The Traveler

One of the plethora of learnings I have acquired in my years of travel is the difference between a tourist, a backpacker and a traveler. A tourist seeks the getaway; think Egyptian pyramids, the Las Vegas strip or Paris’s Sacre Coure. A tourist leaves for a short and defined period of time with a purpose that is most commonly a mix of fun, relaxation and culture. Backpackers however, can be defined by name; they seek “getting off the beaten track” but, generally don’t really stray far from it and they travel light, with their belongings on their back. They crave shared experiences and are always young at heart. A traveler however, is here for the journey. A traveler is a personality, an ethic, and a mode of movement. This ethic, in my opinion, can best be described by a verse in Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses,

            I am a part of all that I have met

            Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

            Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades

            For ever and forever when I move.

            How dull it is to pause, to make and end,

            To rust unburnish’d not to shine in use

            As tho’ to breathe were life.

And so, it is with these perspectives that I absorb my experiences on this world and with which, walking home from work last week, I met a traveler. I heard English first, and then I spotted the sun browned skin and shoulder length dreadlocks of Inongo’s first traveler. I did a double take, but he remained. We were walking towards each other so I smiled and said “What have we here, a tourist washed up on the shores of lac Mai Ndombe?” He smiled, introduced himself as Amit and stumbled over his words explaining he hadn’t had an opportunity to communicate in English in weeks.

I have lived here in Inongo for 14 months and although there are occasionally other westerners here for projects, I have never seen or heard of one arriving for personal reasons or by any form of transport other than airplane. As the Democratic Republic of Congo goes, this province is one of the most unexplored and undeveloped in the country. Compared to the eastern provinces of Katanga and the Kivu’s with famous cities like Lubumbashi and Goma, Bandundu Province and Lac Mai Ndombe are unknown even by most Congolese. And it is for that very reason that Amit was travelling here.

We were going in separate directions, so I invited him to our Community Mapping workshop the next day if he was still around. He said he hopped he wouldn’t be as he was eager to get on the next boat heading north to Kiri, a village about 200kms north of Inongo. We parted and I walked home, later wishing I’d learned the story of this intrepid traveler in my ‘hood.

The next day he appeared at the workshop, obviously not having been able to find a boat. We walked back to my office and I explained the project and our work. Amit explained that he was on a search for Africa’s most indigenous tribes, especially those that remained in isolation from the ‘modern world. Amit hoped to find and live with the Batchwa pygmies. The Batchwa are the native people of the Congo River Basin, they still live today as they have done for 1000s of years. Hunting monkeys and forest antelope with poison arrows, naked but for a gourd or a leaf.  Native to the lands of the DRC in relation to the relative newcomers, the Bantu, the pygmies have been pushed to the edge of society.  They still live a primarily subsistence life, living off the forest and without agriculture. By many Bantu they are considered to be primitive and closer to animals than to humans and are often treated as such. They suffer greatly in the villages where I have met them, so I will be interested to hear what Amit finds on his arrival. His goal is to arrive in this area, where the are reputed to be relatively untouched, gain their trust and live with them for a few weeks learning about their world. His family and friends around the world are petrified he will be captured and eaten and he was warned time and time again not to undertake this life risking adventure into the dark corners of the Congo.

It took him two weeks on a bus, motorbike, boat and by foot to arrive here in Inongo and he still had about 200km to cover before his destination. Once he reached the waters of Lac Mai Ndombe everyone he spoke to said that Inongo was the lake’s hub and it was here that he would quickly catch a boat northwards. He spent a full week here in Inongo, to Amit this was a significant chunk of his two month visa, to the Congolese this was rather quick and to us it was a welcome visit with a fascinating and tenacious traveler.

The first two nights Amit and his guide, Timote, stayed near the port in a dirt-floored room in the hopes of catching a boat. But we told him he was welcome to stay at our house, and so he did. We were quite amused to discovered that not only did Timote speak no English and Amit speak no French, but Timote had quite a stutter. Just another challenge in an already difficult mission, but they appeared to get by just fine.  

The week pushed on, and Amit was disappointed by undeparted boat after undeparted boat, his family and friends imagined him being eaten by natives, and we sat on our veranda, talked politics and religion, drank cold beer and even played a round of golf or two. 

Amit practicing his shot

One hot afternoon we were cooling off in the tepid brown lake when a ferocious wind blasted by and got our attention. Although we basked in brilliant sunshine, we could see a heavy storm approaching from the end of Inongo bay. We stayed in the water, sipped our beers, and watched over the next minutes as dark clouds, heavy rain and wind blew in our direction. As seconds passed we watched one boulevard palm tree after another whipped into a frenzy. Lightening forked from the sky. In the opposite direction moisture heavy clouds created a prism for the sun’s rays and they bounced in fuschia and orange off the clouds.  It was a 360 degree nature show. The pelting rain arrived and massive raindrops bounce of the lake’s surface while our puppy Kitoko sought shelter while her crazy parents and friend stayed in the warm and magnificent lake.

We had many a good discussion with Amit, a worldly traveler and devoted worshiper of Israel. A true student of the world, Amit reveled in discussions with the locals of Congo. He wanted to understand how they lived and hear stories of survival, bravery, love, culture, and a way of life forgotten by many of the rest of us.  He was not limited in who he sought to learn from, and teach.  Most nights spent on the patio with him in Inongo, the discussions became in-depth and intriguing.  As a proud child of Israel, Amit was well versed in the teaching of the bible.  He spoke of the duplicity in the Christian teachings between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And during many a discussion he would present his bible, written in Hebrew, and read to us what the original text actually stated. It was a fascinating and often humorous study in the histories of religion. 

Amit finally leaving!

Another conversation about the history and negative impacts of development got Tristan and Amit quite heated. Amit quite causally claimed that mostly all the atrocities in the world in the last 2,000 years were caused by the White Man; hunger, war, slavery, disease and plastic. I was only half listening, and was surprised to see smoke coming out of Tristan’s ears.  The discussion went on for a long time and they begrudgingly agreed to disagree. We jokingly called him white man from then on.

A few days later Amit apologized to Tristan.  He said that he had learned a bit about sensitivity and would no longer refer to many of the atrocities from the past 2000 years as a fault of the “White Man”, but rather Western Culture.  Tristan now sees the merits of being a “Politically Correct” advocate.

We were both sad to see our new friend leave after one unexpected week of visit.  We learned a lot from him in a very short time.  

Safe travels friend.

Jenn & Tristan