Blood River (24 page)

Tying up alongside one of the village pirogues, Malike disappeared with his three mates up a four-metre-high sandy bank,
leaving me to get my breath back in the shade of a tree. I was
finding the heat and humidity difficult to bear, and the suddenness of standing up after so long made me giddy. I panted
heavily as my breathing settled back down again and plucked
the sweat-sodden clothes from my skin.

Venturing out of the shade, I faced the same dilemma that I
encountered in every place I visited in the Congo. I wanted to
nose around, ask questions and take photographs, but I did not
want to catch the attention of the local authorities with all the attendant hassle of having to explain who I was, pay bribes and
beg not to be arrested as a spy. Also, I was feeling so enervated
that I was happy to skulk into the same hut where the crew were
restoking and simply avoid the midday heat.

They ate in silence. Without cutlery, they skilfully set about a
lump of cassava bread the size of a rugby ball delivered on a
broad, glossy banana leaf. In turn they would pinch enough for a
mouthful and roll it into a ball, which they would then dimple
with their thumbs. Into the cavity they popped the garnish - fried
river fish, no bigger than a stickleback, coloured red by hot palm
oil - before eating it eagerly.

'Are you hungry?' Malike offered me the remains of the lump.
I toyed with a marble-sized piece, struggling to overcome a gag
reflex brought on by the rotting cheese smell and wallpaper-paste
texture.

There is something primordial about Congolese villages. The
villagers themselves wear modern clothes, often in tatters, but
modern nevertheless in that they are factory-made and delivered
by the occasional trader who ventures along the river. But the
houses are at the base level of simplicity. There is not a single
pane of glass, metal hinge, cement plinth or fitting that connects
this place with the modern era. There is no litter, no plastic bags,
empty cans or cigarette butts. Without any painted signs, it is a
place of browns, greens and duns, a settlement built in the jungle
and out of the jungle, utterly separate from the modern world.

The doors are made of split cane, held together by a rope of
woven vines and kept in place by wooden sticks. The walls are
mud thrown against a cane trellis, baked hard by the sun and
fissured with a crazy paving of cracks so intricate it looks almost
man-made. And the roofs consist of layers of wide, dry banana
leaves held down by lengths of split bamboo.

This region is one of the rare places in the world that fails what
I called the Coca-Cola test. The test is simple: can you buy a Coke?
I have been to many remote places where Coke is an expensive and rare luxury, but it is still almost always possible to find a
trader who, for a price, can procure me a Coke. Out here on the
upper Congo River, where a hundred years ago a Belgian hunter
could buy ferry tickets, I could no more buy a Coke in 2004 than
fly to the moon.

Back on the river I tried in vain to spot the remnants of the paddle
steamer that the river pilot had told me about back in Kindu, the
one that had been sunk during early post-independence fighting.
His story echoed a terrifying account of the 1964 rebellion written
by an American teenager, Murray Taylor, whose father had lived
his own Poison wood Bible existence, working for twenty years as
a missionary near this section of the upper Congo. In his account
of the incident, Murray described how the local tribe that his
father had sought to convert to Christianity, the Mitukus, tried to
defend his family when the Mulele Mai rebels approached and
how scared his family had been when the rebels chugged into
view on the river on a boat stolen just before Mike Hoare's
mercenary force reached Kindu:

Soon a rebel steamer came up the river from Kindu and began
shelling the main river settlements. I was really scared. This
was the first time in my life I'd heard big guns. Besides, we
weren't sure who the rebels were firing at. We prayed that
God would protect us. Later we learned that the guns were
aimed at the Mitukus on the other bank of the river.

Murray went on to describe how he saw two warplanes as they
flew over the mission station searching for the rebels' boat:

I heard what I thought was thunder. Suddenly it dawned on
me that it wasn't thunder; it was the explosion of bombs
hitting their target! Little did I realise then what effect those
bombs would have on our family. But that air attack proved to be the beginning of our trouble with the rebels, for they
suspected that my parents had called the planes!

That afternoon, some rebels arrived at our mission station.
They told us that the planes had sunk one of their riverboats.
Soon more rebels came and confiscated our two ordinary
radios. Later, more rebels returned to the mission. Their faces
were ghastly and frightening and they were very hostile.
Again they searched our house for the transmitter they
were sure we had. They threatened to kill us if we didn't
reveal it.

The Taylor family was eventually moved by the rebels to
Kisangani, the large port downstream, where the Mulele Mai
rebellion reached a bloody conclusion in late November 1964.
Murray was lined up against a wall with his father and various
other male prisoners. A guard opened fire with a machine-gun,
killing Murray's father. The boy described how he survived by
ducking behind an arch. When the rebels came to remove the
bodies, one took pity on the fourteen-year-old boy and he was
ordered downstairs to join his mother and sisters.

I must have passed the spot where the boat was sunk, but I had
missed seeing any remains.

After their fuel stops, my crew would return to the water at full
power and full voice. Their Swahili harmonies reached from
bank to bank as Malike led his colleagues in song. He would begin
and then the refrain would be picked up in turn by the others,
with choruses and verses lasting hours.

As my pirogue journey went on, my sense of unease began to
build as I neared my next ordeal. The river was navigable only
as far as Ubundu, at which point I would have to continue
overland for 100 kilometres around a series of rapids and
cataracts, still commonly referred to as the Stanley Falls, until I
reached Kisangani, the large port city built at the bottom of the seventh and final set of rapids and the model for Conrad's
Inner Station in the Heart of Darkness. In the early twentieth
century the Belgians had built a railway around this unnavigable reach, although when I researched my trip I discovered it
had not run in years. Worse still, the road between Ubundu and
Kisangani had disappeared into the equatorial forest, and peacekeepers from the large UN base in Kisangani never ventured this
way.

I knew Ubundu had witnessed some of the worst fighting in the
region during the war. In the forest between Ubundu and
Kisangani, there had been clashes between Hutu refugees, who
had made their way here for sanctuary in the aftermath of the
1994 genocide in Rwanda, and Congolese militiamen backed by
the now Tutsi-dominated regime in Rwanda, seeking revenge
against the Hutus. And its local mai-mai home guard had then
clashed with Ugandan troops sent to secure Kisangani and its
lucrative diamond trade. All in all, I knew Ubundu was always
going to be one of the major troublespots on my journey, far
removed from its more genteel days during Belgian rule when it
was known as Ponthierville.

In 1951 Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and a fortystrong Hollywood film crew arrived in Ponthierville by train.
They were on their way to the jungle, riverine set for the filming
of The African Queen, the story of two colonial misfits taking an
old boat down a river to attack a German warship. In the actress's
diary she describes a charming railway town where the local
missionaries enthusiastically helped in the filming, showing the
crew the best spots along the nearby cataracts from where to
capture shots of models of the African Queen being pounded and
battered by the white water. The book, written by the pre-First
World War Belgian hunter, described the town as a pretty
colonial outpost.

My main hope for getting through Ubundu lay with a team of
motorcylists from an American aid group based in Kisangani, whom I had contacted by satellite phone from Kindu. They told
me they would be making a rare visit to deliver vaccines to a field
clinic in the town. Towards my second evening on the pirogue I
began to fret, because I knew that if we did not make Ubundu that
night I would miss the bikers, when they headed back to
Kisangani early the following morning.

Malike could tell I was becoming more worried and kept
reassuring me: 'Don't worry, we will get to Ubundu by nightfall.'

He was utterly unfazed when one of the other paddlers quietly
lay down at my feet and went to sleep. Kago Arubu was the
thinnest of the team, but had given no sign of being unwell before
he stopped paddling, let his paddle clatter to the floor of the
pirogue and collapsed.

I looked round anxiously at Malike. 'He has fever. He will be all
right.' There was no shade for Kago to lie under. He did not drink
any water. He just lay down out in the baking sun and within
seconds was fast asleep. Malike would not even let me try to
paddle as I would mess up the balance and the rhythm. So
effectively we had now lost an engine and with it, I believed, all
hope of making Ubundu that night.

As the sun began to sink, the river bank came alive with other
river travellers. I started to make out dozens of pirogues making
their way back upstream, clinging to the bank where the current
was weakest and the shadows longest. Our progress downstream
was slow - I reckoned we were making only ten kilometres an
hour - but at least we had the current with us. The pirogues
heading upstream could not have been going faster then five kilometres an hour, and in many places the paddlers were using their
paddles in the shallow water to punt the pirogues.

One pirogue passed us going upstream and I saw a small dog
asleep on the bow. `Hunters,' whispered Malike. I looked further
down the river bank and the other members of the hunting pack
were running along the foreshore yapping and frolicking. Their
muzzles were covered with blood and then I could see why. In the pirogue behind the sleeping dog was a butchered antelope with
soft Bambi-style white spots on its russet coat.

The hunter saw me reach for my camera and then put on his
own danse macabre, enacting the hunt that had taken place
earlier that afternoon. In his tattered clothes he jigged about on
the water's edge, barking like a dog to show how his pack had
chased the animal clown before he had dispatched it with a spear.
As a grand finale he posed dramatically with his spear and the
antelope's head.

I don't know if it was the smell of the recently killed meat that
stirred him, but the feverish Kago suddenly arose. A discussion
between the paddlers then ensued, followed by negotiations with
the hunter. Within minutes one of the blood-soaked quarters was
onboard the Sandoka wrapped in leaves and ready for cooking
once we reached Ubundu.

The presence of the meat seemed to energise all four paddlers.
They worked their blades with added vigour, churning up the
river water into small mocha whirls, inching us closer and closer
to Ubundu. For the first time in days, I started to look at my
watch, anxiously calculating and recalculating how long it might
take, but Malike kept on reassuring me we would make it.

Almost astride the Equator, night fell like a portcullis. The sun
dropped below the horizon and suddenly all was dark. My arms
and face had been cruelly sunburned out on the river and I convinced myself I could actually see my skin glowing, as I peered
into the gloom, anxious to spot the first sign of the town.

Ubundu is a large town and a strategic port, so I was expecting
to see at least a few lights from the shoreline. I was wrong. The
first evidence I had that we had reached Ubundu was the sound
of the rapids. For hundreds of kilometres the Congo River had
been mute and yet suddenly, as we rounded a headland, I could
make out the sound of rushing water. It was terrifying.

'There is Ubundu,' Malike pointed over to the left bank.

'I see nothing. Are you sure?' My voice quavered.

`You cannot see anything at night, but it is there.' With that he
spun the head of the pirogue towards the right bank and prepared
to tie up for the night.

'It is too dangerous to cross above the rapids during the dark
and there are soldiers over there too. We will stay the night here.'

`Wait a minute,' I said. 'I must get there tonight. The motorbikes
leave early in the morning, we have to cross now.'

I heard Malike negotiating with his three colleagues in Swahili.
In the darkness I could not read their faces, but I could tell the
other three were not happy with the idea of the night-time
crossing. The debate continued for minutes and then I thought of
the dollars hidden in my boots.

`If you get me there tonight, I will double the pay.' My offer was
desperate, but effective. Malike translated and suddenly the
pirogue was spinning round through 180 degrees and darting out
into the open river.

The noise of the cataracts grew. Somewhere out there to our
right was the start of the Stanley Falls. When Stanley encountered
these rapids for the first time he tried to shoot them. Various
members of his expedition drowned and he ended up dragging
his canoes around each dangerous section of water. The sound
had a dramatic effect on the paddlers. They dug their blades in
the water with studied effort and I sensed that on each stroke they
looked out right, peering for the first signs of white water.

We surged across the river. In the darkness I could not tell how
quickly we were being washed downstream, but my legs were
tense, my heart racing, anticipating what I would do if the pirogue
toppled. Peering forward, I was desperate to make out the first
signs of the opposite bank and suddenly, as an almost full moon
emerged from behind the clouds, I started to make out some dark
shapes up ahead.