Slept in a tent with Ann (rather than on the truck as usual) to get early night but the natives were very loud so not a great sleep. Stomach bad again so no breakfast. Walked on with Vicki through a road tunnelled through overhanging bamboo.
Back on the truck, I sat in the crows' nest all morning, clambering down for a bustling shopping stop where Jim, Adri and Tom bought folding carved wooden chairs and I again missed out on a cold Fanta.
Continued on a road busy with pedestrians and trucks piled with people, fruit and packages. Passed a silent funeral procession: a group of men carrying a litter bearing a woman’s body draped in printed cotton material, with no wailing or sounds of grief. A stop for wood almost became a brawl when some local men arrived and one started yelling at us and dragging the wood from our hands. A couple of them were more friendly but the aggressive one even tried to claim one of the pieces of wood we'd unloaded to add new ones.
The road ahead was lined with suspended drawstring bags and then baskets of charcoal for sale, in several sizes. I would have happily bought a basket and left them the charcoal, their craft being of more value to me, but weaving leaves from the surrounding jungle is a part of life here and the most cost-effective packaging available. (It's also biodegradable, so much better for the planet. I wonder if they still use woven baskets or plastic is part of their lives now.) Our cooks bought out one man's roadside pineapple stall. We stopped for lunch at wooden benches under some palms and two youngsters with hands on hips watched us eat from across the road.
Very short post lunch drive to Kisangani, where we hung out of the truck looking for Albert, Adri's boyfriend, who was meeting us there from Holland.
Kisangani seemed almost like a ghost town; run down and closed, stretches reminding me of an outback Australian town with large balconied corner buildings like country pubs. Crossed the impressive Congo River near some spectacular chutes, water crashing and foaming over huge boulders, on the worst maintained bridge so far in our journey. There were damaged boards, loose ones, and missing ones, with river rocks visible through the gaping holes, and we groaned as we slowly crossed. What an entrance to a town!
Finally made it to the infamous Hotel Olympia where Albert emerged from the bar to enfold Adri in his arms as we whistled, cheered and clapped. There was barely room for our truck and tents among the thatched pagodas, children’s dressmakers dummy, broken furniture, Coca-Cola and beer cartons littering the hotel's rear yard. Unknowingly parked Stanley within range of the tethered chimpanzee Buta, who delighted us with her antics on the truck with Myrta's toothbrush, and pulling out the pegs and unzipping Anne's tent, pitched beneath her tree. She had us laughing for hours.
Many of our group ended up stoned and drunk playing ping-pong and table soccer. Vicki and I crashed out while the others raged on.
Caption: Buta plays with Myrta's toothbrush in the camp behind Hotel Olympia, Kinshasa
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