12 Jul El Ogooué: Another river, another madman, another dream...

Over the years my spirit has softened a little and the days of throwing myself into adventure, pushed by some nocturnal oath or in search of an unattainable kiss, are beginning to give way to those of enjoying rereading those adventures close to fantasy that so often made me dream and that led me into so much trouble.

And it must be that I am finally maturing, because tonight I am delighted to recall a great folly of African exploration whose footsteps I tried to follow, in my own way and with mixed results.

I am referring to the exploits of Emile Gentil. A few days ago I wrote about the adventures to unveil the secret of the Niger River, and this time I take you to the Ogooué River, further south. Another river, another madman, another dream...

The madness devised by Gentil consisted of travelling through the interior of Gabon on the river in a steamboat, dismantling it at its source and carrying it on its back through jungles, savannahs and swampy areas to reassemble it in Chad and navigate the Logone and Chari rivers until it reached the market town of Kousseri, in the extreme north of Cameroon...

And while it may seem simple in the telling, the matter was complicated by disease, wild animals and the hostile inhabitants of Kanem Bornu's kingdom.

A crazy idea, but as Unamuno said, "Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of conquering the impossible". And I, who have not achieved any impossible, but I have done a few absurd things, went and sailed those rivers, and of course, I entered Kousseri. I still don't know why I did it, whether it was because it was on the edge of everything, and the edge has always tempted me, or whether I simply went because I had never been there before. The fact is that I went in.

I don't usually plan things very much, because planning in Africa is fantasising, as Moravia said, and I learnt it on my first day. I travel light, although my backpack never lacks a piece of fuet, a knife, my moleskin, a map, the scarf a Saharawi gave me, a Kenyan kikoi blanket, a couple of T-shirts and my lucky (clean) pants. That's all I needed to leave everything behind and disappear... and with that I got on a rickety barge (with no intention of dismantling it) and set off for the Ogooué river, to finish an adventure that had begun a long time ago.

We drove along the wild beaches of Gabon, travelling at half speed, through dense red and black mangrove swamps or flooded forests, through lost Fang villages, through primeval forests and small clearings, where shy sitatungas or buffalo and forest elephants often come to drink. It was the end of a great adventure in instalments. Attached to the pleasures of the flesh, I returned when the fuet was finished. Besides, although I enjoyed myself, I admit that I was a little afraid of that night, so black, invaded by the chanting of frogs, some disturbing splashing nearby, the screeching of monkeys or the invisible movement of some mammals... that night, everything kept me alert.

Some time ago I had travelled along the Chari and Logone rivers, canoeing between Saras villages in Chad, or visiting Musgum villages in Cameroon, with their characteristic buildings. That is where this adventure began for me. I remember the sunsets in the Chari, the smell of mango or kola nut, the flocks of egrets emerging in groups from a solitary acacia tree or the close purr of a family of hippopotamuses. Now from the distant prison of my office, I remember those days with special nostalgia.

By the Chari I reached Kousseri, the market town, where the palace of Sultan Rabih, the one who fought Gentil on the river and lost, was still standing. Besides the palace, there was a colourful market of miseries, fed by an incessant traffic of motorbikes, trucks and camels, all heavily laden, which endlessly crossed the Chari by the only existing bridge that ended at the border with Chad. There, under a tireless rhythm, everything was for sale and everything was possible.

And tonight, as I recalled crossing the lost villages of the Fang, sailing among the hippos of the Chari or watching the elephants of Kalamaloue approaching the town of Kousseri, I thought happily that it had been an incredible adventure, yet another one.

And as Hellen Keller, deaf, blind and a fighter, would say, life is either adventure or it is nothing?

And speaking of adventures, and as I don't want my advice to be lost or fall on deaf ears, I am writing it down again and saving it:

1.-Choose a different, distant and inaccessible destination.
2.-Once chosen, don't think twice about it
3.-Then carefully choose someone to accompany you.
4.-Once you have made your choice, think twice.
5.-Bring a good plan
6.-Don't follow it. Change it along the way, adapt to it.
7.-During the trip, always do something new, something that scares you, very, very much.
8.-Don't stop doing things you regret not doing, and don't do things you later regret doing.
9.-Fall madly in love along the way, maximum three days.
10.-Don't be lazy
11.-Laugh at everything
12.-Try (almost) everything
13.-And finally, think with your heart and not with your head (or with any other appendage of your body...).