Everybody was shaking. Our helpers because of all the sugar they ate. We from anxiety.
Who were we kidding anyway. We had heard the tak-tak sound before and we knew what it meant. I guess we were just hoping it would have been a dry birfield or something. Whishfull thinking.
A quick run trough the the front driveline components showed the the noise came from inside the front differential. Trying to drive now only resulted in noise, no more movement.
Our front diff had completely packed up.
We switched the engine off and it became silent. Very silent. You could see the dissapointment on the faces of our crew. We had a deal with them, they would bring us to Kapia, no matter what, and we would pay them for the service. They were afraid now that they would not get paid (or paid less) as we would obviously not reach Kapia.
We had to decide very quickly how and how much we would pay. This is so difficult! We had no idea what a reasonable amount would be. We did not want to pay them too little. Because they deserved an honest wage and we certainly did not want to make enemies here. On the other hand we did not want to pay them to much as that would only open the doors for corruption and create the impression that 'white people' always pay too much.
We decided on 150$US for all of them. 150$US divided by 8 = 19$US per person. For three very long had working days. Josephine asked me if I would be happy with that amount? I wouldn't. I'd feel insulted and angry probably. But in Congo that is a lot of money. This was so difficult!
We gave the money to papa Likas and thanked them for all their work. We also gave them our axe, for which they were very grateful. We barely used it anyway.
Our crew then dissapeared in the darkness, leaving us all alone on the savannah.
Papa Bazil, Mufuta, Vita, Papa Likas, Masambe, Bony
We knew we had a bit of problem here, but we did not discuss it too much. We were tired and hungry. There is nothing we could do now anyway so we opened up our tent and made ourselves a nice meal. We cooked some pasta, opened a can of tuna and used our last package of instant mushroom sauce. Whatever would happen tomorrow, we might as wel do it well fed.
20 minutes after our crew had left we heard some very loud "YAHOO's" emerging from the forest. We recognized the voices. Probably they had waited with counting the money until now, and the result seemed to make them very happy. We paid too much..
It was a beautiful night again, as we were in the savannah now we had a clear view of the sky. The African sky can be so magnificently beautiful. We only had a candle to provide us with some light. In different situations this would have been the perfect bushcamp.
A strange sense of rest came over us, in a way we felt relieved. We were happy that we would no longer have to struggle with only a functional front axle.
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