Day 24
I really had to force myself out of our tent that morning, despite the noise off the village. My muscles hurt and my eyes preferred to stay closed.
Mufuta, Vita and papa Basil had returned to their own village for the night, but they would come back. We sat down with papa Likas. He offered his help and we gave him the same explenation we gave earlier to the first members of our crew. He agreed with the conditions. He suggested we 'hire' 5 extra guys, including him, from his village. We knew we needed that kind of manpower to push 4 ton of Toyota trough the jungle. They would join us until we reach Kapia. Apparantely the road there is much better and we would be able to drive on our own to Dibaya-Lubwe from there.
Papa likas made a drawing of how the road went all the way to Kapia. The first few kilometer would be slightly downhill until we reached a river. From there the road was uphill all the way to Kapia. The first part of the hill would be the hardest as this was in a forest with the usual ruts. Halfway to the top the road leaves the forest and we would be in much easier savannah.
"Nous allons y arriver avant midi!" - "we will get there (Kapia) before noon"
As soon as Mufuta, Basil and Vita arrived we were on the road again. Our batteries were now officially dead so we needed a push to get started. It was key not to turn of the engine now! Our crew loved the raw sound of our broken exhaust!
We advanced quickly. Our crew was hanging on the sides of the car while two guys were walking in front, making quick improvements along the way. The way we progressed our first few hundred meters made mea actually believe we would make it to Kapie before noon! We must be the two most naive people in the world!
It had been a while since we saw serious rain. Frequent showers yes, but not cloud bursts. Until now. Just when we arrived at the river in the bottom of the valley fat raindrops were falling from the sky. This usually means trouble. Our crew searched for cover in the forest while we sat in our car whilst a could emptied itself violently right on top of us. We could see the mostly dry road transform in a muddy stream. The hard compressed mud was gleaming.
This rain couldn't have come in a worse time. The road was now extra slippery and we already struggled so much with grip - or the lack thereof. Our crew worked hard to construct a road that would provide us an as level as possible path with as much grip as possible. It took a huge amount of energy for every meter we worked ourselves forward.
We could see our crew was losing its motivation and we feared that they would just give up or demand more money. It was Josephine that discovered the magic of our camera. These guys loved the camera! Everytime the camera came out they posed and they work like crazy to look cool on the pictures.
I stalled the engine. I felt really bad about it as they could not pushstart us uphill. Only downhill. I let the Landcruiser roll backwards for a few meters and it still wouldn't start. The lost few meters would cost us hours to get up again. I did not want to go backwards any longer. So while our crew continued clearing the road, I started to get our auxiliary batteries out again.
Everything was just so hard now. Getting the engine started again had cost us an hour. The original enthousiasm was completely gone, we were moving forward at a rate of a meter per hour. The hill was about 700meters long.
We stopped progressing at all when we had to go trough a small detour around a tree. It was small but steep incline.
With the rain also came the little moisture flies. Millions of them. tiny little flies. They favoured our eyes and ears and loved our nose. Annoying little thingies!
We tried everything to make the road better in order toget us up this little hill. We had at least 10 attempts to climb it, but it just didn't work.
Since we left the village early this morning we had covered 4 kilometer. Of which the first 3,8km were done in the first two hours. The rest of the day we spent on this hill. The last 3 hours we hadn't moved at all.
Darkness was setting in again, we weren't going anywhere today..
The crew wanted to return to their village for the night. We would be camping here. Just when our guys wanted to leave the news came that the sick child in the last village had died. A messenger was sent to the surrounding villages. This meant a lot of people would want to visit the family of the kid, so there will be a lot of traffic on the roads that night. A creepy thought to be camping spot in the middle of this situation, all alone on the Congolese jungle.
Kapia became a mythic place for us. Our own Atlantis. The hidden city that nobody knew where it was. We started having our doubts if we would ever get our car out of this jungle again. Tomorrow is another day..
We opened our tent in the place where we were stuck. All the batteries from our flashlights were empty (from last nights rythmic struggle) so we helped ourselves with a candle. The rainforest was insanely loud and peaceful at the same time. I would have loved this place otherwise, but it was hard to forget in what kind of trouble we were.
Progress after day 24... Day 29 since we entered Congo.
None at all really... Camping in the jungle
