33 - The Horror! The Horror!

Boulevard du 30 Juin

OK, I'm in Kinshasa, on Conrad's side of the Congo River, a couple of miles or so from Stanley Pool, the ante-chamber of the Heart of Darkness, but I'm not actually going to follow in Conrad/Marlow's footsteps, or rather wake, up the mighty river, 1,500 or whatever miles into Kurtz-land at Stanley Falls. It would take forever, or at least three weeks, I'd get bored, and it would mean passing through the M'Bandaka region where they've been having a little bit of a blood-letting population control exercise recently between rival tribes over access to land and water.

Instead, I'll do in reverse, and purportedly in eight hours by bus, the more than month-long journey Conrad/Marlow did by foot to Kinshasa from Matadi, where rapids preclude up-river navigation. As for 'The Horror! The Horror!', Django the taxi driver says the Pacha hotel where I’m booked might qualify, even though it's just across the road from the Memling, the best hotel in town and an institution in itself. As we pass by he seems to have a point – the dark passageway into it looks dirty, gloomy and is swarming with suspicious types, dismissed by Django as 'little thieves and bandits.' We proceed on by to the nearby Ave Maria which, despite ongoing dust-producing restoration work, has large airy rooms at the same price - $85.

Side street in downtown Kinshasa

The Schnorrer! The Schnorrer! Thank God for the Yiddish word for beggar to provide the neo-Conradian rhyme. Kinshasa is full of beggars, thieves, and other ne'er-do-wells; and everybody from diplomats to hotel staff to sundry well wishers tell you to leave all your valuables and money, apart from small change for minor passing needs and deterring muggers from further violence, in the hotel safe when you walk out during the day - and not to walk about at all at night.

The city is in a terrible state, buildings in various stages of disrepair, the broad avenues crumbling, broken, often no more than sand. But the centre, when it was still Leopoldville, was built on a grand scale, and it must have been pretty attractive. To move on from the awful hoary old dowager cliché to an awful boxing one: in its prime it must have been a prize fighter, could've been a contender, but now it's battered, nose-flattened, punch drunk, slurring, staggering with dementia.

Behind the Memling and Pacha in Downtown Kinshasa

A visit to the Pacha shows that once you pass the gauntlet of the corridor and stairs, it's not that bad, even if pokey. As for security, people have been mugged in broad daylight right outside the Memling.

On the broad dusty Boulevard 30 Juin beggars, many of them women with little children, sit in the dirt outside massive official buildings, one of which would be a credit to gigantic communist-type architecture. Definitely worth a picture, and I've been happily snapping away despite being assailed by dozens of shouting passersby, telling me 'it's not authorised.' This is especially true when I wander round La Cite, the vast crumbling true Africa centre of the metropolis with its long broken roads, dirt alleys, and jumbled shacks.

Street in La Cite

Begorrah! Begorrah! OK, I haven't yet found an Irishman here to say that, but it's too good a pun to miss, and Kinshasa produces plenty of cause for surprise. It's an enormous chaotic place, a huge swarming ant hill, with a population of 9, 10, 13 million – all estimates are given – and a kaleidoscope of implausible sights along its dust-filled, pot-holed, rutted mud streets. A policeman on a pedestal at a crossroads, his arms outstretched in prefect imitation of the crucified Christ before bringing them smartly up above his head to direct the traffic, repeating the gesture to the four cardinal points; evangelical shop front churches in the slums – 'With the Rev. Apostle Leopold;' Golgotha hand bag store shack; El Shaddai (God Almighty) pharmacy shack; Kaka's cold storage shack with the sign 'One never fights Israel' from some Biblical reference; Labiotec Gen. Med. Laboratory shack with a red cross on its dirty front; markets and stalls selling peppers, fruits, everything; sewing machine shack; unisex hair salon shack; Vision of Heaven manicure and pedicure shack; cyber cafe shack; Christians for Public Health health centre shack; billboard with a family – AIDS has no face; total street pandemonium with mini-van buses crammed beyond the possible; dark blue uniformed police with reflecting yellow vests, looking for bribes according to Jacques, my taxi driver; lamp posts keeling over double or lurching drunkenly in every which direction from the impact of crashing cars and trucks, even in the richer neighbourhoods with walled mansions; the rough and ready night club quarter of Bon Marche, full of shack-like dance and drinking halls, shaking to the wee hours with women and booze; three-hour long traffic jams; the huge walled complex of palaces built by former dictator Mobutu; the quarter he named after his mother – Maman Mobutu.

Another street in La Cite

And all this against a beautiful backdrop of lush green hills with palms and other full canopied African trees. Ah, of course, no photos in slums and markets if stuck in a traffic jam – the locals might become aggressive, seek money, steal camera; snap only when the car's moving to make a quick getaway, that's the street gospel here according to my St. Jacques.

And, again of course, the Chinese rebuilding the roads. Let's only hope they do a better job than in Angola. And... And... And...

The Dollar! The Dollar!  Back in the hotel cafe drinking tea and watching South Africa clobber France. The front desk man approaches. There's a woman in a business suit waiting for me at the desk. She tells the receptionist I invited her up stairs. I did no such thing, quoths I, I don't know her from Adam – or
Eve. She continues to try to whore herself out on poor ancient me. What people will only do for a dollar! Wham bam, NO thank you Ma'am, and it's back to watching the game.

At the entrance to La Cite

Kinshasa's 'stalinist' buildings

As the ball goes flying over a goal post, a psst comes flying over my shoulder. Ma'am is sitting at the table behind. I smiled at her earlier, quoths she, quite indignant. Evidently a gaping of my lips, cheering on some South African play, was taken as a come-up-stairs invitation. No, Ma'am, you have it totally wrong, quoths I. But Ma'am won't take no for an answer. She floats over again and drops a piece of paper on my table – Helene, with a 099 cell phone number. Well, Helen of Troy she ain't, and I beat a hasty retreat from overheated hen to the air-conditioned coolness of my chamber.


The Squalor! The Squalor! Not here, anyway! After watching Maradona doing his Danny De Vito (with hair) antics at the Argentina-Greece match last night, we are walking in Gombe, the leafy river-bank quarter hosting the monumental domed presidential palace and countless resplendent embassies, verdant oases of wealth, luxury, peace and calm behind their high walls and guards. This neighbourhood is definitely a garden city.

In front of the palace rises a large bronze statue of Laurent Kabila (pere), assassinated by one of his guards in 2001, and a large mausoleum. Some think current president Joseph Kabila (fils) is better and more serious than Dad. Army tents are planted here and there along the bank under beautiful full-leafed and canopied trees - along with the occasional termite castle - guarding against the appearance of any undesirables aboard a pirogue from the other Congo. And of course, photos are verbotenissimo; don't even think of it.

There are still out-of-character dirt pathways, including one alongside the Iranian embassy, and the grand tree-lined boulevards are run down, rutted, dust-covered but still beautiful, impressive. The whole area is flag-bedecked with workers speeding the face lift (paid for by the European Union, according to St. Jacques) for the golden jubilee independence celebrations.

The embassies – British, US, German etc. - are large and their grounds are well manicured; pedicured too. A beautiful blue bird relieves himself on one of Her Britannic Majesty's branches. Nearby are the enormous National Bank and a few casinos, endowing those who have with a choice of where to play with their wealth.

Tintin presides over Congo rapids

We continue the drive parallel to the river and on to the rapids. A woman cop directing the traffic is deep in conversation on her cell phone. No wonder there's a massive jam. Another woman cop has her foot firmly planted inside an open-doored car; the driver is dutifully counting out his little 'donation' in 500 franc (50 cent) notes. We arrive at a grassy cafe with the sign 'Welcome to Tintin; when Jesus says yes, nobody can say no.'

Overlooking the rapids, a statue of Tintin sits on a log, reading a book that proclaims 'Jesus Christ is our God;' his cartoon friend, the captain, stands nearby, as does another character on horseback. Less amusingly, three beautiful monkeys – a large female and two babies - wander aimlessly around a small cage. Why the hell would anyone do that to them?

Meanwhile the Congo flows on majestically, rippling, bubbling, spraying, boiling over the river-wide rapids that halt any further navigation downstream.

Congo rapids

32 - Please tell me I didn't do that

 Oh Gawd! I've just given a whole new dimension to the old saw 'they all look the same to me.'  I'm just about to leave for the banks of the Congo to navigate over to Kinshasa and a local guy turns up at the hotel to collect the money for yesterday's gorilla trip. He's asking for $50 more than I thought I had agreed with his boss on Friday. I tell him to phone his boss and check it out. He fiddles with his phone and can't get through.

'I have the number here, I'll give it to you,' quoths I.

He starts to dial, then says: 'Wait a mo, that's my number.'

'What,' quoths I, 'it was you who was here Friday?'

'Yes,' quoths he, 'don't you recognise me?'

 Gawd!!!

Meanwhile it's total pandemonium at the boat departure point, called The Beach. They've pulled the road up for reconstruction and a whole dust-encaking walking detour from the taxi is in order. There are two ways of crossing – either pay four times the price and go by so-called canot rapide (rapid motor boat) that takes 12 people and performs all the migration formalities for you for $20, or join 12 million shouting others from the world's toiling and sweating masses, huge bundles swaying atop their heads, and struggle aboard a large clapped out old ferry. Muggins decides to forgo the local colour and pay the $20.

Brazzaville disappears into the haze on crossing to Kinshasa

Two guys, Fabrice and Olivier, take my case, haul it over the dusty rutted detour, buy my ticket, nurse my passport through its various stations of the cross at the long table of migration officials, see me past another police official who first tries to relieve me of 10 per cent of my money in 'tax' as though I were a local trader and not a tourist, and finally see me aboard La Liliane.

'And what about a little something for Fabrice and Olivier,' quoths they, although the service is all meant to be included in the price. Well, they put on a good bit of 'local colour' entertainment of their own during the more than hour's wait, so they're worth $5.

Kinshasa port heaves into view

La Liliane's capacity of 12 has miraculously jumped to 16 and we're pushed up towards the front, doubtless to prevent any capsising and a reprise of 1961 when the West German ambassador, journeying in the opposite direction, famously fell overboard and provided the crocodiles with their daily bread. There is, of course, no sign of life vests anywhere, not that that would help much against those giant snapping jaws.

Kinshasa port skyline

We approach Kinshasa's sky-scraper studded skyline and are tying up at the dock, also called The Beach, when muggins really does almost ape His Excellency the much lamented West German Ambassador. It's a high step up onto the iron dock, a disembarking fellow passenger has narrowed the available space, yours truly hauls himself up with a backpack pulling down on one shoulder, staggers, teeters on the brink between dock and deck, and is rescued by the grabbing hands of a couple of guards.

UN peace mission boat and post at port

A nice lady with stripes on her shoulder tags and DGM (Directorate General of Migration) on her arms takes charge of me. 'Diplomat, diplomat,' she shouts at any and everybody as she propels me towards 'the formalities.' I do not disabuse her. We now pass stations of the cross, Kinshasa style.

Fist station  - a dirty little cell-like room with a thick iron grill door above which is written 'Formalities, Diplomats and V.I.P.'  She hands my passport through the grills to a self-important fatty, who peruses it, seems satisfied and hands it back.

Now we proceed through a dirty corridor to station no: 2 – a dirty little cell-like room with a thick, clanging iron door under the title 'DGM, Bureau of Studies and Contentions.' At least it's air conditioned. She hands my passport to a second self-important fatty who peruses it, then takes a questionnaire which he fills in religiously. Name..., father's name... mother's name...

‘Are they still alive?’

'Yes,' quoths I, 'they're called Mr. and Mrs. Methuselah.'

World lung destruction - tropical hard wood awaits transport

He is not amused; I better stop being a smart arse. Now my Beatrice - actually her name is Mamacarou - takes the passport to several other stations, whither I do not follow, returns, and we're outside, where she hands me over to a taxi driver friend called Django, gives me her card, tells me to phone her if ever I come back through the port, and hovers expectantly - upon which Django informs me she's waiting for her tip.

'Tip?' quoths I. 'For a police woman? For an official?'

'Oh yes,' quoths Django, 'elsewhere you may not do so but here we tip our officials most liberally.”

I give her $3.50.

Kinshasa port view

31 - Gorilla Sunday

Baby gorillas with 'foster parents' at Iboubikro

Wow. They are just like us even if they do have furrier bums. The little ones are grabbing at their milk bottles, thumping their chests with both hands, running around in circles, jumping up trees and swinging from branches. And further up-stream I manage to provoke a full grown silver-back male into throwing a tantrum - and mud and water at us.

This lowland gorilla protection site on the Bateke plateau some 100 miles north of Brazzaville was set up through the benevolence of British casino mogul John Aspinall to look after baby gorillas whose mothers have been killed by poachers seeking to sell the young in the cities. When they reach full gorilla adolescence at about eight, they are then reintroduced into the wild miles away in the forest. During the civil war about 10 years ago they were evacuated to the coast but then brought back.

Time for play

 It means an early departure from Brazzaville to get to the youngsters in time for their feeding. At Iboubikro, the babies are cared for in a forest across a river where two attendants act as foster mothers. There are four little ones aged between 2 and 3 1/2; they’re the ones grabbing the bottles of milk to drink, thumping their pectorals like miniature King Kongs, and doing their victory dances.

A few dozen miles away on a forested, river-surrounded peninsula lives Sid, a massive 27-year-old 440-pound silver-back who was first rescued as a tiny baby by a French woman. A truly magnificent creature with a ginger fringe on his high ridged head, he has survived war (he was never sent to the coast) and polio (they get the same diseases as us, and it slightly affected his jaw). It is Sid who takes an instant dislike to my voice.

Bateke plateau and the blue lake

Every morning and afternoon he comes to a little wooden jetty on the river bank, sitting quietly and waiting for the attendants to approach in a motor boat with extra food - this time bringing muggins in tow. He sits there, massive, pretending to look away nonchalantly, but eying us out of the corner of his eye. He recognises the voices of the others as friends. But mine is new to him. He immediately jumps down from the jetty, rushes furiously back and forth along the shore (fortunately, they don't go into water), yanks violently at a rope tied to a pole near the boat, and with an all embracing sweep of his massive arm hurls reeds, mud and water in our direction. I seem to have that effect on most living things. Naturally my camera and I get ourselves tied up in Gordian knots during Sid's royal command performance and I don't manage to take even one blurred shot.

Attendants approach Sid with goodies

I shut up, and he eventually resumes his pose on the jetty to munch on some more roots, hauling up a crate of roots and fruit brought by the attendants, and nonchalantly catching other delicacies thrown his way; no miniature King Kong, this one, in all his massive girth.

Sid was put on the island with four other males because there are too few females among those rescued, and the project did not want to sexually overload the groups that have been reintroduced to the even remoter forest. This is not as cruel as it might sound, because it is natural for male gorillas in the wild to be alone until they establish their own group. Two of the four were killed early on, apparently by poachers to sell the meat. So that left Rupert, Titi and Sid. Rupert, sensing that Sid was weaker because of the polio, protected him and for a while all three lived in peace. Then one day both Rupert and Titi were found dead. There were no bite marks, so they didn't kill each other, and it’s assumed they were poisoned, but the details remain unknown.

Sid ponders

A French attendant on the reserve has a few insights into gorilla mores and behaviour compared with that of their close relatives, the chimpanzees. He spent 10 years tending the latter and says poachers are much more devastating for gorillas. The chimpanzees flee at the poachers’ approach, leaving perhaps only a mother to be killed and her baby stolen. But with gorillas the silver-back turns to face the attacker and protect his troop; thus he gets shot, as do other younger males who also do not flee, in addition to the mother of the to-be-poached baby. As to the silver-back's strength, a mere slap from his arm can break a human's arm or leg.

Anthropomorphically, the Frenchman says, the chimpanzees represent the black side of man - they attack, fight and fight to kill; the smaller bonobos, on the other side, represent man's rosier side - they make continual love, not war.

Some more pondering

As for gorillas and men, the former would seem to have the advantage in intelligence, if you listen to the only other visitor in the reserve today, a Belgian helping to set up the European Union (EU) embassy in Brazzaville. According to him this is a bureaucratic exercise in futility since there’s no real common foreign policy, each EU state has its own interests, and no EU country is going to withdraw its own embassy and leave it all to the new EU creation.

Becalmed after tantrum

Moreover, according to aforesaid Belgian, Congo’s president and government don't come off too well either in the gorilla-man comparison. Let them be corrupt, steal and build their castles on the French riviera, but then at least bring water and electricity to vast quarters of Brazzaville that now lack it, quoths he of the politicians. There's enough money to go round for both public services and private greed, but they have no sense of actually doing anything for others. At least the silver-back protects his troop.
 

Oh, you lot bore me, anyway

And as for the Chinese, they're here in spades, and if their road construction here is anything like their road construction in Angola, then perhaps the gorillas would perform better, too. Meanwhile, the termites are also doing a great public works project, building their own well-constructed castles on the savanna.

The view from Sid's living room

30 - Of Napoleon, Waterloo and Joan Of Arc

Interior of St. Anne Basilica

I’m watching the England-Algeria game on the giant screen in the hotel's open-air restaurant in great pain, anguish and suffering when two seriously drunken Frenchmen plonk themselves down next to me.

'Look at your team,' quoths one, a hydraulic engineer working on Brazzaville's water supply. 'They're just like the French team, all bougnoules and bicots (the nastiest N words in French). Mark you, Monsieur, I'm anything but racist. It's just that I want a French team to look like me. I'm sure you feel the same about England. I'm not racist at all. It's just all these hoodlums from the suburbs who think they're stars. They're all shit. We should kick them all out.' All this followed by an idiot laugh.

'Hm,' quoths I, 'well...'

'Yeah, all I want is for the team to look like me,' Idiot laugh.

He must be in his 60s with a weathered face crevassed like the canals of Mars. All I want, meanwhile, is to nurse my agony at England's poor showing in silence. Now he throws Joan of Arc in my face.

'You English burned her.' Idiot laugh. And Waterloo. 'You name your stations after our defeats.' Idiot laugh. 'What's more, if Napoleon hadn't sold Louisiana, the whole world would be speaking French today.' Idiot laugh. 'Then of course there are the Chinese. We are enemies of the Chinese. They must all be destroyed.' Idiot laugh.

Poto Poto town hall

Please let me suffer in peace, Monsieur.

'No, I'm not racist, not at all.' It so happens that his second grandchild was born this morning. 'And you know what Sir Winston Churchill said? I don't mind being a grandfather, I just don't want to sleep with a grandmother.' Idiot laugh.

HELP! Is there no end to my suffering? Isn't England's performance punishment enough for one night?

Given its French antecedents, Brazzaville has its fair share of French pastry shops. And what better way to drown or rather gorge my grief after England's terrible showing than with fruit tarts and millefeuilles and Napoleons (the other type, not the one who could have had the whole world speaking French) and madeleines of Temps Perdus? That is, after gorging myself at a river bank restaurant at the end of the Corniche, looking through the branches of a tall cactus at fishermen in pirogues casting nets in mid-stream. That is, before going back the hotel to watch Ghana v. Australia. That is while trying to forget all about England. That is... That is... So much for pastry Saturday!

View over the Congo from the Corniche towards Kinshasa

And from another vantage point

And through the cactus branches

29 - Closer To the Heart

Brazzaville's corniche at dusk

Time to move on closer to the heart; muggins heads for Brazzaville, on the other side of the Congo River from Kinshasa, by the Malebo (or Stanley) pool - of Stanley and Conrad fame - just above the rapids that prevent through navigation to the ocean.

It's time, too, to take Trans Air Congo's Fokker again as there are ninjas in the forest in between. These are militias of the Pool people who fought a tribal/civil war and now have an uneasy self-rule arrangement - meaning ninjas playing yo-yo with AK-47s board the thrice-weekly train as it dawdles through their territory (there are no buses or trucks) and demand money or otherwise harass travellers. Western embassies warn people not to try it - verbotenissimo!

Muggins turns up at Dolisie airport at 7 a.m. for the 9.45 flight, as ordered - after being stranded in the shower totally soaped up when the water died (fortunately there was a full bucket there; that's what you pay $72 for). The problem is the airport staff haven't.

De Brazza's mausoleum

This time we're allowed to queue up inside and the police guard is friendly, both of us cursing the Malaysian timber companies who are chopping down the trees throughout the region, just as they are doing in Asia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. A surly guy helping a fat woman with two huge carts of luggage pushes ahead, but my anti-Malaysian cop friend soon puts them in their place.

After about half an hour the staff start dribbling in; after another half they start sitting down; after another half they start getting their act together. Once through security a beautiful lady cop smiles winningly, saying 'Bon voyage to Brazzaville. What are you going to leave for us.' Nothing,' quoths I, sensing a little hint of bribe-seeking.

On arrival at Brazzaville there’s total screaming chaos as swarms of barking luggage touts mill about seeking your custom to get your cases off the partially holed conveyor belt.

Brazzaville, founded by Italian-born Pierre de Brazza, the father of French colonialism in the area, is a rather grand mini-metropolis in its way, befitting the capital of former French Equatorial Africa; it's like a garden city, though run down. There are large expanses of green, forests of trees, expansive boulevards, even if somewhat rubbish strewn, playful fountains, and mansions now taken up by palatial ministries and the favoured.

St.Anne's Basilica

Muggins is sneaking a picture of the presidential palace enclosure from across some open ground when three armed soldiers lolling under a tree wave their weapons and loudly proclaim 'verboten.' I beg your pardon, quoths I, noting a whole group of little kids playing football on the open ground; am I not allowed to snap these adorable little kids? Ah, you're photographing the adorable little kids, quoths they, that's fine, go ahead. Which I do, standing in exactly the same position with my camera likewise, zooming in on the presidential enclosure.

A Brazzaville modern skyscraper

There are in fact two presidential palaces next to each other behind high walls, railings and guards. The second, built by current holder Sassou-Nguesso to coddle his holy self, has a huge surveillance tower - again all properly walled and fenced and soldiered - with views across the river to the skyscrapers of Kinshasa. A few weathered modern towers in the centre contrast with the purely African quarter of Poto Poto, with its narrow dust and mud lanes, low buildings and boisterous markets overflowing with life. Other city sites include the odd-shaped green-roofed St. Anne Basilica and the round domed Mausoleum to de Brazza, an ironic honour inaugurated earlier this decade by the president to the imperialist coloniser of his country. But then de Brazza apparently did eschew the extreme and appalling brutality of Belgian King Leopold II's regime on the other bank.

The city's best sites, however, are natural. At the south western end is the Djoue River with its rapids pouring into the broad Congo, whose even larger rapids make navigation down to the Atlantic impossible. And the river views from the Corniche across to Kinshasa in the ebbing light of late afternoon are, again, spellbinding; one more glorious African dusk, a golden haze over the green river-bank vegetable allotments on this side turning to blue-grey on the other Congo's high-rise studded shore. A solitary pirogue slowly furrows the waters far out in the centre as dusk closes in. Once again, ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day...’

Kids play soccer in front of presidential compound

View across the Congo to Kinshasa

Street in Poto Poto

Local beauties in front of Sacre Coeur Cathedral

Djoue rapids

Congo rapids

28 - Fasten Your Seat Belts, Please

The so-called thrice weekly train from Pointe Noire to Dolisie between the coast and Brazzaville is very iffy at best - it seems to leave when it feels like it, and then mainly in darkness, preventing any scenic views. So plane seems to be the only real option despite the warnings against African air transport. Passepartout has already made travel out by bus or truck iffy; he screwed up my tentative road transport, telling me there’s a daily bus (there isn't) on the now tarred road (it isn't) to Brazzaville.


View POINTE Noire to Brazzavile in a larger map

De Brazza's baobab

Passepartout wakes me up ages before needed to get to the airport at 7 a.m. for the 9 a.m. flight. Thank Gawd I am now free of him; I give him $20 just not to come to the airport and hinder me any more. He did get me a good exchange rate in the market, though.

The thing about flying out of Pointe Noire is that you end up not caring if the damn plane does crash. They make you get to the airport two hours before departure, then make you stand outside for more than an hour among the shoeshine boys and lottery ticket sellers. It must be terrible in the rainy season. Perhaps it’s all to take your mind off the reputed lack of maintenance of their planes.

Immortality-seeking scratches

Once we're inside the departure area a fellow passenger says I should have bought a padlock for my case because everything gets stolen. There is in fact a not-bad little cafe inside, though. When they call us for the flight, we have to walk the whole length of the parking apron to get to the old Fokker F-28 twinjet. What a Fokk up!

It's only about half an hour to Dolisie, and the pilot lands with such a thump that my window shade comes slamming down. Now immigration wants to sign me in again, but this time they don't ask for money. They only have two un-motorised luggage carts to bring the luggage from the plane and there's an inordinately long wait while they load up first. I may not have a padlock but my case is still a virgin.

Jungled hillside outside Dolisie

Dolisie is a dusty little town, a mixture of solid buildings and street-side shacks with not much of interest, although it apparently served as a cooler mountain retreat for visitors from Brazzaville and northern neighbour Gabon before civil war and militia conflicts a decade ago screwed that up. The scenery outside is very pleasant, with dry hills giving way to forested mountains. Out of town to the west there's a large baobab tree where the Italian-born explorer de Brazza carved his name into immortality on his way to Pointe Noire from what is now Brazzaville on the Congo River to claim the territory for France in the 1880s. Needless to say, there are now 36 million other names slashed into the poor suffering trunk. Yours truly does not join the immortality-seeking scratch crowd. As a bonus, though, the taxi driver gets through a nearby police checkpoint without paying because he's a relative of the guard.

Dolisie view

Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso went to school in Dolisie, so he has a huge house up in a forested enclave, and the town is said to go into lock-down whenever he's in residence, with armies of soldiers swarming the streets. Fortunately he's not here today.

A train is due in at the station and it's time for muggins, having watched Greece clobber Nigeria, to indulge his childhood fetiche and become a train spotter, wandering down to the tracks. A goods train is just leaving for Brazzaville with people perched precariously atop a swaying heap of bundles on an open wagon. On a siding a single first class carriage waits for departure to Pointe Noire - a sorry dusty affair with broken windows, a large privacy-seeking shawl flapping insolently out from one gaping hole, and banks of metal bunks.

Dolisie hair dressing salon

A swarm of police and army goons drape a stone bench on the broken platform, canoodling with their collection of weapons, some double-barrelled. I manage to sneak a few photos and have just stuffed my camera back into my trousers (... or are you just pleased to see me?) when a super-goon approaches to enquire the nature of my business.

'Just strolling about,' quoths I; 'tourist, trains, whooo whooo, clackety-clack, clackety-clack.'

He is unimpressed. 'Where are your manners,' quoths here; 'you can't just stroll along like that without first announcing yourself to the police.'

Dolisie haute couture

'So sorry, Your Grace,' quoths I, off-buggering without more ado. A little truck on train wheels trundles in along the tracks; on the street outside a large billboard proclaims: Rape is a crime, let us all fight against sexual violence.

I disappear into one more of those magnificent African evenings, the blood red sun descending, the smell of wood smoke hanging fragrantly in the air, a blue haze hovering over the mountains - totally mellow, wonderfully balmy, and delightfully cool. Indeed the weather has been great throughout so far, not much humidity or excessive heat and no need for a/c at night; in fact a blanket comes in useful.

African twilights are spell-binding: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day/The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea...

Dolisie station

First class rail

Campaign against rape

27 - Monkey Business

Local chemist shop

Today we are visiting our closest cousins. Old Passepartout from the hotel has arranged a taxi for me for the incredibly low price of $20 for the 50 kilometres to Jane Goodall`s chimpanzee sanctuary at Tchimpounga. Here orphaned chimps and those rescued from villagers and poachers are nursed back to health for eventual release into the wild. We set off down sand-dune streets to avoid the morning traffic jams, then hit the main route north, passing a large green and white roadside cupboard inscribed `M K Theo Pharma Inch Allah,` the neighbourhood chemists. Inch Allah (God willing) indeed!

On a hill overlooking the sea a huge mansion sits proud - the prefecture; this is sure a great country for those that have. We turn inland; Passepartout has truly fouled up, getting me to the wrong place at a nowhere lake. Enquiries at a neighbouring village reveal that what we want is the Bois des Singes (the monkey wood); now the driver wants $60 for the return trip - still pretty good considering the distance. We're stopped at several police check points, at one of which the driver has to pay a $3 bribe. The grinning cop reads my passport as though it's the bible. I`m beginning to wonder who comes first in the cousindom realm.

Pointe Noire's Cote Sauvage

At last we arrive at a barrier closing off the track. Verboten, says the guard. The guidebook says just turn up and they let you in to see those chimps that have not yet been released back into nature, quoths I. I`d even sent an e-mail to the Jane Goodall foundation a few weeks back and got no reply. I plead with him, try my `but His Excellency, your UN ambassador told me...` schpiel, all to no avail. The chimps have become too big, aggressive and dangerous, quoths he; they are no longer cute little playful children. They really are our clones. Images of that 250 pound chimp ripping that woman`s face off in Connecticut flash vividly on my mental YouTube. The guard may have a point.

I return to Pointe Noire un-chimped. Let`s see whether I have better luck with the bonobos near Kinshasa. At least they make love, not war, all the time - especially when under stress or pressure.

Going for a walk along Pointe Noire's Cote Sauvage beach front I’m waylaid by the World Cup at the equally beach front luxury Twiga hotel, where lunch costs no more than at my not-so-cheap el cheapo hotel. All the locals, of course, are cheering on any African side, but I must say Ivory Coast puts on a good show in holding Portugal to a draw, much to the locals` fortunately vuvuzela-less delight. And it's certainly an improvement on watching the England-US game back in Luanda on the Angolan satellite TV, where there were 44 players, two refs and two balls on the field.

Paintings for sale on Avenue du General de Gaulle

 Meanwhile there's plenty of brilliantly coloured paintings for sale both on the main Avenue du General de Gaulle drag and at an artists' village 'souvenir alley' a few hundred feet from the ocean. At the latter my camera and I get bawled out by an irate painter who screams that I'm a spy making images of his fine handiwork for others to copy.  

Atrists' village paintings