Over our winter break, we finally made it deep into the interior of Zaire, traveling by riverboat and train. I sent this “Christmas Trip Saga” to friends and family back home.
“Just after school closed on Dec. 17 (1974), Mike and I and a friend from school drove down to the port where our big, old riverboat stood waiting. We went on, found our cabin — neat, little double rooms with a shared bath — and then settled down to watch the port activities. Much of it centered around our boat which, we discovered, was far from complete on its own. By the time we pulled out onto the vast river that evening, we were surrounded by four huge barges populated by hundreds of people. These, we found out, were to serve as a sort of traveling marketplace. For the next five days, mixed in with the luxury of relaxing, reading, playing chess, drinking beer and sleeping, we spent our time watching the endless activity. Villagers would paddle their canoe-like pirogues out to the boat, tie on (against the current) and bring loads of empty beer cases, heaping piles of powdery white manioc and dried monkeys by the scores. The monkeys were carried like little suitcases, with their tails tied around their necks. The villagers would come on board, sell their goods, get their beer cases refilled and buy sugar, fabrics, etc., from the boat market before returning to their pirogues and paddling home.
“Evenings were lovely, with the moon on the water and the cool breeze, floating by picturesque villages and eating the good meals in the riverboat’s comfortable dining room. And oh the long hours of reading. Curiously enough, it was ‘War and Peace’ that I chose to pack. I did love thinking about Joseph Conrad making this same trip at the age of 32 and returning to his travel journals years later to write ‘Heart of Darkness.’ But I’d read it recently, and ‘War and Peace’ was the perfect length for this long, leisurely trip.
We were sorry to get off when we pulled into Ilebo. There, we planned to board a train for Lubumbashi, the center of Zaire’s teeming mining district. When we left the boat, we found that our train would be delayed for 12 hours. We strolled around town and ran into an American man who was staying at a Belgian mission outside town. He took us there, and we had an interesting conversation with two old Belgian priests, and bought several of the woven grass mats (tapis) made here, which we have come to like so much. We boarded the train that night, found we had a nice big compartment, and settled in for another pleasant stretch on our journey.
“We met several Zairois people on the trip, and found them freer and easier to talk to than we have found them in the city. On the train, we joined two new Zairois acquaintances for Christmas dinner in the dining car — they had made a special order of gazelle and fou-fou (a kind of manioc mash which you eat with your hands, dipping it into gravy). Later that afternoon, we went back to the dining car to join them for beers and assorted fried insects. It wasn’t eggnog and fruitcake, but it was tasty, and special for Christmas. The other Christmas-y time had been our walk back from the mission into the town of Ilebo to board the train. It was pitch dark, and hundreds of the tiniest fireflies were flickering in the grasses all around us.
“The train would stop in villages, and people would come running up to the windows with local specialties — tiny, sweet bananas; fish just out of the river, fresh-cooked and delicious, and huge, luscious pineapple slices.
“We arrived in Lubumbashi with almost half our vacation remaining. Travel information here is scarce, and we had heard the train could take 10 days. It took only three, and we’d be flying back from Lubumbashi. What to do with this found time? We decided to see if we could go on to Zambia. Amazingly, the consulate said it could give us a fairly quick visa, and so we began making arrangements. Meanwhile we explored lovely old Lubumbashi — quieter and far more strollable than Kinshasa. There is a fine zoo, where we spent several hours, and pleasant parks and neighborhoods. We met some Peace Corps people, who befriended us and kept our Zaire money and unnecessary luggage during our trip to Zambia.
“Zambia is quite different from Zaire. English-speaking, of course, as a former British colony, and much more ‘civilized’ in traditional Western ways — good roads and transportation, for instance. In Lusaka, we browsed in English-language bookstores, walked about a lot and ate good Chinese food.
“We met several Zambians and had good talks with them. Two young men took us on a wonderful personal tour of one of the huge copper mines, where we saw all the mammoth machines and even went down into the gaping pit. It was fascinating, and instructive to see something of the resource which is responsible for so much of the wealth of Zaire as well as Zambia (albeit hugely skimmed off by Mobutu and others of the elite).
“We came back to Zaire on a luxury bus, transferring at the border to what is euphemistically called a “taxi bus,” in Zaire, which is usually a small van absolutely crammed with people. Not comfy, but more, um, interesting than its Zambian counterpart. We had a pleasant enough flight home on Air Zaire, often called Air Peut-être (Air Perhaps) due to its dubious reservation practices, but all went smoothly this time.
“Back at home, we made a most unhappy discovery. We had arranged with several other couples to share in the purchase of a cow — a rare luxury in Zaire. We’d had it slaughtered and stuffed our freezer with our share shortly before leaving on our holiday. Alas, our refrigerator had died during our time away, and was emitting the foulest smell imaginable. The house is still permeated with it. Plus — no beef.
“Cooking here is interesting, to say the least. There is no fresh dairy, so we use powdered milk. We don’t like drinking it, but I make lots of yogurt, strained through muslin cloth. Our flour is flecked with weevils and requires multiple siftings. But we buy plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables from local women who come to our door with baskets full, expertly balanced on their heads. We do just fine.
“Ah, but that Christmas trip! We are now looking forward to Easter break, when we hope to go to the Kivu region of eastern Zaire to see mountain gorillas and climb volcanoes. And I’m already pining for the loooong trip we’re planning for this summer, across eastern and southern Africa. If only there weren’t this rude intrusion of work time between vacations! (Which does, of course, make it all possible.)”