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I don’t know what time it is. I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know what month it is. Luckily someone reminded me that it was Mother’s Day so fortunately, I did not let that slip by without letting my Mom know that I am still alive… where, I don’t really know.

TWBR crew in from of La Pyramide, Pointe Noire, Congo

It has been over three weeks now since we arrived in Pointe Noire, and it seems like we are no closer to getting our Angolan visas than when we first applied for them. “Come back tomorrow,” “Come back Wednesday…” I do not think they understand that I no longer want to come back. If I had my way, I would forget Angola even existed. Unfortunately, reality interferes with my fantasies of jumping off bridges with bungee cords and going to rugby matches in South Africa, Angola clearly out of sight in the rearview mirror of the Tundra. Reality forces me to acknowledge Angola’s existence and come to terms with the fact that we have no choice but to drive through it.

We tried to see if it was feasible to skip Angola, we really did. We investigated shipping the trucks, a drastic step considering how painful the shipping process has been in the past for us, but we have reached the point where we are willing to endure that pain to progress the expedition. In true keeping with our past experiences, the shipping companies informed us that for hefty fees they will be more than happy to transport our trucks around Angola in the amazingly quick time frame of 50 days. No one was ready subject themselves to that type of pain just yet.

Thinking of ways around Angola

We investigated driving back around to Brazzaville, through the “pool area” where rebel groups known as “Ninjas” lurk in the jungle waiting for vehicles to pass, collecting valuables from motorists with the aid of rusting, yet still fully functioning Kalashnikov assault riffles. The funny thing is, in considering this option, the Ninjas are not our biggest concern. We have instead been focusing on the reports of overlanders being turned away at the D.R.C. border for not having onward Angola visas, (even though they are reportedly issued at the border town of Matadi) Having already paid large sums of money to take the ferry across the Congo River to Kinshasa, with the end result of being denied entry, coupled with an expired Congolese visa and a mounting pile of “paperwork problems,” aka financial problems, this option could backfire and leave us in a much worse position than the one we are in now. We do have some Dutch friends whom we met in Nigeria that are in the process of making the Brazzaville-Kinshasa-Matadi run this week and based on what we hear back from them, will decide if we will follow suit.

Little did we know, another problem was looming on the horizon

However, even if we wanted to pack up shop and make a run for it, there is no fuel in Pointe Noire and both trucks are nearly on empty. That’s right, they ran out of petrol a few days ago, gasoil (diesel) is expected to run dry in the near future and according to our friends at the Toyota dealership, the supplies will not be replenished for another few weeks. The situation is so bad, that they do not have any more Jet-A aviation fuel at the Pointe Noire airport, so all airport operations have been temporarily suspended as well. Apparently, the supplier has had some refining issues that have resulted in production shortages. All this is very ironic considering how many times we have watched the sun set over the Atlantic at La Pyramide over the last three weeks and subsequently watched as the flaming, burn-off of gas from oil rigs a few miles offshore slowly lit up the darkening sky. Signs of petroleum production are everywhere here in Pointe Noire. In fact, on some days you can even smell it, yet for some reason, there is no fuel.

Oil is coming out of the ground here in PN, but it goes somewhere else

To top this all off, I have somehow managed to contract malaria again, only days after starting to feel better from the last bout and Shoppman finally lost his odds battle with the local mosquitoes as well. Twilight Zone I tell you, Twilight Zone.

Sitting here in Pointe Noire, Congo, I am starting to go a little crazy. It has been nearly two weeks since we arrived and applied for our Angola visas and we are still waiting. I have been trying to pass the time by reading and reflecting upon the Africa segment of our journey and given all that has transpired here in Africa, I have really only been able to focus on one central theme: corruption. I have become obsessed with corruption. I find myself constantly trying to find out more about the varying levels of corruption in the different countries we have passed through and trying to make sense of our daily encounters with corruption here in Pointe Noire. Each of my conversations with members of the ex-pat community here in the Congo always wind their way back to corruption, and when we are able to get online in between the random yet still somehow consistent power outages here in town, I am looking for more information as to the prevalence of corruption and what if anything can be done to put and end to it… especially here in Africa. I am obsessed to the point at which I can say that in 2007, the Republic of the Congo ranked in the top 10 percent of countries in the world in terms of corruption. (If you want to see where everyone else falls on the Perceived Corruption Index, check out Transparency International’s Annual Report)

“I don’t think you used your turn signal, give me 100,000 CFA!”

Photo courtesy Schalk van Zuydam, Associated Press

Personally, I believe the problem of corruption in Africa is immense. It ranges from our daily encounters with overzealous and underpaid police officers trying to extort money from us for ludicrous and falsified infractions to the top levels of government… politicians who have padded their own personal offshore bank accounts at the expense of the development of their country and the progress of their citizens. The numbers are staggering. According to a 2006 World Bank report, it estimates that half of all funds donated to health efforts in sub-Saharan Africa… billions of dollars… never reach the clinics or hospitals, instead leaking out in the form of payments to ghost employees and payments for padded customs, transportation and warehousing prices. It seems like you can not build a single road, bridge or building without some public official benefiting. During his 10 year rule in Zambia, president Frederick Chiluba stashed away nearly $46 million of public money in his offshore bank account but that pails in comparison to the estimated $5 billion Charles Taylor had in offshore accounts while he ran Liberia into the ground, or the estimated billions that Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has reportedly stashed away in Switzerland while his country teeters on the verge of total economic collapse.

Africa has a lot of problems. Humanitarian problems, economic problems, social problems. The list goes on and on. I am by no means an expert on Africa and I have hardly been here long enough to formulate any reasonable opinions on the cause for all of the misery here on the continent and I am certainly in no place at this stage to recommend any solutions. But I am observant and I do have a background in politics and public policy and that, coupled with my recent obsession with everyone and everything corrupt, has led me to become more and more convinced that all of Africa’s problems stem from two things: a systematic lack of transparency in government operations and a lack of the rule of law. Without transparency and respect for the rule of law, Africa and it citizens will continue to suffer. Sure, most of the problem can be blamed on the endless list of African dictators who have used government institutions for personal gain, but I think the people too can be blamed for not reining in the excess of these plundering politicians. “People power” can be an effective and successful tool against government largess, but it seems to be stagnant and ineffective here in Africa. It is almost like people do not care that their leaders are driving their country into the ground and taking them with it.

The African continent represents one of the poorest regions in the world, yet in terms of natural energy and resource wealth, it is one of the richest. Oil and gas has the potential to provide much needed revenues and has allowed countries throughout the world to address the problems that they face, yet in in Africa, the revenues from energy production represent a curse: corruption runs rampant, waste is chronic and the gap that has developed between the extremely rich and the desperately poor is essentially insurmountable. It is painful to see how much potential Africa has for development yet in reality, how that potential has been squandered, wasted and tucked away into the pockets of the connected elite.

So what can be done? Is Africa destined to become one of history’s monumental failures? Are the people of Africa doomed to be forever victimized by tyrannical despots destined to profit at the expense of their citizens? It is without a doubt a monumental problem requiring a multitude of complex solutions and one that will take years, if not generations to correct, but I guess I can take some comfort in knowing that people are trying to right the ship. The United States has recently developed the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) which provides funding to developing countries on the condition that they meet strict criteria for good governance; the responsible management of government affairs, services and finances, and other lending organizations such as the World Bank are implementing similar criteria for the disbursement of their loans. Unfortunately, many developing countries in Africa with newly discovered mineral and oil reserves such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are turning to other investors, namely China, who delivers billions in development funding in return for access to natural resources but without conditions of good governance, human rights, or economic reform. To the Chinese, “business is business.”

So providing development funding on the condition that the money is used appropriately alone will not work. Pressure has to come from elsewhere, namely from the citizens of these countries and countries throughout the world demanding greater transparency in the public sector and demanding that they become party to the billions of dollars being extracted from onshore and offshore reserves. Given what I have seen here in Africa, if I had to deal with the same problems day in and day out that people do here, I would probably be right along side people in picking up guns and fighting, but violence is not the answer and will only continue to push these countries closer to the point of no return. Something needs to be done to force leaders of countries in Africa to be accountable for their actions and to be accountable to their constituents. One thing is certain, there needs to be a fundamental change in attitude not just in people and nations wishing to help, but in people here in Africa, because the situation seems to only be getting worse… (case in point; Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Somalia) and programs like the MCA are only Band-Aid approaches to stemming the blood flow from a hemorrhaging wound.

We have been here in Pointe Noire, Congo for over a week now. Just what are we doing here you might ask? Well, we are playing the waiting game. We are waiting for our visas to Angola, the link in the chain that currently separates us here in Central Africa with our rendezvous the south. We knew that getting visas for Angola was going to be tricky but I do not think anyone knew just how difficult it would be.

We have heard horror stories of overlanders before us being forced to backtrack hundreds of kilometers because they were unable to obtain visas for Angola, and others who simply gave up and found another way around, usually by sea. Without a doubt, securing visas for Angola has been one of the most difficult exercises in bureaucratic navigation and patience to date. We do have a great contact here in the Congo who has been helping us out tremendously with the visas, but even with his help, the whole process is far from transparent and totally frustrating. Right now we are basically trapped with very few options other than to sit and wait it out.

Luckily, we have been “marooned” in a place where we are being treated extremely well. The owner of a really cool beachfront bar and restaurant here in town, Patrick, has let us pitch our tents near the volleyball court of La Pyramide, so we have been camping on beachfront property most of the time. Before that, Christo and the South African telecom workers put us up in style for a few days at their house here in town. There have also been a steady stream of patrons at La Pyramide, curious and excited about what we are doing, who have taken us under their wings in various capacities, feeding us, letting us do laundry at their homes, letting us jump on the internet, and including us in the fascinating ex-pat community here in Pointe Noire. If it were not for people like Patrick and Sabine at La Pyramide, Elin, Nathalie and Didier Bardin, Asmah and Christophe, and Christophe the commercial diver, our wait for the elusive Angolan visas would be a lot more painful.

I was going through some old pictures on my hard drive, sorting things out to try and make my computer run faster and it reminded me just exactly where we have been on this trip. Unfortunately, I think my computer problems are related not to the amount of space photos are taking up on my hard drive, but the amount of moisture that has accumulated in it as a result of the nearly unbearable humidity here in tropical West Africa.

We are kind of in a rut right now and when you are in a difficult spot, sometimes the only way to make the future look brighter is to look back on the past. Looking back through all of our photos, it was quite obvious that we have been to a lot of cool places and have driven pretty damn far. All of the different environments, all of the different roads, all of the different countries and all of the different people add up to a pretty amazing experience, so even if I did not solve my computer problems, I definitely re-energized my own spirits.

It does not seem that long ago when we pulled off the Stuart Highway in Australia to snap some photos as we passed by the Tropic of Capricorn on our way north to Darwin. Since then, we have passed by the equator (although we did it on a plane and the trucks did it on a boat in route to Singapore), the Tropic of Cancer (although there was no sign in China to actually prove it, so the photo was not that interesting),the Arctic Circle, back past the Tropic of Cancer (this time there was no sign in the middle of the Sahara Desert so no real photo opp there either) and down into the Southern Hemisphere once again here in Gabon (this time pulling over for a few minutes to take a photo… although the risk of getting clipped by a logging truck in the process was fairly significant).

It was nearly a year ago when we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn in Australia

Several months later, we would find ourselves a lot farther north

All the way to the northern-most point on the European continent

Now we are back in the Southern Hemisphere, this time on terra firma

We still have a long way to go and will pass by several more geographically significant coordinates, but looking back, we have logged a lot of miles and ticked off quite a few degrees of latitude and longitude. Actually, about 120 degrees and 275 degrees respectively of latitude and longitude to be exact… nearly three quarters of the way around the world equatorially and about a third of the way around the world north to south. The aim is to make it a full 360 in both directions, the far reaches of the Arctic and Antarctica aside on the north south route, so we have not done too bad for a government auditor, and graphic designer and more recently, a stone mason.

The US state Department does a pretty good job of issuing travel advisories. Travel advisories provide information to US citizens traveling abroad to let them know that either the area they are in may not be particularly safe or to make would be travelers to a particular region reconsider their plans to go there in the first place. The recommendations in these advisories range from telling people to be “vigilant and alert” to recommending against all “nonessential” travel to a particular country or region all together.

At the beginning of the expedition, we were paying fairly close attention to these travel advisories. Our proposed route around the world had us going through at least a dozen or so countries where the State Department had current travel advisories in place. I guess the travel advisories serve a useful purpose, but they also seem to give you a fairly negative impression of a place, especially if you are going there. When you read that there are terrorists operating in a certain country, active abductions and hostage takings, and the general potential for something bad to happen to you, it can start a vicious cycle of negative scenarios popping up in your mind and you can find yourself walking on eggshells when you could be enjoying the experience. Eventually, for better or worse, you start to take these travel advisories with a grain of salt.

Maybe the advisories have served their purpose by placing the possibility of something bad happening in our minds and subconsciously that affects our behavior in a certain country. To date, we have been through at least half a dozen countries on our trip with active travel warnings and about half the time, we are driving through the region of a particular country that directly applies to that advisory. Fortunately, we have had no problems whatsoever. In fact, we have felt quite safe in some of the places that have been issued particularly serious advisories.

We drove through the northern part of Mali where we were led to believe that Tuareg rebels were lying in wait, ready to ambush us on the road and kill us, and we passed through the Niger River Delta region in Nigeria where we thought it would be just a matter of time before we were kidnapped and held for ransom by militants there. Maybe we have been lucky. Maybe it is because we have our own vehicles and have more control over our movements than someone traveling on public transport. Who knows. Whatever the case may be, we actually felt pretty safe there and in Nigeria, we were treated with the utmost hospitality and even more so it seemed because we were Americans.

We made lots of friends in the Niger River Delta States

To the credit of the State Department, I guess some of the areas we were traveling in were dangerous. One night in Nigeria, some security forces on patrol stopped by our campsite with AK-47’s at the ready. They found out what we were doing and suggested we follow them and camp in front of their headquarters where they could “ensure our safety.” I think they were going a little bit out of their way to make sure nothing happened to us, as the potential danger was not from rebels, but from local farmers hassling us because we were camping on their land. But at the same time, this was in a part of Nigeria that had no current travel advisory in place.

There are more prominent risks to your health in some places than gun-totting rebels

I can sense that I am rambling here a little bit so I will get directly to the point. I do feel the State Department has an obligation to inform its citizens traveling abroad that there is the potential for danger. At the same time, I think the language in the advisory itself can sometimes be a little strong and does people a disservice. The bottom line is, use your head. Common sense can go a long way to ensuring your safety. (Maybe the State Department feels that citizens traveling abroad are total morons)

Mark and Shoppman seem more concerned with what the street food will do to them…

By reading the travel advisories, you are meant to think that the rest of the world is this terribly dangerous place where people are lurking around every corner waiting to turn your trip into a total nightmare, and by traveling to these places, it will ensure that your photo is not only on your personal blog, but on CNN as well. Yes, there are dangerous places in the world and you would serve yourself well not to go for a roadside picnic in Somalia. But at the same time, I would also be wary of pitching a tent for the night in a park in East Oakland or taking a midnight stroll in parts of St. Louis, but you do not really see advisories on these domestic places where the homicide rates exceed those of some of the “conflict zones” we have been through.