In my comfortable bed with my very comfortable pillows and fresh crispy linen I slept very well.
First stop: du café. I had three cups. 300cfa each. I asked where to get the coffee that is the not ground. The men told me to go to ancien Sobraga (later I found out Sobraga stands for Société de Brasseries du Gabon) where there is usine du café or go to a Score supermarket which is in downtown. I also remembered long ago that there was a hole-in-the-wall style coffee shop in a Géant supermarket, just I didn’t remember which one and there are two not far from each other. Of course it could be that the coffee shop no longer existed but one can always try.
After the coffees I walked down to the seashore. About a kilometre down the road there was the first of Géants, CKDO Géant. On my way I bought a 700cfa baguette with avocado salad, tasty. The Géant was just a hypermarket, no coffee beans, all ground.
Another kilometre down the road running along the seashore a proper shopping mall: Géant / Casino. There, a coffee shop that had probably changed since I had last seen it, selling Pierre André coffee, from Cameroon. Depending on the mélange, the price is 3200-3700cfa for half a kilo. Not that cheap.
I walked along the seashore road, not too pleasant because it’s mostly three lanes and busy traffic. In Libreville there are no motos, only taxis which are shared by default. One must stop a taxi and call his or her destination and the price one is willing to pay. It’s more difficult than it sounds, especially if there are others around you doing the same. So it made me walk more, which wasn’t bad after all. I passed some important-looking buildings. The sea side was empty.
I saw something that looked like the doors of no return in Benin, a kind of gate looking out to the sea, commemorating the slaves being sent out to the seas. I snapped a few photos and then I snapped a photo of the huge building across the road.
Immediately I heard a uniformed guard calling for me from behind the fence surrounding the building. I approached the guy. He made me show him the photo I took, told me I wasn’t allowed to even walk around the “gate of no return” across the road, no wonder noone was around, then he made me to delete the photo and asked me to prove there are no more photos on my phone. Then he looked at my gallery, even played a video I made for a friend. So much for privacy. Then another uniformed guy ran to us, this time on the street, asking if all is in order. I asked what the building was, it was presidential palace. It was quite ugly and looked like a huge block of flats. And the guys don’t know yet that the deleted photos are first send to a bin before they are deleted so it’s easy to recover them so here you go, a photo that caused all the wahala:
Some pictures of the gate that “noone is supposed to walk around”:
I like this weather in tropics: humid and stuffy and as if it will rain any minute. It’s pure sadness of tropics.
From the presidential palace I walked towards the post office. There I was told post stamps are a whopping 700cfa each but that I should buy them in a philatelic shop next door. The shop was empty, two bored ladies at the counter, one of them started talking how stamps are really 800cfa to USA and such but 700cfa to France, I immediately said I was sending the post cards to France. The cards were there too, as usual, 500cfa each. I posted them at a quite sophisticated mailbox.
From post office I went to the Score supermarket which now is another Casino supermarket. There too is a coffee shop, same prices as in Géant but it also had Gabonese coffee but for a whopping 3000cfa for 250g. No thank you. I had an espresso, 500cfa.
Then I needed to find a toilet. I asked someone for help. And just like in Liberia, I was directed to a… bank. And there it was, a toilet, the security man didn’t even blink when I asked for it.
Next door from the bank there was village des artisans. Not very big, it has mainly materials and “African” clothes, there are only a few shops that sell masks. Most of the sellers are Muslim and this being Ramadan and middle of he day they were dozing off, so no hassle at all. There are also a couple of joints with food and the food seems to be Senegalese, I took advantage of it and had a very tasty tcheboudjen with fish for 1200cfa.
From village des artisans I walked all the way back to my auberge. I passed mausoleum of Leon Mba, the father of the nation but I wasn’t sure if photos were allowed.
Around my auberge I struggled to catch the taxi. Finally I stopped an empty one – if there are passengers, the driver tries to match where you wanna go with where he is actually going – and the driver said I need to pay 1000cfa, fine.The usine du café too served Pierre André coffee. Not only they sell it at the same prices as the shops at supermarkets but the usine was already closed and the shop only had ground coffee.
Since again I struggled to catch taxi to where I was staying (either ancien gare routière or Bessieux) I decided to at least get the taxi to the shopping centre where I could get my bag of coffee. That was easy, 300cfa. I bought the strongest coffee, mélange of robusta and arabica for 3200cfa/500g.I walked back to the auberge.
The artists I went through the border and police and bus journey with told me they’d be performing in a place called Murmure the first night, at 7pm.
Live music is always welcome. But to find the venue? Google Maps pointed to some rotisserie. I found the Gabon Music Expo had a webpage on Facebook. There there was a reference to the venue, Murmure which had a location marked on the map.
I took a taxi, but the driver had no idea where we were going, so I had to direct him. We stopped in quartier Saint Louis in the middle of some residential area. Noone had any idea where Murmure was. Finally some men told me there were no bars around and I should go where bars are. And so I did. And there it was, in the same building as the rotisserie Google was pointing at. But it looked from outside like a night club, entry allowed only for ages 21 and above. And true enough, the bouncer looked at the shabby me and mentioned something about having “clothes” and wouldn’t allow me in.
I didn’t protest much although I thought about the people who I travelled with, 12 hours in a dilapidated bus, on torn seats, if they knew they were playing in an “upmarket” venue. It was supposed to be a music festival after all, not some posh event.
I walked back on the main road and I intended to walk on when a man passing me by said I should take a taxi because the road was “dangerous.” So I did walk along the taxis that were stopping at the street lights, quite a line, shouting “Ancien gare routière, Bessieux, 500!” until I finally got into one.Back around my place I sat down in a bar, noone reprimanded me for my clothes. I chopped akara.
The next day I had thought to leave Libreville but as usual the laziness took over and by the time I had my third coffee it was almost noon. Heavy clouds were hanging in the sky, I decide to stay and be lazy. I walked up the road to see what Bradt Guide to Gabon described as the most beautiful church in Libreville, Saint Michel de Nkembo. The church has quite beautifully sculpted wooden columns.
I had a baguette with avocado salad for breakfast made by a woman who just places her pots on the ground at the bus agency where I stayed.
Later in the day I went to the beach. I didn’t know exactly where the beaches were though I had been to a small beach in Libreville many years ago. The taxi dropped me next to Radisson Blu hotel.
The beach indeed was small, just a couple of meters of sand and some trees. There was a volleyball match played and the DJ who commented acknowledged me publicly in English: “oh we have white people here.” I walked on the beach, there were sellers selling orchid flowers, coconut juice and palm kernels. I sat down just before the sand ended in a small restaurant. The prices, ha. I grew unused to such. Beer 3-4 times more expensive than in buvettes, don’t even start me on food. I had a small 33, 1500cfa.
A
nd it started drizzling and then the drizzle turned into rain. I walked back, his under a tree with other people. Then I walked back to Radisson Blu, saw coffee in one of the beach bars, espresso for 2000cfa. I went back to my own corner cafe, taxi for 500cfa.
I tried finding a barber and the barbers were there but each time I went in there was a long queue of men waiting to be barbed. I stayed with my long scruffy hair.
I ate beans. 300cfa for a large spoon. When I asked if I should eat them alone or with rice the question wasn’t understood, the woman serving told me I can eat it alone or with rice anyhow I wanted. Yet when I asked her to add vegetables, she had a pot with some tasty looking green stew, she refused me saying the vegetables are for foufou.
Coming back to Maman 