35. Gabon: Bifoun, Lambarene to the Congolese border.

We knew almost nothing about Gabon when we went through.  It was not our original route, and our own guidebook had only 1.5 pages of information, none of it first-hand. This was of course before internet and Google, where you can get information so easily on any subject, in any internet café in the world.  That is why we arrived in Lambaréné without knowing its association with Albert Schweitzer.[1] As mentioned before, it is the country most like tropical Bolivia, where Dan lives, that we encountered.  In fact the architecture of his house is similar to the convent below.  It is a style that he called, Rubber Boom architecture, but it could obviously be called tropical Catholic style. It was (and apparently remains) a very expensive country, but we were lucky with our hitching.  It did not seem strange at the time, but most of our rides were with foreign drivers (Cameroon and Chad).

Lambaréné, not even mentioned in the guide book, was a highlight of the trip.  As an important river port on the Ogooué, in turn the 4^th largest of Africa in terms of volume discharged, it caught our imagination.  Again it most resembles the town of Rurrenabaque, where Dan now lives.

Finally, Dan has no memory of taking over the driving of the vehicle we were hitching in as described below. Obviously the owner was very relaxed to leave his vehicle with a 22 year-old tourist with instructions for “taking it home.”

Our route in yellow.  Base map from ezilon.com.

Bifoun -   Lambaréné, Gabon, Tuesday, 1 March, 1983

(HELENA) We had no trouble getting up early, in spite of the loss of the alarm clock, because someone turned on their radio full blast at 5:30 and the village gradually awakened. However, we had the same problem that caused us to buy the clock back in Madrid; every so often I would wake up and have to look at my watch with a flashlight.

This time we were ready in record time, JUST in time to get the full effect of the “black flies”, very tiny bugs that make one itch terribly. I felt them first and, after only 30 bites or so, got out my long-sleeved shirt. Then they just bit up my face. Dan didn’t feel them so much at first, but by the time he got out his long-sleeved shirt, his arms were covered with tiny red splotches.

As we were packing up, our host came out in his length of cloth that was wrapped around him in the neat way we’ve been seeing since Cameroon. It was still kind of dark, but Dan decided to take a chance and ask him if he could take his picture. He acceded, although he would have preferred to have it taken in his “Western” street clothes. It must be a pretty long length of cloth because it wraps all the way around and crisscrosses somehow around the neck.

Bifoun, Gabon catechist Nemi Affeme

We’d been warned that a paying ride to Lambaréné would be expensive, but the first truck that stopped wanted to charge even more than that. We let him go. The next truck was an empty logger that clearly said “Passagers Interdit” on the side, but a helpful (?) man across the street saw it was driven by a friend of his and stopped it for us. He reluctantly said he’d take us for a bit less than the price we’d heard, so we accepted. Dan clambered on to the long trailer and tried to tie our packs to the middle according to the driver’s instructions. The driver not only was impatient with our French, but decided we didn’t know any at all. He eventually climbed up and finished the job himself.

By now, big Mercedes Benz trucks are getting to feel like home. He had us in Lambaréné at the door of the Catholic Mission in two hours --  two rough hours. Rough, not so much for us, but for our poor packs that bounced around.  They did make it, though. We didn’t converse much, but we did find out that he is from Chad.

Lambaréné is a beautifully situated town. Part of it is on one bank of the Ogooué River, the main part of the town is on an island, and a small part on the other bank, all this joined by two long bridges and set among rolling hills. The river is wide and flows smoothly and slowly.

Lambaréné port on the Ogooué River, Gabon

Dan went in to inquire at the mission and a woman there called the nuns by phone to see if they could put us up. Dan had said we wanted a place to pitch a tent, but that hadn’t gotten through, and we arrived at the convent to find that they had a room, but no good place for a tent. Dan first talked to a nun who wasn’t too patient, but when she asked him what language he spoke, she brought in an Argentine nun. Just as with the Spanish priest in Tambacounda, Senegal, our Spanish really saved the day. The Argentine nun, Sor Maria Angélica, was most friendly and she told Dan that he could go ask the priests at the school next door if we could pitch our tent there. I stayed with the packs and she invited me to sit in their spotless sitting room and sip some ice cold "jarabe casero" with water. Mm.

Our main reason for stopping here was because we’ve run out of clean clothes. Just five days since everything was clean in Yaoundé! When Dan saw we could pitch a tent at the school (not much privacy), BUT that the convent had clothes-washing facilities, we decided to pay the almost $12, to be able to wash our clothes and get a good rest from the tent.

There are five nuns here and they’re from the order of the Immaculate Conception (a French order). They run a day nursery and a dorm for 30 girls, from age 5 on up. They have a beautifully kept compound with flowers and grass that overlooks the south branch of the river. This is the nicest place we’ve slept in since Bobo Dioulasso, Haute Volta, 2.5 months ago. Not only are there fresh clean sheets and a sink in the room, but we’ve even got a hot shower at our disposal. As Maureen would say, “DECADENT”.

Lambaréné Convent

 

Lambaréné Convent

After our big clothes-washing (in this humidity, who knows when they’ll dry) we had our lunch and flopped down for a good, long siesta. True decadence!

In the late afternoon we took a walk out to the end of the island (where we’ll pitch our tent) and back into town to find bread for our supper. As usual, we were a little off on our timing and things were closed. Just granola and milk and the bunch of cherry tomatoes we’d picked up on our walk.

Ogooué river from the tip of the island.

Later that night, Sor María Angélica approached Dan and told him she wished we would not pitch our tent at the school the next day, but stay at the convent one more night. She said there are too many snakes here, that not too recently two of the big German Shepherds here were bitten by one of the small, “minute” snakes and died. They would even consider giving us a special price if we stayed on. Mighty tempting.

Lambaréné, Gabon, 2 March, 1983

(DAN) No wonder the convent is so clean --  they start vigorous sweeping at 0500 hrs. I guess that things have to be presentable before 0600 chapel. In any case, it felt nice to lie back and “sleep” in a little late.

Sor Maria Angélica saw me again and mentioned in passing that the girls had found another snake and the “man” of the convent was sent to kill it. She is very interesting, has been in Gabon for 37 years, is Argentine, but of a French mother. She gets to go back to Argentina every three years. This last time, she informed us, she was allowed to spend Christmas with her family. Not so long ago (at least before Vatican II) she said they were not allowed to sleep, or even take a drink of water outside the convent. Her family lived more than a half a day away, so she could not really see them, even on free days. If she wanted, her mother could come to the convent and spend the night. She says that it all started changing with John XXIII. However, she added, now her mother is dead. Things have changed, I would say, if now a man is allowed to sleep within the sacred compound. There are very big, good looking German Shepherds, but they are a piece of cake if you sweet talk them.

The Sor also cleared up another mystery for us. Ever since we said we were coming to Lambaréné, Helena has been saying that Lambaréné is very familiar sounding. Well, Sor encouraged us to visit the Schweitzer Hospital across the river, which explains the picture of the famous man in our room in a Catholic convent.  She said he had treated many sisters and she had met him, but once he was very old. It is actually a double mystery solved because, when we were in Zing, I looked Schweitzer up in the World Book and it said he had worked in Cameroon. I asked various people in Cameroon about him, and asked if they knew where he had worked, but none had heard of him.

Well, this afternoon after another decadent siesta, we headed over the hill on the island, across the bridge, and up the bank about a km to see the Hospital. We walked first past the impressive (but already decaying) new area inaugurated in 1981. There were some more recent, temporary buildings, and finally the older part that dates back to A. S.'s early days. Some people really knew what they were doing when they built the older ones. They are on stilts, with wide verandas, only one room wide. They were completely built of hard wood and do not have real walls, but are screened in, crisscrossed 2 - by - 2’s. They have made his house into a museum of his things, his bedroom, library, piano, etc. They have a Very Nice young French woman there to explain the museum. They have restored a part of the old hospital to “early days” equipment, operating room, laboratory, etc. All of the other buildings that are of the same period are now housing for the staff. The entire older part is set on a high bank overlooking the river, through huge, old palm trees and a few mangrove trees (I believe).

Albert Schweitzer house

Albert Schweitzer's grave

Admitting our ignorance, we asked the young woman whether A.S. was German or Swiss. She said “French, of course, from Alsace-Lorraine.”  (In retrospect he was born a German, because at that time, it was part of the German Empire, and became France after WWI).  We saw his grave (born 1875, died 1965) as well as those of his wife (who lived mainly and died in Europe) and several other trusty co-workers. We’ll have to read up on him when we get back, as with everything we’ve seen, but we wonder quite what made him so much more famous than, say, Dr. Beck. Of course there is the musician - philosopher part of him, but we also wonder if he didn’t have a little Oral Roberts syndrome; there were pictures all over of him thinking, planning the hospital, or meeting famous people (including Pablo Cassals). He arrived in 1913 and died there in 1965. I guess that span alone would make a person famous.

This morning we went down the shore of the island here to the main part of town, changed money and mailed letters. Helena thinks this is the busiest port she has seen in the river-traffic category, and that includes Manaus. At just about any given moment there is a motorized canoe, or larger Yamaha boat, or a barge of some kind moving about. The main part of town is very small and set up the side of the mountain in the river. As much as the town is spread out, it cannot have much more than 6-7000 people, but it seems to carry a lot of punch.

River traffic on the Ogooué at Lambaréné, Gabon

We decided to stay at the convent another night. Not because of snakes, but because we’ve slept 15 of the last 18 nights in the tent and are looking forward to another week or so. It will be nice to leave in the morning with everything dry. Clothes, tent, etc. Besides, they decided to charge us half of what they originally said. About the snakes, if we were to start worrying about them there would be no good place. In fact, in Mitzic we had to herd a big spider (2 1/2 inch diameter?) off the top before we could roll the tent up. All in a night’s sleep.

Lambaréné - N’Dendé, Gabon, Thursday, 3 March, 1983

(HELENA) It was sad to leave the comfort of our convent room, but as Dan just said, nice to have everything clean and --shall we say -- bordering on dry. We had decided to keep up our hitch-hiking effort, so we set off (after saying goodbye to Sor María Angélica and getting the address for “Las Hermanas de la Inmaculada Concepción;” she even said she’d remembered too late that we might have enjoyed sharing some yerba mate with her) and were across the southern Lambaréné bridge by 8:30. We hoped to get as far as Tougamou (91 km) for the night and Sor María Angélica had mentioned they had a convent there and there were Salesiano brothers there.

We were barely across the bridge and were still walking when a Frenchman in a pickup stopped to pick us up. He was accompanied by three local workers --and his little dog -- and was going only 40 km down the road. That was enough for us, so we hopped on the back and rode with them till they dropped us at a crossroads. It was a nice, cool morning and it felt good to be on the way. (Funny how good one feels at the start of the day and one HAS that ride. By the end of the day, no ride in sight, it’s another story.)

We decided to really “hang loose”, so we got our notebooks to play a word game. A couple of cars went down the other road and a couple of paying rides went by going our way, but we had all the time in the world. We were really getting “into” our game when we heard another car coming. We actually were a little disgusted they wouldn’t let us play in peace, but we thought we’d better stuff our things away just in case. When we saw that it was a pickup that would most likely take paying passengers, we didn’t even make the effort to stand up. Ah, we can resume our game. But no, the man drove past us some 75 m, stopped, backed up, and offered us a ride. All of his other passengers were paying, but he wanted to give us a ride as a cadeau. He was a bit insistent that I ride inside, but since there were other people already in the cab, I got out of it. We really can’t imagine what his motivation was. All he said was that his father is rich.

He picked us up at about 10:00 and we drove along at a good clip. It wasn’t too clear when we got on where he was going, but we felt lucky to have a ride at least till the next town. What a surprise when one of the drivers' companions told us they were going to Tchibanga, to the west of N’Dende, where we hoped to get to in three days! We felt mighty lucky because, frankly, there wasn’t much private transport traipsing about. We were really on top of the world when the driver insisted on buying us delicious, COLD, canned orange drinks.

Then our luck kind of turned, we had our ride, BUT... We hadn’t gone long when we

stopped and immediately heard the tire go flat. They changed it quickly, but the replacement looked mighty weak. Sure enough, a little after noon (after we’d stopped for a drink and should have had the spare fixed) the old tire went flat. Nothing to do but sit and wait, 60 km back to Fougamou and 40 forward to Mouila. We all sat around for a while before the driver decided to send the tires with one of his two companions when the next car went by. We knew he couldn’t possibly be back for at least 3 hours. The other two passengers decided to pay that far and take the next car. That left the driver, his helper, and the two of us. We sat there and collected dust for the next 3 hours and finally the driver decided to take a van into Mouila, I guess so he’d be sure to have a comfortable night. But, surprisingly, he told Dan to drive the pickup on in if the other guy returned.

It was dusk by the time the companion returned with the two tires that looked ready for their last lap, but they put one on and Dan drove on into Mouila. He says it felt good to be driving again, although the lights were positioned in such a way that he really had to strain to see very far ahead.

Before the second flat, Dan and I were amazed to see large patches of beautiful grassland surrounded by the forest. It was definitely natural, savannah, but we had expected tall rain forest all the way through to the Congo. (By the way, by some miracle, these are only our third and fourth flats in our 5 1/2 months of travel, the first being on the way to Atar, Mauritania. We haven’t mentioned the second which occurred just the other day as we rode the truck to Bifoun, Gabon. We were clipping right along when we heard a very loud explosion. It was obviously a tire, but we just kept on going. Finally the helper reacted to our worried looks by shrugging and saying “there’s no spare”. We rode the rest of the way on one of the double tires.)

It was dark when we drove into Mouila, but since our driver was going on, we felt we couldn’t pass up such a ride. He insisted we ride in the cab and, before setting off, once again gave us orange drinks. It soon began to rain, so we were glad to be inside. He’d taken on a lot of cargo and some passengers, so they all went under the tarpaulin. He wasn’t a very careful driver, but it was remarkable the way he’d slow way down for every bridge. They’re all narrow, wooden and looked quite slippery from the rain. He’s one of these drivers who is hard to figure out. Here he’d offered us the ride, but we hardly said a word all the way to N’Dendé (78 km away). It was pouring upon arrival and it was almost 2200 hrs. No room at the travelers’ lodge, so he finally dropped us somewhere in the vicinity of the Catholic Mission. He looked relieved to be rid of us; after all, he’d picked us up 12 hours before.

We stopped under a shelter long enough to put on our raincoats and pack covers and walked several blocks to the church. The priest had gone to bed, but we talked with a group of 5 young men from the French army who were there for “maneuvers”. They were occupying the guest quarters, but they said it would be okay for us to sleep on the porch of the priest’s house. So... after a cup of coffee which one of them was kind to offer, we stretched out our sleeping bags, lighted our mosquito coil, and proceeded to spend the night on the priest’s porch. For a while the rain threatened to blow in, but it tapered off before long. We were grateful to be just out of the rain and in a horizontal position.

N’Dendé, Gabon -  Kigamou, Congo, Friday, 4 March, 1983

(DAN) We didn’t want the unknown father to find us sleeping on his porch, so we rolled out at 0500 and were completely ready to go by the time he was up. In fact, he was through breakfast before he knew he had visitors. After his initial surprise he gave us some advice for further travel. So after saying goodbye to our friends, the French military “observers”, we headed out again.

Every now and then one reads about how heavily the French are involved militarily in Africa, but it is a little different to see it first-hand. We think it significant that they are observing “maneuvers” of the Gabon army along the border of the People’s Republic of Congo.[2]

We found that our timing and hitching luck had been most favorable. Only two vehicles make the trip across the border every week and one was leaving that very morning. There was a young Swiss traveler waiting as well. He told us that the accepted price for the stretch we had done free the day before was 10,000 CFA. So we saved $60 yesterday. We felt fairly smart because he, the “experienced European traveler” thought it was not possible to hitch in Gabon. At this point, Pappy, we want to assure you we exercise the utmost caution about who, where, and when we look for rides. But travel here is incredibly expensive: 22 cents/km per passenger.

However, we had to take a paying ride to cross the border into Congo. Our vehicle could not leave until the gendarmerie opened at 0830, so we had time to go to the market for some hot bread and good, cheap bananas. This is on top of the granola we are still enjoying. We finally got loaded up at 0900, but the officials, for some reason or another, would not let us leave till after 1100. It wasn’t clear what the problem was, but we’re pretty sure that it has to do with the driver and collector being Congolese. A couple of gendarmes got on with us and, as soon as we got out of town had us all get down for another identity check. It does not help that perhaps half of the officials are visibly and olfactorially drunk. These are the ones that feel the need to impress us with their authority, their command of either English or US geography, etc. We had two more, long, involved identity checks. They were laborious with us but never threatened the white travelers; we overheard, however, 7000 CFA worth of bribes demanded from the African travelers. If you are getting tired of all these encounters with officials, identity checks, etc., so are we.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer

[2] Judging from the Cubans that we met in the Congo, there were probably Cuban soldiers “observing” the border with Gabon.