North to Goma, Zaire Again

I walked and waded through the mud on the trail heading back North. I tried to skirt around the bigger mud puddles because I didn't want to get stuck in the mud and sink quicksand style like the truck had done. Walking alone in the jungle I started to notice more wildlife.

There were monkeys and loud birds daily. Sometimes the monkeys caused me some problems. One morning I was eating my breakfast and drinking my hot tea when a solitary monkey snuck down and stole a large tin of margarine from me. I had the cover off because I had put some on my oatmeal along with cinnamon and sugar. The stupid monkey took the full tin up the tree and started to gobble it up. I was pissed at him for taking it and I was throwing sticks up the tree but I had no way of ever hitting him and he knew it. Even before he finished eating it all he started to get diahrea. He never vomited but his other end turned into a gusher in less than a half hour. He was feeling terrible and I was laughing at him. I had nobody to talk to or anything so I was ranting and raving at him like he understood everything I said. He must have felt the same loneliness because he stayed right there in the tree spray painting it for about an hour. I finally left him there and continued walking.

I had seen no people or signs of people in two days of walking then there was suddenly a Pygmy standing on the trail looking at me with a stunned look on his face. I stopped walking and talked to him in English and in my limited French but he never responded. I slowly walked up to him talking calmly the whole time and he never moved or said a thing. When I got close enough to reach out and touch, he suddenly reached out and fondled my long straight black hair. My white skin wasn't so rare in Africa because there are quite a few albinos everywhere I went but none of them had long straight hair like I did. I frequently had people wanting to run their fingers through my hair. I often let them to easy tensions or to show that I was friendly. This man looked to be in his thirties or so but they tend to look older than they really are so he may have been younger. After a few minutes of me trying to talk to him he finally started communicating with me. He was out hunting and he went over by a tree and showed me his prize. It was a Dikdik. They are very small antelope about the size of a small tall slim dog. I had to laugh to myself that the little Pygmy hunted for little Dikdiks. I started walking and we walked together for a while. Then he showed me that if I walked in the jungle it was actually an easier walk. Not right along side of the road where the jungle was thick right down to the ground because the road let in light but instead he showed me how deeper in the jungle it was actually easy to walk because there was very little vegetation on the ground and almost no mud either. My only problem with that is without him showing me where to walk out in the jungle I would just get lost within a short time.

We met up with his friends in maybe an hours time and through sign language and some Pidgin thown in I figured out that they were inviting me to come along with them on their hunt. So I followed them. One of them had an old rifle and while we were walking a couple of them stopped to listen and then pointed up in the canopy. I looked up and saw nothing but the one with the rifle took aim and squeezed off a single shot and a monkey came tumbling down to the ground. They seemed happy with their catch of a few Dikdiks, the monkey and some things wrapped up in leaves that one of them was carrying. We walked almost until dark and came upon their encampment. There were thirty five or so people in total with a few kids running around and about half men and half women. All of them were almost totally naked. The men sat down and started to smoke while the women started to prep the game to eat. I set up my tent. They were very interested in my tent but by the sounds of them talking back and forth they didn't like it enough to want to sleep in one. They preferred their temporary grass and branch huts. This was just a hunting camp I think but they didn't have really permanent housing anywhere from what I gathered over my time in Africa. These Pygmies acted and looked very similar to the ones I had met over in Western Cameroon. They were still the original hippies, happy go lucky, averse to work, trying to get high all the time and enjoying unbridled sexual freedom. They tried to get me to take one or two of the women into my tent but I turned them down. I couldn't see any health problems in this group of people but I was just a chicken over STDs.

I stayed with these Pygmies for a couple of weeks until my food was running low. I ate the roast monkey and Dikdiks and things with the Pygmies and even tried eating their grubs and things but I still needed my tea or coffee and my oatmeal every day. We had been moving North very slowly over the course of this two weeks or so and they led me to the road and I started walking alone again in the direction of Goma. There were more and more slash and burn farms so I knew I was getting closer to Goma.

While I was walking one morning I notice a young women using a hoe basically out in the middle of nowhere. I looked around and I didn't see any farm or people or anything but here she was hoeing away. Then she stood up and looked right at me looking at her. She was very pregnant! She bent back down over her hoe and every few minutes stood up and looked at me. The look she gave me kept me there but told me not to come any closer to her. I kind of walked back and forth wondering what was up looking over at her working. Then she went behind a downed log right near where she was standing and working. She didn't stand back up for about ten minutes. When she did stand back up, she was wrapping her newborn in a cloth. I was caught off guard by this. I went to walk over to her and she made it clear to me not to do that so I hesitated and walked back to the trail. She put the infant on her back and went back to hoeing furiously. I know now that she was delivering the placenta the next time she stopped working. Then she stood up and smiled at me and just walked away into the jungle with her baby. I went back to my walking. I finally arrived back at Goma almost a month after I left my buddy there. I stocked up on beer and slept like a rock that night.

Goma seemed to have a lot more people and activity this time. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I talked to some local people I met there including one man that was a school teacher. He spoke some French and some English so we were able to communicate quite well together. He was concerned about my walking through Zaire alone.

He kept telling me horror stories about things happening to people out in the middle of nowhere. He told me stories about the history of Zaire and the early days of the Belgian and French presence. I didn't like hearing the parts about torture and people getting their hands cut off. The Belgians started the practice of cutting hands off from what he told me and now it is a widespread practice as a sort of terror weapon. (even now in 2010 this area is fighting the longest and one of the most bloody wars the world has ever seen and cutting hands off is common practice as is mutilating females of all ages to prevent them from reproducing and to cause terror. United Nations says the genicide going on in this area today has claimed about 6 million lives so far.)

My teacher friend didn't like Mobutu the leader of Zaire but he did not tell me why. He also told me about Idi Amin in Uganda and that many of the soldiers here in Goma fled from Uganda because of Amin. I didn't know most of the history of this area and that was maybe a good thing because if I had know just how violent Africa really is I probably would not have come here like I did.

I enjoyed meeting and talking to this man. We hung out together for a few days before he had to leave to get back to his teaching job. I resolved to try to act a little safer in my choices of things I did in the future but since I was already here there wasn't much I could do. Even if I wanted to leave Africa now getting out of involved getting to the bigger cities in the East or South. No airlines flew into this part of the world yet in 1972.

I wanted to go see the mountain gorillas over in Rwanda and Burundi that I heard about and the plains in East Africa with the huge herds of animals. Over a year in Africa and I had seen very little wildlife. I was disappointed by that. I started to talk to the trucks coming and going through Goma for a ride to the highland mountain areas East of Goma. I finally found a truck that offered to let me ride up on top of his load so I headed East with him early in the morning and left Goma behind.