African Encounter

    AFRICAN ENCOUNTER Overland Safari Blog January – May 1973 Part Eight  – In to the Central African Republic The Insanitary Edition  (that's not insane but it might well be)  Farewell Zaire - The Truck awaiting the Ferry to cross the Oubangi River   A first sighting of RCA as we crossed to Bangassou.  The Republic of Central Africa (RCA) is a relatively small country in terms of its population, it is about the size of France and is one of the World's poorest countries despite the wealth of natural resouces that it is said to possess.  It is probably one of the countries that we travellers knew least about before we reached it, so here is some historical information and something about events that were current at the time our transit.   "Approximately 10,000 years ago,   desertification  forced  hunter-gatherer  societies south into the Sahel regions of northern Central Africa, where some groups settled. ...

  AFRICAN ENCOUNTER Overland Safari Blog January – May 1973 Part Seven  – From  Kisangani to Central African Republic The Main Road in Zaire - it got worse, much worse ! I recall finding out about EO and the journey to London from Tony Jones Brother who was based in JHB and was able to fill me in with some of the details of how the trip might operate.  I found that the only problem was that, having never been on such a journey I didn't know what I needed to know and hence what questions to ask. At that meeting I was given a brochure telling me such things as the places through which we might pass and the challenges that we might have to face. In the brochure I learned a bit more, including a sentence that I recall (not quite clearly) but to the effect that I would learn something about myself.  This seemed slightly confusing as at the time I thought that I knew a fair bit about myself - how wrong could I be; it seems that it has taken some 50 years to begi...

                                                    AFRICAN ENCOUNTER Overland Safari Blog January – May 1973 Part Six  – From  King Edward National Park to Kisangani "Europeans at Stanleyville in 1902" - rather how one expected "Colonials" to appear. The sorts of White Men one  ight have found in some of the large houses, now shells, that we had passed. It is noticable that there are only men in this photo - although there is some evidence of other, non-white, people in the background .    27 March 1973 As we journeyed on, the following day we came across something which was rare in two ways; this was an enclosure in which Okapi were kept. The Okapi is a creature looking rather like a cross between an antelope and a zebra. What was even more unexpected in this part of the world was that the enclosure in ...