Because of our involvement with our 'crew' we did not have too much trouble with the begging here. Apart from that I believe we had been very lucky to break down here.

:scratch:

Let's rephrase that last sentence: "We could have broken down in a much worse region then this, people were generally nice around here."

By now we had become part of the road. Early in the morning we had the kids that passed trough. They were very curious but they could not stay long as they had to go to school. You could see the dilemma on their faces, every fibre of their body wanted to stay around and check out these white guys, but they would get into serious trouble if they did not show up in school!


We felt sorry for the bike transporters that had to pass trough here. They had such a hard task at hands already, and then we created an extra obstacle by blocking the road with out truck.

After the little detour there was a short level piece of track before going steep uphil again. I took as much run-up as possible and launched myself up the hill. This won us 20 meters or so.

Josephine: "What was that noise?"
Me: "What noise?"
Josephine: "That tak-tak noise?"
Me: "Don't know"

I had heard the noise too but I did not want to think or worry about it. Not now.

The road was too steep to even attempt driving up with our front axle alone. We would use the tirfor for the remaining 500m. The length of the cable gave us about 10meter of progress with each go. Then the tirfor had to be released and a new tree had to be found to continue. 500 meters. 10 meter at a time. Everybody knew this was going to be a big job. But once we would make it open we would be out of the forest and onto the savannah, were it would be possible to drive on our own steam again. That was a big motivation.




My respect for these guys is endless. It is incredible how they could manage such hard labour for hours on end. If the motivation got low, the camera always cheered them up again. They barely eat or drink. At this rate I would have died already... twice.


This last pictures gives and idea of the angle we were working at.

"Tonight we would surely reach Kapia!"

The guys were getting hungry. We could not blame them. They did not have food, and the nearest village was 5km behind us. Our food stock was low too, but we still had porridge. We bought a lot of porridge as it is very nutritious and takes little space in the car. I don't like porridge very much but we had eaten it every day since we were on the road.

We cooked up a big pot for them. They loved it. To make it a bit tastier we gave them our pot of sugar, so they could add a bit to their porridge. We were still cleaning up our cooking gear and by the time we returned the sugar was all gone. They just ate a full kilogram of pure sugar!

About halfway up the hill we ran out of trees. The trees had made way for thick bush. But nothing strong enough to hook up the tirfor... :scratch:
Nothing is easy in Congo.. We cut down a tree.

The procedure for the last 250meters changed a bit:

Dig a deep hole in the middle of the road. Put the tree in the hole. Close the hole. Attach the tirfor and winch the Landcruiser 10meters forward. Dig out the tree. Close the hole. 10meters further, dig a deep hole in the middle of the road... And repeat.

When we just started with the tirfor that morning everybody was optimistic. Kapia seemed so close by. Everybody worked extremely hard for 10 hours non-stop and we had only progressed 500meters. So mouch trouble for so little result. We still hadn't mae it up the hill and out of the forest, although we were close now.

It got dark again.

Nobody wanted to stop now, you could tell from everybody's face how tired they were. Papa Bazil started a song and the work continued. Everybody sang. No more joking, no more pausing. Just working at a steady pace to get this damn Landcruiser on top of the hill.

Papa Likas told me it was his greatest wish to hop on to the back of our car when we made it to top and ride together with us to Kapia. There his task would end and would finally be able to go home to his family. We shared his wish!

Late in the evening we made to the top, I still had the engine running since this morning. We were nervous.

I put it in 1st and let the clutch go. We moved!

*TAK*TAK*TAK*