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Mom and Dad Visit Ndende. The Report of their Trip.
Peace Corps had advised to allow at least six months to organize a trip to Gabon, given the difficulty of communication and slownessof the visa process. There was also time needed for immunizations and other preparations. So by the time we arrived in Libreville on July 22, we had been working on this visit for a long time.
We flew on the overnight Air France flight from Paris, arriving in Libreville around 5:30 in the morning. Hannah was waiting for us in the arrival hall of Leon Mba International Airport, but it took some time for us to pass through passport control, immunization check, and to receive our bags, which have been notoriously prone to misdirection lately. Many steps, but everything seemed quite casual. Finally we emerged, hugged Hannah, and bustled onto the van that would take us to Le Meridien. Not much traffic at that hour, as we sped along the shoreline road and into the hotel. Our plan was to fly to Mouila on Wednesday morning, so the first two days in Gabon would be spent getting organized (exchanging dollars), shopping, and meeting the various Peace Corps people in LBV.
One of the first things we observed in LBV, subsequently confirmed, was that nobody walks. Taxis are plentiful and relatively inexpensive -- 500 francs CFA (at 650 to the dollar) to go along the main road; 1000 ("un course") to anywhere in the main city. But since a premium is paid at the international hotels, we crossed the main seashore road and got a cab to a tea room for breakfast. We had cafe au lait and very nice croissants, although there was no mineral water -- the proprietor went out to a store somewhere and bought us a bottle when we ordered it. Hannah had been taken here in April when she was taking the foreign service exam; it is quite near the american embassy compound. The French have a compound. The Nigerians have a compound. Everything in LBV has a compound. The city is built on hills, and the street structure certainly seemed chaotic. So is the visual sense of the city. It seemed not very developed on our first visit: some apartment buildings of 8-10 stories could be seen along the waterfront; commercial buildings of concrete of 2-3 stories, but interspersed with 1 and 2 story structures. Later we would ride through many different districts, with their own character ("the Frenchy French" district, for example), but what struck me most at first was the heterogeneity of the city, and the lack of clean property demarcations -- even the "downtown" seemed laid out higglety pigglety and certainly not conducive for strolling. In fact, we never walked through the downtown.
Our next stop was the Peace Corps case (house) where Hannah was staying, which also houses the medical office, and where we could change dollars into francs. The case is located in a district known as "Behind the Ecole Normale," or teachers' college. (Another relatively posh district is "Behind the Prison." It is quite near the university, named after Bongo, and the main road to this district, the Bongo Triumphal Highway (more about the cult of Bongo later) is lined with impressive architectural monuments, starting with the huge Mbolo Hypermarche, then various high rise ministry buildings, the national assembly, the Russian and Chinese embassies, all on huge tracts of land, with plenty of parking and much open unlandscaped space. The case itself is an airy 2-story building, behind a wall with a 24 hour guard, and next to a hopping bar, Le Centrale, that never stops. Downstairs is the medical office. Upstairs is a veranda, then a large living room with bookshelves, TV and VCR, wicker couches; a dining room and kitchen, and then several dormitory-style rooms with 3-4 bunk beds each and attached bath. This is where the volunteers (and sometimes family members) can stay when they are in the capital. There is a telephone that can receive calls only, and a bulletin board for posting useful information; also lockers for storing stuff. The street with no name where the case is located is not paved (the roads leading there are), and it is lined with other compounds lived in by what seem to be middle class families. Down the hill and up another is the Peace Corps bureau, a 3-4 story building which houses all the offices of the country administrative staff, the project directors, the drivers, etc. Here there are computers, and the PC vehicles are kept. They are plain white 4-wheel drive SUVs and trucks -- the Peace Corps logo was removed after Sept. 11. We met Hannah's project director Pauline, Charles the head of the environmental program, and the head of the TEFL (english language teaching) program that is just returning after a hiatus. Hannah had some work to accomplish there -- printing out her quarterly report; and so we hung out meeting people and being welcomed. There were a number of volunteers in residence doing business; some were ending their terms and were going through the final details of closing, which takes a week or more. There was also a peace corps wedding -- the first traditional ceremony took place just before our arrival; the second "legal" one after we'd gone to Ndende, so many volunteers had come into LBV for that event.
Then it was lunchtime and more importantly, time for what we came to value as an important feature of la vie Gabonaise: repos, or rest hour. We had the lunch buffet at the Meridien, and discovered why LBV is one of the world's most expensive cities. The buffet was 15,000 francs each; very nice, though; a complete array of crudites, salads, meats, cheeses, bread, and then 5 or 6 hot dishes, both European and African (porky-pique -- porcupine, in a spicy sauce, served with rice.) Dinner that night was on the water front, at an Italian restaurant (La Dolce Vita) in the port district. Very nice wood-fired pizza.
Logistically, the city turned out to be more complicated than we imagined; nothing is adjacent to anything else, and we needed to take taxis everywhere. Roger and I being quite helpless, Hannah had to be our constant guide, a fact made more difficult because she was staying 20 minutes away from our hotel. By the third day, when we were leaving for Mouila, we had confidence enough to take a taxi BY OURSELVES to the case, but at first everything was quite baffling.
The second day was a shopping day. We breakfasted again at the tea room, only to find that they were out of coffee this day. We visited an artisans' market to explore the souvenir market, and came away quite confused and boggled, so we decided perhaps we should visit the cultural museum first. In the lonely planet guide to Africa, there are 3 key attractions in Libreville. This was one of them, but it was difficult to find. Hannah knew exactly where it was, but it was still invisible, tucked into the first story of a big Elf oil office building, its sign hidden from the road by a big construction-type corregated fence. The museum, on two levels, displayed various items of traditional life: particularly economic (fishing, woodcutting) and religious things -- masks, fetishes, mannequins, baskets to put the masks in, ceremonial pavilions for rituals. We got a sense of the variety of ethnic groups and the different kinds of masks they feature. Ndende in the southwest is in Punu country, and the (priest?) there walks on stilts and wears a white-faced mask. The masks of the Fang (the biggest ethnic group, in the north) are long and narrow.
Then we went shopping -- again going by taxi. Hannah had learned about a grocery store with imported goods from another volunteer, so we went there first because she was told she could get brown sugar there. "Prix Import" reminded me of Stockmann's in Moscow--they had everything, for high prices, and lots of people with fancy cars were driving up and driving out with goods. Imported cheese from France, sausages, poulet de Bresse -- (at about 8 dollars a pound, as I remember) -- fruit, vegetables, and your standard array of groceries. Hannah's Peace Corps stipend does not go very far here. From Prix Import, we went to the Walmart of Gabon, Mbolo. Here they also have almost everything (but not brown sugar), and while the prices are high, they were lower than in Ndende. For example, Hannah needed to buy a dozen or so plastic binders for a seminar she will be giving to school teachers in the fall on AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, so she'd been shopping around the stationery stores in LBV for the best price. Mbolo had the lowest. Hannah bought some more stuff to take back to Ndende -- potatoes (we'd bought Cantal cheese in Paris and wanted to make mashed potatoes with Cantal); meusli; she'd bought pickled peppers at Prix Import for her fellow volunteer in Ndende, Mike.
More time spent at the case -- we'd brought 4 episodes of West Wing on tape, which were much appreciated, and others had been sent, so there was lots of watching of the television. Dinner that night was at a Vietnamese restaurant "Saigon" down by our hotel. It was quite good, although not very populated -- that was our general sense of LBV restaurants. As Hannah told us, the oil boom is long gone, and people don't have the same kind of money they used to. The hotel seemed very underpopulated, and had a kind of "end of empire" sense about it. It would be unfair to compare it to Inturist hotels, because it really was first-class, but there was also a kind of emptiness about it that reminded me of Inturist hotels. President Bongo, though, has lots of money, and we saw both his extensive official palace along the waterfront, and even more extensive private residence sprawled along a hillside out towards the airport side of town. We were looking forward to getting to Ndende and seeing where Hannah really lived.
Wednesday morning, then, we checked out of the Meridien and took a cab with our bags to the peace corps case, where we would leave one of our suitcases, since luggage is a liability on bush taxis. We unfortunately created a minor scandal among the taxists at the hotel, since the driver the porter had lined up was not an official taxi driver after all and had jumped the queue AND was going to overcharge us. The taxists in the queue all yelled and screamed, and we eventually went with a legitimate one (taxis are identified by their color schemes -- each town has its own; other than that, the cabs are identical only in the advanced state of their decay. Mostly Toyotas on their last legs. The roads, despite the paving, are deeply potholed, and experienced drivers know how to wind their way around the pits.) The Libreville airport was somewhat confusing (you check in for domestic flights by going into the international check in area, for example), but Hannah was experienced by now, and guided us in and out. We had time for a coffee, and to buy post cards -- one sign of the lack of tourist preparation was the absence of postcards in the city. Then we waited. The flight was delayed, but we had all day to get to Ndende. Then a longer delay was announced, so we went upstairs to the airport restaurant, ate a good spicy stew, and watched the Tour de France live on TV! Then came the announcement that the Mouila flight had been cancelled, and would be rescheduled for 9 am the next day (the flights are normally Monday, Wed, Friday). First they were going to keep our baggage, then in the face of objections by other passengers they agreed to return it -- we learned some of this later; Hannah negotiated everything for us. So we got our bags and headed back to the case to claim a bunk bed and try again in the morning. No body seemed too surprised to see us back there. Air Gabon, known locally as Air peut etre, seems often to cancel flights without warning. Just like American Eagle at home.
The next morning, all the folks from the waiting room the day before arrived at the airport, checked our bags again, and waited. This time Hannah made the acquaintance of a woman who was flying to Mouila to return to the American missionary hospital near Ndende, Bongolo in Labamba. She's a nurse supervisor, and has been there 8 years; she was just returning from a year's home leave. It was arranged that we could get a ride with the Bongolo truck, which had to pass through Ndende to get to Labamba, the bridge on the more direct road having been out for a long time. We did not appreciate at the time what a treat this was, but it certainly made the trip quite pleasant. We were only troubled by the information that our plane ticket for the return was not sufficient; we needed to get our names on "The List" at the Mouila office of Air Gabon, and we would have no time to stop. Hannah asked another volunteer at the Peace Corps case in Mouila to do this for us, when she stopped to pick up a bag to take back to ndende. The flight itself was uneventful -- a Boeing 737, nothing to be seen because of the low cloud cover. The Mouila airport has an impressive new terminal building (although no lights or control tower), but it is not open for use, even though it was "dedicated" a year ago.
The road to Ndende went through Mouila, across a broad river that has mermaids in it, Hannah said; we three rode in the back cab of a club cab Toyota pickup -- the standard form of transport in the bush. It was air conditioned, too, so we could keep the windows closed, thus escaping the dust of dry season roads. This is not standard. The road to Ndende is not paved, but scraped and packed red dirt and gravel. There are a few rivers to cross with the kind of board bridges Hannah has described in her letters. Lots of pot holes. The area is quite flat, or at best rolling; vegetation is mostly low trees and bushes, although we did see pastureland and cows in one place. There were only a few villages along the road from Mouila to Ndende. Off in the distance, at one point, we could see rolling hills, but the region here is quite untopographical. About an hour later, we arrived in Ndende, we said goodbye to the missionaries (hearing lots about their work, vicariously, as Karen the returnee was briefed by Terry, the driver, an opthamologist there, about what had been happening. They had recently returned from a clinic in the northeast where they had encountered an eye patient who had apparently recently recovered from ebola, a rare escape that probably deserves a medical journal writeup but won't ever get one.)
When we got to Hannah's house, just in back of the main road, the lycee, and the Total gas station, it turned out the electricity was off. First the kids in the neighboring house said it was off in the whole quarter, but then it turned out it was only Hannah, and it had been off since Monday (this was Thursday). Upon further inquiries, it transpired that the person through whose house the electricity flowed (and was metered) had not paid his bill, he was out of town, and the power company had disconnected them. Hannah managed to locate various relations of this person, of her own landlord, and the power company, whose representative said he would reconnect her, for the time being and even though it was wrong, by 6. And he did!
Ndende.
We spent from Thursday to Monday in Ndende. Mostly we walked around the town, meeting people Hannah knew and worked with, being introduced, saying hello, how are you, I'm fine (Bonjour, ca va? Oui, ca va?). How to describe the town? One-story. There are two 2 story structures -- one is located at the famous Carrefour de Bonheur, where a second story has just been added over a grocery store. It has three rooms: one will be a pharmacy, one a doctor's office, and the third has been rented by the 2 peace corps volunteers for their "Bureau", where it will have a commanding view of the crossroads and all traffic coming to and through Ndende.
This part of town reminded us of a typical small town in a western movie. There was some joking about creating a new genre of manioc westerns.
The other 2-story building is a "nightclub" under construction. A nightclub seems to be a bar with dancing. There's another one in Ndende, too. There is no conventional (in the midwestern sense) layout of the town, and we couldn't quite understand the logic of how buildings were laid out. Generally, there is a long road going through Ndende, crossing the river and going on to Congo, and then semicircular roads in increasing arcs on either side of the main road. No roads have names. Like LBV, Ndende is divided into several f "quartiers"; each has a "chef," a government official; each has a football team that play one another in the afternoons. A few streets in Ndende are paved. But most of the activity of the town is concentrated along the main road that connects Labamba and Mouila. At either end of the main road are checkpoints, and passing cars have to pay a toll to the town government. There is street lighting on the main road, but off the main road it gets quite dark at night, and it's wise to go out with flashlight after dark. (All year around, the sun rises between 6:30 and 7 am, and sets at about same time at night.) The main road has most of the government offices and services: prefect, lycee, gendarmes, hospital, old post office (now a ruin), hostel for travellers, primary school, dept of roads. There are also many businesses lined up. Grocery stores, bakery, little bars and cook shops. One bigger hotel -- St. Hubert, with manicured lawn and a terrasse. There are also lots of ex-businesses; restaurants no longer in business, boarded up airline offices. The sense is given that this is a town in stasis or gradual decline. In our snapshot visit, it was hard to tell if half-finished buildings had been half-finished for long, but there were many that had that look about them. At least, no one was working on them while we were there. Further along the road from the carrefour is the main market, with many stalls of shopkeepers: Seydou the tailor, a photographer, another closed airline office (Air Equatorial). Hannah spends a lot of time there and knows many of the shopkeepers, many of whom are Malian -- in general, it seems the entrepreneurial class is not Gabonaise; the Gabonaise professionals are the school teachers, nurses and doctors, government employees. There are a couple of fancier landscaped house-compounds -- Hannah says they are owned by the local deputy or other government officials.
Ndende has electricity and treated water; but no telephone, or postal service. This seems to be punishment for being stronghold of the political opposition. Many people have television. Boom boxes blast out of the shops at the carrefour. In general, one needs to be able to hear the sounds of Ndende to get the full effect -- Hannah's video that she shot will convey some of this: the music, and especially the roosters and chickens, the roosters at all hours of the day and much of the night. Other birds as well, with interesting calls. Road sounds are the big logging trucks that come through, and the many bush taxis plying some of the "nine routes" for which Ndende is famous. There are 5 roads that converge at the Carrefour de Bonheur, but there is disagreement about how many of the nine are magical, whether 3 or 4 or 5.
Other "wildlife": lots of amazing birds, including hummingbirds that hum and others that chatter; grey parrots are native, but rarely seen. we only saw one. There are several different kinds of lizards; we mostly saw two kinds, never in the house. Dogs, cats, chickens, roosters; there were a couple of kept rabbits in a hutch behind Hannah's house. Everything else lives further back in the bush. Except for "Mark," a pet chimpanzee, who is kept by a forestier named DeMotte. Mark does not like strangers, as his reaction to us attested, but when his owner came out to comfort him, Mark gave him a big hug.
We took numerous strolls around town; the excuse was that Hannah and Mike needed to check out the possible houses for the new volunteer who would be assigned to Ndende. The houses -- the sturdier ones are made of cement block (which are manufactured in town) and covered with stucco and painted; the roofs are timbered, treated to ward off termites, and covered with corregated metal. More basic are mud brick houses, or plank houses. Corregated metal is preferred; otherwise, thatch is used for the roofs. Some houses have running water (as hannah's does) and electricity. But hot water is a luxury that we never encountered. Otherwise, there are water taps throughout the town, and it's the children's job to fetch and carry water. Washing is done in wash sinks attached to the outside of houses, with taps; or in the river. Bars on the windows are necessary for the middle classes; covered terraces or verandas are also standard. There also seem to be "family compounds," to accommodate the extended families that seem to be common in the town. We'll describe Ma Christine's compound later on. A few houses were very elaborately landscaped, with flowers and trees and shrubs, but more generally there is more random greenery about: mango trees, frangipane trees, papayas, bananas. There are some gardens attached to houses, or nearby. This being the dry season, stuff doesn't grow as fast as other times of the year. The basic methods for clearing and keeping grass and weeds down machete and burning. The lawn in front of one of the public works buildings, for example, was charred; and there were often plumes of smoke to be seen far off in the "brousse" (bush), where people were clearing land. Manioc and other crops were grown but agriculture seemed always to be on an extremely small scale.
Along the way, every day, we ran into the people with whom Hannah has been in contact during the year she's been in Ndende -- teachers and administrators at the school (her closest neighbors are attached to the school, but unfortunately for us, they were spending the dry season in their village and we did not meet them); nurses and doctors at the hospital; shop keepers; and many others. Hannah knows most of the people in the markets, it seems, and everybody knows her. They were happy to meet "Mama and Papa." Sometimes, as at Mme Gomez, we were invited to sit and talk. She seemed very well informed about the world, and optimistic about the model provided by South Africa, for example. The medical staff was in the process of doing the annual vaccinations; they were going around town in cars and on foot, wearing the special vaccination t-shirts and carrying their vaccination boxes. There was some scandal involved with this work (people get extra pay for the job, but thus it becomes a source of patronage, as well); nothing passes just smoothly here. People were extremely friendly; smiling; the kids were a little shyer, but also responded to "bonjour," "bonsoir (if after noon)", "ca va." Only the local "fou" seemed a little ominous. But even she seemed quite well integrated into the daily life of the town. The boys under 10 seemed to love playing with a kind of toy truck or car, some quite primitive, others more elaborate, that were attached to a rod with a steering wheel that they pushed around town. Kids also do a lot of work: especially carrying water, helping with laundry, running errands. But they were also playing a lot -- in the river and lake, around the laundry tubs, along the paths.
Shopping: the stores seemed all to feature the same range of goods: canned vegetables and meats, dried groceries (flour, rice, couscous, pasta, nestle dried whole milk,), toilet paper, cleaning supplies, frozen turkey and chicken parts, frozen beef parts. There is yogurt and fresh milk, too. Most stores seemed to have a little of everything -- the general store effect. In the food marche there are what's fresh: peppers (very very hot piments!), manioc, sugar cane, manioc leaves, taro, bananas.
For our first dinner, Hannah made a yummy spaghetti sauce of canned tomatoes, canned mushrooms,canned corned beef, onions and garlic. Breakfasts were croissants that she'd ride her bike to the bakery for, and we splurged on boxes of orange juice, too. For drinking water, Hannah thinks the town's water supply (which is treated) is safe enough, but all the peace corps volunteers have big filter urns; they pour tap water in the top, and it filters down to the bottom. The next night, we made pizza at Mike's. He has a stove with a so-called oven: a uninsulated compartment that is heated, but the heat cannot be regulated. We made pizza dough with ingredients bought at the local store: flour, yeast, palm oil, powdered milk, carried it to Mike's after it had risen (he lives toward the other end of town); rolled it out with a Regab bottle (the local Gabonese beer); and topped it with a tomato sauce Hannah had made, some "pizza cheese" we bought in LBV (like processed mozzarella); and the Kraft parmesan we brought at Hannah's request. It was great. With the leftover dough, we made "dinner rolls," which turned out to be quite leaden. On our third night, we made mashed potatoes with Cantal cheese from Paris, and had salad with lettuce brought over by one of Hannah's friends, Seydou the tailor. This was great. For our last night, Hannah had inquired at the Hotel St Hubert about whether they had bush meat, and the answer was yes, so we went down there for dinner. The plate du jour was wild boar, stewed until very tender. It was very gamey and good, in a rich spicy sauce, served with rice (rice is a staple), and canned peas cooked up tastily with onions and bacon. For drink, there was Regab, or an imported (from Cameroon) "Castel" (not to be confused with South Africa's Castle Lager). And coca-cola and orangina (both bottled in LBV), and another orange drink, "D'gina Orange", a copycat of orangina. Lunches were sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly, or cheese, on baguette. Cheese is hard to get in Ndende, so Hannah (and many other volunteers) splurge on it when they go to LBV.
On Saturday afternoon, we went walking with Hannah's new video camera, and she recorded the tour. It was great fun and a great success. We have the 40 minute tape, and will try to convert it to VHS format and possibly put some clips up on the web. The sound is especially important to give a feel of the entire ambiance. We toured the lycee, deserted now during vacation; it too is surrounded by walls, and consists of separate buildings connected by lawn and walkways. There's a big satellite dish connected to the teachers' ("profs") room; there's also a computer lab that we didn't see. The classrooms are standard blackboard plus desks; there's a pavilion for performances, and other kinds of administrative buildings. Outside the walls are some playing fields, including a basketball court built a few years ago by a volunteer who had been a player at Stanford, I think Hannah said. Housing for the staff is built around the school; we looked at two possible houses for the new volunteer, who will be teaching english at the lycee (relieving Hannah and Mike of repeating that favor next year). The houses were spacious, but abandoned, one with ceiling falling in. They would need a lot of work to be habitable, but the location and space were nice.
One night we went to pay a call on Ma Christine. She is the matriarch of a family based in a village not too far from Ndende, and related in a complicated way to Mohammed, who is the boyfriend of a volunteer in Mouila, which is how Hannah met this family, because the volunteer (Jenny Howard) was Hannah's host for her site visit last year. This family has been in mourning for a year because of the death of the patriarch, and the official end of mourning (retrait de deuil) was to take place just after we left Gabon. Ma Christine works for the government in the office of the highway department, and Hannah says she's also very active in local politics, enjoying great respect among the women. She and the family lived in what seemed to be a compound of several houses. When we got there around 5 or so, everyone was sitting outside, preparing the meal on two big campfires in large aluminum cooking pots. Kids were wandering around, some watching TV inside the house; young men rode in on motor scooters, but had little to do with the cooking circle. It looked like many generations engaged in the dinner process: chopping, stirring, mashing taro. We were offered chairs and glasses of Regab beer and we chatted (via Hannah's translations) with Ma Christine. We are struck by the contradictions in our expectations of way of life: the campfires (and we saw much more evidence of this) seemed quite primitive, but also an efficient (and cool) way of cooking for a crowd; there was cold beer in the refrigerator and electricity for the television, but no outdoor lighting (we had to be guided back with aid of flashlights). There is furniture, both made of local materials, woven reeds and wood, and plastic patio chairs, but people also use mats on the ground and the floor.
On the way back to Hannah's house, we passed the lit up "Christian Alliance" church. This is a very active missionary outfit, who has churches in many towns, and who also run the hospital in Bongolo. Their aim is to turn over the hospital to Africans, and they are training doctors and nurses effectively to do that. The Catholic church is also important in Ndende, and in addition to a big church there are a couple of catholic schools and a mission. There are also other small evangelical churches that we noticed, as well as a mosque. Some Gabonese have become Muslims, such as president Omar El Hajj Bongo, and Mohammed; Ma Christine attends the Christian Alliance church.
For the rest of our stay in Ndende, we relaxed, read, listened to the BBC, talked to Hannah. It was really wonderful, seeing her in action and seeing the respect in which she is held by so many people. We should also mention the good health work she is doing. She is able to buy inexpensive condoms in Mouila (they are sold throughout Gabon at the off-track betting kiosks at a subsidized price, but there are none of these in Ndende); and whenever she goes out she carries a box of them with her. Guys (and sometimes) women (who then urged their male neighbors to "do like I do") would come up to Hannah and buy them. This was always a little embarrassing for us, but Hannah is unfazed. (She has learned to say, "I have come here to sell men's socks," [one of the euphemisms for preservatifs] in Punu, which always draws laughter in the marche.) There are no statistics on AIDS in Ndende or Gabon, except as collected incidentally, but clearly many are infected, and Hannah hopes to conduct a more careful sampling of the incidence of infection next year.
Twice in these 3 days, peace corps volunteers came through on their way to Tchibanga, the bigger town further east. One of them brought the news that we were only wait-listed for our flight back to LBV on Monday (oh-oh! the next flight wasn't until Wednesday and what if that got cancelled too! So we made backup plans to take the bush taxi all the way from Ndende to Lambarene.) The others stopped to pick up a valise left behind by accident, and that Hannah had brought down from LBV. In other words, even without telephone, messages get passed and contacts are made. Unfortunately, most people are just passing through Ndende, and few stay for longer visits, even though Hannah has a very nice guest room with double bed and moustiquaire, plus a canopy-sheet to catch the red ants that fall from the ceiling. We were very comfortable there! Personally, I preferred the cold shower to the "bucket bath" (a bucket of water heated with an immersion heater), but one can get used to much.
Early Monday morning, we arranged to take a bush taxi to Mouila, in order to see about getting on our 5:30 pm flight. (More to be nervous about: the Mouila airport is not lighted; sunlight goes by 6:30, so we hoped the plane would be on time, as well as have seats for us.) Hannah spoke to a "dispatcher" the night before about reserving space "inside" the taxi, and sure enough, at 7 am the driver showed up for us. This was one of the newer trucks: a Toyota pickup with front and rear seats inside the cab. Hannah and I and two others sat in back, Roger sat in front on the emergency brake between the driver and another passenger. Four or more people rode in the open back -- there's a board behind the cab for sitting; there was luggage and bananas back there, too. The ride back took a little over an hour -- it was indeed dusty, but not too terribly bad, and the roads were more passable than during the wet season. The driver dropped us off at the new internet cafe in Mouila (the cafe part consists of a coffee maker in the back room), and we had some great connect time. Then Hannah visited the Air Gabon office to clarify our flight status -- no problem. Now we had the rest of the day to kill. We took a cab to the peace corps house -- a large villa in a big enclosed space, with separate barbecue area and picnic table (built by Mike -- he is a famous furniture maker). The resident volunteer was away, however, and the other volunteer in Mouila was in LBV for the wedding, so we could not get inside. Outside on the veranda, though, were comfortable chairs, and we rested and read there for the rest of the day. Then to the airport, where check in took place in a little shed next to the fancy unused terminal. Hannah managed everything for us. First all the tickets are collected from the prospective passengers, and then names are called out one by one, luggage is collected, and boarding passes issued. The plane arrived on schedule, met by a huge fanfare of officials, because it carried the delegation coming to judge the regional finals of the Miss Gabon pageant. Mohammed was in charge of the local arrangements: the delegates were met with special cars, flowers, TV cameras, and all the standard hooplah. While they disembarked, we lined up and soon were on our way back to LBV. We'd spend one night at the Meridien (this time figuring out it was simpler to get an extra bed for Hannah than for her to go back to the case), and then the next day we'd catch a car to Lambarene, to see yet another part of Gabon and one that was important to Hannah, since she'd spent 3 months there in training, and would return at the end of August to help train the new volunteers.
Transport in Gabon: we did eventually see some public buses, but most transportation is taxis, taxi buses (vans), bush taxis (vans and pickups), and private cars. To get to a place like Lambarene, one goes by taxi to a sprawling market 8 km from the center of LBV, where one can buy ANYTHING but at great peril to life and limb, warned many of the volunteers: ivory, bush meat, fabric, souvenirs. It is also the "Gare de Routiers," where cars depart. Hannah warned us about the drill: once our taxi pulled up, we would be besieged by guys offering us rides to Lambarene and grabbing for our bags. We were therefore to travel light and hang on tightly to all our things. Before getting out of the taxi, Hannah would negotiate our terms for a ride: 3 places in the back of a car, at 5,000 francs each. Once someone agreed to that, we got out, he (and all the rest) led us down
the hill to where the cars waited. There we met our driver, Alfred. These guys are just hustlers. He tipped them for the business (I don't know how they allocate the tips -- all of them claimed to be responsible for us); and as soon as the other two passengers arrived, we took off, bought gas, and headed out the road east and south to Lambarene.
Hannah had explained that we would see folks selling stuff--crafts and bush meat--along the road, and that we could ask the driver to stop, with moderation. But it turned out that one of the passengers in front (the young man slept the whole way -- he had malaria, he eventually told the driver) was on a shopping trip, looking for bush meat for her grill stand back in LBV. She and Alfred were both Punu, and spent lots of time catching up on mutual acquaintances. Both were quite amazed to find that Hannah could speak some Punu too. Alfred was very gregarious. The route was lined with villages, one after another. There were a few bigger towns along the way, and relatively little wilderness. As we got out of LBV, the landscape became progressively more forested and hilly, what we midwesterners might call mountainous. "Roadside stands" consisted of an upturned oil drum, with the goods on top, or in the case of bush meat, hanging from a pole. We saw (and stopped for) gazelle, porky-pique, a huge lizard, bananas -- too expensive,
"you can't buy anything for 500 francs anymore, 500 is dead," said the shopper; but she bought a gazelle and two porky-piques, there was also raffia, and other fruits. Also several gendarme check points. Alfred was well known to most of them; but at one point our passports and visas were scrutinized carefully. Mostly these check points are aimed at non-Gabonese Africans. Near the equator, another gendarme gave us a hard time about crossing the equator--did we want to see it, did we know we had to pay to see it?
When we did cross it, we stopped and climbed a hill to a large billboard and took pictures all around.
The road continued to become more windy, and mountainous, and we continued to stop for bush meat, eventually filling the trunk (everyone travels with coolers in Gabon, for the bush meat). Alfred let us off at Ma Claire's restaurant, one of Hannah's favorite haunts from peace corps training. We had a fine lunch looking out over the Ogooye river (Lambarene is located on an island; on several hills): carp, manioc leaves ( spinach like, chopped, and quite good), and beer. There was also chevretin on the menu, an endangered gazelle like animal that lives in the water, but the environmental wing of the peace corps has done an effective job of indoctrinating volunteers about not eating endangered animals.
The restaurant had expanded since last year to an open pavilion with a great view of the river and the bridge-- Schweitzer's hospital was back in that direction, on the main shore of the river. We would go there later, but first Hannah wanted to look up friends from stage, since the stage house was in this neighborhood. She showed us where friends lived, we met some of them; we met some trainers and peace corps people. Today was the day the volunteers were having their interviews prior to placement, which would be the next day. We stopped to visit with Brenda, one of Hannah's cohort who was there for training. She thought that the new stage were not as nervous about placement as theirs had been, but she was busy making little "survival packages" (a jar with many symbolic items -- rubber bands, band aids, Mars bars, each with a legend) for the next day's placement announcement. At the peace corps house was a map with the locations of the current cohort -- the new people would be pasted on tomorrow.
Our destination was the convent of the Sisters of Immaculate Conception. Brenda gave us directions to the short cut -- up past the stadium, past the minister's house, and down the hill past the freres' monastery to the soeurs'. We climbed up and up, saw a very impressive and brand new villa -- later we learned it belonged to the new minister of eaux et forets, the most important ministry in Gabon, at least most ubiquitous. But the only path was a steep goat trail straight down. Roger and Hannah were carrying our overnight bags, but we all managed to scramble down, and walk along the road along the river bank (on the other side of the island) to the convent. This was a red brick haven of peace and quiet, with lawn and flowers, and a few fellow travellers -- a French group making a documentary, and the sisters. We had a room with three beds, with hot shower -- everything well screened in against mosquitoes, which are supposed to be pretty bad in Lambarene.
After repos, we went up to the road to catch a taxi to the Schweitzer hospital, which is a few kilometers up river. We were given a lift by a French forestier -- French in that he was white and spoke French (as well as excellent English), but he said he'd lived in Gabon for 20 years, and Africa for 30. ("I like France but I hate the French." He drove us all the way to the hospital, and we took the guided tour of Schweitzer's house -- his bed, his office, his collections, his many tributes. The hospital is still a going concern, and carries on significant research; but much of the historic part is now undergoing restoration. On our way out, we ran into Awa, the cousin of Hannah's friend Sali who was expecting a baby, and for whom we'd brought sets of baby clothes. Sali had given birth last week, was still in the hospital, so Hannah arranged we would visit her there.
Dinner that night was probably the best one in Gabon (not counting Hannah's place in Ndende) -- it was grilled fish down by the river, across from the island, in the "hot" neighborhood of Isaac. We were joined by Brenda and Richard, also from Hannah's cohort there to help train. They'd been baking cookies for the next day's festivities at the nearby house of two volunteers posted in Lambarene. They lived in the lap of luxury, with stereo and soft furniture. As well as being adjacent to Isaac. Here's the setup: there are many bars and nightclubs, but a particular big bar has lots of tables and many individual entrepreneurs with small grill stands outside. Hannah and all the volunteers have one favorite: you go up there, and pick out your fish (he has them in a bucket under a table. On the table are all the preparation things -- sauce, accompaniments (potatoes or rice). You negotiate the side dishes and style, and go find a table and get some beer from the bar. When the fish is ready, the proprietor brings it over. The fish was super fresh and seasoned wonderfully. It was great!
The next day, we had breakfast in a tea room in the main part of Lambarene: this is a strip of stores, restaurants, and bars along the river, on the opposite side of the hill we came in on. While having our croissant and coffee, a number of the peace corps people came in, too. It's a pretty small town. Then we went to the hospital to visit Sali, Hannah's friend, and saw the baby. It turned out they were going home that morning, and she insisted that we ride with her and the baby in the taxi. This was quite uncomfortable for us, since this seemed to be such a private and family moment. Hannah assured us it was ok. The father in fact was in LBV buying supplies for the christening. They're Malian; he's a teacher; this is their first child. We visited at home; exchanged our gifts -- two outfits from Target, tres americain, as Hannah requested; we were given a length of tie-dyed cloth.
Later, we had some more meetings with Hannah's friends, and at lunch (at a very African place, where we had spicy chicken), we talked with two of the trainers, who discussed the characteristics of the current stage of trainees. At various moments during the visit, Hannah would say, "Now you've seen everybody." And then we'd meet some more! But eventually, it was time to go. We'd arranged with Alfred to drive us back in the afternoon at 2 (he'd made a trip back to LBV and returned in the meantime -- it's about 3-4 hours). As we were leaving the restaurant, we saw him, and confirmed the meeting. What happened next was very much part of the scene. We waited for Alfred at the convent, which was great, since we were all reading. He finally arrived around 3, having decided to wash his car, etc. Then we went to find his other passenger, who wasn't where she said she'd be. He dropped something off, muttering. (His cell phone hadn't been working because the entire phone network was out -- Hannah had tried to call Air France to confirm our flight, with no luck.) We drove around and around, he'd stop and ask people about the whereabouts of his other passenger, and then he drove us to look at the hotel that he had started to build but could not finish because the bank financing it had collapsed. His family chose not to help him out, he lamented, his uncle had bought a new car for his girlfriend instead. Alfred had studied the hotel management in France, I think, and was driving to save up money to continue his hotel project. He'd mentioned other failed business activities -- a paper mill in Konga, for example. Finally, we stopped because he'd seen someone -- it was the shopping lady, heading back to LBV with all her coolers. I don't know if she was the original passenger and hadn't been where she was supposed to be, or what. Anyway, eventually we hit the road. This was not such a leisurely drive, and in fact, Alfred drove quite fast, passing blindly, but the real hazard was other drivers, even more reckless, especially the ancient beer trucks that ply the road. Luckily, in most sections there was not a lot of traffic. Again, we were amazed at Alfred's ability to dodge the pot holes and other hazards of the road. After 3-4 hours of white knuckles, we finally returned to congested Libreville, checked back into the Meridien for the last time, and headed out to an Indian restaurant for dinner.
Our final day in Libreville was mostly devoted to shopping: we were ready to brave the crafts market again to buy masks and other things, now that we'd seen some that Hannah had bought from a wood carver in Ndende, plus other examples on display in the hotel. The artisan village consists of many individual shops, many sellingthe same things -- wood carving, stone carvings, textiles, baskets. Hannah was torn in three directions as we got more familiar with the layout, each of us three bargaining for items, but needing Hannah to translate. Some of the sellers were very aggressive, others were only aggressive. But we all came away satisfied with our purchases, and went back to the hotel to pack them away and get ready to leave.
The Air France flight to Paris leaves at 10:30 pm, but there is "early check-in" from 5:30 to 7:30. Having done this, you're free to leave the airport and return in time for the flight. Originally we'd planned just to have pizza across the road from the airport (at the "Dakota" pizzeria), but there was so much time, we first went back to a music store where Hannah was hoping to get the last copy of a CD of a Tchibanga rap group (with a rap about AIDS -- she'd seen them perform in Ndende) -- she did! She'd been there earlier, they didn't have one, but said someone else did and to come back later. Then we went back to La Dolce Vita for a drink until the restaurant opened, and a last pizza overlooking the lights of Libreville. This was pleasant, although one of us gets a little nervous about getting to the airport. In the end, we caught a cab that would drop Hannah off near the peace corps case, and then take us on to the airport. So our parting was not as complete as we would have liked (others wanted to get in our cab as she got out; we had to fend them off, and then we were gone). Traffic was worse than usual, but we made it to the airport 15 minutes before a very thorough boarding check began. And right on schedule, we took off from Leon Mba international airport for the last time.
What impressions do we retain from our trip? One is how comfortable Hannah is there, and how she is relishing all the experiences and all the interactions that she has. She has been assuring us things are great there, and we were able to see this with our own eyes. She is frustrated by bureaucracies, of course, but is able to accept that things are messed up without being driven crazy. Another is the physical beauty and extraordinary friendliness of the Gabonese that we met. (And not just the Gabonese, of course; the Malians, Senegalese, and others there.) We greeted everyone, and they greeted us. Some offered us hospitality, but everyone seemed interested in meeting Hannah's mother and father, and generally seemed to be enjoying life, even if to us life seemed like a very hard slog. I am aware that these impressions are really only that -- and I am therefore nervous about making any kinds of generalizations.
Finally, what struck me powerfully was how non-touristic Gabon was. By this, I guess I mean that there is not much interest in or effort to promote the country as a destination; the only place we found to buy postcards was the airport, and the Schweitzer hospital, for example. There are no guidebooks produced locally; there are no tourist attractions. The game reserves apparently have some private lodging, but are not yet set up for tourists --no transport through the reserves, for example, no system of information. The people we saw at the Meridien seemed there on business (the hotel also did a good business in fancy banquets for local notables) and not for touring. There was not even much sign of backpackers with their Rough Guides. This anti-tourism feeds back into our sense that Gabon is a country in stasis: not growth, but simple reproduction of what exists seems to be the aim. Making a living on the land is tough, but people manage, it's just that they don't really get beyond this. Families send their kids to the lycee, but without passing their baccalaureat, the path to professions is barred, and they return to their villages to live their lives of subsistence. Of course, the absence of politics makes forbearance and subsistence all the more necessary.
It was a great trip. We wouldn't have missed it for anything!
Diane and Roger
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