Berberati-Bayanga-Bangui

A small bamboo truck and it's proud owner


African boys in Berberati enjoying a bike ride

Madeline Danforth - Josh and Kimia's daughter being carried by Elize

Well it's Jay's turn to update the blog. We're back in Bangui! We had a great time in Bayanga, a few adventures along the way, and another 800 or so kilometers under our belts. We drove down to Bayanga from Berberati on Saturday - the roads have been worked on, so we made much better time than we expected, and ended up having time to go visit the Pygmy village up the road where Nate worked when he was here a few years ago. We hooked up with Louis, an American who has been living with the pygmies for 22 years, and got to talk with him about the situation the pygmies are in (much oppressed by the local tribes in the area) as well as talk about some hope for them. We saw a lot of fruit trees, many that weren't there when Nate was there before, so that was very encouraging.



The next day, we got up and walked back the 2 km to the same village, and enjoyed a church service with the pygmies, and got to listen to some of their music. After the service, we watched a group of pygmy boys practice their spear throwing, by rolling fruit back and forth at each other across a field, and trying to hit it.

Then we all loaded into the landcruiser to go out and visit the elephant at the game reserve - it's got a very unique open field - with salts and minerals that result in the largest gatherings of jungle elephants anywhere in Africa - we saw 45 elephants, but there are up to 100 there at a time. The hike out there was also quite fun - it's a 35 minute walk through the rain forest, and although there were two pymgy guides with us - they didn't carry dart guns. Just a single machette and sticks to throw at feisty elephants. Turns out the sticks were needed. Just as we started to wade across a stream, the lead pygmy stopped turned around and wispered to me "get all the munju's (white people) back - and keep going". One of the bull elphants was standing downstream from us, and he wasn't happy to see us. After 10 minutes of trying to scare him away by slapping the machete on the water (no results, he just kept chasing them further upstream) the pygmies gave up and came back to get some help from the main camp. 5 pygmies then walked up to the elephant, throwing sticks and yelling, and finally he left, allowing us to continue on to the salt field. Lots of excitement!





That night, we had Louis over for dinner, then went with him back to his village to watch the pygmies sing and dance (which is almost a constant activity for them). Their singing is amazing - it really is, and they have an amazing amount of energy - we left around 11pm, and they were still going strong!

Monday morning we left at 6am for the long drive back to Bangui - we took the "4th Parallel" road back, that cuts off about 200km of driving, but takes just as long (or longer) than the more northern route. But the roads were (relatively) good, and we made it in 9-10 hours of actual driving. Relatively is the key word there - the very roads we traveled are mentioned in the below article (which is encouraging by the way)

Interesting article on Roads in CAR

We did have a slight fiasco when the lead truck broke through some planks on a bridge, getting the front drivers side wheel stuck in the bridge - but with two jacks, and lots of loose planks we managed to get it out in about and hour, and were on our way.



We stopped at a Catholic mission along the way, where ICDI has drilled a well - and got to see the work that is being done there to help the pygmies - also very encouraging.

Now we're back in Bangui, and the team just went out to watch ICDI's true love wait's team at one of the TLW clubs - Abe and Lisa were able to share with the group.