After I had retrieved my motorcycle from the Gabonese border and returned to Dolisie I was back on good tarmac. The 375 kilometers to the capital Brazzaville should be easy riding along a new, paved road built by the Chinese. The road was so new, in fact, that it had not been opened for heavy traffic. There were numerous road blocks preventing big vehicles to enter as the final touches to the road were still being done. Most thankfully, motorcycles were allowed to use the new road. The poor truckers had to trudge on along the old, rundown dirt road, a seemingly hopeless task. It must have taken them several days to reach Brazzaville.

As a result of this I had the four-lane road almost to myself. The new road by-passed all villages and towns and there was not a gas station in sight. It was a rather pleasant drive but a little lonely. Here and there were people building ditches, laying down the final pavement and painting road markings. As I drove, more and more construction appeared and I should have known that this leisurely drive wouldn’t last forever. Where the road passed by the town of Mindouli, about 100 kilometers before Brazzaville, I came to an abrupt stop. Across a deep ravine was a new bridge under construction. It had not been paved, grids of reinforcement bars were visible and there were gaps still to be bridged. I was told by some workers to continue along the old road.

I drove back a kilometer and found the turnoff to the old road. It was not a gravel road. The surface was mud and it started with a steep downhill slope. For the first few hundred meters the mud was packed but still moist. I crawled by at snails pace and wondered for how long this would last before I got back onto the new road. Out of nowhere the back wheel slid out to the left. I caught the slip with my right leg. Then it slid out to the right and I caught it with my left leg, the one with the operated knee. The bike straightened out.

Wow, that was a close call. The saves were automatic. I did not have the choice of refraining from putting my left leg down and save myself from a certain fall. There was no way I could have considered the situation, evaluate the risk and make a decision:

“Hey now, my back wheel is skidding to the right and I will fall if I do not put my left leg out to block it. But wait, that is my operated leg. Will this be a heavy blow or should I risk a save?”

Everything happened in a split second and reflexes took control. The subconscious part of the brain will just not intentionally refrain from saving the day, or at least try to do so. Fortunately the block was not very hard on my knee but the warning bells chimed loud and clear. Around the next bend in the road I stopped dead in my tracks.

Before me appeared a terrible sight. For a stretch of a few hundred meters the road was covered in water and mud. Treacherous wheel tracks made by numerous semi trailers turned this part of the road to an impassable obstacle for a guy with a bad knee on a heavy bike. Even with a good knee I would be seriously concerned. One little mistake and I’d be on a plane back home with my leg in a package. That would have been just the disgrace. Coming back to Sweden with the tail between my legs after having returned to Africa perhaps prematurely.

I got off the bike and assessed the situation. Walking back and forth along the muddy passage I decided that there was no chance in hell that I would attempt this road. And God knows what would happen around the next corner. I didn’t have the slightest idea for how long I would be forced to travel along the old road before getting back out on the asphalt on the other side of the road work and would the road be as bad or would it improve? It didn’t matter. I was not going to drive my bike through this.

But what was I to do then?

I pondered my situation but came to no conclusion. I tried to talk to a few people but no one spoke English. The town of Mindouli was very small. The railway line passed through it and there was a small train station but not much more. My options were few, if any.

Then I came across a man in nice clothes standing beside a big truck that got repair work done on its breaks by another man in not so nice clothes. The nice clothes man, overlooking the work, started to talk to me in French. I did not understand what he said but I started to explain my situation by hand signals and key words in English. I said that I needed help getting my motorcycle across the bad part of this road in some way or another. Perhaps on the back of a pickup truck, I said, pointing to a white Toyota Land Cruiser that happened to be parked a short distance away.

"That is my truck", the nice clothes man said.
No shit?
Sure, and he proposed to load my bike onto it and drive me and my bike to the town of Kinkala where the good road was supposed to continue. As it turned out, the nice clothes man was here to service the big truck that had lost its brakes and come to a halt right at this spot. The not so nice clothes man worked for him. What a strike of good luck. I had only been stranded here for half an hour and I already had a solution to my predicament. Naturally, there would be money involved but I was all too happy to have found a way out. How exactly the bike was going to be loaded onto the back of the Land Cruiser remained to be seen.

When the repair work was finished an hour later, my savior talked to a bunch of guys in the village and then we drove over to where my bike was parked. A few minutes later my bike had been lifted onto the back of the pickup truck. I paid the guys for their work. If you are a white man in this part of the world, no help is offered for free and perhaps it is only fair.

Another piece of unused luggage finally came to good use. I’ve been carrying a ratchet strap with the intention to be used to tie the bike down during boat trips but up until now it has been just another piece of unused luggage adding to the weight of the bike. It did a good job keeping the bike in a steady position on the back of the pickup truck, too steady perhaps.

The Toyota owner wanted 200 000 CFA (325 €) for his services implying that he was a business man and used his truck in his business. I negotiated the amount down to 130 000 CFA (210 €). I had no idea how far it was to Kinkala and the paved road. Perhaps it was only on the opposite side of the unfinished bridge that had blocked my way. Perhaps the dirt road would be drivable just around the next corner. It didn’t really matter. I needed help crossing the initial stretch of mud no matter what but as we started down the road I got more and more convinced that I had got good value for my money.

It started out nice and easy on a decent mud road but soon it turned from decent to bad to nasty. The road curved its way up and down rolling hills and the surface got muddier the further we got. At a village there was a typical African traffic jam where big and small vehicles shove themselves into the slightest unoccupied gap in or off the road. In these situations I cannot but lament the stupidity of African drivers.

No one would ever consider settling down at the end of the queue waiting for their turn to pass, when arriving at a traffic jam. Instead they frantically try to fill every spot available in order to prevent someone from behind taking it, which they certainly would. Even if it means that the complete width of the road, the side walk and both ditches would be filled up so no vehicle coming the other way have any possibility to pass, there is still no space left empty. If there is only a narrow passage and there is a big truck coming the other way, someone would still jam their car into the gap and crate a gridlock.

Stupid, stupid, stupid but totally uncontrollable. Some times there are police trying to create some kind of order but of little avail. The police don’t seem to have sufficient authority and the frantic urge of getting ahead is just too strong with the drivers. The result is that it takes much longer to get through and much longer to clear any stuck vehicles. It always ends with a lot of shouting, a lot of honking of horns, backing up, going forward, going sideways, turning around, creating a little space for yourself only to be filled by someone else and the grid lock continues.

Eventually we got through with the help of the powerful four wheel drive of the Toyota Land Cruiser. Next was a steep uphill slope where a semi trailer spun its wheels in a cloud of smoke almost at the top. The Toyota cleared it on the side but it was extremely slippery in the wet mud. At one point we came sliding sideways down a slight decline only to get the nose in the right direction before ending up in the ditch. It was like Bambi on ice. I could not in my wildest dreams see myself on my motorcycle during these conditions and the 210 Euros that this would cost me looked more and more like well invested money.

The biggest challenge was still to come. Coming over a crest in the road we were met with a sea of thick mud and pools of water. Trucks were stuck in the ditches to the right and left and in between there was of course a typical African traffic jam with cars pressing on from both directions skidding and slipping in the mud trying to get around the trucks and the busses. There were a lot of people trying to dig stuck vehicles out of the mud, there were numerous uniformed police trying to create some kind of order but they were only contradicting each other in their aim of getting vehicles through and to no surprise a gridlock was formed. As if this was not enough, it started to rain.

It was late in the day and I had no hopes of getting out of this before the sun set. I prepared to spend the night in this sea of mud, one way or another. My driver had no such thoughts though. Pressing on like everybody else, he miraculously manage to get through this obstacle as well but not without scratching the side of his Toyota on some trucks, slipping and sliding as he forced himself through. It was in the nick of time. As we cleared the last vehicle, the rain increased and night was approaching. But this was the last obstacle and we managed to reach Kinkala just as the night fell. We had then travelled 64 muddy kilometers in six hours. I was immensely happy to be back on the hard surface as I thought about all the people stuck in their vehicles out there in the mud.

The deal I had with the Toyota driver was to take me to Kinkala where we would offload my bike but due to the rough road and the senseless driving the side stand on my bike had snapped in half. Without it I could not get on my bike let alone get off it. Besides it was now dark so for a few dollars more I was driven the last bit into Brazzaville and was dropped off on the courtyard of the hotel of my choice.

At Hotel Hippocampe I was met by friendly people, plenty of westerners and Asians. It was expensive, as hotels are in these regions but the room was large and clean, there was hot water in the shower, good food in the outdoor restaurant and cold beer in the fridge. As I sat in the restaurant, cleansed of the mud, well fed, sipping a cold one, I though about that I could just as well have been stuck in a car, filthy to the bone, dead hungry and very uncomfortable back there in the sea of mud.

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