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.