Zaire, 1989
Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 8:06 pm
There are many reasons I went to Africa, and maybe I'll get around to mentioning them all at some point. In the meanwhile, though, a tale from Kisangani, Zaire (Now the Democratic Republic of Congo)...
DRC, or Zaire as it was then, is a massive country - Nearly all of which is thick jungle. I prefer the term "jungle" to "rain forest". Even if the heavens DO open with an almost monotonous regularity! Kisingani is in the North of the country, and is the northernmost point of the mighty Congo river that can be navigated. It was formerly known as Stanleyville, after the explorer that found the falls (Stanley Falls, unsurprisingly). The same Stanley that found Dr Livingstone.
I was staying at the Hotel Olympia. It was the only hotel in the town, and was fairly safe. Zaire has always been unstable and dangerous and, despite massive natural wealth, extremely poor. The hotel had a few rooms, but most people camp in the enclosure - which is surrounded by high walls topped with broken bottles and razor wire, and patrolled by armed guards. It's not really safe, but it IS safer than anywhere else in the town. The hotel was owned and run by a Greek ex-pat couple. There are lots of Greek ex-pats in the area, which was slightly unusual i thought as it was formerly the BELGIAN congo. I never met any Belgians there.
I met a trio of fellow travellers in a bar in the town. Two Australians and a Kiwi, they were. Or possibly two Kiwis and an Australian. I'm not even sure I could remember it then! Still, they were good company.
We had been engaged in the usual traveller conversations; where we'd been, where we were heading, where we originally came from, that sort of thing. I'd explained i came from a small village near Reading, in England. One of the others perked up.
"Oh! I know someone from near Reading!" he said. I steeled myself for this one. He wasn't going to ask if i knew someone called <insert random name here>, was he? People seem to have a tendancy to say such things! "Whereabouts near Reading?"
"A place called Pangbourne" I replied.
"Oh yeah!" he said, a grin appearing on his face "you don't know a bloke called Dave ********, do you?". Bloody hell...not only DID I know Dave, he was my next door neighbour, and my oldest mate! Here i was in the middle of a jungle, the four of us about as far from home as we all could be, a thousand miles from any form of "civilisation" (although, actually, the locals were no less civilised in their own way), and this bloke knew him. Small bloody world, this one!
The four of us seemed to get on fairly well, and there is a certain amount of safety in numbers. Kisangani is a wild and practically lawless place, with its own unique problems. Life is very cheap there, even by African standards. We hung out together, exploring the place, drinking loads, that sort of thing. We devised the "Kisangani beer scam". But I'll get to that later.
A couple of days after we met, we met a bloke in the hotel bar. He, like the owners, was a Greek ex-pat. He ran barges up and down the Congo, floating tinned goods and other supplies from Kinshasa (the capital) up to Kisangani, and taking fruit, timber, and coffee back down again. The round trip takes three to four months. He was also the sponsor for the new contender for the Zaire National Wrestling title. Wrestling is BIG in Zaire, REALLY big. The contender was a mountain of a man, an albino African. I hadn't seen the champion yet. Anyway, we got on well with the Greek, buying each other drinks, playing cards, grabbing something to eat, and stuff. He invited the four of us to be his guests at the match the next day. Naturally, we agreed!
The following morning we went to the hotel reception, as per our instructions, and were met by a bloke in a suit and peaked cap. Having ascertained who we were, he led us out to our ride. Which turned out to be a very shiny and well-maintained vintage Rolls-Royce. The type that has a seperate cab in the front for the chauffeur. Absolutely definitely the most unlikely vehicle you would imagine seeing in this steaming, muddy, rotting shack of a town in the middle of the jungle in the middle of Africa! (Everything rots in a jungle...buildings, clothes, people, everything - it's just the way of things, and no sleight on the place!). Ushered into the plush interior of the Roller, we set off to the stadium. Four motorcycle outriders in front, and two behind. This was getting to be a surreal day!
The wrestling match was being held in the local football stadium. There was a grandstand on one side, the other three sides were a tall wall topped with the usual assortment of anti-social weaponary. Spikes, glass, barbed- and razor-wire, that sort of thing. The ring had been set up close to the grandstand. Our seats were definitely the best in the house, the rest of the grandstand almost groaning at the weight of the people squished into it. Our VIP area was barricaded off, with armed police (well, all the police are armed there, i was just making the point!) protecting us. there was a big crowd around the ring, with much pushing and shoving to get the best views. The whole stadium was patrolled by crowdlets of police and army, armed with heavy knotted lengths of rope and club-like long sticks. These were used to smash the hell out of anyone that tried to make it over the wall. There was no shortage of those willing to run the gauntlet. As i said, wrestling is big in Zaire! (And life is cheap!)
Every now and then, some brave (and swift) wrestling fan would actually make it past the soldiers or policemen, and get to the crowd. Most were dragged out of the crowd. One that I saw DID make it...he rolled under an army truck parked near the ring, and managed to sit down in the pack before a posse of soldiers came running round the otherside. They knew he was there, but didn't know which he was. Some poor bugger was selected at random by the uniformed thugs, dragged out, and had the proverbial kicked and thrashed out of him.
The early bouts of the wrestling were young kids...their matches clearly choreagraphed. Each successive match was a higher age group, and the wrestling, at the very least, better performed. After about an hour, it came to the final match. The current champion was a beast of a man. Huge. Resembling, above all else, a shaved gorilla. The contender, an albino as i said earlier, stripped of his suit, looked like a shaved orangutan. The crowd went wild!
The wrestlers seemed evenly matched, and they clearly weren't acting. This was real wrestling, a struggle between goliaths - not the nasty fake stuff that us westerners have come to see the sport as. I swear you could feel the thuds of some of the throws even up in the grandstand where we were!
Halfway through round three the police and the army fell out with each other. Soldiers and coppers were laying into each other with fists, and ropes, and sticks. Everyone forgot the wrestling, this was far more entertaining! Officers ran around, firing their guns in the air (where do those bullets end up?), trying to get their men apart. Due to the brutal treatment most people suffer at the hands of the police and army, this was definitely something they wanted to see!
I don't think anyone knows who won that match. By the time order was restored, the wrestlers had gone. Still, most people appeared to have had a good time!
Our VIP status at the match proved quite handy a few days later.
The four of us were out in a bar, playing the Kisangani Beer Scam. There are two brands of beer available in Kisangani. Skol international recipe (!), and the local stuff - Primus (pronounced pree-mus). Primus is actually a damn good beer, and the workers in the local brewery get it free. The scam is simple - you buy a bottle of Skol, and leave it on your table. Within minutes, a local comes along and says "Don't drink that! Our beer is better!" and gives you one. (Don't forget, the employees of the brewery get it free....we weren't ripping them off!). You then hide your Skol under your chair until you have finished your Primus, put the Skol back on the table, repeat until paralytic! A fine way to spend an evening.
As we were sat at the table, chatting and laughing, and talking with the locals, a nasty little man walked past carrying a framed picture of the President of the time - one Sese Seko Mobuto, a highly unpleasant tyrant. The nasty little man smacked the picture against the foot of one of my friends, who was sitting with one leg crossed high on the other.
"You kicked the President in the face!" he screamed. He turns to the rest of the bar and tells them they must defend the Presidents honour, threatening them with all sorts unless they comply and attack us. I can't specify the threats, my Lingala was not up to translating that!
The four of us found ourselves standing back to back in the middle of crowd, windmilling our fists and fighting back. Fortunately, the locals are completely dumbfounded by the idea of using fists. Our only advantage. You'd just have to punch them in the face, that one would drop away, another would replace them. To be fair, their hearts weren't really in it. Their actions were only because the consequences of refusing the orders of the agent provocateur were worse than a bloody nose. Eventually (i have no idea how long...all was a blur) some policemen turned up, recognised us from the wrestling match, and dragged us out.
I loved Zaire, and i adored Kisangani. I am very sad that it is now too unsafe to travel to.
All the above is absolutely true, with no exageration or fiction. I like travelling!
©Psikottix, 2006
DRC, or Zaire as it was then, is a massive country - Nearly all of which is thick jungle. I prefer the term "jungle" to "rain forest". Even if the heavens DO open with an almost monotonous regularity! Kisingani is in the North of the country, and is the northernmost point of the mighty Congo river that can be navigated. It was formerly known as Stanleyville, after the explorer that found the falls (Stanley Falls, unsurprisingly). The same Stanley that found Dr Livingstone.
I was staying at the Hotel Olympia. It was the only hotel in the town, and was fairly safe. Zaire has always been unstable and dangerous and, despite massive natural wealth, extremely poor. The hotel had a few rooms, but most people camp in the enclosure - which is surrounded by high walls topped with broken bottles and razor wire, and patrolled by armed guards. It's not really safe, but it IS safer than anywhere else in the town. The hotel was owned and run by a Greek ex-pat couple. There are lots of Greek ex-pats in the area, which was slightly unusual i thought as it was formerly the BELGIAN congo. I never met any Belgians there.
I met a trio of fellow travellers in a bar in the town. Two Australians and a Kiwi, they were. Or possibly two Kiwis and an Australian. I'm not even sure I could remember it then! Still, they were good company.
We had been engaged in the usual traveller conversations; where we'd been, where we were heading, where we originally came from, that sort of thing. I'd explained i came from a small village near Reading, in England. One of the others perked up.
"Oh! I know someone from near Reading!" he said. I steeled myself for this one. He wasn't going to ask if i knew someone called <insert random name here>, was he? People seem to have a tendancy to say such things! "Whereabouts near Reading?"
"A place called Pangbourne" I replied.
"Oh yeah!" he said, a grin appearing on his face "you don't know a bloke called Dave ********, do you?". Bloody hell...not only DID I know Dave, he was my next door neighbour, and my oldest mate! Here i was in the middle of a jungle, the four of us about as far from home as we all could be, a thousand miles from any form of "civilisation" (although, actually, the locals were no less civilised in their own way), and this bloke knew him. Small bloody world, this one!
The four of us seemed to get on fairly well, and there is a certain amount of safety in numbers. Kisangani is a wild and practically lawless place, with its own unique problems. Life is very cheap there, even by African standards. We hung out together, exploring the place, drinking loads, that sort of thing. We devised the "Kisangani beer scam". But I'll get to that later.
A couple of days after we met, we met a bloke in the hotel bar. He, like the owners, was a Greek ex-pat. He ran barges up and down the Congo, floating tinned goods and other supplies from Kinshasa (the capital) up to Kisangani, and taking fruit, timber, and coffee back down again. The round trip takes three to four months. He was also the sponsor for the new contender for the Zaire National Wrestling title. Wrestling is BIG in Zaire, REALLY big. The contender was a mountain of a man, an albino African. I hadn't seen the champion yet. Anyway, we got on well with the Greek, buying each other drinks, playing cards, grabbing something to eat, and stuff. He invited the four of us to be his guests at the match the next day. Naturally, we agreed!
The following morning we went to the hotel reception, as per our instructions, and were met by a bloke in a suit and peaked cap. Having ascertained who we were, he led us out to our ride. Which turned out to be a very shiny and well-maintained vintage Rolls-Royce. The type that has a seperate cab in the front for the chauffeur. Absolutely definitely the most unlikely vehicle you would imagine seeing in this steaming, muddy, rotting shack of a town in the middle of the jungle in the middle of Africa! (Everything rots in a jungle...buildings, clothes, people, everything - it's just the way of things, and no sleight on the place!). Ushered into the plush interior of the Roller, we set off to the stadium. Four motorcycle outriders in front, and two behind. This was getting to be a surreal day!
The wrestling match was being held in the local football stadium. There was a grandstand on one side, the other three sides were a tall wall topped with the usual assortment of anti-social weaponary. Spikes, glass, barbed- and razor-wire, that sort of thing. The ring had been set up close to the grandstand. Our seats were definitely the best in the house, the rest of the grandstand almost groaning at the weight of the people squished into it. Our VIP area was barricaded off, with armed police (well, all the police are armed there, i was just making the point!) protecting us. there was a big crowd around the ring, with much pushing and shoving to get the best views. The whole stadium was patrolled by crowdlets of police and army, armed with heavy knotted lengths of rope and club-like long sticks. These were used to smash the hell out of anyone that tried to make it over the wall. There was no shortage of those willing to run the gauntlet. As i said, wrestling is big in Zaire! (And life is cheap!)
Every now and then, some brave (and swift) wrestling fan would actually make it past the soldiers or policemen, and get to the crowd. Most were dragged out of the crowd. One that I saw DID make it...he rolled under an army truck parked near the ring, and managed to sit down in the pack before a posse of soldiers came running round the otherside. They knew he was there, but didn't know which he was. Some poor bugger was selected at random by the uniformed thugs, dragged out, and had the proverbial kicked and thrashed out of him.
The early bouts of the wrestling were young kids...their matches clearly choreagraphed. Each successive match was a higher age group, and the wrestling, at the very least, better performed. After about an hour, it came to the final match. The current champion was a beast of a man. Huge. Resembling, above all else, a shaved gorilla. The contender, an albino as i said earlier, stripped of his suit, looked like a shaved orangutan. The crowd went wild!
The wrestlers seemed evenly matched, and they clearly weren't acting. This was real wrestling, a struggle between goliaths - not the nasty fake stuff that us westerners have come to see the sport as. I swear you could feel the thuds of some of the throws even up in the grandstand where we were!
Halfway through round three the police and the army fell out with each other. Soldiers and coppers were laying into each other with fists, and ropes, and sticks. Everyone forgot the wrestling, this was far more entertaining! Officers ran around, firing their guns in the air (where do those bullets end up?), trying to get their men apart. Due to the brutal treatment most people suffer at the hands of the police and army, this was definitely something they wanted to see!
I don't think anyone knows who won that match. By the time order was restored, the wrestlers had gone. Still, most people appeared to have had a good time!
Our VIP status at the match proved quite handy a few days later.
The four of us were out in a bar, playing the Kisangani Beer Scam. There are two brands of beer available in Kisangani. Skol international recipe (!), and the local stuff - Primus (pronounced pree-mus). Primus is actually a damn good beer, and the workers in the local brewery get it free. The scam is simple - you buy a bottle of Skol, and leave it on your table. Within minutes, a local comes along and says "Don't drink that! Our beer is better!" and gives you one. (Don't forget, the employees of the brewery get it free....we weren't ripping them off!). You then hide your Skol under your chair until you have finished your Primus, put the Skol back on the table, repeat until paralytic! A fine way to spend an evening.
As we were sat at the table, chatting and laughing, and talking with the locals, a nasty little man walked past carrying a framed picture of the President of the time - one Sese Seko Mobuto, a highly unpleasant tyrant. The nasty little man smacked the picture against the foot of one of my friends, who was sitting with one leg crossed high on the other.
"You kicked the President in the face!" he screamed. He turns to the rest of the bar and tells them they must defend the Presidents honour, threatening them with all sorts unless they comply and attack us. I can't specify the threats, my Lingala was not up to translating that!
The four of us found ourselves standing back to back in the middle of crowd, windmilling our fists and fighting back. Fortunately, the locals are completely dumbfounded by the idea of using fists. Our only advantage. You'd just have to punch them in the face, that one would drop away, another would replace them. To be fair, their hearts weren't really in it. Their actions were only because the consequences of refusing the orders of the agent provocateur were worse than a bloody nose. Eventually (i have no idea how long...all was a blur) some policemen turned up, recognised us from the wrestling match, and dragged us out.
I loved Zaire, and i adored Kisangani. I am very sad that it is now too unsafe to travel to.
All the above is absolutely true, with no exageration or fiction. I like travelling!
©Psikottix, 2006