Congo Adventures, Part 4: In Which Ill-Equipped White Folk Attempt to Climb a Live Volcano

Congo, Day 3. 

One of the benefits of not having electricity is that there’s really nothing to do but sleep after it gets dark. As a result, you’re up at dawn and chipper as hell. Susan and I took our morning meal in the camp’s main building. Michael Pollan would love the Congo; I’m reasonably sure everything we ate (save for a jar of Nutella) originated within five miles of where we broke our fast.

We packed ourselves into our military vehicle and bounced down one mountain and up towards another. Today we were scheduled to climb Nyiragongo volcano.

On the way there, our driver flagged down another truck and bought some bread from them (How he knew the moving vehicle contained bread for sale I know not). Although there was no way for us to know it, this was the entirety of the supplies  we would have on this trip. We don’t know if this was a miscommunication, another example of African half-assery or another rip-off, but we being were sent to climb a goddamn volcano with three pieces of bread and two bottles of water.

At the base of the volcano, we were reunited with the Korean film crew (and the Korean Bear Grylls), along with a handful of other people headed to the rim. The plan was to climb the volcano, spend the night on the caldera in a cabin, then return in the morning. Porters would carry our luggage to the top and back for the princely sum of $12 a day. Susan wanted one. I thought I could carry my own gear, then relented under Susan’s concern. Susan, it turned out, is much smarter than me.

Halfway up, we had stopped for a break. One of the Dutchmen from the previous day’s gorilla trek was also heading for the summit. He was suffering mightily as he lumbered into the clearing and plopped down, clearly on the edge of throwing in the towel. Korean Bear Grylls saw this and tried to motivate him by yelling at him in Korean, then pounding him with a partially-filled water bottle. The Dutchman got pissed off and started whaling on Korean Bear Grylls with his own half-filled bottle. This only motivated KBG more, and the two men flagellated each other for several minutes. “No one back home will believe this is happening,” I said to Susan, as the Dutchman and Korean executed their savage ballet.

“You’re right,” she said. “I better film this.” And she did:

The climb was a little over five miles. It took six hours to go eight kilometers. We climbed something like 8,000 feet, almost all of it over volcanic scree. At our last stop before the top, Susan and I discovered that we had no supplies. On our last drops of water, the trip once again took on the tinge of a battle for survival instead of a relaxing vacation.

Several of us made for the rim to see the volcano. At first blush, it wasn’t so impressive in broad daylight. We stood a vertical half mile above a bubbling crater of lava and peered through thick clouds of steam that warmed the breeze. Seemingly out of nowhere, it began to rain. Susan and I picked our way carefully back to shelter, reaching it only after we had been drenched by the cloudburst.

At 12,000 feet, well above the tree line, the wind was whipping. As the sun began to drop, it began to get positively chilly. Neither Susan or I had brought appropriate clothing for cold weather; I mean, you would think the middle of Africa wouldn’t warrant a parka, right?

We were housed in a handful of chalets just below the volcano’s rim. Each one was fairly basic, sheets of metal bolted into a rudimentary box, each with a rubber sleeping pad. No evidence of bedding. When Susan enquired, we were told that we could rent a sleeping bag for $25. This was the equivalent of two day’s wages. Susan accepted the offer. I declined. Once again, Susan was smart. I was not.

My idiot plan was to wrap myself in both our ponchos, then ride out the night encased in an impermeable burrito of rubber (wow, that sounded dirtier than I thought it would). This plan completely backfired: Since our ponchos were non-porous, the heat I generated condensed and seeped back into my clothing, leeching further heat from my body. This vicious cycle lasted from sundown to 11 PM, when I awoke, shivering uncontrollably and having difficulty breathing in the thin air.

I could think of three options: I could go outside and try to find the guides and rent a sleeping bag from them (the darkness, dangerous rocky ground and the howling wind cast doubt on the viability of this plan). I could admit I was wrong in not taking the sleeping bag and ask Susan for help. Or I could die with dignity.

While I pondered this, the sound of my gasping through chattering teeth woke Susan up. Here is our conversation:

 Susan: Noah?

Noah: Mmmm?

Susan: You OK?

Noah: Mmmm..

Susan: What’s wrong?

Noah: Dying.

Susan: Oh.

She thought about my predicament for a moment, then stuffed me in her sleeping bag until I stopped shivering uncontrollably. Then she popped herself in. Two full-sized adults in a single sleeping bag makes for a tight fit; Susan and I were literally nose-to-nose for about five hours. I love Susan dearly, but this was the literal definition of “too close for comfort.”

We woke up at 4 AM to view the volcano in the predawn darkness. At night, it was beautiful. See? 

 The crater.

 The rim at night.

I’m not sure if it was majestic enough to put myself through this again, but it was pretty damn spectacular, sitting there in silence, watching the churning magma below. As dawn broke, the camp roused in preparation for the return leg. Susan and I returned to our cabin, where, in the rapidly improving light, it became clear I had taken some rather drastic measures to survive the freezing cold. The following conversation took place:

 Susan: Noah?

Noah: Yeah?

Susan: Are you wearing underwear as a hat?

Noah: Mind your own business, woman.

Susan: Wait, are you wearing socks as gloves?

Noah: Nunya’!!!

Susan takes photos too, unfortunately.

Being on a trip brings you so close to your significant other. Ten minutes later, Susan and I found our way to the stinky volcano latrine. “Noah, cover me while I take a shit,” my beloved requested, ever the lady.

“Only if you cover me,” I replied.

In a musical, this might have turned into a duet. Toilet en du volcan, perhaps.

We headed down. Susan is the worst mountain descender ever. It took her five times longer to go down than to go up. Her strategy was to literally scoot the five miles down entirely on her butt. After a hundred yards of stupefyingly slow progress, two of the porters took pity on Susan and literally held her hand and walked her down for five miles. “We’re breaking up if you photograph this,” said an angry Susan who’d caught me fumbling for my camera.

The journey down only took about two hours. An exhausted Susan stumbled into the clearing and collapsed. We begged a bottle of water off the Korean film crew and greedily chugged it, grateful to still be alive. Both of us were dirty and sweaty. We had traveled through four countries without taking a shower, and we smelled a sour mixture of fear and total exhaustion.

We had one last adventure – our ride back to the border was in a jacked-up flatbed truck (with the obligatory armed guard in back, of course). NATO had graded all the roads leading back to Goma in this part of the country, so lighter vehicles could pass. Nevertheless, we were thoroughly jostled by the trip; Every so often we would pass a giant dump truck returning from the field. The bed of these trucks were stacked impossibly high with sacks of crops. Workers say precariously atop the cargo, some 30 or 40 feet above the broken ground that rushed by at 60 kph. Several times, we saw a worker start to topple, to be saved only by grabbing one of the ropes used to lash down the giant sacks of maize and potatoes.

On the outskirts of town, we came thisclose to vehicular manslaughter. We missed a guy on a motorbike going the other way by microns. Our driver didn’t. even. twitch.” We passed so closely, I whipped my head around to see the damage from what I thought was an inevitable impact.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Hakuna Matata,” I said ultra-soothingly.

From behind the wheel, our driver, who spoke not a word of English, gave a deep, slow nod of agreement. His eyes never even left the road. No worries.

Congo Adventure, Part Three: One Riot and Seven Gorillas.

[Author Note: OK, this series is going to be four parts, not the originally-promised three. Suck it up.]

In the morning, we left the lodge for Virunga National Park’s northern reaches. Our destination was the Bukima campsite at the foot of the mountains the endangered mountain gorillas made home. By the light of day, we were permitted to ride the rear of the giant armored truck.

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a celebrity, I recommend being white and riding through remote Congolese villages. People dropped everything. At first, we passed the simple, single-story lodges that housed the park rangers and their families. Rangers were paid $170 dollars a month, some six times the average wage in this part of the world, so these people were well-fed and relatively content. They were happy to see us (All told, Susan and I were injecting more than $3,000 into the local economy, including a whopping $400 each for a single hour with the gorillas). As we passed out of the ranger’s camp, we were increasingly surrounded by villagers who relied on subsistence farming. Their jobs were apparently to alternate between whacking the soil with sticks and – judging from the incredible number of children we saw = breeding wildly. The adults mostly eyed us sullenly, rich foreigners passing by. The children, on the other hand, were wildly happy to see us. There is a move in the Congo that every child over the age of four seems to have mastered: It’s a vigorous Miss-America style wave, followed by a smooth upturn of the palm so that the waving hand is now outstretched and demanding of a handout. 

It was both pathetic and moving to see so much begging. These people had NOTHING. Every few minutes Susan and I would come up with some stupid revelation about life here. “None of these people have ever seen the ‘Tourette’s Guy’ videos or watched a porno film,” I would say. “See that guy over there wearing the Subway T-shirt?” Susan asked. “Think he’s ever been to a Subway?”

This last point was kind of interesting: Apparently, 90+% of the world’s donated clothing winds up here. No one apparently cares (or – sadly but more accurately – can read) what’s on their shirt. Here is a small sampling of the stuff we saw people wearing during our visit: 

(1)   FUBU

(2)   A pink Chicago Bulls Jersey (on a dude)

(3)   I “Heart” NY

(4)   Towson High Girl’s Fast-Pich Softball

(5)   Eminem: Rule-Breaker (with embossed pic of rapper)

(6)   Chanel sweater (on a dude)

(7)   Boy Scout Shirt (Rank: Wieblo, multiple merit badges)

(8)   Minnesota Department of Health

(9)   Detroit Free Press

(10) Several championship shirts from teams that did not win. I believe these were the shirts that the winners wear immediately after, for example, the Super Bowl. Obviously they print these for both teams, so the loser’s shirts have to go somewhere.

Honorable non-shirt mention: Santa hat, worn non-ironically.

Approximately one hour into our journey, Susan started a riot. Ironically, it was triggered by charity; As an antidote to the anticipated begging we would face in Africa, Susan and I had brought several dozen packs of Pop Rocks (that fizzy, carbonated hard candy crystals) to give to children. We figured the look on kid’s faces who had probably never had candy before would be pretty much priceless. Oh, and we’d given them out as tips to our drivers – good as money ‘round these parts. While we hadn’t had much opportunity to mingle with the locals, that suddenly changed when our vehicle broke down in the middle of one of the villages. Susan and I clambered out of the back of the truck. While I helped the driver work on the engine (my strategy was to pop the hood and look for a big on-off switch set to ‘off.’), Susan strolled down the road to meet some of the local kids. “Noah,” she called back, “can I give them some candy?”

“Sure,” I replied, thinking nothing of it. Susan fished several packs of Pop Rocks from my pack and handed them to a couple of the kids. The kids looked confused. “Bonbon,” Susan said, using the French word for candy. She mimed tearing open one of the packs and pouring it into her mouth. The kids got it. So did every villager with a clear line of sight.

You know how little kids are when someone brings in candy? They don’t quite have the maturity to wait their turn to get a piece, and it kind of turns into a free-for-all scrum. Yeah, that’s what was going down here, only with hundreds of full-grown adults. People who viewed us as giant walking ATMs saw one of us malfunctioning and spewing out free shit. The rush was on.

I turned to find Susan in the middle of a rock-star-sized crowd. Probing hands stripped her of all candy in mere seconds. Our driver grabbed his machine gun (bad sign) and rushed back into the crowd, yelling in Swahili and waving the gun around. The sight of an angry armed man wielding a machine gun was, apparently, only a mild deterrent to the crowd, but it was enough to back them off a bit. “Let’s roll, babe,” I said, grabbing Susan by the wrist and ushering her back to the truck. A few angry complaints in Swahili followed us, as did several children who trailed our progress for some distance with surprising ease. Kenyans and Ethiopians make wonderful distance runners. I wondered if sufficiently greedy/hungry Congolese could be similarly trained to run at high speeds behind a truck (possibly with me dangling a sandwich on a  fishing pole).

Before I could fully explore this churlish fantasy, we arrived at our second campsite. We stowed our bags and were told we would be heading out straight away to track the closest family of gorillas. In the main (and only permanent) building of the camp, we were paired with another pair of armed rangers and a couple of affable Dutchmen (Sub-Saharan Africa is popular with the Dutch; in three weeks we met over a dozen Netherlanders and exactly zero Americans.) and set on our way. We crossed over a mile of ragged fields and entered the jungle.

We climbed up the steep slopes on a path that had been carved through the dense woods using nothing but brute force and copious application of machete. The forest path narrowed, then narrowed further as we branched from the main artery onto smaller and smaller tributaries that snaked through the jungle. The bush was incredibly thick. Technically, we were in Virunga National Park, but this tract of forest was contiguous with the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Struggling through another snarl of saplings, I thought that name was far more appropriate for what this was – a suffocating crush of vegetation. The rangers moved through the jungle effortlessly, barely disturbing a branch as they eased through the underbrush. The white people thrashed behind them, struggling to keep up.

After several hours, I was tired and disoriented. Behind me, Susan was wheezing a bit in the thin air. Here, in the deepest reaches of the jungle, our group would likely die if our guides melted into the forest. Finally, some twenty minutes after abandoning even the faintest trace of trail, we halted. I was about to ask why we stopped, when I heard a rustle in the trees above us. Maybe twenty feet away, a giant fucking gorilla was casually chomping the leaves of the tree. I poked Susan to draw her attention to the animal we had come so far to lay eyes upon.

Susan was cranky and tired from climbing. “What?” she asked, following my gaze up. “Oh,” she breathed.

“If this was Donkey Kong, you’d be dead by now,” I murmured.

This is supposed to be a funny story, so I won’t dwell on it, but seeing a wild animal in its environment is incredible, a thousand times more real than seeing something in a zoo.

Miscellaneous observations:

(1)   We had to wear surgical masks. Even 12,000 miles from work, Susan and I can’t seem to get away from surgical masks.

(2)   Gorillas are gassy bastards. The group of seven averaged three flatulations per minute (source: best guess).

(3)   Members of this group were acclimated to very limited numbers of human visitors. The adult animals didn’t pay us much attention, but we were investigated by a teenager. When he got within six or seven feet of Susan, one of our guides tossed a stick to startle him and move him back. Before grudgingly retreating, the curious gorilla gave our guide the most wonderfully offended look for disrupting the interaction. So did Susan, for that matter.

(4)   There may only be a few hundred gorillas left at the time of this writing, but they’re trying to come back. The group of seven we spotted included three large males, two females, a teenager and – best of all – a tiny little baby that was never far from its mother’s arms.

(5)   Doing a quick headcount, it was clear there were more boys than girls in the group. Even though gorillas are polygynous, we figured there was at least one very pissed off male gorilla in the group. After about 50 minutes, we found him when Susan caught (and filmed) a male gorilla pulling his own ripcord during a bit of self-lovemaking. Video:

 

When we arrived back from our trek, we found the campsite populated by an Asian camera crew that was visiting the region to film a documentary for Korean TV. Their leader, a tiny bearded man in a cowboy hat, introduced himself as (and I quote): “the Korean Bear Grylls.”

“I am the American Lee Myung-bak,” I replied, which got a good laugh from the group [Lee is South Korea’s president. Protip: People from other countries LOVE it when you can name the president/PM of their country].

The Koreans and our Dutch companions quickly departed, leaving Susan and I alone in the camp, save for a few guards and staff members. “You must be hungry,” said the camp’s chef. I will make you dinner. Thirty minutes,” he promised.

Thirty minutes. Three hours later, the food arrived. “Sorry,” said the cook, as he delivered our food, “time is different in Congo.”

No shit. On the plus side, neither Susan or I had ever eaten at a restaurant where the slaughtered the chicken you were going to eat before your very eyes.

As was the case the previous evening, Susan and I were exhausted from the day’s events. We went to sleep, bathed in the light of the volcano we would be climbing the following morning.

Next Time: A vastly underprepared Noah and Susan spend the night on the rim of an active volcano. Also: Noah wears underwear as a hat.

In the Congo, Part Two: In Which Susan Destroys a Military Vehicle

Goma was the city on the Congo side of the border. What’s Goma like? Let’s put it this way: At the time of my visit I had been to over 75 countries. The previous champion of my “worst place on earth” list was Tangiers, Morroco. The day before, Nairobi had narrowly edged Tangiers for the top spot. Goma blew both cities away. In the last twenty years the city had gone through civil war, absorbed a flood of refugees from the Rwandan genocide, undergone periods of famine brought on by arguably the worst, most corrupt government on earth AND been buried by a nearby volcano that was still active. The city was heavily garrisoned by the UN forces, which protected the army of aid workers trying to stem rampant poverty from the region’s incessant instabilities. Goma was a blue city. Literally: Through charity or thievery, the entire city was painted the same shade of fluorescent blue the UN uses to paint their soldier’s helmets.

We took a cab to Virunga Park’s tourism office. The cab driver wanted five dollars to take us half a mile, scoffing at the Congolese Francs we offered (“We don’t take that shit!”). The taxi was riddled with bullet holes, which the driver had thoughtfully duct-taped over.

The park’s tourism office was more encouraging in appearance; There was no evidence of gunfire and – amazingly – there was electricity. A single employee was napping at the desk when we entered. We woke him and introduced ourselves. “You’re late,” he said.

“We’re here exactly when we said we would be,” I replied.

“I’m not sure we can get you to your campsite in the park tonight,” he replied. “It is very late.”

I looked at my watch. It was 3 PM local time. The sun beat down on us through the windows. “Seriously?” I asked.

“What are our options?” Susan asked.

“There is a new lodge we might be able to get you to. It’s closer. The price is…” he checked a paper, “$400 a night.”

“You’re scamming us,” I said. “What’s the average yearly income here - $300?” Susan tried to calm me down, but I was on a roll. “No, clearly they’re trying to milk us for a little extra juice. Waita fuck up your booming tourism industry, player,” I said to the clerk, laying the sarcasm as thickly as possible.

While I steamed, Susan began the pragmatic task of salvaging the situation. She swiftly negotiated the rate of the lodge down to a reasonable number. The park’s tourist director made a call and said out transport would be here soon.

Ten minutes later, our ride arrived. I was expecting another bullet-ridden cab. What showed up was an armored military troop transport with giant tires that came up to my chest.

Our driver was a skinny guy wearing a shiny knock-off green and gold track suit. He looked like a benchwarmer for the Seattle Supersonics. Susan and I made for the open back of the truck, but were stopped by Track Suit. “Not safe,” he said, and gestured for us to get in the front of the truck with him. The truck's cockpit was so high that Susan literally had to be boosted up into the cab. I piled in behind her and we sat stuffed, bags and all, in the cramped cab of the truck.

Our ride passed in rumbling silence. After a few fruitless attempts at conversation with the driver, we gave up. People in the Congo speak French and Swahili. Apparently, ‘not safe’ was the only English our driver knew.   

  

From satellite photos on Google Earth, I knew the park was only about 20 miles away from the city center. In America, this ride would take about maybe half an hour, more if we stopped for a slurpy. Round these parts, it was going to take all day: In 2001, Mount Nyiragongo erupted and buried the city like a modern day Pompei. The roads were completely destroyed in the eruption, and were now littered with shards of jagged of lava that stuck up to two feet out of the earth. By modern standards, the road was impassable. Only small motorbikes – which could pick their way between the rocks – and giant military vehicles could traverse the “road.” The going was insanely slow and the ride was rough; Susan and I were covered with bumps and bruises when we peeled our travel-soiled clothes off that night. Most of our time was spent praying, first for the jagged road goatpath of a highway to flatten out, then simply for the vehicle to not run out of gas (we’d noticed the gas gauge was on empty. Fortunately (?), it was only broken).

We rumbled out of town at eleven miles an hour, being thrown this way and that at random.

After a couple of hours, it did start to get dark. Susan and I exchanged nervous glances as convoy after convoy of NATO soldiers rumbled past, presumably heading to safer pastures for the night. Five minutes after the last convoy passed, another military truck, this one sporting a .50 caliber machine gun swung across the road, cutting off out path of advance. Several soldiers piled out of the back, each carrying an automatic weapon. Bandits. “I love you,” I said to Susan, fearing this might be my final pronouncement. The soldiers passed the cab and ambled into the back of the vehicle, where they assumed the watchful repose of a sentry. They were, apparently, here to protect us. Our truck resumed its bumpy journey, now followed by the troop transport. Moments later, a third vehicle pulled into an escorting position in front of us.  

As dusk approached, Susan and I found ourselves traveling overland, escorted by no less than a dozen heavily-armed soldiers. In my opinion, we could have used some more. Out here, there was no electricity. Our vehicle’s headlights cut a little pocket into the night, which occasionally revealed pockets of dark faces staring as we rumbled past. The only light was from the cone of the volcano. The same volcano that had buried Goma and the same volcano we appeared to be driving directly at. I voiced these sentiments to Susan, and asked her why she thought gorillas would choose to live here, on the edge on annihilation. "I don't know," Susan said, "maybe that's why they're almost extinct."    

The military convoy rumbled up the mountain, getting closer and closer to the volcano. Finally, we ground to a halt at a gate staffed by even more soldiers. Our driver jumped nimbly down from the truck and engaged the gate attendants in vigorous discussion. Although my Swahili is limited to pleasantries and dirty words, it did not take a genius to realize that the park guards were not keen on letting us in at this late hour. I turned to Susan and was getting ready to tell her we might have to endure the bumpy ride back to town when our truck started to roll backwards.

Susan later told me that she thought we were being towed somewhere. My more pessimistic view was that the driver had parked ten tons of rolling stock on a steep mountain without using the parking brake. The alarmed shrieks from the soldiers in the back of the truck seemed to confirm that my opinion was correct: our vehicle was officially out of control and was – at this moment – picking up speed and careening towards the escort vehicle parked behind us.

Even in the dark, two things were clear: First, in a few seconds we were going to collide with a heavily armed military vehicle and – second – the only person who could stop the out-of-control truck was Susan, who was wedged between me and the driver’s seat.

Susan’s confused face begged me for additional gentle prompting. “Woman, you think this is a ride? Jump on the brake!” I yelled.

African voices joined me in urging Susan on. From the gatehouse, I heard our driver yell out “Mzungu [‘foreigner’ in Swahili], brake! Brake Mzungu!!!”

Mzungu Susan sprang into action. Within two seconds, she had jumped into the driver’s seat and was searching for the brake with her foot.  Unfortunately, the entire area was PITCH BLACK. It was a race against time to see whether Susan would find the brake before the collision.

We were too late: Susan and I were rocked by a great impact – a flat bang followed by a terrible sound of rending metal. For one terrifying moment, both vehicle’s shifted, and it appeared both would be sent rolling downhill, likely to death or serious injury of many soldiers and one or two white people. A split second before momentum would make inevitable further disaster, Susan’s foot stabbed down on the brake. Both vehicles ground to a stop. Susan looked at me, the whites of her eyes clearly visible in the dark. Outside, a new chorus of excited Swahili erupted. Inside the truck, no one spoke. Out of the darkness, our driver flung open the door and threw himself into the cab, looking resplendent as ever in his green and gold tracksuit. Without EVEN ACKNOWLEDGING THAT SUSAN HAD JUST CRASHED A GIANT FUCKING MILITARY VEHICLE, Track Suit starts up the truck and peels out at a rumbling 8 mph. The gate was now open; Our collision must have somehow convinced the park guards to let us enter. In the dim glow of the taillights, I can see that the impact has done a good bit of damage to the trailing vehicle, which was apparently unable to follow us any further.

Susan and I sat in shocked silence. “Hakuna Matata [‘No worries’ in Swahili]?” Susan finally ventured.

“I suppose,” I said, “they don’t exchange insurance info in Africa.”  

Ten minutes later, we arrived at the lodge. I an oasis of crappy, the lodge was... almost indescribable. A six star luxury villa set into the jungle. While sipping on welcoming champagne, we were given instructions on the finer point of life at the lodge. These included:

(a)   How to summon our personal butler.

(b)   What to do if attacked by gorillas.

(c)    The location of the private wine cellar.

(d)   What to do if attacked by guerillas.

Susan and I shared what amounted to a medium-sized house with a stone shower large enough that the cast of Jersey Shore could have held an orgy in it.

At dinner, it was clear that we were the poorest people there (excluding the waiters) by far. One of the guests was Brent Stirton, a photographer for National Geographic and Getty Images, among others. He was easily the coolest guy I’ve ever met. Later, we found out he was the guy who had taken Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s kids’ baby photos. As entertaining as Brent was, the most memorable conversation was between Susan and the head park ranger, who had joined the guests to welcome us to the park.

Susan began the signature exchange of the evening while discussing the status of animals here with the head ranger. “I noticed that there were a few dogs, but I only saw one cat," Susan said. "Are cats really popular here?”

“Well, yes,” said the ranger, looking a tad uncomfortable, “this is a really war-torn area. Pets aren’t really something that are important to people when they’re starving themselves.”

Something about the way he said this caught my attention. I made eye contact with the ranger and subtly pointed to my stomach and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. They ate all the cats during the war, didn’t they?

Almost imperceptibly, the ranger nodded, then quickly went back to talking about something else. Susan had no idea the exchange even occurred.

Despite the opulent surroundings, Susan and I were spent from the day’s exertions. We collapsed into bed and fell into the deep sleep of the exhausted, day one of the Congo complete.

Next Time: Susan incites a riot, Gorillas, and an explanation of where vintage clothing goes to die. 

Three Days In The Congo: An Epic... Something.

(Alright, I know I said this blog would be Chicago-based, but I'm too lazy to put this anywhere else.)

This is the first post describing 72 very eventful hours Susan and I spent in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Apparently, what happens in the Congo does not stay there.

Part 1: Getting to the DRC

Scene: Africa, February, 2012

A trip to Africa. We had an exciting itinerary planned: Following a short stay in Nairobi, we were heading to the Democratic Republic of Congo to spend a day with endangered mountain gorillas and climb a an active volcano. Unbelievable, right?

We flew into Nairobi the night before we departed for Congo. Nairobi can be broken down into a simple set of positives and negatives.

The positives: It costs slightly less to fly into Nairobi than the nearby cities of Entebbe (Uganda), Kigali (Rwanda) or Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania).

The negatives: Nairobi is a shithole. This is a city roughly as large as New York that has maybe four traffic lights and no roads bigger than two lanes. The city is redolent with Eau de Open Sewer. Our hotel employed five security guards to prevent our, what, murder? Robbery?

We stayed only one terrible day in Nairobi before beginning our journey to the Congo. Our ride to the airport was arranged through the hotel’s official taxi driver, Solomon. The day before, Solomon had driven us around for four hours, confirming our initial impressions of Nairobi. Solomon was about sixty, and was VERY in touch with his own emotions: He repeatedly confessed to us that he loved us like his own children, children who paid him $55 for four hours’ work (OK, he left that last part out). However, Solomon hadn’t tried to kill or rob us. This meant that he was our most trusted ally in this godforsaken city. We accepted his offer.

“Solomon, how long does it take to get to the airport?” I asked.

“Oh, could take two, three hours,” Solomon replied.

We left at 5:45 AM for our 11 AM flight. We were at the airport by 6:15.

The sense that Solomon had failed us lasted only until we tried to enter the airport. We’d come through Nairobi International at 2 AM two days earlier; now, it was a madhouse. It took us almost two hours just to get in the front door of the airport. Organized chaos would at least have been organized. I swear to God, I think we saw someone trying to take a chicken on a flight.

We reached the front counter around 8:30, slid our passports across the desk to the ruddy-faced agent for Air Kenya… and listened in disbelief as he told us the airline had absolutely no record of us being on this flight.

Missing this flight endangered an already-fragile travel schedule. We had only budgeted three days in the Congo, each one meticulously allocated to activities. Gorilla permits weren’t cheap. Nor were permits to climb an active volcano, visas, lodging, and transportation. All told, Susan and I had several thousand dollars invested in making this flight.

A lady behind us was late for her flight to Rwanda. We stepped aside to discuss our situation, and God tossed us a bone.

“Oh, here you are,” the gate agent said. “You’re on the same flight as this lady. The 8:30 flight.”    

Susan and I checked our watches. It was 8:24 AM. The questions of why the airline would book us on a different, earlier flight, or why they wouldn’t notify us were lost. Even after a short time in Africa, we’d learned that if we didn’t move now, we might be shit out of luck.

I am not sure how, but we somehow cleared customs, and found ourselves running down the terminal. Precious seconds ticked by.

“Which gate?!?” Susan yelled, running ahead as I lumbered behind, carrying our packs.

“Ticket says Gate 8,” I yelled back.

There was no agent at Gate 8. There was also no jetway; patrons simply walked out onto the flight tarmac and boarded whatever plane happened to have an open hatch. There was a sign by Gate 8, though, which reported that the flight was bound for Mogadishu, capital of Somalia. Black Hawk Down Mogadishu.

“Susan, No!” I yelled, as my fiancé joined a queue of straggling passengers. “It’s going to Mogadishu! Moga-fucking-dishu!”

Fortunately, the gate signs were as incorrect as Air Kenya’s ticketing procedure, and our plane was going somewhere (hopefully) less dangerous. It was not possible to fly into the DRC (AKA The Democratic Republic of Congo), at least on an airline that hadn’t crashed in the past three months. Our planned itinerary took us to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, from which we would travel overland to the DRC. As we boarded, however, we were informed the flight would first be making a stop in Bujumbura, capital of nearby Burundi. It was unclear as to whether this stop was planned, or merely a whim of the pilot.    

Our first approach to Bujumbura was aborted. Moments from landing, the plane immediately went to full power and banked away. Having a massive jet plane go from almost landing to clawing for altitude is terrifying. Over the screaming engines, our captain explained the landing had been aborted (“No shit,” remarked Susan) because of animals on the runway. Our second landing attempt was also aborted; People on the runway this time, reported the captain, in a tone a little too casual for my liking.

Eventually we landed. The airport terminal was little more than a shack set into the jungle. By the runway, perhaps twenty meters from the plane, fishermen were lined up, plying their trade in a ditch that lined the runway.

Moments later, we were off to Rwanda and, and hour later, Susan and I crammed ourselves in a minibus and, at the princely sum of $6 each, were sent speeding away across the country.

For a country that’s as legendarily conflict-plagued, Rwanda was a tremendous surprise. The capital was virtually pristine. Buildings were painted. Outside the capital, the road dodged between steep, impossibly tall green hills, each covered with a tidy patchwork of agriculture that separated equally picturesque village. Then, just when you’re about to forget that you’re in the very heart of chaos, you see a guy on a skateboard hitching a ride down the highway by grabbing the bumper of a truck that’s going 50 mph.

Rwanda’s niceness only served to prime us for how crappy Congo was. We reached Gisenyi, the border town on the Rwandan side of the Congolese border. Exiting Rwanda was an orderly, perfunctory affair that took place in a low white building with a well-manicured lawn. To get to the Congolese side, we walked over a neutral zone of about 50 yards to a dusty, sagging shack with ‘Immagracion’ scrawled on the side. A generator roared in the background, powering a single dingy light bulb. In dormant high school French, Susan indicated our interest in entering the country and handed over our visas and passports. The agent began entering our information into a ledger by hand.  

Thirty minutes later, we were still waiting. Tiny African men in ridiculous blue berets swarmed around, accomplishing little. Susan and I sat helplessly, longingly looking back at the (literally) greener grass and smiling customs agents on the Rwandan side of the border*. Finally, our passports were returned. “Where are our visas?” Susan asked in French. The customs agent spoke a few words and made a gesture not unlike brushing off a fly. “He says we don’t need them and that they stay here,” Susan reported glumly. And so we entered Congo, our legal status a shade of grey. 

Part 2: Susan deliberately crashes an armored military vehicle... just to be a bitch. 

*When we left the Congo, we finally figured out a big reason for why things were so slow: the entire border operation had only a single passport stamper and only a single inkpad, which had to be laboriously passed around between immigration officers. 

Fear and Loathing in Chicago

Location: Chicago, IL

Date: 2008

Question: What’s the easiest way to start a riot in Chicago?

Answer: Throw a cheeseburger into the crowd.

It’s funny because it’s true.  Chi-town (and the Midwest in general) has enough fat people to make anyone but a Houstonite (Houstonian? Hous-ass-bitch?) blush.  Occasionally this blubber comes in handy. For example, as a built-in ass cushion while navigating the wet and frozen streets that are de rigeur six months out of the year. The world was treated to a rather emphatic demonstration of this eventuality when RobertCheyuriot slipped on the frozen finish line en route to (barely) winning Chicago Marathon.  While the ultra-skinny Cheyuriot was, pardon the pun, out cold, the average Chicagoan would have escaped with nothing more than a wet patch on their amply proportioned derriere.

 

Back to the point:  This story is about food.  And shame.  And what Chicagoans are willing to go through to wrap their gums around some mediocre grub.

The Taste of Chicago is the apotheosis of human gluttony.  Each day, upwards of one million fatties converge on Grant Park over the fourth of July weekend to - as the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live put it - consume  mass quantities.  As a neophyte to the city, I’d heard the legends but refused to believe them, preferring to witness the spectacle myself before rendering judgment. 

Wary of the greasy mosh pits and uninvited demonstrations of gastrointestinal fortitude described to me by longtime residents, I paid my visit to the fair at 11 AM on a Tuesday.  There were crowds, but it wasn’t that bad.  The following year I got cocky.  My girlfriend and I paid our visit on July third, traditionally the busiest day at the festival.  I suggested we time our visit to occur just before the evening’s fireworks display began.  This was enough to make my girlfriend, a jaded Chicago native, raise an eyebrow.  “If that’s what you want,” she said.

That’s what I wanted.  We arrived around 3 PM, just as the festival was reaching critical mass.  People were packed in so tightly that you could touch at least ten of your fellow city dwellers at any given moment.  Locomotion was challenging; in spots where the crowds were thin one could waddle along at something resembling the languid strut of a pimp. In the thickest parts of the crowd you were lucky to move ten yards in a minute, humanity pressing in on you from all directions.  At this incredible density, it was very easy to resent obese people, whose added bulk provided just that much more surface area with which to convey their sweaty, greasy embrace to those misfortunate enough to run alongside.

Very quickly, it became apparent that cuisine dictated foot traffic.  The worse the junk food (nutritionally speaking), the worse the crowd and the beefier the folks.  The fried chicken tent was awash with XXL Southsiders.  The deep dish pizza pavilion was mobbed by flushed and sunburned suburbanites.  And the absolute epicenter of this flesh storm was the funnel cake booth, the twain where both groups met.  A hundred yards in any direction from the tent, bodies were packed so tightly that air seemed a precious commodity and what oxygen one could draw was tainted with the oily stink of overfed humanity.

This did not deter us.  I needed a funnel cake something fierce. Unfortunately, after five or six minutes of trying to work our way towards the Mecca of fried dough, it became clear that we would get there a lot faster if only one of us went.  We split up, Susan continuing towards the food stand while I turned my attentions to staking out a spot where we could safely feed.  Serendipitously, this decision would lead me to witness, not one, but two defining images of these modern times.

It began mundanely enough with one of the herd migrating away from the funnel cake tent.  Even by Taste standards, this woman was gigantic.  I estimated her weight at 350, give or take a polish sausage.  Despite her size, she had persevered in getting a funnel cake with the works, and was (presumably) in the act of returning to her lair with her prize.  Because of the crowding, there was simply no room to hold food at your side, as people normally do.  To adapt, this woman, along with many others, had resorted to holding their funnel cakes aloft, overhead where it was safe from the plebian masses.  It was an amusing-but-effective technique; from my vantage point, it looked as though she was making a doughy offering to the gods.

The deities apparently declined. I watched the woman with the fascination all of us reserve for those living at the physical extremes as the fat woman began to wear down from the exertion of carrying her desert aloft. Fatigue began to set in and her arms began to quiver. The paper plate she held tilted forward, slowly at first, then more dramatically.  Atop the unbalanced funnel cake, a scoop of vanilla ice cream began to roll, slowly at first and then faster as it picked up momentum. 

Helplessly, I watched the accident unfold. The ball of ice cream was now sliding towards the edge of the plate at an alarming rate, picking up more powdered sugar, toffee and chocolate syrup with each passing moment. Coated with the three messiest substances known to man, the frozen ball of cream avalanched across her plate, hung for a precious second… and plummeted over the side, directly onto the top of the fat woman’s head.

Though she had undoubtedly registered the impact, the lady did not immediately react.  Slowly, her face adopted the grim countenance of someone whose head has been shat upon by a bird.  Then her eyes widened as she realized that bird shit is neither as large or cold as the semisolid object topping her head.  Best of all (for me, at least), the copious heat of the day had conspired to destabilize the ice cream/chocolate/sugar mixture, which had now begun to slide down her face.

You must understand the woman’s position to appreciate the true direness of her plight.  Normally, removing the offending confection would be a simple matter.  In this situation, however, Funnel cake Woman lacked both a free hand and room to maneuver.  Any attempt to pluck the ice cream away would undoubtedly unbalance her funnel cake completely, sending it crashing down and further soiling her (I shall ignore for the moment the possibility that the woman was simply unwilling to abandon her dessert.  She’s suffered enough already.).  Nor could she set her plate down, or even bring it below head level.  In short, she was screwed.

Or was she?  I saw a gleam of possibility in her piggy eye.  And then I saw the tasty solution she had devised.  The ball of ice cream was sliding down her temple.  The woman angled her head so that the ball would run by the corner of her mouth.  There it was: If she could somehow eat the entire ball of ice cream in one massive bite, all would not be lost.

It was a heroic attempt.  Funnel Cake Woman’s tongue sprang from her mouth like a spring-loaded predator on a national geographic video, lassoing around its prey and corralling it towards her gaping maw.  She was in her element, acting on instinct and at ease with every part of the act. As the ice cream made contact with her searching lips, I was certain this was going to work.  Then someone jostled her and the ice cream popped free.  The largely-intact glob landed on one of her slab breasts, where it lay, melting into her pre-shrunk cotton she-tent. 

This woman must have really been attached to her shirt. She did a little shimmy, trying to dislodge it, but there was nowhere to go. Panic set in. Funnel Cake Woman began emitting frantic little yelps that failed to articulate her situation but succeeded in drawing the attention of the five or so people who were pressed into direct physical contact with her.  Immediately, each of them began to panic as well, worried about being soiled by the ice cream leaking off of this behemoth (who, incidentally, still held her funnel cake high and proud).  Those in the immediate vicinity began yelling, imploring Funnel Cake Woman to back away from them.  This added pressure backfired badly.  The obviously-rattled Funnel Cake Woman totally freaked out, and began to do a little spinning dance that succeeded only in wiping ice cream against every trapped person around her.  In turn, most of those she tagged then did their own little evasive maneuvers, spreading melted dairy product into a second rank of unsuspecting folks.  It was the absolute worst-case scenario for a single ball of spilt ice cream.  As an observer outside the danger zone, I was laughing so hard I was worried about blowing a blood vessel and stroking out.

But that’s not all. Before beginning part two of this story, let me caution you: This will not top part one.  Stop reading if you’d like to go out on a giggly high provided by a good ice cream panic.  Otherwise, read on:

The second sordid chapter began only moments after the conclusion of the opening act.  Cries of dismay still rang in my ears as I, still chuckling, poked away from the scene of the mess.  I had gone no further that ten yards (albeit taking several minutes in doing so) when I witnessed a fight at extreme crowd density.  A woman (who we’ll call “Ghetto Lady #1”) was coming through the crowd, child in tow.  Being packed in so tightly, personal space was nonexistent and tempers were running high.  Ghetto Lady #1 was no exception.  “Stay back!  Stay back!” she brayed.  This was akin to asking a person with the world’s most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control their shitting - it just wasn’t going to happen.  As the crowd surged back and forth, she changed tactics.  “Don’t press on my child!” she admonished no one in particular, “Ima whup yo’ ass ifya press on my child!” 

A woman of similarly fair breeding (whom I will refer to as “Ghetto Lady #2”) took it upon herself to correct the ill manners of Ghetto Lady #1.

“Shut up and handle it, bitch!” said Ghetto Lady #2.   

From there, it was on.  Trying to represent ebonics in typeset hurts my fingers, so I won’t cover the back and forth of the argument that precipitated the battle. Near as I could tell, Ghetto Lady #1 (who was putting on an admirable job as a role model for her kid, I should add) triggered the actual physical altercation by threatening to slap Ghetto Lady #2 “back into the cooch she came out of.”

“You ain’t doin’ shit - yo’ pimp hand be trapped!” replied Ghetto Lady #2.  In addition to being hilarious, this comment was factually accurate.  We were still in the thickest part of the crowd, and hands were by-and-large relegated to one’s side. 

Still, it was too much.  The gauntlet had been laid down and, were it possible to do so, picked up again.  It was setting up to be the lamest fight ever; There was no way to swing, kick, elbow, pull hair, or any of the nastier moves that we’ve all claimed to use in our street fighting days.

Both women, probably realizing this, decided to go at it by shocking each other by going “BWLAAAAHHH!” really loudly, each letting their tongue hang out like one of the “Wassup” guys from the beer commercials.  They also widened their eyes threateningly for emphasis.  This went on for a minute as they decide how to escalate.  Finally, Ghetto Lady #2 says “Ooh, bitch.  You gonna get it now,” and headbutts her nemesis.

There is a proper way to do damage with a headbutt.  It generally involves rearing back and loading the spine before delivering the blow.  With no room for that, the ladies exchanged harmless, neck-only headbutts.  This ineffective display went on for an embarrassingly long time, to the delight of the crowd.  Several bets were placed by drunken rednecks on who would win.

The fight ended when the ladies (through their lame headbutting) tangled their braids to such an extreme degree that their heads were literally stuck together.  No, seriously.  Both of them had to ask for help from someone in the crowd to separate them.  Historically, being helplessly attached to your opponent is a great way to end a fight.  If Churchill had superglued his hand to Hitler’s, we could have saved a lot of lives.  In the present, there were a few more desultory insults regarding the quality (or lack thereof) of each participant’s weave, but things cooled rapidly.

As order was restored, my girlfriend reappeared next to me.  “Want some funnel cake?” she asked.  I bit a piece directly off the plate.  It was pretty good.  “Did I miss anything?” my girlfriend asked.  I shrugged.  The last thing I heard was Ghetto Lady #1 yelling at the crowd “Where my child?!?! Anyone seen my little boy?!?”

Mother of the Year #1.