FOUGAMOUING

So, it's been already a week since we went Fougamouing, and I still haven't told you how the trip went. Let me now fill in this huge information gap by telling you the story of the lazy receptionist, talkative guide, spirits of the forest and seven thousand mosquitoes, all of whom we met in Fougamou. Brace yourselves, it's going to be long!

Hôtel Ngounié must be Eshira for Hotel Mosquito
A week before our departure, we booked a double room (I even have a room with a bed for three, if you're interested!) at the Hôtel Ngounié, apparently the best (and only) hotel in the ville. Upon informing the receptionist that we'd made a reservation, we were confronted with a high-pitched prolonged Gabonese ooooooh!, which usually means that you're asking for the impossible. She told us that as we hadn't made our booking with her, she did not know about it. However, she would make the effort of finding us a room. And she did. Of course, it had no light in the bathroom, the shower consisted of a hose, it smelled horribly of anti-mosquito spray and it cost thirty euro, but what do you expect if you arrive without reservation?

Luckily, we always travel with a mosquito net, otherwise we would've been in trouble, as the generously used mosquito spray was indeed smelly but not very effective, and the place was swarming with bloodthirsty buzzing crowd. We were of course asked to give our mosquito net to the receptionist, for, well, she had none. We politely refused and it proved to be the right decision, as in the morning we found several mosquitoes literally stuck in the net. I'd never seen such determination.

Les génies de la fôret
We hired two locals to take us hiking in the forest, and, before setting off, we even visited the house of one of them. It was a simple wooden hut, darkish, full of kids and traditional musical instruments. Neighbours came by to look at us or even boldly take pictures with their mobiles. We began our hike by going down to the river and listening to the story of Fougamou waterfalls. The guide didn't even need much encouragement, and, as soon as we left the village, he began his tale in a loud, clear voice:

- The waterfalls of Sindara are the wife. The waterfalls of Fougamou are the husband. We are all their children. In the forest, there are spirits. They are the spirits of the forest (génies de la fôret) and they are good. They help you. If your machete gets broken, you take it down to the river, you ask the spirits for help, and in the morning your machete will be as good as new. But you must respect the spirits.
- What happens if you don't respect them?
- A long long time ago, there was a couple who decided to catch the spirits and make them work for nobody but the two of them. They took a broken hammer to the river. The man hid in the tree and the woman on the river bank. They waited. When the spirits came, they saw the man and the woman, and got very angry. They were disappointed with their greed, and they changed them into huge termite mounds, which are still visible, one on the tree, the other on the river bank.
- When did it happen?
- A long time ago. But it is true. There is also a more recent story. Some years ago, Yugoslavians came to Fougamou to build a dam. They did not ask the spirits for permission and they did not even present themselves. One day, they wanted to cross the river by boat, and seven people drowned. This was the spirits' revenge for their disrespect. The dam was never built.

Better safe than sorry
...was exactly what we thought and were glad to find out that we weren't going to make the same mistake as the unlucky Yugoslavians. Accompanied by the right people, we were going to do things as they should be done. As we reached the river bank, we stopped and were informed that we were now going to take part in a special ceremony, in which the spirits would be let know who we were and that we came in peace. Thus we would be given protection from diseases (no more worrying about malaria!) and a guarantee that our trip would be safe. Nice!

The guide-shaman-storyteller opened his magic bag, from which he took out seven special leaves. On six of them he put: pink candy, honey, a piece of banana, sawdust from a magic box (the perfume of spirits) and our personal sacrifice: a piece of a muesli bar. On the seventh leaf he placed five bananas. We were told that these leaves are like open palms and are used for sacrifice because they say I'm sorry. Having distributed all the treats, the man lit the Okoume tree resin in the middle of the spread, and he put some calcium next to it. The preparation finished, he practiced pronouncing our names, and then sang-prayed-shouted in Eshira, ringing a small bell while he did so. Afterwards, we were all given a banana, of which we had to throw a piece into the river (for the river spirits) and another piece on the forest ground (for the forest spirits). The rest we were allowed to consume, which was good news, as we were getting hungry. Occupied with my banana, I hardly noticed that the man had put a little red and white feather on his forehead, and started chewing on the perfume-sawdust. Before I could react, he grabbed my T-shirt and spat onto my chest and neck, which made it very difficult to remain serious. However, we were now sporting the spirit perfume and were thus safe to wonder further into the forest. The Yugoslavians had no idea what they'd missed!

No crevettes for us!
After the ceremony and a tricky jumping from one stone to another on the river bank, we arrived at a lovely place, where the villagers went fishing for river prawns. We met a girl and a little boy fishing with a simple rod (a stick and fishing line, which proved to be extremely efficient), and we joined them for the crevette catching. It was amazing to see them catch dozens of prawns with their hands, as if it were the simplest thing on Earth. Later on, Jandro, who tried to help, found out that it wasn't as easy as it seemed. As a result, the villagers were in for a lovely dinner and I must say we were rather jealous!

Imparting wisdom
On our way back, we were given several important tips on how to survive in the jungle. My favourite one is about snake bites. Apparently, when bitten by one of the several venomous snakes of Gabon, you must act quickly. You will have no time to get to the hospital but do not despair! Here's what needs to be done: you take some of the liquid from your ear (!), which is also poison, and which can kill a man in no more and no less than five minutes, and you put it on the bite. One poison will neutralise the other, and you can go back to your plantation. To be on the safe side, Jandro and I decided unanimously not to clean our ears the night before a jungle trip.

We were also offered a lot of advice on hunting in general, and specifically on how to catch the huge walking sum of money in the form of an elephant (which is of course illegal in Gabon). I will spare you the cruel details of setting a trap and letting the poor animal starve to death. Let me just tell you that for one kilo of ivory a villager is paid 500 000 CFA, which amounts to 750 euro.

Lifelong learning
Even though we only hung out with the villagers for one day, we could observe a lot of things about their lives. And I think this was the most interesting part of this experience: we saw the village houses from the inside, we could ask all our silly questions, we went fishing, we were introduced to the génies de la fôret... We've been in Gabon for more than a year and we constantly discover new things. Don't you think it's fascinating?

More pictures from Fougamou here and here.

AS MYSTICAL AS IT GETS: THE SINDARA MISSION

On our way to Fougamou we made a little detour and visited the Sindara Mission. Over one hundred years old, semi-abandoned but well taken care of (apparently, these two are not contradictory), it is a lovely complex of buildings, well worth a visit, if only to feel the overwhelming peace which emanates from the place.

We parked our car next to Our Lady of the Equator church, and began exploring. There was nobody around but you could see the presence of people in the trimmed garden and the general cleanliness. After looking around for a while, we found an amazing path, with huge monumental trees on both sides, which led to the other Mission buildings: a school, a library and another church, from which the sound of prayer reached us. Two security guards explained that the school was still running, even though the Mission was indeed less and less frequented by priests and teachers. As we expressed the wish to see the river, one of the guards, saying that he had nothing to do anyway, offered to be our guide.

Heading for the river, we chatted to the guard, who patiently answered our questions. We were about to reach a village, when we ran into an agitated old man, a friend of our guide, who told us the following story:

My wife and I went to the plantation. I stayed a bit longer, while my wife went back to the village. To my surprise, as I came back to the village to pick her up, she was dancing and having fun. I got angry. I broke my wife's basket and left her in the village. I am walking home alone.

Believe it or not, the broken basket was still there, carelessly tossed to the side of the road, when we got to the village, and the wife, most probably full of shame, was nowhere to be seen. There was loud music coming from one of the buildings (the village bar, we assumed) but the dancers must have called it a day.

We reached the river and saw the rapids, misleadingly referred to as waterfalls by the locals. On our way back we made a little stop in the village, to get a cool drink. The drinks, however, turned out to be the very opposite of cool, which bothered us greatly, but had no effect whatsoever on our guide, who could've competed against the world champions in fast beer drinking. As we sipped on our D'jino, all the children gathered in the bar, sucking on their big red lollipops, a selection of at least ten pairs of eyes staring at us almost without blinking. I smiled and waved, and felt I was expected to do something amusing, I just couldn't figure out what.

We left Sindara, slowly walking under the towering trees and following the church choir, who sang and advanced slowly, burning candles in their hands. A truly mystical sight, I thought, and three minutes later I fell down, scratching my hand, and hurting my elbow. As mystical as it gets.

Later on, when we came back to the car, our guide insisted on exchanging phone numbers, so that we could stay in touch. We consented, and were shocked to receive a phone call from him yesterday, asking if we'd got home all right. He's planning to come to Libreville next week, so maybe we could meet up. Well, maybe we could.

More pictures from Sindara here.

LA VIANDE DE BROUSSE

Last weekend we went on a little road trip. Our final destination was Fougamou, well over 300 kilometres from Libreville. Once again, we came to the conclusion that travelling by car can be, well, extremely cool. You get to see lots of things on the way, you meet very nice people and, in my particular case, you take plenty of pictures to torture all you friends with as soon as you come home.

The road to Fougamou is in a surprisingly good condition. Apart from huge holes around Kango and an unasphalted bit between Lambaréné and Fougamou, the quality is absolutely European (leaving Poland far behind, I'm sad to say). All this thanks to the Chinese and a Spanish construction company Acciona, which is based in Fougamou itself (they actually went as far as putting road signs on the bit of the motorway they built!).

The nice, asphalted, holeless road made driving much more relaxing - this coming from the eternal co-pilot - and we could focus on observing our surroundings. All along the road, which is normally rather busy and leads to the very south of the country (Mayumba), there are villages and, consequently, villagers and village life. Merry anthropologists that we are, we were glad to be able to take a look at the Gabonese reality away from Libreville.

The first thing you notice when driving through the countless villages, is that nearly every house has a little wooden stand (or just a metal barrel), where they present whatever it is that they currently want to sell. The goods vary: it may be just fruit, palm wine, a basket or a traditional instrument, but it may also be the very popular viande de brousse, venison also known as the thing I managed to kill last night. This could be a gazelle (8000 CFA = 12 euro), a python (15000 CFA = 22,5 euro), an antelope (40000 CFA = 60 euro), a porcupine (10000 CFA = 15 euro), a crocodile (15000 CFA = 22,5 euro), but also little things, such as turtles, squirrels and dried monkeys, which accidentally look like dried babies. Yum!

Of course, I wouldn't have been myself if I hadn't taken pictures, even if it is of smelly dead animals (the lack of a fridge doesn't help...). Instead of just stopping the car and stealing the photo before anybody could react, we took a different approach: each time we would get out of the car and ask the hunters for their permission. At first, we were slightly uneasy: half of the village is usually sitting outside, extremely fond of any distraction that might make the day different from all the other ones, and there we were, two whites with their camera.

While some villagers were open and laughed good-naturedly at our curiosity, explaining how you hunt for a python and letting us take the pictures, others must have felt our nervousness and were not as kind at first. When we approached a group of men selling a particularly impressive selection of game, they looked defensive. We asked if we could take a photo and they said no. Disappointed, we asked if they were the hunters. They confirmed and their attitude started changing: now it was 1000 CFA for a photo. We told them that we respected the effort that hunting constituted and thus were ready to pay for the pictures. As I turned to the car to get some money, they stopped me and said: You were very polite and talked to us. You didn't just steal the photo. Due to all this, you don't have to pay. Jandro continued chatting with them while I took a few pictures, and they said that it would be their pleasure to take us hunting whenever we felt like it. They made sure I took pictures of all the animals and we exchanged phone numbers in case we felt like hunting one of these days. We parted as friends.

I must say that we really enjoyed breaking the invisible wall between us and the villagers. Both parties distrustful at first, after a short conversation we would all smile at each other. I think they enjoyed our interest, our silly questions about how to cook a crocodile or catch a python, and we definitely had fun talking to everybody.

On our way back, as we passed through the village of Agricole, the hunters who'd offered to be our guides were sitting at the very same table. They eagerly waved at us and I waved back, smiling. Jandro, however, did not notice them and felt guilty. The following exchange of text messages followed:

Hello! I'm sorry I haven't noticed you! But my wife did wave. Have a good day! Alexandre, Union Européenne

No problem, you were concentrated on your driving. Have a good day, too! Etienne, bridge of Agricole

I can only tell you one thing: we are seriously considering going on that hunting trip!

More photos of viande the brousse are here.