KING CONGO
Writer and photographer James Oatway joins the last leg of an expedition to Africa’s heart — and a soulful animal encounter
WHERE is the heart of Africa? Geographically, it is an invisible spot on a piece of muddy ground in the middle of a swamp in a dense rainforest in the Republic of Congo. This is where the continent would balance if you placed it on a pin. It is now marked by a steel beacon, screwed into the mud by Kingsley Holgate and his expedition team, who were guided there by GPS and local Bayaka tribesmen.
“Lovely buggers,” says Holgate of the Bayaka. “We wouldn’t have made it without them.”
I met him and his team in Etoumbi, a town near the Odzala National Park, just north of the equator. They had emerged from the forest a few days before, having completed their goal. The forest had scarred them. Having driven all the way from South Africa, they could only drive their beloved Land Rovers so far.
They’d had to approach “The Heart” on foot — a trek through thick jungle. Kingsley’s legs were in a bad way. His ankles were red and swollen. Many flies buzzed around inflamed cuts and sores, caused by the thorny vines that guard the forest. His burly, Rambo-esque son Ross Holgate, wiry veteran team member Bruce Leslie, and the stout, smiling Brad Hansen all sported similar wounds, but Kingsley’s looked the worst. At nearly 70 years old, the jungle trek had nearly killed him.
“We were really worried about him,” Bruce confided. “I’ve never seen him like that before. He was finished.”
He showed me pictures of Kingsley crawling neck-deep through a swamp. Then there were the bees. Team member Mike Nixon had suffered more than the other team members and sustained a potentially fatal number of stings — more than 60.
I would not be subjected to these jungle horrors. I had flown into Brazzaville with two other journalists, Richard Holmes and Francois Haasbroek. We’d had time to briefly explore the capital. I could see Kinshasa, the sprawling, restive capital of the DRC, on the other side of the Congo River.
The streets of “Brazza” were bustling but orderly. Traffic was thick but moving, aided by white-gloved pointsmen. We visited the colourful market district, Poto-Poto, and walked through the busy alleys, where mainly Muslim traders sold mainly Chinese goods. I drank my first Ngok, a popular local beer, on the side of a busy street as the sun set on the market.
The following morning we left Brazza and headed north towards the equator. The road was quite good although it was littered with the corpses of many vehicles, including a Porsche Cayenne. We stopped for coffee in Inoni and discussed the large python we had seen for sale a short while earlier. Killed with a gun, this 3m snake would be sold for about R250. It would be eaten and its skin dried for traditional medicine.
On the way we passed through President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s home town of Oyo, bizarrely well developed in contrast to the other villages on the route. Further on, we stopped for some pictures in Makoua, which straddles the invisible line that divides the northern and southern hemispheres and, according to the recent Rugby World Cup results, good rugby from bad.
After quick introductions in Etoumbi, we boarded the Land Rovers synonymous with Holgate’s adventures and headed into the great Ndzehi Forest, which rose up dramatically on both sides of the dirt road. We reached Ngaga Camp shortly after dark. The air was heavy and fruity from the decomposed foliage on the forest floor. I stood on the stoep of my stilted wooden cabin, which blended seamlessly into the forest, and stared into a wall of black jungle, seeing nothing, hearing only the nocturnal forest orchestra.
The next day was bucket-list stuff as we stalked a family of Western lowland gorillas. These are wild apes and strict gorilla-viewing rules are in place.
After a 45-minute walk through the thicket, the sudden cracking of branches signified the presence of a large creature. That was when I laid eyes on Neptuno, a great silverback who, together with his family of around 15 apes of different ages, was nibbling at Marantaceae shoots.
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