Kinshasa to Matadi was on todays menu. A huge portion of adventure and kilometers with a side-dish of eye-opening situations and ,for our standards, miserable living conditions. Lots of young guys training and running, women carrying huge containers on top of their heads and plastic burning everywhere. For about 350 km, we were the only white people to be seen, ‘Mundeles’ was said to us on multiple occasions. After a quick break in which we drank a Congolese beer of 65 cl (!), we continued the drive. The road was in a surprisingly good state, thanks to important transport back and forth to the port city of Matadi? Primitive road markets made place for small patches of tropical forest. A deep orange/red soil colour makes an amazing contrast with the green ‘toppings’. Our drive was given further colour by the music taste of the driver; engaging and enthousiastic rhytms created a smile on our face, despite not understanding one single word of the beatiful language that is Lingala. Closing in on Matadi, the number of small markets, sim-card sellers and safety concerns grew larger. Crossing another car, you wonder if there’s even room for a needle between two side mirrors. Luckily, our driver is as experienced in driving as we are in installing solar panels… NOT! No worries though! Finally arriving in Matadi, we are surprised by the cheerfulness of the young mothers in the ‘Inzo’. Carrying our bags of 23kg on top of their heads like it’s nothing, made our egos a little smaller🙃. We are treated to a warm welcome, including a joyful song performed by all. And by ‘all’ I mean both the children and their mothers, it’ll be some time until we can distinguish Claudine, Jeanine, Seraphine and their kids Vainquer, Dedelle, Dieumerci. Wonderful to see they are as excited as we are. After some more gigavocados and a grand tour of the surroundings, we do realize there are some obstacles ahead of us. Nothing we can’t handle! Our first ‘engineering’ task is given straight away, take apart our beds, and reassemble in the other room so we’ll all sleep together. As you’ll learn along the adventure, our team likes to keep it cosy😜. This seemed to be enough for the day and after installing the mosquito nets, we hit the hay.

Geschreven door A3Adventures