African Brew Ha Ha

Very Bad Spots Up Ahead

The three kids I have been left to baby sit are warming to me now and are showing off to the other village kids their new white friend. They gather in a tight semi-circle around me whispering encouragements to each other, hoping I’ll do or say something extraordinary.

“Sweetie bon bon?” one asks hopefully pointing at my tank bag.

My adopted three take great pleasure in telling the gathering crowd of children that there were only three boiled sweets in my bag and they, still licking their lips exaggeratedly, had had them. So there.

One dissatisfied child in a red T-shirt and huge shorts down to his ankles can hardly believe his bad luck and asks for evidence. All three stick their tongues out with satisfaction and the disappointment registers on everyone’s face. One small girl in a denim dress impulsively kisses one of my brood on the lips to get confirmation that she’s missed out on the rare treat but enjoys the shared fruity taste all the same.

“Sweetie paper,” one says. This starts a frantic search around the yard for the discarded sweet wrappers: they are found, licked, sucked and enjoyed every bit as much as the sweets were ten minutes ago. One child wearing nothing but a faded yellow T-shirt chews and swallows one of the wrappers to everyone else’s scorn, but the delight is apparent on his face.

The eldest boy, with clear eyes and comparatively fluent English, confidently informs the others, “This is the bike that will fly”.

“Well, no, it won’t fly but …” I am loathe to correct him.

“Will you go down this road?” He asks with a worried expression.

“That’s the idea.”
”But there are some very bad spots.” He exaggerates the last word with a shake of the head as if the spots were fiendish traps and my planned trip was the very height of folly.

“When you reach those spots you will have to fly. Nothing can go on this road. You will be stuck for many days in those bad spots, there will be no way out.”

He is holding the handlebar of the bike now with his left foot on the peg as if he intends to speed off down the muddy track in front of the house and show me how to fly over the dreaded spots.

I can see what he’s edging towards.

“OK, jump on,” I say.

That was the cue they were all waiting for. Fourteen children push and fight their way on to the seat of the bike brrrmm brrrmmmm-ing their way down an imaginary highway with vibrating lips and screeching sound effects, twisting the throttle and slapping the hindquarters of the immobile bike as if it were a stallion.

Of course now I’ve made a job for myself and have to make sure everyone gets a spell on the bike or there’ll be tears, so spend the next ten minutes lifting smiling kids on and lifting scowling kids off until one toddler in a Celtic FC football shirt and a permanent leak of snot on his upper lip becomes over excited by the whole experience and takes a piss on the pillion seat.

“OK, that’s enough. EVERYBODY OFF!”

The Curse of Ndende?

January 8 “No, of course it’s not too late to come for lunch,” says the female voice down the line, I glance quickly at my watch which shows ten to two, “ I’ll send my driver.”

Within 10 minutes an air conditioned 4X4 arrives to take me to the home of Madame Marie-Hélène Mathey Boo in downtown Libreville.

The traditional rouge with vegetables was obviously kept on warm while waiting for me but the food doesn’t look as if it has suffered at all, and I can barely wait to tuck in. The cook serves the rice and then the fish dish to each of us in turn: myself, then madame sitting at the opposite end of the table, then her assistant Christy on my right.

The dining table is formally laid out with table-cloth and linen serviettes, heavy cutlery and shining porcelain, water and wine glasses (“yes please, why not”). It is surprising to me (who is not, admittedly, always the most formal individual) how pleased I am at such a simple thing as a laid table, a courtesy that has not been shown since visiting the Zim farmers of Shonga. I know how that sounds. Weird.

Marie-Hélène is instantly likeable. Some people just are, and others take time to warm to; my guess is she has lots of friends. She is director general of the Centre International des Civilisations Bantu, or CICIBA if you happen to notice the personalised registration plates on the three new 4X4s in the driveway. The organisation is a cultural focus for 11 Bantu-speaking countries spreading from west to southern Africa. Until very recently Marie-Hélène was the DR Congo’s ambassador in Gabon, which she happily admits, apart from the perennial refugee problem on the border, was a very taxing round of cocktail parties, golf dates and networking opportunities.

Marie-Hélène’s home accentuates the love for her family – two attractive sons and grandchildren who live in Kinshasa and Brussels – with cheerful photographs lining the walls of holidays and good times past. Lunch barely seems over when madame excuses herself and says she has to prepare for a meeting and her professional assistant will look after me.

Christy, quiet until now, has a fair command of English (and you can’t underestimate the importance of that on a lunch date) and wants to talk about everything from the DRC to life in England, from Bantu history to black magic. I learn more from Christy in an hour than I have in the whole previous month in Gabon. But madame has disappeared and I’m not sure whether it would be polite to leave before her return or hang on in case she walks in the door at any minute, and we haven`t had tea yet.

In the meantime a visitor who has an appointment arrives at the house and says he will wait for her return. Henri Tchikaya is an animated individual who uses his entire upper body to stress his points, whether serious, comical or flirtatious, which makes his conversation compulsive viewing, even for somebody who can barely understand a word he says. Madame returns and her household assistant serves tea, five hours after I was brought to the house.

Advice:

Madame Marie-Hélène Mathey Boo: “The accident has told you to find another way; you cannot carry on by the route you had planned. This happened for a reason, don’t fight against it. You must and you will find another way to carry on.”

Henri Tchikaya: “Remember, Gabon is the centre of traditional beliefs in Africa and Ndendé, where you had your accident, is the centre of those beliefs in Gabon. You must ask yourself why did the accident happen there … you were not meant to continue with your journey by that route. Ndendé was the centre of the slave trade many years ago so people believe there are many bad spirits there. Did you take a charm with you? Did people back home raise the spirits to protect you? No? Then it is too late. You must find another way; it is the way your trip is meant to be.”

Christy-Aurore Masamba: “Believe in God.”

Keep Going

January 1 2008              After a relaxing and morale-boosting week off with Olive to give the collar-bone a chance to knit together and the pain of the other injuries to dissipate a little, I find I am looking forward to the next part of the trip with some gusto. While the biking part of the journey has taken a break (!) for a while, the desire to finish the trip is as strong as ever.

For this I must thank the excellent and varied guidance from my Tea Encounters during the past 11 months which has all come in useful at different times on the abhaha, from the practical (“Bring a puncture repair kit” – Bill Beaumont) to the encouraging (“Be open-minded about where you’re going” – George Ogola) to the quirky (“When in doubt, turn right” – Mehdi Benslimane) but perhaps one simple piece of advice from Dave Edmundson has helped me cope more than most when the outlook appeared difficult – “Keep going”.

Not only is backtracking often not an option when we set out on a new [ad]venture (there’s no reverse gear on the Triumph, anyway) but we also have no idea who or what is further down the road, which makes the journey itself worth taking and the future a compelling mystery. Anybody who scans some of the earlier posts won’t fail to notice the wonderful people I have chanced upon who have made the abhaha what it is. When things get challenging, someone usually appears who is able to make sense of the seemingly random series of events that make up a day, and make me look forward to the next. And for that, I thank them all.

With that in mind, especially if you’ve had a difficult 12 months in 2007, my sincere advice to followers of the African Brew Ha Ha is - Keep Going.

Happy New Year

Alan