the ituri-forest, DR Congo
g r e e n
the congolese say: there is africa. and then there is the congo!
and they are right – the DR Congo is something special, something unique. at the 25th january 2007 we entered the country in goma, the “capital” of eastern DRC. thanks to Sekombi, a friend of us, who got us at the border we even skipped the obligatory, usually high intensive investigation of the luggage and settled down for the first days in the cultural center run by sekombi.goma is a thriving but somewhat dirty and exhausting city: noisy music in front of many, many, many small shops trys to attract customers, the smelly dust of countless garbage-fires lies in the streets where the snow-white vehicles of the UN-Mission in the DRC seems to be omnipresent. after the elections, which took place just 2 month ago we find ourselves in a “let’s do it” – atmosphere. everybody seems to feel just the way the energetic lady in the congolese embassy in kampala as she was convinced: ” Give us two years – and we are back again!”
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for our first stage to butembo, 300 km north of goma we entered a bus. it is forbidden to cross the Virunga national park, the oldest np on the continent, by ones own. the security remains fragile. hundreds of soldiers are guarding the road, every 10 km stood a double-post. our driver handed each of them a cigarette or some congolese franc through the window – and of we went. from Butembo we enjoyed our first 50 km by bicycle on congolese soil – including some spectacular views.
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soon it began. we entered the ituri-rainforest. riding through the forest is somewhat exhausting: it’s hot, humid, greeeen – and great. a noisy silence surrounded us, myriards of birds and insects are constantly “talking” with eachother. one might get a glimpse of a monkey at the “shores”of the forest, but most of the time you could only hear them, holding their brisk “general assemblies” in the trees – noisy, not far, but invisible. the “green’ness” of the forest is overwhelming. the so called road winds it’s
way through thousands of different trees, palm-boulevards, bamboos-avenues, seemingly never ending, only occassionally broken up by one of the goodnumbered rivers. oh what a seductive thought: the fangorn-forest described in the “lord of the rings” isn’t just an illusion. it is right here. and it is sleeping. but be aware! once it will awake nothing will be like before …
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there is also everything necessary to enrich the life of a cyclist: steep mountains, rocky piste, sand, washboard and – mud! sometimes it was just like this: get off the bicycle – pushing, pulling, carrying – get on the bicycle for 500 metres and … get off again. we were not alone. the “tolekas” were there. these are cyclists, who carry up to 180 kg on their bicycles for up to 500 km – and retour. they carry coffee, salt, sugar, softdrinks and any other convenient goods. here I’d like to pronounce my deepest respect for those guys, so much stronger than us. they literally are the venes of life for the people living in the forest.
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this wouldn’t have been the DR Congo if there would have been only cycling. so we spend quite some time at the police-checkpoints: immigration office, office for tourism-ervices, security officers, the ministry of finance – every thinkable institution seemed to have an outpost in the forest. everybody “representative” was important. needles to say, that the money they asked for, was “just for our security”. “only 10 USD per person” was the average. it took us quite a lot of training und convincing efforts to pass all those checkpoints without paying any money. amazingly enough – that’s exactly what we managed to do. the letter of recommendation from the congolese embassy in Kampala proved invaluable at those ocassions. a official document more valuable than gold there.
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3 weeks after we entered the forest we eventually arrived at – the “heart of africa”. kisangani. this town lies literally “right in the middle of africa. though we were a little scarred by the three weeks cycling through the mud we soon regained our strength – as we discovered a lebanese restaurant. we stormed into a the establishement to celebrate a real “shawarma”. Ohh what a delicacy. after 3 weeks of “wari na waharagi” (rice and beans) my gum was upside-down. but i want to be fair – we enjoyed some great monkey- or antelope-meat in the forest.
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and it was in Kisangani that we got to know our “home” for the weeks to come : the congo-river. but that is another story …
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to see more pictures of the forest, click here
