Woke up to the grumbling of people discovering that thongs and shoes they’d left outside their tents had disappeared during the night. Stupidly we had also left our new stools out and four were gone. So too were Ben’s clothes, left out to dry - two pairs of underpants, denim shorts and shirt - and the three pairs of undies I had hung at the end of the truck. This resulted in our first blow up as a group, with some of us wanting to make a stand and demand the return of our stuff and others saying we should do nothing. I didn't understand why our stupidly leaving things out made this stealing okay. The "do nothings" wouldn't sit back and do nothing if the same thing happened back home, even if they had left things out. What was great though was that while our words were heated the tension dissipated quickly and things returned to normal, with no lingering tensions about our different opinions.
Kel and Ben tried to fix the gearbox while we were arguing.
Marcus and several others headed into the village and brought back a young lad who’d hightailed it on seeing them. They put him in the back of the truck and tensions raised again when the rest of the villagers congregated around us, the boy's mother wailing horribly. The crowd seemed far angrier at the lad then at us but we were also worried about the risks to us and the likelihood of us getting anything back. Vicki doctored the lad's horribly raw ankle before we drove off, threatening to take the boy to the police in Bangui but dropping him just on the edge of the village. (Doubt that this improved international relations!)
The EO truck overtook us as we limped towards Bangui with only three gears. I had a great talk with Adri about personalities, her work, developing, learning to like yourself and relationships. We finally reached the infamous capital city of CAR, with our first stop at Post Restante, where we waited for ages for our cache of letters. Then we traipsed from bank to bank. They had a minimum exchange of $60 so I cashed $20 with Adri and we got more local money than we’d expected because the teller made a mistake with the rate.
We rushed to put our passports in for Zaire visas, pleasantly surprised that they would cost only 5000 Central African Francs. Then we sat down to read our mail. What letters: two from Mum containing lots of cricket clippings, news that Mum and Dad have bought a new house, and its address, comments about my long letter to them and that my sister Annie had sent me a paper Christmas, a typical loving thing for her to do, complete with tree and pudding to Nigeria, but because we didn't go there I missed it - that parcel would come back to me, in Melbourne, two years later! (Exodus had provided a list of Post Restante addresses but not dates when we were expected there, so family and friends gambled on us receiving letters.)
Another letter dropped the bombshell "gossip" that my recent ex had split with his post-me girlfriend and become involved with Jenny (I already knew this) and she is pregnant (I did not know this), with the baby due in March. I felt a kaleidoscope of emotions: deep affection for Ray, shock that this was considered gossip and sadness that Ray didn’t tell me himself. How different everything will be when I get home. I hope Ray, Jenny and I can be friends. (We were able to be and are still close all these years later.)
Bought a cold drink and two greeting cards of women made with butterfly wings. Women storekeepers led me by hand around expensive food stalls. Visited the filthiest cesspit toilet I’ve been.
We headed to our campsite, where the black sky showered us with the briefest but wonderful shower of rain. Several of us stood out in it with arms raised.
The toilets stank so badly I held my nose and breathed through my mouth and was as quick as possible. The shower was an intermittent drizzle amid a haze of mosquitoes, so I washed in the laundry trough instead, crouching down below eye level with the hose. Used to my crazy antics, our mob laughed but the Encounter Overland girls found it a bit much.
Lounged in the campsite bar, where we could have bought baby crocodiles, before going back to the truck. Made a huge fruit curry for dinner, enjoying cooking with everyone away from the truck and fire rather than breathing down our necks.
Pre-warned about the dangers of Bangui, we rostered two-person guard duty shifts, each of us at opposite ends of our precision pitched row of tents. There was an official camp guard who patrolled with a torch behind his ear and armed with a bow and arrow, but I heard him warn someone hidden behind the fence not to wait because we weren't going to bed!
Geoff got stoned and drunk with EO passengers in the bar, and started telling one-liner jokes, many of them on the highly inappropriate "coon" theme. There was no stopping him so I observed from a distance his swaying progress around the bar and loud conversations.
I've got lots of letters to write but am too tired to start now and it's probably best to think before I put to paper what's in my head. Ray in my thoughts tonight. So I went to bed instead.
Pandemonium when Geoff finally emerged from the bar and headed for his bed, staggering and giggling his way into and out of the truck, which reduced everyone to hysterical laughter, and then collapsing into his tent with his feet sticking out.
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