Gisenyi’s neighbouring town is Goma. In actual fact, it’s more or less the same town with a passport control point in the centre. At that time, as today, the eastern part of the Congo was a mess. There were so many rebel factions that nobody knew who was on whose side. Sometimes they didn’t even know themselves.
Gisenyi didn’t have any nightlife. Every night I could hear the parties in Goma while I searched for an English channel on television. I was a frustrated party animal. The security chief’s offer was tempting, but I told him that I did not have a visa for the DRC. He said it was not a problem, since Rwanda controlled much of that region, and that he could organise that I go through without one. He wanted to show me exactly how powerful he was.
To spend a day with the gorillas in the mountains would have cost $500, but I couldn’t afford that. What it would cost to see the guerrillas wasn’t clear yet, but at least I was about to find out.
The road that linked Gisenyi and Goma was obstructed by a single cross-bar. The soldiers who manned the control point took a great deal of pleasure in taunting everyone who wanted to go through. Here they played God as they decided who could go through and who could not. Women were pawed and men humiliated to make sure everyone knew who was boss. Strangely enough, it did not seem to bother most people – they accepted that this was how things worked.
The soldiers didn’t exactly look fighting fit, but they were certainly well armed. Each of them carried that all too popular symbol of power in Africa: the AK47. They prodded people into rows with the barrels. Some were called out of the line and taken around the corner for interrogation. The people who stood in the rows did not make eye contact and looked steadfastly at the ground. Even if the person in front or behind them was pushed around, they did not show any reaction.
When I got to the front, the security chief ordered me to leave my passport at the control point. My courage failed me. This was flagrantly disregarding the number one rule of international travel – you should always have your passport on you. “I’m the boss here. You leave passport. We pick up when we come back,” he barked at me. I doubted the wisdom of my decision, but I had to concede even if it was unwillingly.
Goma and Gisenyi may be sister towns, but they certainly had different fathers. A different set of rules applied in each of the two towns. Although no road or river linked Kinshasa and Goma, it was still more Congolese than Rwandese. Goma was a bustling little town. There were cars and taxis and street café’s and pool tables where people drank beer. The roads were in an even worst condition than those in Gisenyi.
The town smelled strange and “dark” in a way, something I attributed to a flight of fancy before I realised there were active volcanoes close by. This also explained the dirty, black layer of silt that covered everything.
Our first stop was a local bar where the security chief shooed people away from a table so that we could sit down. It was ten o’clock in the morning. The table was vintage plastic garden furniture; the walls were unpainted and for drinks you could choose between whisky, gin or cognac. South Africa was represented by Amarula and Castle. The security chief explained loudly and with large gestures how Goma and the countryside surrounding it also belonged to Rwanda. The locals looked at him with disdain, but he didn’t give a damn. He was Mr Big Shot and no one would be able to burst his bubble.
There were huge petrol depots for vehicle and aircraft fuel. The explosion I’d heard a few nights previously at the Izuba Hotel happened at one of the depots. Apparently someone tried to steal fuel and the soldiers shot at him. The thief and the soldiers all died in the explosion. The thief’s burnt body was still lying there, his arms outstretched as if in a final plea to God. Nobody seemed terribly bothered by the corpse and the security chief regarded its presence as a very public warning to others not to steal. “These people …” he said, while he waved his arm with loathing over the town. He definitely wasn’t there to win friends and influence people.
The official reason for the presence of Rwandan troops in the eastern part of the Congo was to prevent another attack by the Interahamwe, whose members had fled to those parts. In theory they were safeguarding the entire area against them. In reality Rwanda was a poor country and the eastern part of the Congo was every capitalist’s dream. Its natural resources were a big draw card for all kinds of entrepreneurs. There were diamonds in abundance and their most important mineral was used to manufacture tin. While the Rwandan troops were busy “safeguarding” that area, they were also busy with large-scale theft to fill their own and their government’s coffers. You could see the signs of prosperity everywhere: gold watches, new cars and shiny shoes that were wiped clean every so often.
A few beers later the security chief decided it was time to move on for lunch. He did his fellow boozers proud – by this time he’d already had half a bottle of whisky. I seriously doubted that we would get a decent meal in this war-torn town. He pushed the nose of his Toyota 4x4 (another standard issue in many parts of Africa) in a westerly direction. The town became a jungle for a few kilometres until high walls unexpectedly rose up next to us. The entrance to the premises was packed with sandbags and there were soldiers carrying Brownings.
We entered a magical world. A beautiful, snow-white colonial house commanded our attention. Kilometres of lawn were neatly mowed and the garden was manicured up to the edge of the lake where luxurious yachts and speedboats worth hundreds of thousands of rand bobbed in the water. The waiters wore waistcoats and their bowties and starched cloths worn across their arms were brand-new. Here you would not see any signs of war, only the people who benefited from it in a big way. I even spotted a Hummer in the parking area.
The lunch menu wasn’t complicated. You could choose between pizza, pizza and pizza at 40 American dollars a piece. The cheapest whisky was Johnny Walker Blue. The pizza crust tasted like bread and the cheese was hardly visible over the half-baked effort. Around me everyone feasted. How else did one spend the spoils of war?
Everyone always tells you that “there is no such a thing as a free lunch” and this valuable lesson I learnt in Goma’s country club. The security chief got drunker and drunker and more people joined us at our table to be introduced to the brave mzungu. The next moment someone got out a television camera. The same television team who had waited for us at the Kigali airport, reappeared in Goma and suddenly wanted to interview me.
Then it struck me what the invitation was really about. The plan was to show that Rwanda had had such success in cleaning up those parts of the Congo that it was safe enough for a white tourist to lunch there. I agreed to the interview, but I talked so much politics and went into such detail about how Rwanda was stealing the Congo’s resources that I doubt it was ever used.
I was ready to go home, or at least back to Gisenyi. I had had enough exposure to Big Boy’s arrogance and people who benefited from other’s misery. The pizza didn’t do much to lift my spirits either and the beers began to affect my better judgement.
But Mr Security Chief, quite peeved that his PR stunt had not gone according to plan, had more up his sleeve. He was intent on showing me exactly how far his influence extended into the Congo and rejected any resistance on my part. He had the keys and I was at his mercy. Armed with another bottle of whisky for the road he drove in a westerly direction and we went deeper into the war zone.
We got through the first roadblock without any trouble. The second one was bad enough to make my urgent need to pee disappear and the third one was the cherry on top. At the third roadblock Mr Security Chief, in his drunken arrogance, got involved in a brawl with a soldier who was even drunker than he was. He insisted on being let through, but the soldier was set on stopping him.
The soldier’s uniform was decorated with freaky fetish symbols that would make any sane person tremble. A split second after he put his AK47 rifle through the open window at the security chief’s side, I was already standing next to the vehicle. My beer pee was back and more pressing than ever. I could not wait for the outcome of their fight; I had to go and walked into the bushes. I had just opened my fly, when I saw a man sleeping in the grass. That was very strange, especially given everything that was going on only a few metres away. I stepped closer to inspect him and then I saw