To Hellholes and Back Read online

  The hell of it is, it actually sounds like a pretty good law, even if it did come into effect pretty much the way our enforced gambling, uh, mandatory car insurance, and most other laws do anymore.

  Ten minutes later a livid policeman opens the door and jumps into the Mercedes as we make a right turn. Apparently, right turns are illegal on this street. At the moment, anyway.

  We pile out of the car and stand on the sidewalk for another round of a game that’s becoming routine. A rictus of verbal abuse from the cop. Demands for an outrageous sum of money. Threats to haul us downtown. Protests from D. B., Gilles, and Henri of near though not quite equal intensity. Arrival of more cops. Calming period. Amiable personal discussion—what part of town you’re from, what village your wife is from, the business of the tall white dude in the Seattle Mariners cap looking like he’s carrying a fresh load in his boxer briefs.

  Before long everyone is getting along and the cops begin moaning that the government hasn’t issued paychecks in three months and now that we’re friends, hey, brother, anything you can score me would be appreciated by me, my wife, seven kids, and two girlfriends. This last point always clinches the deal with knowing laughs and pretty soon two or three dollars in francs changes hands followed by more easy laughter and handshakes. The lesson? To quote Kevin Cronin, “If you really want to get through to somebody, you got to speak to them in their own language.”4

  It’s not quite noon. We’ve been on the road two and a half hours, paid five bribes, and narrowly avoided a sixth. Henri’s fragile PR nerve has been touched once too often.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says with genuine disgust. “I have not had this much trouble in at least six months. Please do not get the wrong impression of Congo.”

  An hour outside Kinshasa at a boat harbor in the riverside village of Kinkole we board Henri’s battered old twenty-foot wooden scow—the only thing missing is Kate Hepburn hectoring an emaciated Bogie—for a short cruise along the Congo River. On the north bank is Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo (much smaller than the DRC, it achieved independence from France in 1960), but we’ll not be crossing into foreign territory. Nevertheless, we stop at the port’s immigration office—a low-ceilinged hut with no electricity and stacks of boxes for chairs—to assure the pseudo-officials of our intention not to break any border laws. For some reason this requires us to hand them a few dollars before we can board our listing vessel.

  The famed river is eighteen miles wide here, and it’s pleasant to chug along the water away from the anarchy of Kinshasa, enjoy a light breeze, and check out the fishing boats and grass-hut villages that sit on the waterline. The highlight is a stop in a subsistence fishing village called Lokuta, where, as visiting whiteys, Henri and I get the royal treatment—a tour of the village from the chief, in an African-print shirt, and a plate of sliced bananas and dried fish.

  An hour before sundown we’re back tying up at the marina at Kinkole.

  “What are you doing? You may not moor your boat here!” Another soldier, another red beret, another Kalashnikov charge toward us.

  “Yes, we are allowed,” Henri shouts back. “I paid the harbor office for this privilege.”

  The soldier stands in front of Henri and tells him that whatever deal he cut with the harbor office isn’t applicable. Not today. Not while he’s in the neighborhood.

  And so a little more arguing, then a transition into cheerful banter about the wives, kids, and girlfriends. A couple of cigarettes. A few dollars. Handshakes. A twenty-minute delay. And we’re off again.

  Team Congo closes the day at an outdoor bar—more accurately four plastic chairs set up on the banks of the Congo River—with three warm beers and a Coke. (As a devout Christian and professional driver on call at all times, D. B. never drinks.) Below us swirl the infamous rapids that vexed colonial developers—steamships couldn’t get past them, requiring a torturous portage through thick jungle—and still occasionally claim the lives of thrill seekers attempting to conquer them in rafts and kayaks.

  An elderly man hustles out from his small house on the side of the river with another round of drinks. As a magnificent purple-red African sky takes form, I ask Henri how many bribes we paid on the day. Before we departed Kinkole I’d wandered around on my own for an hour and missed part of the action.

  “I have no idea,” he answers. “I lost count.”

  I remind him of my quest to find the funniest joke in Africa and ask if any good ones come to mind. He drops his head like an exhausted prizefighter and takes a massive hit off his lung dart.

  “Not at the moment,” he answers, blowing smoke and staring into the man-eating rapids.

  Finding jokes in Africa isn’t a cakewalk. Once I got the idea in my head, I sent off an e-mail soliciting jokes from my many Peace Corps friends and relatives who somehow remain friendly to me despite my occasional Peace Corps tirades. I figured it’d be a good idea to stockpile jokes from across the continent, but reaching out to my extended PC tree netted precisely zero replies with Africa jokes.

  Two e-mails did come back bluntly stating that I was going to be rightly regarded by the reading public as an ignorant asshole for attempting to be funny about Africa. (Peace Corps volunteers are tragically unable to find the humor in anything that doesn’t belittle American society; it’s part of their training.) Fortunately, on the banks of the Congo, I recall a story told to our safari group by a native Mokoro poler on the Okavango Delta in Botswana:

  After Creator made the world, all of the animals on Earth got together to throw a big party. Everyone was getting along well, but there was a mischievous rabbit in attendance who decided it would be funny to play a trick on the hippo. When no one was looking, the rabbit grabbed a burning stick from the fire and jabbed it into the hippo’s rear end. The hippo immediately ran for the river to relieve his pain in the water. The water felt so good that he decided to make the river his home for the rest of his life.

  This did not sit well with Creator who quickly appeared and sternly addressed the hippo.

  “Hippo!” said Creator. “I thought I told you that you are not allowed in the river because you are so big that you will eat all of the fish.”

  “Yes, this is true,” answered the hippo. “But I’m so heavy and it’s so comfortable here that I’d like to stay. How about if you let me remain in the river on the condition that I promise not to eat any of the fish.”

  Creator thought about this and replied, “How can I trust you to keep your promise?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” answered the hippo. “I’ll stay in the water during daylight hours where you can easily keep an eye on me, then leave the river at night to feed on plants and grass. Before returning to the river each morning, I’ll take a big dump and spread it all around. That way, you can look through my shit and see that there are no fish bones. The day you find fish remains in my stool is the day I’ll abandon the river.”

  After considering this for a minute, Creator agreed to the deal. And that explains why, to this day, hippos live in the water, but don’t eat fish, feed on land at night, and spread their scat wherever they go.

  Now, that’s a decent enough story, but in my experience it’s what’s more often known as an “origin myth,” not a joke. The striking thing about hearing it told in the Okavango Delta, however, wasn’t the story itself, but the reaction it received from those listening to it. When the “punch line” about scattering scat in the morning arrived, all the whiteys in attendance, including me, nodded in respectful, New Agey appreciation of this quasi-religious psalm from a wise and dignified (if ultimately ass-backwards) ancient tribal font. Never mind that, like all vegetarians, hippos have an enormous cross to bear and that modern science tells us the reason they spread scat is to mark their turf. Our reaction indicated that we were all immensely honored to have this solemn piece of oral tradition passed down to us by such an authentic source.

  Meanwhile, I’d noticed that as the story had been gaining momentum, th
e seven or eight Mokoro guys among us, obviously familiar with where it was going, had been smiling and shaking like kids about to wet their pants. At its conclusion, they broke into a chorus of locker-room laughter, a completely different reaction than their tourist counterparts. To them, the story clearly resonated with a humorous, absurdist value.

  I’m no cultural anthropologist (as though this fact needs to be reiterated), but I have some experience with Trickster Owls and Light-Giver Ravens, and it occurred to me that one thing Westerners often overlook in legends such as the one about the rabbit and the hippo is that one of their main purposes, aside from any ethereal explanations of life and nature, is entertainment. No matter what the point, a story doesn’t survive a millennium or two of campfire retellings if it sucks. Whether you make a living bringing down impala with spears, poling tourists through the delta, or using a police badge and AK-47 to collect bribes from passing motorists, the last thing you want at the end of the day is to be preached to. This was as true a thousand years ago as it is today when I sit in my faux bistro chair, crack a frosty one, shout, “This dumb fucking ass-clown!” and quickly move on when I accidentally bump into Joel Osteen on my rounds through the dial. That’s why The Office is on channel 2 and the Trinity Network is on 87.

  Look at it from a less reverential perspective and you can see a lot to laugh at in the hippo story. The Stoogesesque slapstick of the rabbit jabbing the mighty beast in the ass with a burning stick. An all-powerful creator capable of putting together an entire planet and its inhabitants reduced to bargaining with a hippo, which, for all its other attributes isn’t historically regarded as the craftiest of animals. And, of course, the scatological nature of the punch line—there isn’t a culture in the world that doesn’t love a good fart or shit joke. As Howard Stern will be happy to tell you.

  It might not be the funniest joke I find in Africa, but on the banks of the Congo the hippo story feels important for shedding light on a disorienting day in which the flower of Kinshasa squalor has blossomed into a garden of hopeless dysfunction. In a society based largely on intimidation, success is based upon not backing down to bullies (God, cops, whomever), the ability to negotiate impromptu deals (scattering feces, francs, whatever), and at all other times partying hardy (with silly rabbits, mistresses, whomever).

  When I mention this fascinating cultural connection to Henri, he fakes an appreciative snort and goes back to his cigarette. Gilles stares sullenly into the sky. However else they might be described, Team Congo cannot be accused of intellectual snobbery.

  After a few minutes, Gilles calls the old man over from the house to settle our bill. D. B. finishes his Coke, walks to the car, and turns the key. Three, four, five, then six times the starter whines and whines, but doesn’t catch. I hear him try a seventh time before he opens the creaky car door, gently closes it, and walks back toward us on the crunchy gravel.

  Without turning around, still staring at the river, Henri blows a plume of smoke and says to me, “Now we have something to laugh about, don’t you think?”

  3

  The Most Beautiful City in the Congo

  Our story about being aid workers desperate to help the Pygmies hasn’t been taken seriously. The UN has denied our request to fly to Mbandaka. So far the Congo has been a bigger letdown than The Sopranos finale.

  True, Kinshasa is temporarily fascinating in an end-of-days kind of way, but so far my stay here has amounted to little more than an elaborate time killer. I’ve pretended to care about river rapids and presidential deathbeds, but the only reason anyone comes to Kinshasa is to get a flight out of Kinshasa. No planes, no boats, and no trains whittles the list of options. Thankfully, there’s one solution guaranteed to haul even the saddest sack out of the doldrums and fix, temporarily at least, all problems: road trip.

  Driving anywhere in Africa is a painfully slow process. Before you can even address the shitty roads, you have to deal with the Michelin map, the Central African edition of which is so enormous and unwieldy that it requires a surface roughly the size of a soccer field before it can be fully spread out. Making matters more difficult, Henri and D. B. aren’t wild about the idea of embarking on an impromptu roader—Jacques is waiting for a call-back from a crop duster or helicopter pilot somewhere—but stagnating at the intersection of Congolese corruption and Team Congo’s professional inadequacy has me in such a funk that they have no choice but to play along when I officially declare Mbandaka dead to me and begin pointing at roads leading to places I vaguely recall reading about in history books. As a result, discussions of plans B, C, and D go roughly like this:

  “This place Kimvula looks promising,” says I, pointing at the map with the get-up-and-go of an Eagle Scout. “What’s out there?”

  “The road to Kimvula is impassable at this time of year,” answers D. B.

  “At what time of year is it passable?”

  “Most of the time it is difficult.”

  “Kikwit sounds interesting. Man could really lose himself in a place called Kikwit.”

  “The road to Kikwit is restricted by military checkpoints. Very difficult.”

  Resigned to the fact that, once aroused, my spirit of determination recognizes only victory—and that a four-thousand-dollar down payment counts for something, even in the Congo—Henri reluctantly enters the conversation. He begins pushing a drive west toward the coast to Boma, the first Belgian capital of the Congo, a rarely visited city steeped in history. Boma isn’t anyone’s idea of a prom date, but given our current paralysis, the idea of standing at the edge of the continent staring out at the vast Atlantic, the plains of human evolution at my back, holds a certain appeal.

  “There must be a decent beach out there,” I say.

  “Due to the condition of the road, we cannot drive all the way to the ocean,” D. B. says. He’s been pegging the buzzkill meter now for forty-eight straight hours. “But along the way is a waterfall and Matadi, which is the most beautiful city in Congo.”

  So, Matadi. Then Boma. Swapping Pygmies and Mbandaka for waterfalls and Boma feels like trading Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio and Bobby Shantz, but what the hell, it could be worse. Of course, it was supposed to have been much better.

  “There is just one problem,” Henri says. “The brakes in the car must be repaired.”

  “We’ve been driving around Kinshasa four days in a car with bad brakes?”

  “It is only a small problem. At high speed if you must stop suddenly, they may not work. In the city it is OK because there is so much traffic.”

  “Yes, I can see how that makes it OK.”

  Henri acknowledges sarcasm only when he wants to.

  “As you may have noticed,” he says, “it is impossible to attain a dangerous speed while driving in Kinshasa.”

  I have no choice but to concede the point and marvel once again at Henri’s incredible knack for winning arguments in which he’s nearly always wrong.

  Before we can leave, we have to pick up the Mercedes across town. Henri and Gilles meet me at the hotel in a rust-corroded 1980s Mazda driven by another Team Congo auxiliary member, a guy in his early twenties whom no one bothers to introduce. From the backseat I assess the Mazda’s cracked dashboard—none of the gauges work. The interior is gilded in soot. The vehicle has clearly been engulfed in flames within the past few weeks.

  Ninety minutes later the airport terminal appears in the distance. Gilles explains that our mechanic is actually an airport security guard. He’s got the Mercedes in an airplane hangar out of which he runs his side business using the shop’s tools. It is unknown whether any of the major airlines serving Kinshasa have a problem with this arrangement.

  Turning onto a service road leading to the airport, we immediately plunge into center stage of a terrifying show. Five young African men rush into the street, surround our car, and begin thumping on the windows and making surly demands in Lingala. Our driver wisely accelerates through the mob, but not before one assailant scrambles onto the hood and anothe
r hurls himself butt-first onto the trunk. Everything about the way this unfolds—the suddenness, the shouting, the beating on the car—feels exactly like a Hollywood re-creation of a Third World kidnapping.

  “What the hell is going on?” I shout at Henri.

  “Do not panic,” he answers, not unlike the pilot fumbling for his rosary beads as the second engine catches fire and the nosedive begins.

  With the car careening through traffic, the guy on the hood spreads his body across the windshield. It’s an effective tactic. We’re forced to slow down.

  The car is surrounded again, this time by eight or ten men. A short guy in a black shirt jogs along next to me, actually smiles and says hello, then thrusts his hand through the open window. Money, passport, camera—everything important to me is in the backseat of the car. A reasonable lunge and the guy could have it all, a move I’d be forced to resist. Judging that a physical altercation here will greatly complicate matters and likely result in defeat for me, I begin cranking up the rear window. The driver wheels on me and shouts to leave the window down.

  “If they really want to get inside, they’ll break the windows!” he shouts. “I cannot afford such a repair!” Impressed with this flash of Congolese horse sense, I leave the window down and do what I can to push the guy away from the car.

  Seconds later, a soldier with a bandolier of high-caliber shells strapped across his chest steps in front of the car. At the wave of his rifle our attackers disperse like roaches. The soldier directs us to the side of the road. After a brief negotiation we cough up five dollars and receive full military escort into a dirt parking lot. Here we find D. B. and the world’s largest mechanic—six-eight, shoulders like shanks of beef, ass like a beer keg—waiting with the Mercedes.