Day 15

Day 15

We slept until late today and only got on the road at 9. Silently we hoped to reach Pembeyangu today although the road would have to better as yesterday.





The road was not better then yesterday.

Erosion became a real problem and we spent most of our time "underground"





And then we tipped over...

We had been driving in akward angles a lot, and a few times already we could feel two wheels lifting off, but until now we managed to always end up on our 4 wheels. Until now..

We had two wheels in the air and we were resting on our side. Luckily the eroded sidewall made sure we did not fall too deep. We knew it would happen sooner or later but the sound of bending sheetmetal still scared us a bit.



It was nothing spectacular (sorry ) but nevertheless, we were in a situation were our wheels were 20 cm off the ground. We do not have locking differentials by the way.

We got our shovel out again :roll: and starting to add ground underneath our wheels to make them grip again and made the next few meters a bit more level hoping that we would righten ourselves again. It worked like a charm but it was a great amount of work. Damage was limited to a few extra dents.

Still exhausted we continued, still in bizarre angles.

Then we tipped over again..

"Annoyed" would be a correct word to describe our mood. We could still see were we tipped over last time and we knew how much digging it takes to get the car righted again.

No choice... out came the shovel... and eventually we got out again... and it did not take another kilometer before we... tipped over again... and again..

And again.

At this rate it would take years to get us to Ilebo, we had to find a way to keep moving. Now, most of the road was ok to drive on. The little indicator on our dashoard learned us that we could keep driving until about 35 degrees tilt angle. It were only occasional patches were the angle would become too big and we'de be on our sides.

We figured that if we would keep enough momentum, that we would slide forward on our side and "bounce back" on our wheels. So, that is what we did. We kept the speed up and if the road dipped too much we would tip over. Because of the higher speed the impact on the side was much bigger. But that, combined with the forward movement created a "jo-jo" effect (do you guys know what a jo-jo is? Not sure if it is called the same in English).

Move forward. Tip over. Slide forward a bit on the side of the car. Bounce back. Wheels touch the ground. Move forward. And repeat.

Some of the longer steep section were maybe 100meter long. We would "bounce" numerous times to get trough this. When we got trough we had a fixed procedure:

- Depending on what side we tipped over, the person sitting on the opposite side would get out of the car first.
- Armed with a hamer and spanner "20" go to the other side of the car
- Bang and bend the door back into shape so it would open again
- Both of us would walk back the part we just "bounced" trough, picking up all the parts of the car that fell of. Usually the mirrors, various bits and pieces of the filling cap, the sandladders, indicator lights and the odd bits of our roofrack.







Strong car!

This technique is probably not described in any "4x4 driving techniques" handbook.

That day we did the "tip over thing" at least 20 times. After a while you stop worrying about the dents, but I can still hear the sound of the impacts.

Then, out of the blue, there was a road! This was completely absurd, as this road led to nowhere, but here it was, a recently build road about 10 meters wide. The forest was cut and cleared, the ground was made level and smooth as silk 8O



Where did this come from?

We drove onto the road and immediately started sinking in. I floored it to keep momentum and we crept forward, leaving deep ruts behind us.

We felt really bad when that happened. Somebody put a huge amount of effort in building a road here. And then comes along this stupid tourist and he just pulls two big ruts spot in the middle of this road.

We did not stay around to take a picture of our ruts, we were a bit embarrased.

The road dissapeared as suddenyl as it appeared before.



What the ... ?

Originally Posted by constructeur I've reviewed your website and I'm still curious of a few things. These questions apply to all your travels, not just this trip. How do you and Josephine get on with washing clothes? and if they need drying (If it's the rainy season and you can't rely on the sun or dry heat)

If we stayed at a campsite and had running water, we did the wash there. When you travel for a long time, you regularly stay somewhere for a few days to get organized again. Sometimes we were "on the go" for a longer period of time, then we washed up in rivers or whatever was available. We did this immediately after stopping at night. If it wasn't dry in the morning, we hung some bungees in the back of the car. We probably had a permanent grubby look though.
In DRC it was a lost case. The humidity, the mud, the digging. We looked -and smelled - like we got stuck in the jungle for two months! ;-)

Quote:

How are you cooking?

Started out with a Coleman two pit gasoline burner. Great piece of kit, but after 9 months of dirty African fuel it was really finished. Everything was black black black, bad burning, etc.. Barely useable. In Japan we bought the same stove again. Seconhand. That one was shot after 6 months of dirty Russian fuel. We then ordered a Primus Omnifuel and had it shipped to Cairo. A bit more work to set up, and only one pit. But it worked. After 6 months we had to rebuild the entire stove, but it is still functional now.

Quote:

How is your car interior outfitted?

Some pictures from during the buildup can be found here: http://radiobaobab.be/index.php?id=178 . We could sit inside in emergencies or if it was really cold. It was ok, but on the long cold evenings it was a bit cramped. In the warm countries we lived outside ofcourse.
Everything homemade on the interior.

Quote:

Could you also include something of items or tools you wish you had, and things you installed and don't use that much.

Phew, difficult question. I once formulated a better and more detailed answer for this, but I can't really remember. You can soon read it in Chris Scott's new book (Overland Handbook) which is due for publication
In short: we used everything we took and didn't miss anything we didn't take. Which does not mean we really 'needed' everything we took.

Originally Posted by grahamfitter When you were busy digging, did you think you should have bought a winch instead of some other things you bought for the trip? Or would you have preferred to leave them behind, too, for another extra month on the road?

When we were busy digging we thought of only one thing: getting out of the obstacle, using whatever was available. Thinking about the things that we did not have but could have helped us at the time would have been a sure recipe to get a depression.

But yes, it did cross our mind. And yes, it would have helped tremendously and reduced the damage the our car (the value of all the things we broke exceeds - by far - the price of a winch). But did we need it? Nope, we have always gotten out this far without a winch

But given the option, I would choose the month extra any time.

That said, I am building a new and improved version and a winch is on my shopping list.. but only if we have some spare cash..

Then again, there is something magical about getting trough impossible obstacles. The improvisation, the stress, the hard labour.. Great stuff! A winch would kinda spoil the fun ;-)

The road was pretty varied. Jungle track. 'Bouncing track', weird patches of newly constructed road, etc.. I am not sure which kind of road we liked more... or disliked more.. . Often we had to wait to let the bicycles pass, sometimes they had to wait to let us pass.

Not surprisingly we would not make it to Pembeyangu today either. They gave us too much hope in Kananga that we could make it in one day. It was obvious that nobody there had recently travelled on this stretch. Or maybe they had travelled it on foot or on a bicycle, and they do not have a clue how difficult this road is with 4 wheels instead of 2.





We stopped in the biggest 'town' in the area, Domiongo. It took a bit of searching to find a cathalic mission, it was on the outskirts of the villlage. Once again we were greeted friendly and had permission to camp in their grounds. We sat together with the fathers and talked for many hours.

They told us about the mysterious roads. Apparently some NGO (they did not know the details... or they told the details and we forgot) has funded the construction. Several teams started working at several locations. The different bits were supposed to connect at one point. As of recent, work had nearly stopped... no more budget. It was unclear if more budget would become available or not. In any case the idea of the construction was to invest all the money in labour instead of buying an expensive CAT. Great idea ofcourse, that way all the money stayed in DRC, instead of filling the pocket of some bigwig at CAT. If you look at the road it was quite a feat. They thought about drainage and everything. Unfortunately they could not compress the earth enough with the tools they had. We already started a few ruts, it would only take 1 heavy truck to completely destroy these roads again. These roads would not last a rainy season.

The major complaint of the fathers was the upcome of all sorts of other religious movements (we talked about 7th day adventists before, but other movements were active in the area too). They claimed that they grew in popularity because of the animated ceremonies. But these movements did not have the social network and organisation behind them as the catholic missions. People would no longer work at the farm of the mission, would drop out of school, etc... Apparantly 'alternative' religions were also gaining in poularity, like fetishism, ..

Anyway, we talked about many other things too, it was a pleasant evening with interesting people.



In the evening the fathers would run their generator for a few hours. It was in a little hut very close to our tent. The hut was half submersed from the rain water. All of a sudden the generator shorted. Smoke and blue lightning came out of the hut. One of the fathers ran in the hut, barefoot (!), with a stick and hit the offending cable until it got disconnected. Brave father!

Progress after day 15. Domiongo.