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| Michels house, Okoyo |
But it is definitely better and safer to travel a road like this with
a local-expert driver in a good jeep than in an old and bad maintained
truck. Michel is absolutely an original, indeed, probably a little bit
lonely as the only mundele within about 250 square kilometers. Anyway,
as my french was already improving and he was speaking slowly and clear,
we found a lot to talk and the four-hour journey to Okoyo passed fast.
By truck this would have been a trip of half a day – at least!
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| Michel and the Chinese |
Okoyo is a nest with about 3000 habitants, not so long ago without a
tarred road, still without electricity or running water. For the road
construction workers, housing is a little bit different for sure their
houses have air-conditioning and all the other comfort, moreover, there
is even satellite internet! Michel occupies some locals as cook, house
keepers, etc. When we arrived around midnight, the cook served us a
great dinner, which was followed by something I have already dreamed for
a long time really good cheese. Well, I am staying with a French man
here! In Okoyo, there is not an awful lot to see: there is a small
market, one shop, which is better sorted than the others (does not
really mean a lot), an elementary school, a hospital (without doctors
and without interior arrangement or medicine, because the doctors who
have originally worked here, took everything with them to their own
private clinics in Brazzaville), there is a police station and various
churches – that's it basically.
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| City center of Okoyo |
Not far away, there is a quite big river. On the shores, Chinese
workers build two ships at the moment. These ships are supposed to
transport goods for the road construction on the river. For sure, as
there were so many Chinese people here, local children called me again
Chinese…. A lot of my time in Okoyo, I enjoyed staying in the
air-conditioned house, it was nice by itself not being on the move at
the moment, and I simply took it as a resting place from traveling. I
read a lot, watched French TV und spent quite some time at the net,
trying to find out about the best way to reach western Africa. All that
came with good food, cheese and ham sandwiches, beer, champagne, red
whine, pasties, just anything one can imagine. All these things need to
be bought in Brazzaville, about 9 hours by jeep. For sure, all these
items are imported from Europe, and there is only one shop in Brazza
selling all this stuff, probably at whooping prices.
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| Road to Gabon |
As the road here is in a terrible condition, it is used by only few
trucks. Which transport goods from Gabon to RC or vice versa. Another
possibility are sometimes Chinese trucks which go once a while from
Okoyo to Franceville to organize supplies for the road construction.
During my four days with Michel, there was only once a truck going to
the border with Gabon. And this one we managed to miss. As my visa for
RC was only good for 15 days and it was already about to be finished,
Michel decided, that he will send me by jeep to the border. One day, one
of engineers has to travel all the way to the border anyway to take
some photos of the road and the bridges, so why not now.
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| Road to Gabon |
So, I left Okoyo as I came – in a fancy jeep with a driver. However,
this part of the road was by far the worst, I travelled on this trip so
far….It was 80 kilometers to the border. Astonishing enough, it took us
only 4 hours, as the driver was really a good and brave man.The road was
really cruel. Here, I also want to say thanks to Michel for his
friendship, for organizing everything for me and for being a great host.
The border between RC and Gabon are about 20 kilometers from each
other, and I was glad that the jeep was allowed to take me all the way
to the Gabonese border post, as for sure, in between, there was also no
traffic! Crossing of the RC border post was kind of stressful, as the
official could not read tourist visas and strictly stated the visa was
already expired. It needed some time and argumentation skills to make
him allowed me to leave. To be on the safe side, I also just refused to
understand the bad word cadeau (present) …. So, after a while he just
gave up and let me go.
