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family with hooves and a humanlike shriek) frolics in the always-wet gloom of fantasy forests seen nowhere else on earth. I had to come here and experience these hidden wonders in deepest central Africa for myself.
My destination was the town of Beni in eastern Zaire, couched on the lower flanks of these great Ruwenzori Mountains. However, I began my journey a long way from Beni, over eleven hundred miles to the west, in the capital city of Kinshasa (Leopoldville) on the great Zaire (Congo) River—the Amazon of Africa. Getting to the mountains presented experiences and challenges that, by themselves, could have filled a good half of this book.
Part I—Kinshasa to Kisangani by Riverboat
Chaos. Absolutely bloody, sweaty pandemonium.
I though I’d get there early. “Board at dawn,” an official of the riverboat told me. “Afterwards—all crazy!” Well—it was barely dawn. The sun was still below the horizon. And it was already crazy. Passengers—hundreds of them—tumbling across the docks, down metal plates that pretended to be a gangplank—goats, pigs, bundled chickens, caged monkeys, buckets full of vegetables and meat, baskets bulging and covered with sacks, women in bright flowery frocks carrying babies papoose-style, little children dragging even smaller children, an Indian merchant balancing twelve bound rolls of printed fabric on his head, three Bantu tribesmen manhandling an enormous trunk with brass padlocks and a Christmasy ornamentation of stickers and transit labels. And soldiers too—big fellows with angry faces and automatic rifles and a penchant for pushing and bawling at the churning, shouting, screaming mass.
I hardly had a chance to see the boat from the quay. The General something or other—a lopsided, low-in-the-water, rusty white five-deck creature pierced with tiny windows—mother to a flotilla of five even rustier barges strapped with frayed cables to its superstructure and to one another. Together they were easily the size of a football field. My ticket indicated I had a “to-share” cabin in the main vessel. Most of the crowd was surging farther forward into the shadows of the single-and double-deck barges. Over three thousand people were in there, I was told later, for our seven-hundred-mile, eight-day ride from Kinshasa to Kisangani (Stanleyville). I don’t know how many were in the main boat, but it felt like a floating palace compared to the stifling claustrophobia of the prisonlike rooms and passageways on those barges.
I found my room. Two bunk beds and a porthole encrusted with explosions of rust and black cobwebs. Couldn’t open it. Wouldn’t make any damned difference anyhow. Never been in a tiny space so hot before. Sweat pouring. Wanted to dump my pack but nobody around, no key, so dragged it back up on deck and sat in a small patch of shade, wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself for the next eight days.
Time passed very slowly in the sweltering heat. They’d said the boat would leave at ten A.M. It was now one P.M. and still no sign of departure. More shouting, desperate passengers—more goats and chickens. Finally a great blast of steam, whistles, gongs, and soldiers giving vent to their pent-up anger by dragging away two raggedly dressed men who tried to leap for the side of the boat as it creaked and sagged into the main channel of the river. Howls and yells from friends or family on board. Didn’t make a bit of difference. The soldiers had something to punch and pound at last. God—sometimes I hate Africa.
And then again, sometimes I don’t. Ten or more miles upstream, things settled down. People came out on the long veranda with stools and folding chairs; there was the chink of beer bottles, even the aroma of food being cooked somewhere deep in the growling bowels of this ungainly boat-barge conglomeration. A breeze too. And shade. Now we were getting civilized. Kinshasa was gone. Farewell, festering, unworkable city
My destination was the town of Beni in eastern Zaire, couched on the lower flanks of these great Ruwenzori Mountains. However, I began my journey a long way from Beni, over eleven hundred miles to the west, in the capital city of Kinshasa (Leopoldville) on the great Zaire (Congo) River—the Amazon of Africa. Getting to the mountains presented experiences and challenges that, by themselves, could have filled a good half of this book.
Part I—Kinshasa to Kisangani by Riverboat
Chaos. Absolutely bloody, sweaty pandemonium.
I though I’d get there early. “Board at dawn,” an official of the riverboat told me. “Afterwards—all crazy!” Well—it was barely dawn. The sun was still below the horizon. And it was already crazy. Passengers—hundreds of them—tumbling across the docks, down metal plates that pretended to be a gangplank—goats, pigs, bundled chickens, caged monkeys, buckets full of vegetables and meat, baskets bulging and covered with sacks, women in bright flowery frocks carrying babies papoose-style, little children dragging even smaller children, an Indian merchant balancing twelve bound rolls of printed fabric on his head, three Bantu tribesmen manhandling an enormous trunk with brass padlocks and a Christmasy ornamentation of stickers and transit labels. And soldiers too—big fellows with angry faces and automatic rifles and a penchant for pushing and bawling at the churning, shouting, screaming mass.
I hardly had a chance to see the boat from the quay. The General something or other—a lopsided, low-in-the-water, rusty white five-deck creature pierced with tiny windows—mother to a flotilla of five even rustier barges strapped with frayed cables to its superstructure and to one another. Together they were easily the size of a football field. My ticket indicated I had a “to-share” cabin in the main vessel. Most of the crowd was surging farther forward into the shadows of the single-and double-deck barges. Over three thousand people were in there, I was told later, for our seven-hundred-mile, eight-day ride from Kinshasa to Kisangani (Stanleyville). I don’t know how many were in the main boat, but it felt like a floating palace compared to the stifling claustrophobia of the prisonlike rooms and passageways on those barges.
I found my room. Two bunk beds and a porthole encrusted with explosions of rust and black cobwebs. Couldn’t open it. Wouldn’t make any damned difference anyhow. Never been in a tiny space so hot before. Sweat pouring. Wanted to dump my pack but nobody around, no key, so dragged it back up on deck and sat in a small patch of shade, wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself for the next eight days.
Time passed very slowly in the sweltering heat. They’d said the boat would leave at ten A.M. It was now one P.M. and still no sign of departure. More shouting, desperate passengers—more goats and chickens. Finally a great blast of steam, whistles, gongs, and soldiers giving vent to their pent-up anger by dragging away two raggedly dressed men who tried to leap for the side of the boat as it creaked and sagged into the main channel of the river. Howls and yells from friends or family on board. Didn’t make a bit of difference. The soldiers had something to punch and pound at last. God—sometimes I hate Africa.
And then again, sometimes I don’t. Ten or more miles upstream, things settled down. People came out on the long veranda with stools and folding chairs; there was the chink of beer bottles, even the aroma of food being cooked somewhere deep in the growling bowels of this ungainly boat-barge conglomeration. A breeze too. And shade. Now we were getting civilized. Kinshasa was gone. Farewell, festering, unworkable city
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