The timing of my international flight was not great – five
days after the weekly WWF-chartered Cessna flight to Bangui. So I had to pay for five nights in a hotel in
Bangui. But, on the bright side, some
time to transition out of life in the forest and back into life in the 21st
century. Except that Bangui is hardly in
the 21st century.
But first I should go back to the local flight, which
captured another aspect of life in the forest – the dangers that lurk there for
those who still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. There were three guests from the Lodge ending
their visit, but we had two other passengers on the plane: a mother
accompanying her teenage daughter to the capital to get to a hospital that
could fix her broken leg. Broken by a
charging elephant in the forest the previous day, whilst they were foraging for
fruit. I suspect neither of them had
even been in a car before, with both throwing up during what was a totally
straightforward flight without any turbulence.
Anyway, we made it to Bangui, where I was met by the ‘fixer’
the lodge owners use there.
The hotel
they generally use was full, so I’d been put in the Oubangui, a former Sofitel,
that overlooks the river that separates The Central African Republic from the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
It even
has a swimming pool!
However, it is not
what it probably once was …
… no hot water, no internet access, no batteries in the TV
remote control… But my room on the ninth
floor did have a great view of the river, the bed was comfortable enough, and
the swimming pool was usable! &
thankfully the buffet breakfast wasn’t too bad, as I was very short of funds (no-one
takes US$ here, and I didn’t realise that my bank has now made it obligatory to
inform them well in advance if you are going to want to withdraw funds from an
overseas ATM) and so was living on as much breakfast as I could eat plus food I
could buy cheaply on the street (basically bread, and fruit). & tap water with chlorine tablets added.
The inability to use
the internet at least gave some encouragement for me to take a rather
over-priced day trip to the Boali Falls (one metre higher than Niagara Falls
and actually quite impressive) and to wander around seeing the sights of the
city – those sights being the red-brick cathedral and the Boganda Museum, the
latter being slowly rehabilitated after its looting by the Seleka rebels in
2013, although many of the exhibits are still in storage and some of the murals
have still to be cleaned up.
I also took
a look at the bush=meat market, with its displays of smoked monkeys, duikers,
pythons, porcupines, rats and – saddest of all – pangolins.
It’s a strange city to wander around in as a
tourist – full of ‘official’ buildings (government ministries and various UN
offices), all heavily guarded, and the only traffic being motorbikes carrying
ridiculous numbers of people (I saw six people squashed onto one!), various
military vehicles (including tanks!), and official UN / NGO vehicles.
There are also a few uninspiring monuments at road
junctions, but when I took a photo of one I immediately had a soldier come up
to me demanding to know what I was doing, why I thought I could take a
photograph of something so sensitive (the wall of one of the UN peacekeeper
buildings was to my left – not in my photo, but close enough to be a problem,
apparently).
Thankfully it was sufficient
for me to delete the photo with him watching, he didn’t demand payment of a
‘fine’.
What I really wanted a photo of
was the mural(s) on the perimeter wall of the OCRB – the Central Office for the
Repression of Banditry.
Lots of
paintings of people with Kalashnikovs … but I knew I could not risk
photographing it, given the number of police and army people everywhere on the
streets.
The best I could do was
approach three policemen and play the sweet little old lady game, asking
innocently if it was permitted to take a photograph there.
The result was a photo taken on my behalf (on
my phone) by one of the policemen, who would only take the official anti-gang
‘shield’ of the organisation and not the pictures of gunmen – but even the
shield is quite cool!
It's not a city
where I feel totally safe even in the daytime, as you never know when one of
the many armed police/military guys might take a dislike to the way you are walking
or looking at him. But it is certainly
interesting. Even at breakfast in the
hotel, there were doddery old local men in ill-fitting suits carrying their
‘National Forum of Traditional Leaders’ bags at one table, Russians at another,
and this guy – who I managed to sneak a photo of as he left the hotel later –
at another table. A place where I was
glad to spend a few days, but also in some ways glad to get out of alive!
& - postscript – the only place where I’ve been asked at
the international airport whether I’m carrying any gold or diamonds in my
luggage!
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