Waiting For The Rabbit To Die. Bangui, Central African Republic – Africa Overland 1980

This is the eighth instalment of a four-month trans-Africa trip from Johannesburg to London that I did with Exodus Expeditions in 1980, travelling by ex-army truck and camping. We were not sightseeing, though we did see some incredible sights. Our goal was to see and experience Africa from south to north by whatever route was open. Four months. Twelve people. One truck. Fifteen countries. 18,000 kilometres. Links to the earlier posts are listed at the end of this one.

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We walk into town every day. Initially it’s for the French pastries, but then one of the other women in the group and I discover we each have a secret. We’ve become close on this journey. She’s the one I become best friends with, but then we discover that each of us needs an ally, and we become that for each other too. We both fear we are pregnant . . . . .

At last the long slog through the jungle is over; at last we have arrived in Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic. We’re camped in a “field”. I use the term loosely. It’s an open gravelly space, more of a wasteland really, at the edge of the city, near the town dump. Bangui was a small city in 1980, with a population of about 350,000; small, isolated, largely undeveloped,

a former colony of France, still frequented by French businessmen hoping to make a profit from the resources of this poorest of poor countries. But as is the way with all colonizers, they import their comforts from home. Bangui has French pastries!

And ice cream that is safe to eat! We devour them as if they give us life; they are a daily source of joy, a sustenance that is so much more than a mere treat. We spoiled privileged Westerners are getting a daily fix of home.

We’re camped at the edge of town waiting for our visas to enter Nigeria. You cannot get them ahead of time so Craig has collected our passports and taken them to the Nigerian Embassy and we wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn. For ten days.

We have the tables from the truck, placed end to end. They form a “wall” along one side, parallel to, but set back from the street. We’ve strung a large tarp above them as a “roof” for shade. The five tents form a semi circle on the other side of the table. Our shopping, cooking, and meal-clean-up duties continue as normal. Whoever is rostered for cooking duty walks to the central market for fresh food.

The market is the life-blood, the heart of the town. It is here that there is a sense of community, and a preservation of ordinary life, and within that a hope that it will continue. There is colour and energy here. Everything is for sale from chickens to vegetables to hand-crafted souvenirs, and amongst them are these bright collages made from butterfly wings.








Craig, the expedition leader, and Brett, his co-driver, stay in a hotel in town, undoubtedly to have a break from us, but also to take care of business, doing the accounts, exchanging currencies, gathering information for forward travel, seeing to truck maintenance. And to unwind and gather energy for the next leg. I cannot even begin to imagine the responsibility they carry.

Meanwhile we are divided into pairs and rostered on to 24/7 guard duty, in eight hour shifts. There are always two people in camp. Most nights we’re all there, hanging out by the fire, making friends with some locals. It’s not the most wonderful camp site, but evenings around the campfire always seem to make up for it.





And then it happens: Helen and Eric are doing the graveyard shift. Eric’s a good guy. A little hapless perhaps, definitely a bit stubborn, but overall a good guy. I must say Helen’s not all bad. What human being is? She mucks in and does her share and for the most part we all get on well enough with her. But a river of entitlement runs wide and deep in that one.

You bitch, I do not like you.
You really are a stuck up selfish tart.
And yet you make me hate you
all the more by making me hate myself.

You sparked the internal wars
between me and me.
One me should be
more mature and tolerant.
The other is as spontaneous
as should be and reacts to you
quite naturally bitchily.

And so I hate you even more
for upsetting my precious
precarious equilibrium.

And because I know the only answer
lies with me . . . . .

So Helen and Eric are on the graveyard shift. It’s late, long after midnight and into deepest darkness; there are no street lights here on the edge of town. They are sitting together at the table, illuminated only by the small lantern hanging above it. We’re all in bed trying to sleep. It starts quietly enough at first, but gets louder and louder. Helen and Eric are arguing about something, shouting at each other. Then there’s the sound of a slap, and suddenly Helen’s crying out He hit me! He hit me! No-one answers. No-one cares. I can’t for a second condone Eric’s behaviour. He should not have hit her! There is no excuse for that! At the same time I acknowledge that probably every one of us felt like hitting her at one point or another on this journey.

And then it happens: Late one dark night the back of a tent is slashed, the one facing the hill at the back of our gravel campground. No-one is hurt, and nothing is stolen, but it is a wake up call for sure. After this, one of the people on the graveyard shift must be walking the perimeter of the camp at all times. There’s no more sitting gabbing together at the table, and with this new regimen there are no more security issues.

And then it happens: my friend and I confess to each other our fear that we are pregnant. And so begins a quest for tests. Every day we do the fifteen-minute walk to town looking for answers. We’d noticed that on previous days we’d walked past the British Embassy, so we decide to start there. Closed until further notice. Even to this day there is no British Embassy in Central African Republic. I wonder what happened to their imposing building.

We stumble on a connection with the World Health Organization. A lovely man who works there takes us to his lab and I feel as if I’d stepped back in time. Surely it is 1950 here. As we talk about our predicament, it feels even more like 1950. He thinks he can get us a test, and then says: but I don’t know how long it will take for the rabbit to die. What? What is he talking about?
I’ve never heard of such a thing. And also we don’t know how much longer we will be in town.

(Developed in 1931, the test became a widely used method for determining pregnancy. A rabbit was injected with a woman’s urine and then killed to see if its ovaries had changed. The term “rabbit test” was first recorded in 1949, and was the origin of a common euphemism, “the rabbit died”, for a positive pregnancy test.)

And then we discover the pharmacy! A regular western-style pharmacy! Sort of. And of course they need urine samples. Not for rabbits, or frogs, but for a more current test that does not require animals. It’s a regular modern urine test, though there’s no such thing as the home pregnancy test kits that exist now.

We acquire some small jars with screw-top lids. We take them back to camp, and after dinner that night we keep the fire going, fill the biggest pot with water and boil the jars and their lids. We keep the water boiling for fifteen minutes to make sure they are completely sterile. Next morning off in the bushes we do what we need to do, and once again walk through the orange dust into town.

Gah! Nothing is simple! The lids of the jars leak! Now we don’t have samples, and we do have pee everywhere. Back to camp we go, clean up, and go through the same ritual again that night in camp.
What are they doing? No-one asks and we don’t tell, though some of them guess.

Next morning we successfully hand in our samples at the pharmacy and are told to come back the next day.

There are a couple of other people waiting to be served, but it’s our turn, so I say in my best French for all to hear: Je viens pour le résultat de mon test de grossesse. I’ve come for the result of my pregnancy test. I will never forget the look on her face – horrified, embarrassed, disgusted with these foreigners who have no shame. We have not understood well enough that we are in one of the world’s backwaters, and a Catholic country at that. Even by 1980 one does not speak publicly of such things. She disappears, and promptly returns. Tersely she says deux sont négatifs. Both are negative.

Oh the relief! But here’s the thing – I didn’t get a period for five months on that trip. Nature knows. Nature takes care of itself. The way we were travelling there was no space, no facilities, no possible way of dealing with menstruation. It happens with all species. When the circumstances for procreation are unfavourable, the system simply shuts down. I’ve never been so happy to be a living example of this.

So Bangui is a memorable sojourn. There’s a lot of hanging out, a lot of walking the orange-dirt dusty streets, a lot of ice cream and delicious French pastries, and a few little dramas to keep things interesting. When our visas for Nigeria finally materialize we are all more than ready to move on.

If we had continued west the roads would have been the same as they were from Sudan to Bangui. But now it is time at last to face north again. From Bangui we follow RN1 north then head west on RN3 at Bossembélé. It’s then 450 km to Boulai on the Cameroon border, crossing into Cameroon at Garoua-Mboulaï.







Next post: The villages and mountains of Cameroon. And Nigeria: Kano old town, and staying in a house!

Disclosure:
1. I’ve changed the names of everyone involved for privacy.
2. Obviously any photo with me in it was taken by another member of the group, but I’ve no idea who. We all swapped photos when we got to London.

Previous posts:
1. The Drums Of Africa
2. Tanzania Mania
3. Wildlife And Tribal Life In Kenya
4. The Opposite Of Glamping
5. Turn left At Sudan
6. Mud Luscious and Puddle Wonderful. Central African Republic
7. Becoming Unstuck. Central African Republic





All words and images by Alison Louise Armstrong unless otherwise noted
© Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart, 2010-2024.