Blood River (22 page)

He was right. Just a few river bends downstream from Kindu
and life did indeed close in abruptly. Every so often a chink
would open in the jungle to reveal a few thatched huts and some
shadowy figures, but they were as cut off and remote as they had
been when Stanley passed this spot in late 1876.

The sun was now cruelly strong and I retired under the shade
behind the cockpit leaving Kungwa uncovered up on the foredeck
of the patrol boat. As a trained river pilot, he was meant to know
the lie of the deep water and spent the whole day concentrating
intently on the river in front of him, pointing left and right to the
Uruguayan at the helm just behind him.

Looking over the shoulder of the helmsman, I watched as he
slowly turned the pages of an old river chart. Printed in 1975,
its marked channel had long since been shifted by underwater
currents and for the purposes of river navigation it was pretty
useless. But I was impressed to see the number of towns, plantations and settlements it identified. According to the map we were
passing through a busy river thoroughfare full of navigation
buoys and buildings once maintained by the Great Lakes Railway
Company.

I did see one navigation bollard. It was made of rocks set in
concrete, but half of it had been washed away by flood water.
It was bestrewn with rotting flotsam and capped with a brightwhite dollop of dry guano. Kungwa told me the bollards used
to carry working navigation lights. Not for decades, I thought, as
a black, long-necked diving bird prepared to leave its latest
mark.

As the heat grew, I began to dwell on Cdr Wilson's warning. He
advised me it would be suicidal to venture alone into such a
remote part of the Congo at a time of increased tension. But I kept
thinking of how awful it would be to abandon Stanley's route so
early in my journey.

As the day's heat built up, I began to doze. Images in my mind
began to blur. I thought of Stanley coming down this same stretch
of the river, his boat bristling with guns pointing at the river bank.
And here I was, almost 130 years later, with a Uruguayan sailor
peering down the sights of a General Purpose Machine Gun
trained on the same river bank. And the gun he was using came
from Belgium, the country that had colonised the Congo on the
back of Stanley's discovery. It all seemed a rather strange
amalgam of history folding in on itself. I fell asleep to the
throbbing of the diesel engines.

`Cocodrilo' was the word that roused me. I did not have to
understand Spanish to understand what they were talking about.
The engines had stopped on both patrol boats and the crews had
gathered on the port side pointing at a distant sand bank.

'We have not seen a crocodile before on the river, so we will go
to investigate,' Cdr Wilson was grinning broadly as he spoke. He
then looked over my shoulder and ordered a rubber dinghy to be
made ready for a river safari.

It was the highlight of the day for the five or so sailors chosen
to come along. They joshed and giggled like Girl Guides on a field
trip as we headed towards the basking crocodile, a large specimen
at least three metres in length. Commander Wilson let out a sigh as he peered at it through his binoculars. `It is so big, so big,' he
whispered and ordered the engines to be cut.

Crocodiles, hippos and other river wildlife were once a
common sight along the Congo River. My mother told me of large
pods of hippos she saw from her river boat in 1958, sending up
jets of water as they shifted their bulk out of the way of the boat.
But the Congo's collapse has led to nearly all river life being shot
out by starving riverside villagers desperate for protein. Our
crocodile sighting was a rare treat.

As the day wore on, I grew increasingly anxious. I would soon
have to make a decision: stay with the Uruguayans and head back
to Kindu, or leave the sanctuary of their boat and risk everything
on a river descent by pirogue.

By the time Cdr Wilson summoned me shortly before sunset, a
wonderful sense of confidence had settled on me.

`This is as far as I can take you, I am afraid. We are still a long
way from Ubundu. Are you sure you want to go?' he asked.

I nodded.

Barking orders to his men, he gestured to the side of the patrol
boat, where a small, black rubber dinghy with an outboard was
being readied by a crew member. As I clambered down into the
dinghy with the commander, all the other Uruguayan crew members gathered on the side of the larger boat. They had obviously
been told I was planning to go it alone. Several of them silently
shook their heads as we peeled away and headed towards the
shore.

The commander said nothing as the river bank approached. We
were heading to where some pirogues had been drawn up on a
beach beneath a high river bank. The sound of the little outboard
engine had stirred some villagers into life and I could see them
hurrying down to the water's edge.

Cdr Wilson raised his eyebrows, said nothing and nodded. The
dinghy slid up onto the west bank of the Congo River and I jumped out with my gear. He shook me by the hand and told me
that, according to his map, we were near the village of Lowa. He
wished me luck and pushed off. The sound of the dinghy's engine
slowly fading into silence as the boat disappeared in the twilight
is a memory that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Stanley Falls as recorded by H.M. Stanley in 1878

Author approaches Stanley Falls by pirogue, August 2004

The Congo had already taught me one clear lesson: towns bad,
open spaces good. It is a country where gatherings of people
promise not sanctuary and support, but threats and coercion. As
I stood lonely and terrified on the river's edge that evening, I
knew the safest place for me was out on the river, away from
Lowa and its potential for trouble.

My legs ached with fear, but I tried to stride up the river bank
with confidence, approaching a group of men sitting silently on
the ground next to a quiver of beached pirogues.

'I need to reach Ubundu by the river. Who can take me?' I asked
in French.

My question stirred an immediate flurry of discussion and after
a few minutes a tall, wide-faced man in his twenties signalled for
me to join him a few paces away from the group. For negotiations,
he wanted privacy.

'It is more than one hundred and fifty kilometres to Ubundu.
That will take four days if I come with you alone. It will be
quicker if we take more than one paddler.'

'How many dollars will it cost?'

He paused and tried to look away, but my fixed gaze held his
attention.

'The maximum number of paddlers on our pirogue is four. That
will cost one hundred dollars for everything.'

Now it was time for me to pause. I did not want to seem gullible
by accepting his first offer, so I countered.

'I will pay fifty dollars if you get me there in four days, and
double if you get me there in two. But I want to leave now - right
now.,

My offer met with immediate approval. He span on his heel, shouted back that his name was Malike Bade, ordered me not to
speak to any other paddler and ran over towards the others,
snapping instructions. Three of them immediately jumped up.
All four of them jogged up a steep muddy ramp cut into the river
bank and disappeared out of sight. Darkness was gathering
quickly and I wanted to be on my way. I did not like the look of
an armed man who had just arrived on the beach wearing the tatty
remnants of a uniform and clutching a firearm. He started to
approach me. Remembering the trick used by my pygmy friend,
Georges, back in Katanga, I rummaged in my bag and offered him
a UN pamphlet. It had the desired effect. He grabbed it and
walked away triumphantly as a gaggle of children mobbed him to
demand a peek.

My crew of four reappeared, each carrying nothing but a paddle
and something small bundled up in banana leaves. In the failing
light I could not quite make out what it was until they formed a
circle, dropped onto their haunches and unwrapped what was
effectively a fast-food meal. Inside the leaves was a wedge of
cassava bread and some small, bony fish. The men were fuelling
up for the journey. Apart from their paddles they brought nothing
- no change of clothes, no cooking pots, nothing to eat or drink.
The journey back upstream from Ubundu, against the current,
would take at least twice as long as the descent, so they could be
leaving their home for more than a week, but they were emptyhanded.

They wolfed down their meal, still managing to sift and §pit
the fish bones from each pulpy mouthful. Within a few minutes
they stood up and walked together to the river's edge. They had
a cocky swagger, like a gang of urban punks in a city. Strange,
given that on the muddy bank of the upper Congo River we
were about as far away from an urban environment as it is
possible to be. They approached the pirogues drawn up on the
water's edge. There seemed nothing special about the one they
chose. Like the others it was just a bare, hollowed-out tree trunk containing a puddle of water from a rainstorm earlier that day.
One of the paddlers used his hand to bail it dry, before I lugged
my gear on board and prepared to settle myself in the middle of
the boat.

'Wait,' Malike shouted and hopped back onto the river bank
before looking for something among the grass. It was almost pitchblack, but he grunted with satisfaction and came back to the
pirogue offering me a low, home-made wicker tripod seat. I
thanked him and sat on it. It made me feel a little self-conscious.
Did this special treatment make me no different from the Belgian
hunter from 1913 with his hammock borne by porters?

With two paddlers taking up their station at the helm and two
at the stern, we pushed off. There was no current to speak of, but
within a few strokes the pirogue was far enough away from the
beach for the militiaman to be lost from sight in the failing light.

After a day of looming anxiety over whether to leave the safety
of the Uruguayan patrol boat, that moment of slipping out onto
the river provided a blissful release. I arranged myself on my little
stool. The low wicker seat was smaller than my backside, but it
was surprisingly comfortable and as the paddlers began to find
their rhythm, I let my fingertips trail in the river water. It was as
warm and soothing as a bath.