Blood River (8 page)

There was something reassuringly trustworthy about Georges.
Like Benoit, he did not mention money, but when I asked him if
I could pay him, he mumbled something about me making a
donation to La Voix des Minorites.

`But have you been there recently, along the road between here
and Kindu?'

`No-one has been all the way along that road recently. It is a
long way, more than seven hundred kilometres. But in our
province, Katanga, closer to here, I have walked along some of the
roads in recent years. The mai-mai are not all out of control, you
know. I have been with many of them and they will listen to me.
But once you leave Katanga and enter into the next province of
Maniema, then that will he different. I do not know that place at
all.'

When Stanley passed through here, the name Maniema itself
was enough to cause many of his bearers to run away. It had
terrible associations with cannibalism and sorcery. I was more
sanguine about it. Maniema was a problem for another day some
time in the future. For the moment, I had a much bigger problem
to deal with. If Georges was going to come with us, I needed to
find another motorbike.

It was Benoit who immediately spotted the problem.

'We have only two bikes. You will ride with Odimba on one
bike and I will ride on the other with all our luggage. There is no
space for Georges, and how would he get back here to Kalemie? I
have been in this town for a few days now and I have not seen any
other suitable hikes we could use.'

I asked Michel and he was more optimistic. He took us into the
centre of town and stopped near a small office run by the World
Food Programme, the UN agency responsible for feeding refugees,
left us in the jeep and walked over to the security guard. After two
minutes' conversation he came back.

'My friend here knows a man with a motorbike, who might be
prepared to rent it for Georges as long as he only goes a short
distance out of town. He will try to find the man, but it will take
half an hour or so.'

Michel had to leave, so Benoit, Georges and I all jumped out of the jeep and killed time in the centre of Kalemie until the guard
came back. The heat was getting to me and I needed to drink
something. Some bottles of sugary orangeade were the only thing
available, so I bought three from a hawker and we all stood in the
shade of a coconut tree drinking them. On the other side of the
road was the relic of a building that looked like a restaurant or
cafe. There was a fenced-in garden and an old sign that said
`Cercle des Cheminots' or 'Railwaymen's Club'. I remembered
seeing photographs of this place from the 1940s and 1950s when
it was full of Belgian railway employees, seated at small wooden
tables draped with chequered table cloths and laden with plates
of food and bottles of wine. For years the railway company - La
Compagnie des Chemins de Fer des Grands Lacs, or CFL - had
been the biggest employer in the town, and this was where the
employees drank, ate and socialised.

I walked inside to find a wreck. A wooden bar ran along one
wall and a tall Congolese lady stood behind it.

'Do you have anything I could drink?'

`No.'

'Do you have anything I could eat?T

'No.'

Before I left, I spotted a pile of crockery on a table. The top one
caught my eye. It was marked with the livery of CFL, a swirling
red-and-white pennant, a relic of an age when customers and staff
would have eaten off company crockery.

Back on the main street, we returned to our rendezvous to find
a grubby-looking man talking to Michel's security guard. His eyes
were bloodshot and his breath smelled of alcohol.

,if you want a motorbike, I am your man.' He could barely stand
he was so drunk.

My response was a bit tetchy and impatient.

`If I am going to allow my guide to ride with you on your bike,
I need to see it.'

`I have thought of that. Follow me.'

The man, Fiston Kasongo, then led us down a track away from
Kalemie's high street to the abandoned railway, where he had
hidden it bike in some long grass.

`There is my hike. It is a great bike.'

I could see Benoit was not convinced. Benoit had a pair of
Yamaha off-road hikes. They were only 100cc, much smaller than
the 900cc bike I used to ride in London, but Benoit assured me
they were the best hikes for Congolese tracks; light enough to lift
over obstacles and strong enough to cope with the huge distances
and awful trails. The hike Fiston was offering had a brand name
- TVS Max - that I did not recognise, and was much less sturdy.

Benoit tapped me on the shoulder and took me off to a safe
distance so that he could raise his concerns.

'I have never seen that make of bike before. It does not look
good enough to me.'

I was beginning to feel sceptical, but Georges then joined in.

The bike looks okay for me. I am only going to come with you
for a day or so, not the whole journey. In the past I have walked
this same distance, so if we have any problems I can always walk.'

If 'Georges was game, that was enough for me. Benoit nodded
slowly and I returned to the swaying Fiston. A price was then
settled upon. I asked Fiston how much he wanted per day. He
hesitated for a moment and said $125. Benoit's eyes flickered
disapprovingly, so I offered $50. Fiston did not hesitate for a
second, agreeing enthusiastically to the price. He shook my hand,
promised to meet me at the IRC house and, before leaving on his
bike, asked for a down payment to allow him to buy some fuel. I
gave him $20 and he disappeared, weaving along a footpath
through the high grass in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke that
spoke of an engine in distress.

I spent the next three days preparing for the journey. First, I had
to get permission from both the local district commissioner and
military commander. Even in a large town like Kalemie where the state fails to provide any teachers, doctors or policemen, it still
insists on pieces of paper to authorise the toings and froings of
foreigners. I was wary about making too many introductions as I
feared the authorities would whip up greater problems, but
Michel assured me that the commissioner, Pierre Kamulete,
would not cause trouble. Michel volunteered to make the introductions, so on my second morning in Kalemie he drove me and
my team - Benoit the biker, and Georges the pygmy - up past the
main church and along to the ruins of the old colonial governor's
house, which now served as the commissioner's office.

We sat on an old school bench in the hall outside the commissioner's office, along with a few other supplicants waiting for
an audience with the commissioner. When our turn came we all
trooped into a large room, at the end of which stood a big desk
with M. Kamulete sitting behind it. The desk was bare apart from
a piece of paper torn from a school textbook, covered in handwriting. At the other end of the room sat two military men, one a
large man in khaki fatigues and the other smaller, also wearing
uniform, but with naval insignia on his epaulettes.

`Look at this, Michel, what do you make of this'?' The commissioner knew Michel well and wanted his opinion on the
handwritten page. He handed it to Michel, who read it slowly. It
was a public attack on the commissioner, an anonymous Swahili
denunciation of the inefficiency and corruption of his administration. Written in capital letters using a blue biro, it had been
discovered that morning pinned to a coconut tree in the town
centre. It accused the commissioner and his staff of deliberately
cutting the power line connecting the town with the Bendera
hydroelectric power station for sinister, political reasons. The pair
of them discussed it earnestly for a few minutes and I quietly shook
my head. While the rest of the world drowned in information
provided by broadband Internet connections and live satellite
television, the political debate here in Kalemie revolved around a
rude message, written on a child's notepad and nailed to a tree.

Once the issue had been dealt with to the satisfaction of the
commissioner, Michel thought it was time to introduce me. He
emphasised my interest in the explorer Stanley and my historical
connection through the Telegraph, before I was allowed to thank
the commissioner for his time and ask if he would grant me the
necessary authority to head on my way though Katanga.

The trouble I was expecting did not materialise. The commissioner listened to my plans and made a few remarks about
how difficult it was to travel safely through the Congo. He gave
the impression of finding my plan trifling, not suspicious,
humouring me like someone on a fool's errand, confident I would
be back in Kalemie in a few days after failing to get through
Katanga. At no stage did he ask for money. He simply checked my
passport, looked at the identity documents of Georges and Benoit,
and barked an instruction at his secretary to prepare the necessary
stamps. It was then that he pointed to the larger of the two
military men in the room, telling me I would also need the
permission of the local commander, Lieutenant Colonel Albert
Abiti Mamulay. The colonel squirmed in his seat as the
commissioner pointed at him and said we must come up to his
headquarters for the relevant stamp.

We followed the colonel outside to his waiting staff car. It was
an old Peugeot, which looked too fragile to take any more crashes
or bumps. I was wrong. As we watched, the colonel's driver
jammed the car into reverse and rammed it firmly into a rocky
bank, before over-revving and charging off up the hill towards the
barracks, bumping over exposed tree roots and rivulets scoured
into the roadway by rain.

I remembered the description by the American journalist
Blaine Littell of the same military barracks in the 1960s. He had
reached Albertville just after the town had been recaptured by
government troops, and when he got to the barracks he was given
his own display of torture tactics. A hapless rebel, accused by the
government troops of involvement in Albertville's uprising, was paraded and humiliated for Mr Littell at gunpoint.

There were no rebels to torture when I arrived at the same
building forty years after Mr Littell. I saw the colonel disappear
into a tatty old house and we tried to follow. A squat man, a
pygmy the same size as Georges but without his charm, barred our
way and told us firmly to wait outside. I handed over the piece of
paper already stamped by the commissioner and stood under a
mango tree with another group of men. Some of their clothing was
khaki, so I assumed they were soldiers. The oldest then did something peculiar. From the lower branches of the tree he plucked a
silver bugle. It was buckled and pitted, but he solemnly set about
polishing with his sleeve.

I walked across and asked him who he was.

`I am the bugler. It is my job to sound the bugle at dawn, midday
and sunset.'

`Have you always been in the army?'

`No, I was only just brought into the army this year. I was a
musician in the railway band before the Belgians left and I am the
only person left in Kalemie with any musical knowledge.'

With the necessary stamps on my travel pass, all that was left was
to arrange the fuel, food and water for our trip. But before that I
wanted to test the bikes, so I suggested a run to Mtowa, the
lakeside village at the spot where Stanley first reached the Congo.

Georges said he knew Mtowa well and would guide me, so off
we headed for my first taste of Congolese motorbiking. Benoit
rode his bike with Georges riding pillion, and I rode Benoit's
second bike. The route took us out over the bridge across the
Lukuga River, a cast-iron structure built by the Belgians with a
single carriageway. It was swarming with pedestrians and cyclists
as Benoit led the way, tooting on the bike's horn to clear a path,
before we headed north from the town past the UN base. When
Michel had picked me up from the airport the road had felt sandy,
and on the bike it was downright dangerous. The sand made the tyres slew extravagantly from side to side and one particularly
deep trough pitched me heavily down on my side. Breaking an
ankle now would not be a good idea, I thought, as I dusted myself
down and set off more cautiously.

The road took its round the back of the UN base and for the first
time I could see the scale of the old cotton factory that the
Belgians had built here. As well as the large warehouses for
processing the cotton, there were dozens of houses for the
employees, covering a huge campus. The cotton was not grown
here on the lakeside as the climate was not quite right. To grow,
the cotton plants needed the greater heat and humidity of the
Congo River valley, and under the Belgians the raw material was
then transported hundreds of kilometres by rail and road to this
factory, where it was spun into fibre and then woven into cloth.
By its size alone, I could tell the plant must have been an
impressive sight when operational, but all lay in ruins as we
buzzed by on the hikes.

The going was slow. We were following what had once been a
road, but we were forever slowing to pick our route over streams
that had carved their way across the carriageway, or patches of
mud that had dried in wavy ridges. For several kilometres the
terrain was low and flat before the track started to climb a series
of hills. Just as the road began to rise, we passed through several
villages, where the sound of the bikes was enough to draw crowds
of children. In one village I saw Georges tapping Benoit on the
shoulder, asking him to stop. He hopped off the bike and began to
talk with a group of villagers. There was something slightly odd
about the scene, but it took me a few moments to work out what I
found curious - Georges no longer appeared short.

`This is a village of pygmies,' he explained. `I come here from
time to time to hear about what is happening to these people.
Throughout the history of the Congo the pygmies have suffered,
and it continues today. That is one of the largest parts of our job,
to fight for the rights of these people.'