days until the river slowly released it again. Perhaps they were already digging away at the sandbank. We gave it a wide berth.

The first view of Basankusu was the red light at the top of the telephone mast. Judith and I turned on our phones, racing to get a connection. Because we were travelling with Moise, we were able to land at the ABC (Amis du Bonobos au Congo) beach. It was 7 pm – we’d been on the river for 36 hours! Lots of Judith’s nephews and nieces came down to help us carry our things. Then we saw our watchman struggling with the boat’s driver. What on earth were they doing! They were locked in a tight bear-hug of a struggle. The watchman had been following events and had come to the same conclusion as Antoine – the driver had conserved fuel and was now going to go home with it! We estimated its value at about $25 US. It all got a bit out of hand. The last thing Judith wanted was for me, a foreigner, to be associated in a fracas. It could jeopardise my status. She called off the watch man and we unloaded our goods.  

We then learned that the driver had also charged the young couple and charged them to carry their foam mattress! 

We were happy, though, to let Judith’s family spirit away our goods and cases, and went together on foot to our house.

More beer? Yes there was!