Wanted to write a quick note to say that we did make it to Bayanga and only a day late. After getting a little late start in Gamboula, Constant, Darren, Rosa (cute 4 year old) and I started our way to Bayanga. The goal was to stop in Bilolo, the half way point to have lunch around noon with some SIL folks doing language transcription. We started the trip with Darren as our chauffeur and we were doing fine until we hit our first barrier. It is a curious thing here to have border points within the country and Constant is very dutiful at making sure we stop at each one in order to maintain good relations with all the military men. At the first stop we met a very bothersome guard who wanted to see in the back of the truck, asked us about guns, poked around the inside of the cab and then asked to see our passports. He stalled us for quite a while but we didn't have to pay him anything thanks to Constant. As we carried on we had to go through several more checkpoints but the road was good and I am sure we reached 60 km/hour at some points though we don't know for sure as the odometer and speedometer are both broken on the truck.
We were doing fine and were making decent enough time until we reached a fork in the road. Neither Darren nor I remembered the fork and it was Constant's first time on this road so we chose right. There was a sign pointing to the left and it had the name of a sawmill on it. After driving about 5 minutes down this road we second guessed ourselves. Beware the second guess. We recalled Roy saying something about choosing the wrong fork, ending up at dead-end, wasting a lot of time, blah, blah blah. They key thing was, which way did he say was the wrong way? So we turned around and headed down the left hand road. We must have travelled some 20 km down it before we came upon a sentinel who informed us that we were in fact not on the road to Bilolo but a dead end road ending at the sawmill. So we turned around and headed back for the RIGHT way. Up to this point Coco, our dog, who was also on this journey with us, had thrown up 3 times in the car and we had to stop each time to clean it up. We also switched drivers at the turn around and finally ended up in Bilolo around 2:30 (2 hours later than we thought we would). Just before entering Bilolo we were stalled again by a very drunk rain barrier guard who inisisted it had just rained and that we pay him to let us pass. Reasoning with this guy took a while but eventually we got through. We had a quick lunch with some missionary friends in Bilolo and were about to move on when it started to really pour. This is a problem in two ways. One is that rain can make certain roads as slick as ice, such as the road between Bilolo and Nola, the next largest stopping point. The second problem is that they also have rain barriers that close the road off in the event of a rain. Fortunately, the barrier just outside of Nola was manned by a member of the EBB who Constant easily persuaded to let us pass. It was much to my angst that he did let us pass as the worst and wettest section of road was ahead of us. I nearly cried on the way into Nola I was so afraid we were going to slide right off the road and into a ditch, wrecking someone else's truck. Constant did a fine job in getting us through and he arrived in the outskirts of Nola at about 5:30, just after the bac (river ferry) closed. Constant went about trying to find the ferry operator which was interesting but he managed it and by 6:30 we were crossing the first of two rivers. It wasn't until after 7:00 that we were on the second bac and arriving into Nola. We knew we could go no further so we drove around until we found the EBB church and the pastor's house. The pastor was kind enough to make us a late night dinner of gozo, meat and fresh boiled peanuts (not just a thing for Georgians) around 9:00. The pastor's house in Nola is an old Swedish missionary house so there was plenty of room and beds for us to stay the night. Constant ended up sleeping in the cab of the truck in order to keep an eye on our stuff. Good chauffeur!
After coffee and bread we were on our way to Bayanga and we made it here about 11:30 Saturday morning, just in time for lunch. I can't say it was a harrowing adventure but as close as I would like to come. I am a bit of a road wimp and would probably prefer hours in a canoe to a slip-sliding road.
...Since arriving we spent Saturday afternoon unpacking and visiting people from 'the project', the WWF project in the area, seeing how we could help their development arm of things. Sunday was a good day of rest and learning from Raul and Diana, the American missionaries here. We had hoped to go to a village 40 km south of here but we woke up to thunder and rain this morning so we opted to work around the centre's nursery today and plan on going south tomorrow. Wednesday we will start our way back north, stopping for the night in Wango, then a second night in Liboko, then we will drop off Constant in Nola where he will traffique back to Gamboula and we will go back to Bayanga until the end of the month. There is no shortage of work here and no shortage of people to help. This morning I went and helped/watched as Diana went to see a pygmy guy down the road with a huge boil that had burst on his leg. Quite painful looking, a little disgusting and definitely reason for caution. We are hearing reports of Ebola across the border in Congo about 100 km away and we are hearing lots of warnings about not eating any dead animals you find in the forest. Hmm, I don't think we will have any problem with that advice. Don't plan on eating many live ones either for that matter until we hear better news from Congo. Don't worry mom, we wouldn't think of eating monkey!
Will write more when we return from this weeks adventures.
