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Post by onlymark on Jun 22, 2011 16:49:25 GMT
I've just read some reviews of that book since you mention it. It seems quite a few are disappointed mainly by the help he had from NGO's etc. Nevertheless, it's quite a journey. I'll put it on my Christmas list.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 22, 2011 16:58:35 GMT
Just remembered - I lost just under twenty kilos on this trip between London and Capetown, 90 to 70.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2011 17:56:55 GMT
On my very first trip to Cambodia, the bridges on the Poipet road were like this. But, at least for the bridge part, it was even more frightening than your experience, because I was crammed in the back seat of a pickup cab with 3 other people. That meant that if the truck went off the bridge, I did not have a rat's chance of getting out of the cab alive, unlike your open truck (and I suppose people were not riding in back when it was driven across bridges like that). We must have gone across at least half a dozen bridges like this, before getting to the famous mud pits. I don't think I have experienced such adrenaline rushes in my life as going over those bridges and through the mud pits. (I think I mentioned in my own story what the people in the open cab in the back looked like upon arrival.) The distance is 143 kilometers, and we left Poipet at 13:30 to arrive at around 21:00 (My LP guidebook had specified "be sure you leave Poipet early enough to arrive in Siem Reap before dark.") I will never forget that it only took a nice $5 hotel room and a magnificent hot shower for me to change my opinion from "I would never do that again in my life, no matter what!" to "Hey, I could do that again!" But I would really like to be given the option of getting out of the cab and walking across such bridges on foot in cases like that. Unfortunately, our local expert, Hwinpp, tells us that the road is perfect now. I must find the road less travelled. (Losing 20 kilos would be perfect.)
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Post by onlymark on Jun 22, 2011 19:09:59 GMT
You're right in that the bridges etc are not unique, but it seems normal in many parts of Africa that they don't improve at all as opposed to what Hwinpp says as regards his area. There is a lot of improvement done by the Chinese, as expected, though I do wonder when they leave and the maintenance is once more handed over, how long they'll last. It's a shame because to me one of the first steps for a country to improve itself is to have roads where goods can be transported to markets.
All the bridges we crossed no matter what the country, I'd always if needs be get everyone out before I or the trainee (if I had one, which I did on this trip) drives across.
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Post by lola on Jun 22, 2011 20:43:36 GMT
Holy smokes.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 23, 2011 7:31:27 GMT
We spent a slightly uncomfortable first night, the jungle seemed full of strange sounds and also we weren’t too sure about our security. The next day or two we spent negotiating our first bridges and bog holes. One thought that I had was that I didn’t know what thickness of tree trunk would support the weight of the truck. It was very gingerly that I drove onto the first few bridges until I began to judge better the strength of the wood. We also managed to get through the first of the bog holes without getting stuck, this helped relieve the tension somewhat as we were all nervous that we would spend a lot of time digging our way out of every hole. The truck was doing well in pulling us out of every one.
We reached a village called Gemena and had to stop at a military checkpoint. They insisted that they search all the baggage and the truck, this, I knew, would take a long time but we had no choice. They did a very thorough search of everything and turned up a rubber stamp I had in my briefcase, one I’d had made up and bought in India. The stamp was one I used to stamp someone’s vaccination certificate when they didn’t have an entry for cholera. More and more doctors are refusing to give a vaccination for cholera and thus not stamping the persons certificate. This causes a problem at many borders where they will refuse entry to someone without the stamp. To save a lot of bother, hassle and explanations I just stamp the certificate myself with a fictitious address for a clinic and forge a signature. It has always worked before but for some reason I had forgotten to hide the stamp.
All the vaccination certificates were collected and they found that the stamp matched three different certificates. I was called into an office and grilled about me being a doctor and it not being on my passport. I told them I wasn’t but I worked in a clinic with them, they administered the injections and I was authorised to stamp the certificate. They argued that only doctors were allowed to use the stamp, I tried to convince them that in my country the doctor was not and it was the administration person of the clinic that, after confirming the injection had been done was allowed to use the stamp.
They asked as to why I had the stamp with me. I told them it was a stamp only I could use so it was no use giving it to someone else. They asked as to who was now stamping other certificates if I was here. I said that there was more than one person at each clinic that carried a stamp and someone else was now doing it. The chief who was doing the asking was clearly not happy with my explanations. He said that he was authorised to use stamps for different purposes but if he travelled away from his office then he didn’t take the stamps with him, they stayed locked in his desk. I tried to persuade him further that this was not normal practice in my country, each person carried his stamps with him wherever he went.
I had to pay a fine of 60 US dollars and he let us go. I immediately hid the stamp, and two more they had not found in my briefcase, inside the bodywork of the truck. The next day we came to our first major river in the country, the Mongala, the one we crossed to enter that was called the Ubangui. The village on the bank where the track ran out was called Akula. There were a few mud brick huts, a small shop that had nothing inside it, Immigration and Customs post. It would seem that every large village we came to had officials of one sort or another.
At Akula they were reasonably friendly, just gave us a once over and said we could continue. The problem was that we couldn’t, as there seemed to be no ferry. We asked were it was and was told it was over on the far bank. We looked closely, the river being around 600 metres wide, and could see tucked up into the trees a small pontoon type ferry, similar to the one we had used before.
With a mixture of English and sign language we found out that the ferry wouldn’t come back because it had no diesel and no battery to start the engine. This then entailed us removing the battery from the truck, taking one of the Jerry cans of fuel from the trailer and getting in to a small boat, which was rowed over to the ferry. The ferry “captain” was eventually found nearby and his eyes lit up with glee when he saw me, the diesel, the battery and what he believed to be a pocket full of money.
We negotiated a price, one that was close to the price that I had been told from notes I had that was a fair price, and with somewhat of a performance managed to get the engine started and we returned to the truck. I attached the battery back and drove on, the ferry settling down again with the extra weight. The ferry was supposed to have two engines, one each side of the pontoon, but this only had one that worked. This resulted in the ferry trying to drive itself round in a circle but the captain must have been used to this as we made nearly a straight line to the far bank.
Here though the water was quite shallow and the ferry kept bottoming out as we drew close. So in a balletic style movement the captain steered the ferry in circles, first hitting the bottom and then swinging it off, then hitting again and swinging off until we were getting dizzy. Eventually we arrived at the bank, but facing the wrong direction, I would have to reverse the truck off. I was in four wheel drive because the drop from the ferry was quite steep, the angle of the bank was also quite steep, the ferry was narrow so that it was difficult to reverse with the trailer and it all added up to a heart stopping moment when, as the rear wheels of the truck found purchase on dry land, the front wheels that were still on the ferry and also being driven by the engine, began to push the ferry away as it was not secured to the bank.
The quicker I tried to reverse the quicker the ferry was pushed away from me. The front of the truck dropped of the edge of the ferry into about a metre of water, the ground underneath being thankfully quite solid so I managed to reverse all the way up to a flat area on the bank. After a quick check to make sure all was good we mounted up and drove away. We drove on through the next two major villages cum towns as the days passed in one long round of driving through bog holes, cutting our way through the forest tracks and repairing the bridges enough so that we could cross.
At times we would come to a barrier across the road manned by some military personnel. We would then spend the next few hours while they searched through our things. The “soldiers” all seemed to be aged about sixteen, they all seemed to be nearly drunk and they all had some form of gun that they took pride in showing off. These were very tense times as they always seemed interested in the money and clothes that we had, they always wanted our boots or anything else they could find. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to refuse them anything, one perceived slight and you never knew what might happen. But I felt that once the dam had been broken, once they had received something then their demands would do nothing but increase. It tested our diplomacy to the limit, as we were in effect powerless to stop them taking whatever they wanted.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 23, 2011 7:35:03 GMT
Once being stopped the quickest way to carry on would have been to offer them money, not the best thing because they would then demand more and more. The result was that they took their time in searching everything they could, checking all the paperwork and hoping to find a discrepancy that they could use to get money from us. One morning, soon after setting off we were stopped at a checkpoint and an hour or two passed while we were searched. Soon after lunch we pulled up at another. None of the group relished the thought of having to be delayed again for what seemed no good reason.
We were told to empty all our bags out and one of the English girls was clearly fed up with one of the soldiers going through all her personal belongings and enjoying the inconvenience and embarrassment. So when it came to be her turn to have her bag searched she stopped the soldier reaching into her bag and told him that she would show him everything one by one if he would just be patient. It was quite funny to watch the reaction of the soldier as the embarrassment tables had been turned. She would pull out an item of underwear, hold it up in front of his face and say, “Knickers.” Then another one and repeat, “Knickers.” Then a bra, another bra, more knickers, then the underwear that she had no time to wash was placed in front of his face, then the final straw for him was when she pulled out a box of tampons and removed each one individually from the box, maybe twenty in all, laid them carefully in a line on top of a clean towel then picked up the first, showed it to him and said, “Tampon.”
Then the next, and the next and by the time she had got to about the fifth or sixth the soldier stood up and started to put her clothes back in her bag. She glared at him, snatched the clothes and the bag away from him and carefully began to fold her clothes before putting them away. The soldier turned round and walked off. Risky thing to do but I admired her pluckiness. The rest of the search carried on but it seemed quite quicker than most from then on and we were soon on our way.
Imagine the scene, you have been travelling all morning and just before lunch time you come to the outskirts of a village where you are stopped by another of the numerous military checkpoints. The officer in charge decides that he wants to search all the bags and the truck so you begin to go through the motions. It stopped raining about an hour before, the sun has come out and the ground is steaming. The temperature is around 32 centigrade and humidity is 90%, you are feeling hot, tired and irritable. For many days the jungle has been crowding in, the only view you have is a strip of sky directly overhead, you can only see the next hundred metres or so down the track.
Each side of you is dark, as the light doesn’t seem to be able to penetrate very far through the trees. You’ve had to wash in the odd stream you pass, there is nowhere that you can have a proper shower or bath. The humidity is causing the clothes you wear to rot, your mosquito bites are itching and your boots have definitely seen better days, you are wondering if they will last long enough to see out the journey. All is quiet, there still is a little hum in your ears from the engine and the truck is making odd little ticking noises as it cools down. All the bags have been unloaded on to the only patch of reasonably clean earth at the side of the track and you are waiting patiently for the soldier to finish digging around in your dirty clothes.
You sit and start picking at the drying mud on your body, wafting away the insects flying too close to you. You have been there nearly two hours when you hear a buzzing sound, you can’t identify at first if it is close by or far away. It begins to get louder and you can make out that it seems like the sound of an engine. Your first thought is that it must be someone with a chain saw in the forest but that would be extremely unusual for here. It gets louder and you can identify that it is coming towards you from the direction of the village. You then see cutting on to the track from the side, from a smaller hidden footpath, a motor scooter.
You are surprised enough but as it draws closer you see the rider, dressed in grey, is a nun. It is a white woman, aged about 55years old and she handles the scooter with practised ease as she steers around the puddles of rain water. You notice her clothes are spotlessly clean as she pulls up, switches off the engine, flashes us a small smile and the with a scowl on her face walks up to the army officer. A short conversation takes place, which I couldn’t understand, the nun doing most of the talking, the officer initially standing erect but then slowly looking less and less sure of himself as the tirade continue. The officer turns away and issues some instruction to his men who start to pick up our bags and return them inside the trailer.
The nun walks back to her scooter and opens a large box attached to the rear. From it she pulls out a very large thermos flask and a jug. She comes to us and inside both we see there is ice and ice-cold water, which she gives to us. She explains that she is working at the clinic in the village, it has the only working refrigerator for miles around to keep blood and drugs cool but she makes ice in it as well. One of her patients had come to her and told her we had been stuck at the checkpoint for some time. So she decided to come out to us and tell off the officer in charge as he is always trying to exercise his power around the area and never for any good reason.
The iced water was passed around and it made me feel good to see the group acting once again in an unselfish way. Rather than taking a large guzzle they would take a mouthful and pass it on to the next member irrespective of who they were, the procedure continued until all the group had a drink and then it would go around again, the drinks getting smaller and smaller in an effort to make sure the last person got some as well before it ran out. Eventually the flask and jug were empty and handed back with many grateful thank you’s.
By this time the soldiers had loaded all our bags back and a couple of us went to lock up. The nun was asked what she had said to the officer to make him let us go more quickly. She said that at first he didn’t want to listen but then she mentioned that his mother was being treated in the clinic and how would he feel if she had kept her waiting for so long. It did the trick anyway.
With a wave and a wish of good luck she started her scooter, jumped on it and rode off the way she had come. We returned to the truck and as we were about to drive away I saw a local truck coming up the track from behind us. I didn’t want to be stuck behind it so I drove on to the track in front of it and saw as I did so the truck approach the military barrier. It was only travelling slowly but I had to laugh to myself as I saw it not brake in time, if it had working brakes at all, and drive straight in to the barrier demolishing it. The officer began shouting and waving his arms about and I quickly drove off thinking that maybe someone was having a worse day than we were.
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Post by bjd on Jun 23, 2011 8:11:25 GMT
Thanks to the link you posted on the previous page about the two young Belgians, I can imagine what this drive, the mud, the roads look like. Great to read, although I wouldn't want to do it myself.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 23, 2011 15:46:04 GMT
Several more days passed peacefully, some checkpoints, plenty of bridges and some bog holes later we pulled in to a town called Aketi. By now we realised that each town had its own Immigration and Customs posts. If we could we would drive straight through without stopping but with the tracks being so bad it was easy for someone on a bicycle to catch us up, usually they had a gun and would let us know that it was in our best interests to return.
It was usual to end up paying a couple of dollars each to the officials for them to register us and let us continue. When we reached Aketi we had no choice but go through the procedure. We saw a man in the Immigration office named Marius who told us he was the boss of the area. He told us first to go to the “Tourist” office. The officials here were very surly and demanded a large sum of money from us. Eventually we managed to get them down to just paying ten dollars for a “tourist registration” and the same for a permit to take pictures with the cameras we had already registered.
We stood our ground for as long as we could but they had us at a very big advantage and we were very vulnerable, as we couldn’t travel very fast to get away. We grudgingly paid up and went back to see Marius. He then demanded to see our “Tourist Travel Permit”. This apparently was a permit that gave us the authority to travel through the country. We didn’t have one as it was more than likely a fictitious document anyway but after some negotiation we got the fine down to a manageable sixty dollars from three hundred or more. He then demanded five dollars each to register with the Immigration.
By now we were getting fed up with the constant demands for money, each and every checkpoint and each and every official was making demands. The Dutch girl began to lose her patience and started to shout at Marius and insult him, wanting to know what was his authority to make all the demands. She stormed off and back to the truck. Marius was very unhappy and very angry, he wanted her to be arrested and taken to the capital to go to court for insulting his position. I calmly tried to talk to him. He was aged around 35 years old and the Dutch girl was just 22 years old. I told him that everyone was making demands on us and being somewhat patronising, I said that the girl was young, I asked him to remember when he was young and how that children try and become rebellious, how they seem to have little respect for authority but they grow out of it. I said that she had a strict religious upbringing, this was her first time away from the control of her parents, how her mother had died several years ago from an illness and her father had tried his best to bring her and her three little brothers up in the way of the Lord but her father had been killed in a car crash and she had come away to think about God and sort out her life. She had been under a lot of pressure and was just blowing off steam, as we all do from time to time.
I was laying it on thick. She had not only insulted him but his position and authority, the wrong thing to do with a petty despot.
Marius relented slightly and said that she must pay a fine of 200 dollars and we could go. I told her about this but she refused to pay. Neither side wanted to lose face. The negotiations lasted well in to the afternoon and we ended up spending the night outside the office, Marius going away and told us to tell her to think about it. The next morning the Dutch girl was still refusing to pay anything, Marius turned up and demanded from me the money, he was also losing his patience.
The group were starting to get on at the girl to sort something out otherwise we were going to be stuck there for many days. I spent the next few hours shuttling back between the two trying to reason with them. Also in my mind was the conversation I had with Marius about him also being the boss at the next major town we were going to travel to, Buta. It would take us several days to get there after leaving Aketi and Marius had said that he was going back there soon.
I didn’t want to have to refuse him if he asked for us to take him so I wanted to set off as soon as possible. Also if we met him again in Buta then I didn’t want him to make more demands. I had already cleared with him that if we were to pay a small amount for his services here then we didn’t have to pay any more there. He eventually came down to a fine of 25 dollars and an apology. The girl even refused to pay this but was persuaded by the group, she wouldn’t apologise though. The apology was the main thing I told her, the fine is incidental but she continued to refuse.
In one last try I went back to Marius and apologised for her myself. He spoke English, French and probably one or two tribal languages. I told him that I only spoke English but I was fascinated by the fact that the Danish language doesn’t have a word that translates in to “Please”. Hence they can sound quite demanding and impolite people but also the Dutch don’t have a word for “Sorry”. I was talking out of my arse but I was desperate. So I was saying sorry on her behalf.
I don’t really think he believed me but he wanted the problem to be solved also so after she paid the money he let us go on our way.
The middle of the next day, just as we had negotiated a bridge, Marius came past us in a local pick up on his way to Buta. We actually had to help get the car over the bridge as the driver had misjudged the logs and one side had fallen through a gap. We spent an hour or more jacking it up and blocking it so he could continue. We just hoped that when we caught him up in Buta he would make no more demands.
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Post by lola on Jun 24, 2011 4:36:37 GMT
As a wage slave who seldom gets 2 weeks off in a row per year, I've been wondering what kind of people would have the time and the money for these long adventures. Now I wonder about who'd be in what must be the tiny subset of those with time, money, and a desire to spend them battling mud, mosquitoes and corrupt officials.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 24, 2011 6:49:20 GMT
There are more people than you think, but probably mainly because they don't realise the mud etc bit. The lack of holidays for wage slaves in the US has always made me realise how difficult it would be for me to work there. I did though in San Francisco for a short while but for a UK firm.
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Post by lola on Jun 26, 2011 0:35:35 GMT
Wait. Twenty kilos?
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 5:07:52 GMT
No exaggeration. From leaving London to arriving in Nairobi 18 weeks later - 20 kilos. That's only a kilo a week. I knew I would lose a fair bit so the couple of weeks or so before I went I tended to overeat and put some weight on.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2011 5:19:02 GMT
Yeah.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 6:20:42 GMT
Yeah what?
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 6:45:00 GMT
We arrived in Buta a day or two later and went to see Marius, he was as good as his word and made no more demands. The town is in a mining area and I had known that you needed yet another permit to pass through. On the way into the town we were stopped by checkpoint and had to pay 50 dollars for this so we were again in no mood for other payments. Marius told us that we must go and see the “tourist” officials nearby, this we knew would result in more money changing hands. I decide that if we could we would bypass them.
When we said our farewells to Marius we were just about to leave when the Army found us. We had to follow them to their office and we parked up outside. An officer told us that we had no permission to go any further. He had to contact his superiors in Kisangani for this and we were to stay until he could. He said that he could only make contact with them on the radio but it would take time. We came to an agreement after much discussion that if he was unable to contact them then he had the authority to let us go.
The problem was that he wasn’t prepared to do this for several days. We ended up spending three days in the grounds of a “hotel”, I was constantly asking him for news and if we could continue. The owner of the “hotel” was also demanding money from us to camp there. I told him that we had no choice in the matter as to where we could stay, the army had told us that we must remain here, that we were in effect under arrest and as such we weren’t going to pay at all. If he wanted some money then he would have to claim it from the army.
I told this to the army officer after I confirmed with him that he wasn’t allowing us to move and he just smiled and changed the subject. No doubt it was a regular thing to happen, as I knew of several times that overland trucks had been detained there.
One of my few nice memories of the country happened one night as we were cooking our evening meal in the grounds. I could faintly hear some gospel type singing coming from inside the building. It gradually got louder and louder as probably more and more people joined in. Several of the group and myself went to the door to find out. We saw a crowd of about forty inside and singing away as sweetly as they could. We stood entranced as they finished one song and drifted on to another. In the time w had been there we realised that this was the first time we had heard anyone singing, the people seemed so serious and down trodden, afraid to say boo to a goose. The singing went on and on, some were swaying to the music, others dancing. Everyone was having a good time, I was told by a local also watching that it was the town choir practising. It sounded so good that they surely didn’t need to practise, it sounded almost perfect. I told him this and he smiled in what might have been pride. There were rousing songs, rhythmic songs, haunting songs, no words I could understand but it was so beautiful that dinner was all forgotten, we were rooted to the spot. After nearly two hours they stopped and left the building in ones and twos. I felt privileged in some way to have witnessed it and the memory lingers on.
The Army officer was quite reasonable about the problem but wanted at least to be able to say to his superiors that he had detained us for several days while he tried to get authority via the radio. This never came and on the morning of the fourth day I went to see him again and told him that if we were to be detained any longer then I demanded to speak with my Embassy and inform them as to the situation. I told him that I had spoken with them before we entered the Congo and gave them a date as to when we would exit. If that date came and went then they would make “enquiries” as to what had become of us.
To save them wasting their time and everyone else’s it would be easier just to let us continue on. I don’t think this persuaded him but nevertheless he told us to leave. I quickly went back to the truck, gathered everyone together, loaded up and sped out of town as fast as the track would let us. We never went to the Tourist Office after all.
Finding somewhere to camp for the night was a continual problem. We didn’t like to be too near a village because of the security risk and the often drunken soldiers that would appear from nowhere to demand money or alcohol. If we did find a break in the jungle then within an hour or so there would be a group of locals standing nearby looking at us with curiosity. Sometimes in their friendliness they would start to come into the camp to try and chat or generally have a look around. Not normally a problem but you had to be continually on your guard. There were times when we would sling the long towrope across the entrance of the clearing, as a psychological barrier more than a physical one, this would often work well. One night we found a large clearing just off the track, which seemed ideal. There was a large area of hard packed earth and scattered trees to provide some shade. We pitched the camp an hour or so before sunset and began to cook our evening meal. Normally it was very quiet with the odd sound of the birds or small animals moving around. As the sun started to disappear we could hear a buzzing noise, it began to get louder and louder, one or two bees started to fly around, then there were more and more. The droning became so loud that it nearly drowned out speech and we realised all too soon that we were going to be attacked by bees. We all dived inside whatever cover we could find, some in their tents, some under the mosquito nets, some in the rear of the truck and a couple in the cab. I was under one of the nets and I could see a swarm of them settling on the open bowls of water we were to use for washing up. Soon they were covered and you couldn’t make out even the shape of them. Several bees tried to get under my net but I kept it firmly fastened down. I could see through the windows inside the truck and those in their were fighting a battle to try and kill any that had crept in.
Later I was told that the couple in the cab were amazed that some were trying to push through the rubber seals around the windows to get inside. Killer bees I don’t know, but they certainly seemed to be after us. The onslaught lasted over half an hour at least, the noise gradually lessening, the bees flying off leaving lots of dead in the water bowls, the water having nearly all disappeared. We all staggered out into the open checking each other for stings. It was unlikely that as it got dark they would be back but we rose very early the next morning and drove quickly away just at first light wondering if they would reappear.
We were never quite sure what the reason was that we had to have a permit for the cameras and a permit to take photographs with them. It was just really a way to get money out of us but knowing the sensitivity of the authorities we were always very careful when we used them. It seemed you weren’t allowed to take pictures of any government building, any of the officials, any of the bridges or in effect anything else. One day one of the group was so appalled at the state of one of the bridges that she took some photographs of it to show people at home what we had been through. What we didn’t know is that some official who had just caught up with us on his cycle was watching us. The reason he was after us was that we had just passed through his village without calling at his office, we didn’t even know it was there but he explained to us that we should have done. How, I don’t know, but we should have done. It was always difficult when approached by these officials because you never knew who they were and what power they had. On their cycles they could often travel faster than us especially when we were slowed by one of the many bridges. He demanded a large sum of money as a fine for taking photographs in a “military” area and of failing to report to him. After a long negotiation it came down to twenty dollars, which I paid. What else could you do? Kill him?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2011 10:28:53 GMT
Yeah, I'm sure you carefully calculated your overeating as a preventive measure. Meanwhile, I was wondering about boredom during these forced delays. Clearly, you were often stuck in places that do not seem to have been the most picturesque sites in the country. Was it safe for people to go on long walks? Did people read books more than once? Assuming that Walkmans had already been invented, was there a sufficient supply of batteries? How many people were keeping journals?
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 11:42:44 GMT
The only calculation I did do was how often I could stuff my face with fish and chips and pies.
Boredom was a problem. Not only when stuck somewhere but also on long driving days. Most at some time would nod off. A lot had diaries they filled out every day but I'm sure most entries were fairly standard about where, when what etc. The truck did have a largish selection of books which was added to as trips ended and there was usually something to read without reading the same one twice. Usually it was safe to go for a walk if there was two or three of you and many people did. I would give them a time to be back and they'd tell me a rough direction they were heading in just in case.
Surprisingly few came with Walkmans or any derivative of them. I sometimes had a truck that had a speaker system in the back and we'd have music playing but as you would expect there was always debates over what to listen to. You could buy batteries nearly everywhere and those with them had no real problem getting them apart from in the really remote places.
Thinking of it though I'm not really sure what people did to pass the time. I was usually busy with one thing or another but I do remember a lot of times just sitting there with people having a chat about all sorts of things.
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Post by bjd on Jun 26, 2011 14:51:34 GMT
As impatient as I am at home and as much as I hate standing in line for anything, when I am elsewhere (out of France) sitting in a bus or a train or just not doing much, for some reason it doesn't bother me. I would imagine it might have been the same for the people you were driving around -- whatever they saw would have been different so even if they weren't doing anything, it wasn't necessary to fill the time with reading or music.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 15:04:01 GMT
Probably, yes. They were content to stare out the window or just put their brain into screensaver mode.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2011 15:05:51 GMT
I'm the same way on any moving conveyance -- which is why I was wondering more about the 2,3,4 day delays.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 17:27:27 GMT
If necessary, if I feel the mood needs it or I want the group to alter a certain mind set I'll organise things in these cases to keep their minds of it a little. Usually a competition of some form like an Olympics with events like shoe throwing or balancing a tent pole etc etc. There'd be ten to twenty events of which anyone can compete in as many as they want. I'd make medals out of coloured paper. There were a number of activities I could draw on - one dreaded one being a thorough truck clean of all the equipment.
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Post by komsomol on Jun 26, 2011 17:32:53 GMT
No Scrabble tournaments?
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Post by onlymark on Jun 26, 2011 19:16:47 GMT
I was never much one for games that required thought. If I could hit it or kick it I was well in. The most complex was 'Snap'. I'd tend to get confused if a game was more complicated than that.
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Post by lola on Jun 29, 2011 0:39:38 GMT
The bees sound horrifying.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 29, 2011 7:40:27 GMT
So, to round this off - On the outskirts of Poko, another of the village cum town places, we kept an eye out for any officials as we drove slowly through. As we reached the far side there seemed to be no activity as we came to another metal bridge. This one was the same as many others, no wood to form a roadway, we would have to lay our own, the bridge only just being wide enough to get the truck on with hardly any space down the side. As we drove to within a metre or two I saw two men rush from behind us with a long bamboo pole and hold it across the entrance and blocked it off. I stopped to find out what was happening. It was possible they were doing us a favour by stopping us going on because it was unsafe. I should have known better. They demanded 50 dollars as a toll to use the bridge. I told them that for that money I could buy the whole thing. They were not amused and neither was I. There was no way I was going to pay this at all, my patience was wearing thin. I stood and argued with them but they continued to hold the pole across the front of the truck. I did no more than get back into the truck, engage first gear and start to drive very slowly forward. The front of the truck began to press on the pole and it bowed in the middle as the two men struggled to hold it. The truck was stronger than they were and they dropped it under the front wheels. I ran over it with a satisfying crack as it was crushed and broken. The men ran off and I saw them run back with another pole. By this time I was already nosing on to the bridge and there wasn’t enough room for them to get past. The group managed to climb around the side and we began the long job of laying wood down to cross. Somehow they eventually got passed us and began to still demand the “toll”. They told me that there was an Immigration office just over the other side and we would have to call there anyway, so we came to a compromise that we would discuss it further when we got there. After an hour of so we cleared the bridge and drove to the Immigration building where, surprise, surprise, the official demanded three dollars for each group member as a tourist tax. This official and the two men had a talk about what had happened and the official said we had to pay for the toll as well. We asked some questions about who had authority over what and discovered that the Immigration official had nothing to do with the toll and the two men had nothing to do with the tax. The official had the authority to examine our passports but the two men didn’t. As part of the process the official would have to fill out a register with details from our passports, hence it was routine for us to hand them to him, while we were there and let him write out what he wanted. This we already had done and we asked for them back as he finished his duty. He refused to give them to us until we had paid. We paid the three dollars and asked for them back again. He refused until we had paid the toll. I refused to pay it and said that now his duty was finished he had no authority to keep our passports. I could see him thinking about it, I kept on at him and he eventually weakened enough that he took his hand off the pile of passports on his desk. At first he was keeping a firm grip on them. I reminded him again of our earlier conversation as to who had authority over what and now we wanted what was ours. I leaned forward slowly and placed my hand over the passports and gradually slid them back to me. I wished him well and goodbye, we nodded to the two men who were now very sour faced and went back out to the truck, driving off as soon as we could. Out of all the battles over payment in the country for whatever it was the one and only battle I would win completely without coming to some compromise. Days and days went on in the same way. We would set off at 7am and stop around 5pm. Every day we would have to spend time crossing bridges, driving through bog holes, dealing with money grabbing officials and being extremely wary of the army. Either all in one day, or some combination of the four. The worst was the army. The eldest officer I saw was no more than 22 or 23 years old. Usually the normal soldier was about sixteen, dressed in an odd assortment of clothes, very cocky and arrogant, also usually at some stage of drunkenness and with a large gun of some sort.. These were the stressful times as they would poke around in all the belongings, wanting to count how much money you had, trying to take whatever they wanted and looking at you as though they wanted you to try and stop them. These were the times when I put myself in some danger. For example, at one such checkpoint a soldier jumped in the back of the truck, all the girls had stayed inside, the males had jumped out to supervise the bags being searched. The soldier looked around and walked up to the Japanese girl. I would stay in the back also if there was a soldier inside to keep an eye on him. He probably spoke no English and the girl spoke it very badly as well. He made it known that he wanted to search her, he mimed her taking her clothes off and him going through the pockets. I shook my head to say no. He pointed at the bulge she had at her stomach, her money belt. She pulled up her shirt slightly so he could see what it was. He motioned for her to give it to him and she quickly undid it but held on to the straps. He unzipped the pocket and started to flick through the dollar notes. He half withdrew a 10-dollar note and pointed to himself, looking at he girl. I said, “No”. He turned to look at me and pointed to himself again. Again I said, “No”. Had he just took it and put it in his pocket there was very little we could do about it. For the third time he pointed to himself. I said again, “No” and put my hand on the belt over the money and started to pull it gently but firmly away from him. It was a battle of wills for a second or two but gradually his grip weakened and I handed the belt back to the girl. The soldier lost interest after that, he started to lift up some of the seats where we stored the food, I reached in and picked up a tin of peas and offered them to him. He looked at them, put them in his pocket and jumped out of the truck. I, and the girls, sighed in relief as I sat down again. Each time there was some incident or feeling of being very vulnerable that my blood pressure must have been hitting the roof. On the 28th day we reached the border with Uganda. We had driven on all days but the three we had been “detained” in Buta. The truck had taken a battering but not broken down at all, we had taken a battering both mental and physical and one of the first words that the Ugandan Immigration official said to us, after, “Welcome to Uganda”, was, “You’ll find the bridges are many times better here.” This we found out as we drove via Murchison Falls National Park to the capital, Kampala. At the campsite there we all stuffed our faces with burgers and chips, so much so that we nearly all felt ill. We made a group decision (one of the many we had come to make as a well oiled “group” without any ill feeling) that we didn’t want to eat dehydrated food ever again, the hard part of the trip was over with, for me anyway. In Kampala I left the trip and took an overnight bus to Nairobi. The original plan was when we arrived in Nairobi a new group would be there. They would join our trip south the Capetown. Some already on the trip would leave, others start. However, we were nearly a week late due to holdups and diverting through Chad. So the new plan was I would pick up a spare truck with the new group in Nairobi, the trainee who I had with me all the time would take the old group and we'd meet near the Ngorogoro Crater national park. This meant the trainee had to drive through the Serengeti NP by himself, which I'd done a few times before and compared to the Congo/CAR, is a doddle. Or so I thought. I picked up the new group and after a couple of days went to the meeting point campsite where we were to spend the night. After a couple of hours several 4x4's pulled up and disgorged the old group. I was perplexed. Where was the trainee and the truck? They explained that driving through the Serengeti the trainee had crossed several shallow rivers on the road/track. At each he'd stopped first and walked it as I'd taught him. But he'd got fed up of doing it. So the next one he decided to just drive slowly through. Unfortunately he misjudged where the upriver edge of the concrete roadway was - The trainee had to walk several kilometers to a game lodge to get help from a road gang with a digger that eventually lifted the truck back onto the causeway. The locals were very reluctant to help due to the large amount of crocodiles in that river. Poor excuse thought I. He organised the group to continue on in the jeeps from the lodge and meet up with me. Later that evening he appeared with a rather damp truck and a chagrined look on his face. Eventually we all ended up safe and dry back in Nairobi, some left and the trainee went on the lead his own trips as he was actually quite good at it (apart from the one mistake!). I took the combined group on an easy jaunt south for the next couple of months. THE END.
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Post by bjd on Jun 29, 2011 9:54:45 GMT
Great tale, Mark.
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Post by onlymark on Jun 29, 2011 10:48:56 GMT
You're welcome.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2011 10:57:30 GMT
Bravo for the story, Mark.
Just wondering how often someone dared "I want a full refund!"
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Post by onlymark on Jun 29, 2011 14:01:49 GMT
It did happen. Usually by someone who expected something quite different to what the trips were. The only valid gripe was when a leader wasn't up to scratch - which did also happen. The rest of it was down to the countries and circumstances. Frequently people expected compensation for something they said they weren't told about. But if they had actually read the brochure and pre-departure information they'd have thought differently.
I was the subject of various complaints but usually the substance of it was that I was unfriendly to the person. Not surprising when a lot of those were idiots anyway.
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