Ninjas in the Jungle

The past week and a half have been a bit wild. After exhausting all our options in Pointe Noire and having to part ways with Steve S., we decided to head to Brazzaville to try our luck crossing the ferry there into Kinshasa and then head to Matadi on the DRC/Angola border to get our Angolan visas. The guys heard from a dutch couple just ahead of us on this north to south route that the Brazzaville-Kinshasa-Matadi way worked out, so we were encouraged by the good news and optimistic leaving Pointe Noire.

That was before 48 hours of nearly impassible roads and hours spent traversing the most potholed, muddy, wreck-your-car roads I`ve ever encountered. At one point we were forced to hire ninja rebel guides to show us a backcountry detour route around a semitruck that was fender deep in muck and blocking the main road. The route took us far into the bush and then dumped us in the middle of a ninja village a few hundred meters from the main road. Of course nothing could be that easy, and we found ourselves stuck in a ninja dug-out trench meant to make the passing `easier`. By the time we were unstuck it was dark and we were missing an expensive flashlight, flipflops and a cell phone. Help in the bush is definitely not free...

Stuck in the mud! This is actually a nice patch of the road compared to what was up ahead.

Semi truck stuck up to his headlights in the middle of N1.

The chief of the ninjas was nice enough to tell the guys to quit hasseling us for money and let us stay the night in front of his house before continuing on to Brazzaville the next day. We picked up a Moroccan hitchhiker as well as a guide from the chief for the rest of the trip to Brazzaville. The extra hands ended up being some of the best luck we`ve had in the last week as the road from Mindouli, the town just before the ninja village, to Kinkala, the next major town 40 kms away, was horrific and literally impassable in parts. We had to take another detour route--this time the road was much more picturesque and followed the contours of grass-covered rolling mountains. The detour was meant to take only three minutes according to the locals we asked, but ended up taking well over an hour and required us to reconstruct a bridge using thick trees and six inch wide steel tresses.

Deep breath Dad: Welcome to Ninja checkpoint number one on the N1 main road to Brazzaville! The guys were actually quite friendly.

After three grueling days, we finally made it to Brazzaville and were excited to be on the right track and making progress. All we had to do was get a letter from the Angolan Embassy saying we were headed to Matadi to get our visas in order to be admitted into Kinshasa, DRC. HAH! As if we were so lucky!

Ordinarily you just photocopy your passport and the information for the cars and you can get the letter for free the next day. It just so happens that the day we were to recieve the letter, the power had gone out so the consular was unable to write the letter. To make matters even better, he left that same afternoon to work for some other department in another town and will only be back in Brazzaville this coming Tuesday. There is no one else who can write the letter, so we are stuck. Again. And this time without the great expat community to help us out. Brazzaville seems to have more stuff to do and see, but is still wickedly expensive--the most basic of accomodations still costs $30US a night!

Right now I am feeling extremely frustrated and tired of being in the Congo. We have been in the Congo now for five weeks and it is getting old fast. This `jaunt` has been eye-opening, though, and I am starting to understand more and more how complicated life is in this part of the world. As we are in limbo, my updates are still going to be sparse. I have some unreal photos of and with the ninja rebels that turned out great and aill probably give my dad a heart attack that I`ll post as soon as the internet is fast enough (don`t worry, though, I am of course being safe). I am still trying to work out my response to everything we`ve been through. I find myself becoming less and less compassionate, which isn`t necessarily a bad thing for what we have to go through to get in and out of places around here. I`ll write more later...