Gabon to Congo, Ndendé to Dolisie to Pointe-Noire

There will be no more photos in this space at the moment. I ran out of the 3GB space allowance on this site and I am not willing to upgrade. Running a blog on a mobile phone on WordPress is a joke. Anytime I try editing posts that have photos all formatting goes bust, all paragraphs disappear and all I see is a stream of words. Adding photos breaks words somehow. Maybe when I get to my laptop it will be better. And it will be soon, sooner than I thought, as I type it in Brazzaville where I was refused visa for the last 10kms of my trip, that is crossing to Kinshasa. I was kinda mentally ready for this, as the consulate in Pointe-Noire mentioned I had to be a resident in Congo but still I thought: crossing the river only to be in a city, to catch the flight home, what’s there to worry about? I underestimated the Congolese. Pity.

The photos from the road to Congo would have been nice anyway, the road was maybe not spectacular but it was a good hard slog with elements that I had not yet encountered on this trip.

The driver arrived at my motel in Ndendé at 7:20am. I was already out trying to pay the 6000cfa for the night. The woman managing the hotel was nowhere to be seen. But she finally appeared, slow and tired and sad as ever. Hope she is OK.

We arrived at the boarded up immigration office at 7:40.

At 8:01 a man arrived and started opening up the doors. Three other people arrived waiting to get their papers stamped (or so I thought). One of them was Congolese and he was talking about the road and he said the price from the border was 15k to Dolisie that it’s better to join a car than a huge lorry, that the lorries take forever to reach the town. The other two people – they would join me at the border and we would go together to Dolisie – seemed like they had no idea the road would be hard. They were a man and his elderly mother, going to Pointe-Noire. They were coming from Port Gentil but they took a flight from there to a town that I don’t even know where it is, not boat.

Anyway, the man who opened the door to the immigration wasn’t a man who would stamp my passport. He took the passport though and asked me to keep waiting outside.

The main stamping officer arrived at 8:45, I got my passport stamped and returned soon after, no issues. I called the driver and told him I was ready, he said he’d be coming. Another woman was there by the immigration office and she told me to tell the driver to she’s gone to buy cheese (!) at the market.

Since the driver wasn’t coming I went to the market too in hope of finding some food. In the meantime a car arrived at the immigration office, inside two young men who from what I understood were going to catch fun in Congo. Or just to check it out.

Dolisie is 245kms from the border, the border is 48kms away from Ndendé in Gabon. Google shows a little more than 4 hours of driving from the border, the Bradt Guide mentions around three days of driving, my Gabonese driver says it’s possible to reach Dolisie in a day.

I got baguette with beans, there was no avocado, though I saw later avocado at another baguette stall in Ndendé.

The woman who was buying cheese at the market (not sure what and where, I didn’t see any and I didn’t really ask) was crying in the car. Some men outside asked why she cries. She said she had lost her mother and she was going for he funeral to Pointe-Noire. She had Congolese passport. The men said in response that it’s normal and people get old and sick and die. Oh what a relief to know. Even I managed to tell them that it’s better not to say anything then to cheer someone this way.

There were 3 other men with us in the car, all our bags were in the back of the hillux.

The tar finished immediately as soon as we left Ndendé and became no more that a bushpath where two cars would have problems passing each other. There were occasional mud pools but the hillux did well.

We stopped at a control post just before the border where I got registered in two different books. One man demanded a photocopy of a passport and said I should have one with me. Well, I didn’t.

Then there was yet another control post, and about 1.5hrs since we left Ndendé we reached the border.

There was even a sign bienvenue à Congo. There was a barrier. There was a billboard of the Congolese president handling Congolese flag. There were three heavy lorries parked on the Congolese side. Not sure if they’d be able to reach Ndendé because just before we reached the border there was a very narrow bridge.

It took four different people to register me in four different books so that I could get an entry stamp. The first officer was reading “the guide to behaviour of police officers”, the next one was reading the Book of Exodus from the Bible, the other two were not reading anything. In each of the rooms there was a portrait or a picture of the president N’Guesso.

I am guessing I was registered by the police, the gendarmerie and the immigration. As I was being registered by the immigration the lorries disappeared and all that was left were two taxis. Going of course to Dolisie, the price 20k but I had a feeling it should be 15k but although I protested they wouldn’t budge. They even suggested I should pay for two seats as the corolla was supposed to handle 4 people in the back and 3 people in the front with the driver. They even asked me if the price was 15k would I pay for two seats? No.

Since there were only two passengers, me and the woman going to her mother’s funeral, we waited. I had a beer, 750cfa, Ngok, the local one, warm. Then I had a nice catfish stew with sorrel and manioc, 1200cfa. Interestingly in that place in the middle of nowhere there was again a satellite dish – a sign there was electricity – and network coverage. And one could even buy sim cards but I only noticed that when we left in the taxi, there was another shop a few meters down the road.

Some time later another car from Gabon arrived, with the man and his mother. And the young men in their Rav too.

The man and his mother came without passport so they got a document called laissez-passer from Gabon immigration. Turns out it had to be stamped at every post de contrôle we they passed or later we passed and each time they had to pay for the stamp. On the border the man mentioned he already spent 65000cfa for the stamps, that’s like my visa! And they were two people!

We left the border at after 2pm in an overloaded car, I even had to go in only after the car drove down the dirt to the main road so the suspension was a bit higher. There were four people in the back, an old man joined us, possibly he was local, not sure. We drove and the road at times was very bad, huge mudpools which nevertheless the car negotiated quite well. The driver said the corolla was 25+ years old.

There were not many villages we passed, the road was mainly endless grass and quite flat. But at every village, and Nyanga possibly could be described as a town, we stopped at a police and gendarmerie and immigration control to be registered.

When the number of registration of my own passport on the Congolese side reached 10, I lost count later on, I too was asked for 5000cfa for the registration. I immediately stopped speaking French and the man got confused and let me goq without registering me.

At that post which was in the middle of nowhere, the driver approached me and started talking about a “little problem” he had. I first thought it’s about me refusing to pay to the police. That maybe the driver would ask me to pay so that he himself doesn’t have problems when passing by again on this road. He had said he does this road about 8 times in a month or if it’s a bad month it’s 3 times in a month.

But all the driver wanted to tell me was that if we would remain in touch perhaps I could send him a car one day from Poland. Well. I know sending cars to Africa could actually be a good business but if one lived close to a port. I don’t live close to a port and I also think none of the ships that carry cars to Africa leaves a Polish port. There are simply not enough Africans in Poland but maybe I am wrong? Anyway I did explain this to the driver and I hoped he understood.

In the meantime the man and his mother were forced to pay 5000cfa each at every control post on our way. The posts weren’t even road blocks. If you didn’t know you wouldn’t even see the police. Yet the driver – who claimed he himself was a former policeman – stopped at every post. The Gabonese got their laissez-passer stamped at every post.

In Nyanga, which seemed to be a sort of town, although Google Maps doesn’t have it on its map and we were away from the road marked on the maps as N3, route nationale 3, I managed to get a SIM card. It was only 500cfa and I got the one already registered to someone, but that’s fine with me, the internet in Congo is whopping 6000cfa for 3GB.

In Nyanga we saw a huge lorry packed with singing people. I snapped a photo but a man sitting on the top of the truck shouted something about paying for it.

The driver got two huge catfishes. Although he said they were not catfish. Catfish in French is poissson-chat but he said this was silure which Google translates as catfish, too. But the woman at the border said the same: c’est pas poisson-chat mais c’est silure. Anyway, the driver tied the two catfishes not catfishes to his mirror and they were dangling outside the car. Soon after he acquired a leg of an antillope which just lied under a plastic cover in the boot that protected (badly) all our luggage against the dust. The driver said he was very well-known on this road. For sure.

Towards the sunset we passed a village where people were enjoying palm wine. The man in the back, the one who came from Port Gentil with his mother, said he’d drink some gladly. I joined him saying I’d drink some gladly too. The driver said that palm wine was no good but he would get us some.

Some time later we stopped at a village where there was palm wine being drunk. Atmosphere very jovial, more jovial that a white man appeared, we got huge plastic mugs, the winemaster poured the wine from a plastic bucket to a 0.75l or 1l pastis bottle and we had two bottles. The wine was very good, again I’d call it dry as you call wines dry, we had two bottles between us two, I paid 1000cfa, the man insisted to give me money, the driver said 1000cfa is 3 bottles but we give one bottle for la jeunesse, the youth around us.

It was getting dark but the driver wouldn’t switch the headlights on. I understood why when he finally did and the light, well, you wouldn’t say he had no lights but the lights produced a reddish glow that was visible in the dark but the road below it wasn’t. And we were 120kms away from Dolisie. At one point the driver took out his mobile phone, not a nice smartphone but an old tiny model that does calls only and put his hand out and lit up the way. Seeing this and kinda fearing for my life, I took out my mobile and started lighting up our way from my side of the car. The driver switched off the headlights as they were not helping but the phones were not helping either! At least the road was straight and rather flat and not too bumpy.

We slowed down to the crawl, the driver possibly got tired of keeping his hand out of the windows and brought back the headlights and we continued driving. I even said something about the whole situation not being serious but noone said anything. The driver tried to chat us up saying that around here the country does not produce anything to which I snapped and said that certainly the country does not produce light to which the driver responded calmly that “the light is sufficient”.

He ended up complaining that noone said anything and we should be chatting so that we keep the atmosphere alive to which the woman in the back answered “we are all concentrated on the road.” Fuck yes we are!

It was 100kms to Dolisie, around 8pm, when we reached a village of Kibangou. Another police stop. I got registered, the man and his mom paid 10k again. The policeman even asked out of the blue for my vaccination card, which is a sign of looking for motive to ask for money. Maybe he asked when another, serious-looking, man entered the room and took passport from my hand and asked us to follow him to another building down the road. I walked together with my fellow passenger, he confesses he’d already paid 300,000cfa for all these registrations and stamps. 300k that’s $517, €457, 1950zł. Shit, I didn’t even have this money on me. And if only he had a passport apparently he’d have to pay nothing! Who knows but the Congolese woman in our car had no problems but maybe because she was in her own country.

We entered the other building together, the first building had electricity, this one didn’t. The man had a small lamp and in its light he was registering us. I got my passport back and my friend had to pay 10k again. The gendarme said his boss – common excuse – will look at all those records and demand money from him. And my record could be justified as I had my visa but the Gabonese? And why didn’t he have a stamp from Nyanga? The gendarme even made a circus of calling – apparently – someone in Nyanga to confirm my friend had been registered there. And my friend somehow kept refusing to pay but very weakly so in the end, his papers stayed in the building and we were told to leave.

In the meantime the driver asked me if it’s okay that we stay the night at the police station because “the visibility is low.” And we stayed at the police station – the one with electricity – without a clear plan what to do – until 10pm when the policeman – apparently son of the driver, very confusing – brought a mat and the elderly lady lied down on it and slept. I bought a pack of biscuits and a can of sardines from a shop and we had it with manioc. The policeman offered me his bed in his small room and he said he’d sleep on the floor but I too lied down on the floor. Somehow, there were many insects, including two beautiful mantis and some fat beetles but no mosquitoes. It was also quite chilly.

We saw the truck which we passed in Nyanga, the one with singing women. The next day we found out it arrived in Dolisie at 5am, 7 hours later.

We also met the Gabonese men who skipped this control post and had to go back. They too said they’d paid 300kcfa for all their stamps and instead of getting a weekend in Pointe-Noire they’d be going back the next day as they’d run out of money.

The driver took the man from Port Gentil to the gendarme again. The driver said we had one more control post ahead of us.

At 10pm electricity went off.

The driver woke us up at 4am and we left, with our non-working lights.

There were many enormous lorries on the road. Each time one of them was passing us by, the driver would stop the car and wait till the blinding lights of the lorry were behind us. Those lorries were running empty towards Gabon but going from the border they carried huge logs of wood. So much for forest control.

At one point we almost hit an antillope.

At the next control post, the driver told us to stay away and he himself went in. We managed to get away without registration.

Just before Dolisie asphalt started and immediately there was a toll gate. Road payment.

In Dolisie at the big square that was gare routière there were cars with destinations I had no idea about. There were also big lorries packing people and their luggage in. I felt a sting of jealousy or sadness and it’s no longer for me – I’d join a lorry immediately if I could.

The driver bought me a bottle of beer. I saw the Congolese woman giving him 15k and when I paid my own, 20k, the driver had audacity to ask for… Luggage fee! I told him I wasn’t paying, then I told him I had already paid more than the others – although I was sitting in front alone and as squeezed as I was, the seat didn’t move to the back at all, it was better than sitting with someone there – and the driver immediately changed the topic to the car that I was to send to Congo. He mentioned he’d send me 1million CFA for it. Well. 1m CFA is about €1500 and sending a car to Nigeria from Germany 4 years ago was €740. Not sure how to buy a car for €750…. Anyway we exchanged phone numbers.

My bags were already in another car, ready for Pointe-Noire, 2.5hrs away. We were told it’s 7000cfa but we ended up paying 5000. I managed to have a nice baguette with avocado salad for 500cfa.

The road to Pointe Noire seemed brand new, a narrow dual carriageway, build by the Chinese, route nationale 1, started of course with a toll gate. The road was twisting, going through the mountains, green and gentle we reached 1000m ask before we descended to the economical capital of the Congo.

In Pointe Noire I took taxi to Sueco, 1500cfa which seemed to be the only cheap place to sleep in town. It’s a evangelical school that has a guesthouse attached. We even stopped on our way to check other hotels but the cheapest I found was 20kcfa and they wouldn’t lower the price to 15k.

The rooms in Sueco have common bathroom and no fans and they cost 10kcfa. Sueco is on the border of centre ville. Pointe Noire looks quite rich compared to other African cities and it’s full of white people. It’s all in the oil my friends. But it makes the centre also expensive and that’s why I looked for hotels on our way to the centre so I wouldn’t have to overpay for rice and chicken.

From Sueco I walked down to the train station. Many cafés on my way but they all looked above my standard and the coffee there was 1500+. My original plan was to take the train from Pointe Noire to Brazzaville, the capital of the country. The train wasn’t running, then the train was running. I saw the empty train station. As of now the train has stopped. But there was café de la gare in the building where coffe was 1000cfa, I managed to get my cup but they made it with too much water.

After dark back in Sueco I asked the receptionist if it was normal that the room had no fan. He promised to find me the fan. When I was leaving for dinner after 8pm he promised he would look for fan. When I came back after 11pm he said all rooms were occupied so I wouldn’t get a fan. I got pissed off. The next day it turned out – I peeped into another room – that no rooms have fans. Well. It wasn’t that hot, the temperature at the sea were 20+C. But that the receptionist didn’t know?

I went to eat at Chez Andreas. I had been in Pointe Noire many years ago and I remember the roasted fish there. I took taxi, 1000cfa and I got dropped there, an enormous tail of a fish was 3500cfa. I splurged.