I started writing this journal as a distraction and in no small way as a form of repentance. Distraction is the only currently available remedy for the intense itching that has plagued me for the last few days. Ladies and Gentlemen I have scabies, and it is getting me down. The itching is severe over my hands, arms and back, and keeps me awake at night, however the saving grace of rabies (ladies you’ll be pleased to know) is that it spares the face and the genitals.

Here in Congo people access western medicine to treat the symptoms but visit traditional healers to treat the real cause of the malady. As I have resorted to distraction to treat my symptom I also think I need to look a little deeper to find the real cause of my suffering. On the surface I either caught scabies from a patient I treated or a pygmy I shared a tent with. However this seems a shallow soulless explanation, I think the answer lies deeper back in my infant years. so I have decided it is time to repent.

Nicky Baker I am truly sorry for chasing you around the playground yelling that you had scabies or the lurgi. I would never wish such an unpleasant disease upon anyone (the truth is I was young, insensitive and more than slightly repulsed by how at lunchtime you would take a bite of your peanut butter sandwich, slurp of your ribena a bite of your penguin bar and swallow it all in the same mouthful). Anyhow I hope wherever you are now you have a justified smile on your face and can rest happy in the knowledge that some kind of eternal justice does exist.

Currently it is not the itching that is keeping me awake, I am bouncing back and forth on a terrible logging road in the jungle South East Cameroon. We have been on the bus for 24 hours and only covered about 150km, in fact we seem to spend more time out of the bus pulling it with ropes or building very dodgy temporary bridges than driving. Not only is it a long bumpy ride but I am engaged in an increasingly vicious battle for territory with the old mamma sitting next to me. I am cramped with my rucksack between my legs, as for some bizarre reason the driver refused to place baggage on the roof(normally the minibuses here are double their height with cargo piled on the roof, which makes them very prone to flipping over). I finally give Mamma a sharp nudge in the ribs, she seems to respect this as after a brief torrent of abuse she gives a chuckle and eventually falls asleep on my shoulder. I finally drift off as well, reciprocally leaning on her sack of plantain.

I awoke slowly. the engine is off, we’ve stopped. My first thought is that we’ve broken down again, until I see people crowded all around the bus pressing themselves against the windows. They all have their hands raised above their heads and they re wailing. It is about 6am, the wailing combines with the morning mist to give me the heebie jeebies big time. With a fair amount of trepidation I descend out of the bus to confront this strange ritual. The first thing that strikes me are the people, they are pygmies full grown adults all around 4ft to 4.5ft, they re all looking upwards. I notice that only the women are wailing, then all the men come forward suddenly and reach up to the roof of the bus. A coffin is passed down to them, I have been travelling in a hearse. With this realisation everything comes into a familiar focus; the solemn faces of the men, the wailing of the women. What started as an alien event, with understanding is transformed into a universal human event with similarities unchanged by race or borders.

I am heading to Yokadouma, a logging town in South east Cameroon, in order to head down into the Republic of Congo. Ive been travelling and working a medical placement in Cameroon for the last couple of months and now want to head off to the Congo. The plan is to cross the border and get some form of boat down the Congo river. I havent been able to find any real information about the proposed route(lonely planet for Congo consists of 8 A5 pages and only 5 pages for DRC, which is larger than all of western europe). The truckers i have met have told me there are river barges transporting timber downriver to Kinshasa and Brazzaville, journey time varies from 1 week to 1 month depending on the source.
There is one road that runs south from here towards the border, it is maintained by the logging companies and the only traffic is a steady stream of lorries carrying giant logs from the Congo basin out to the rest of the world.

The last time I travelled down this road(in search of gorillas) I had a slight security issue. I was travelling in a Land Rover Defender with another Englishman, on our way to the national park in search of gorillas. We came across a large hole in the road, the local villagers had created a small diversion of about 10m to the side. We crossed the diversion and were immediately surrounded by young men. They asked for the old gringo tax(which varies according to the tone of your skin), demanding a ridiculous amount for our passage. We refused, they climbed onto the car and started leaning through the windows. We negoitiated and gave them what was a generous sum, in the knowledge that we had no choice for our return but to travel along the same road. On our return we were immediately surrounded again and the price of a safe passage had tripled. Our refusals were met with brandishing of machetes and death threats. As some youngsters started trying to strip things off the outside of the car, a man pushed a machete through the window and started demanding cash. We accused them loudly of being bandits. This caused considerable consternation whilst they argued amongst themselves about whether or not they were in fact bandits. Charlie took advantage of the opening and put his foot down. The land rover roared forward knocking the majority out of the way, I dispatched the last hanger on with a sharp elbow Walter Bailey style(RIP).

So before continuing I checked in at the WWF office in Yokadouma to enquire about the security situation and to try and cadge a lift south. They radioed the main office, to my pleasure the calls signs were: “Bongo 1, c’est bongo 5 fin”.
Unfortunately the WWF has temporarily suspended sending vechicles down the road, due to a military operation against a serious group of bandits further south, who had crossed over from Central African Republic and were attacking vechicles and looting villages. My hopes of a safe passage to the border were rapidly fading. Bugger.

Two days later a solution arrived in the form of Monsieur Aloys Akoa, a Cameroonian truck driver barely a more than slight resemblance, albeit he is black, to Danny Devito. His company are still sending trucks down the road and he ahs agreed to let me ride with him to the border.
Aloys is known as Ancien, as he has been driving this route for 15 years. Ancien likes to start the day with a litre of 6.5% beer and I feel obliged to join him. At 6am we stop at a little village and have a drink with the chief. Aloys is well received, people come out to greet him at all the villages along the route. With reason, trucks are the lifeblood of these communities, they are the reason the road was constructed in order to bring timber from the congo basin out to Douala the port and then the rest of the world(as we travel down this road trucks passing in the opposite direction carry huge amounts of timber surreally marked “Helsinki” “Porto” “Berlin” which feel rightly so a million miles away. Trucks are by and large the only traffic on the road and the only source of income for the villagers, the drivers therefore are treated like royalty. There are 6 of us in the truck cabin, Ancien, Me, Autoboy(anciens son) and 3 Malians. Each night we stop in a small village and follow a routine; eat, drink beer, then Ancien trys to buy me women. The first time I declined his offer politely. The second time I decided to explain my position, my French is hardly eloquent and all I could come up with was “C’est pas la commerce, c’est l’amour”. Ancien proceeded to explain that there are two types of women here: One you sleep with and you pay them money. The other you just buy a few drinks for the night and then sleep with her. I told him I wasn’t particularly comfortable with either. He replied
“In England do the men not buy the women drinks”
“traditionally, yes”
“And do the men not sleep with the women?”
I did not reply and went off to bed alone.

We were the first truck on the road today, it also rained heavily last night. As a result we are slipping and sliding all over the road and Ancien has a grim look on his face(partly perhaps due to his alcohol consumption last night). We pass many downed bridges on the way, bridges here consist of a few logs stretched out over the river. It is only by a miracle of engineering that they can hold the weight of these large trucks. In fact many don’t, most of the downed bridges have a wreck at the bottom, some of the wrecks are alarmingly recent.

I am back in Mambele, the last town before the Congo border. I met up with an old friend who was my guide in the jungle. Petit Jean is at home in the jungle, swings a machete with ease and can smell a gorilla a mile off(literally, this is how he tracks the gorillas and we were rewarded with a group of 7 or 8 huge beasts). With Petit Jean there is none of the irony associated with the English forest dweller with the same moniker Little John. PJ is 4ft2”, a pygmy of the Baaka tribe, with a goatee and sharpened front teeth that form perfect little equilateral triangles. Origianlly the Baaka are hunter gatherers, they do not farm and live completely off the jungle. Nowadays they are almost all settled for some of the year and have access to modern education and health care. There is of course access to the more dubious fruits of modern society such as alcohol and cigarettes, which are taking their toll (similar to the fate of indigenous groups all voer the world). Despite their small stature the Baaka can put away a lot of booze. Indeed the last time I saw JP he was plastered, probably spending all the money we had paid him for his services in the jungle.

I settle down for a beer with JP, Ancien and Tito a military who we picked up on the way, in a small restaurant come bar, hotel. It is the epitome of a family business; Grandma is the overseer and general manager, Momma cooks the food for the clients, Son serves the cold beer from the bar and the granddaughters sleep with the clients.
The atmosphere is nice and the beer is cold, until I realise that the barrel of Tito’s AK47, that he is cradling in his lap is pointing unerringly at my chest. I edge my chair to the right and relax again. One of the granddaughters, who is obviously ill and painfully thin, takes my edging towards her as a sign of encouragement and puts her hand on my thigh. I edge back to my left, back into the line of fire.
The evening ends with drunken skanking with pygmies to a soundtrack of sweet reggae (my musical power complex continues even in africa) and thankfully no accidental discharges.


We crossed Cameroonian immigrations this morning and made our way to the river Sangha. The Cameroonian officer asked for the usual baksheesh and on the advice of my French friend, I sat and waited it out, eventually crossing for free. My French friends tells a story of the Congo border where he waited 4 hours refusing to pay, eventually the immigration gave up and handed him a rubix cube with a disembled image of jesus on the cross. Assembling the image of the Only Son in under a minute he was allowed to pass for free.

Electricity is about to be cut, ill post the river journey next time there is any electricity..

Next week Congo… In search of Umbongo..