Blood River

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Authors: Tim Butcher
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Can you help?'
    He thought for a moment.
    'I cannot remember the last time a white man went through that
area. It has been many, many years. But I know some of the maimai near town. It is not just the pygmies that my group represents.
We represent all minorities, and sometimes that includes mai-mai.
Some of the mai-mai are not rebels, they are just villagers who want
to protect themselves. These are good people and I can talk to them.
The problem is the outsiders who come down here into our
province of Katanga - they are the ones who are out of control.'
    'Would you be prepared to accompany me, by motorbike,
towards the river?' I tried not to sound too desperate as I asked the
question.
    For a moment, Georges was quiet. He looked at his colleague, a
much taller man, Mutombo Nganga; they had a brief exchange in
Swahili and then he turned to me.
    'I cannot go with you all the way, but I am prepared to take the
risk along the roads close to Kalemie. I think you will be safe if I
go with you. I know these mai-mai well. I grew up in the bush and
I know their families and their villages, so I could try to help you.'
    There was something reassuringly trustworthy about Georges.
Like Benoit, he did not mention money, but when I asked him if
I could pay him, he mumbled something about me making a
donation to La Voix des Minorites.

    `But have you been there recently, along the road between here
and Kindu?'
    `No-one has been all the way along that road recently. It is a
long way, more than seven hundred kilometres. But in our
province, Katanga, closer to here, I have walked along some of the
roads in recent years. The mai-mai are not all out of control, you
know. I have been with many of them and they will listen to me.
But once you leave Katanga and enter into the next province of
Maniema, then that will he different. I do not know that place at
all.'
    When Stanley passed through here, the name Maniema itself
was enough to cause many of his bearers to run away. It had
terrible associations with cannibalism and sorcery. I was more
sanguine about it. Maniema was a problem for another day some
time in the future. For the moment, I had a much bigger problem
to deal with. If Georges was going to come with us, I needed to
find another motorbike.
    It was Benoit who immediately spotted the problem.
    'We have only two bikes. You will ride with Odimba on one
bike and I will ride on the other with all our luggage. There is no
space for Georges, and how would he get back here to Kalemie? I
have been in this town for a few days now and I have not seen any
other suitable hikes we could use.'
    I asked Michel and he was more optimistic. He took us into the
centre of town and stopped near a small office run by the World
Food Programme, the UN agency responsible for feeding refugees,
left us in the jeep and walked over to the security guard. After two
minutes' conversation he came back.
    'My friend here knows a man with a motorbike, who might be
prepared to rent it for Georges as long as he only goes a short
distance out of town. He will try to find the man, but it will take
half an hour or so.'
    Michel had to leave, so Benoit, Georges and I all jumped out of the jeep and killed time in the centre of Kalemie until the guard
came back. The heat was getting to me and I needed to drink
something. Some bottles of sugary orangeade were the only thing
available, so I bought three from a hawker and we all stood in the
shade of a coconut tree drinking them. On the other side of the
road was the relic of a building that looked like a restaurant or
cafe. There was a fenced-in garden and an old sign that said
`Cercle des Cheminots' or 'Railwaymen's Club'. I remembered
seeing photographs of this place from the 1940s and 1950s when
it was full of Belgian railway employees, seated at small wooden
tables draped with chequered table cloths and laden with plates
of food and bottles of wine. For years the railway company

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