Welcome to the bush

So I'm finally in Bossangoa, and man is it wild. Literally.

We loaded the vehicles up early, the better to get ahead of the rains. When I opened the back door of the landcruiser to toss my laptop in, I found the back seat loaded up with about forty baguettes. The whole car smelled (not unpleasantly) of fresh bread. It was then I knew for sure that Bossangoa was going to be unlike any place I've been before. Never in my life have I ever been to a town so small, so utterly insignificant, that you can't even buy bread. (Bossangoans seem to have other priorities: namely beer, cigarettes, and condoms, all of which are readily available. But let me not get ahead of myself...)

The roads were surprisingly good, paved for about 120 kms before giving way to the sort of muddy, rust-colored artery you find all over the continent. In this part of the country the population is fairly dense and we passed villages at regular intervals, immaculately swept compounds of dried mud brick and thatched roofs. The people seemed relatively well off: manioc drying along the roadside in thick white lines like the chalk of a soccer pitch, small livestock on the fringes flirting with our convoy and their own untimely deaths. The soil is fertile and the forest thick, offering plenty to eat and even more to cook it with. As in the Congo, I was struck by how easy life ought to be here (relatively speaking). Just north of Bangui, where the people have not been affected by the conflict, people are getting by.

It was heads-up driving, fraught with the typical perils of the African road: men in short-sleeved suits weaving bicycles around puddles and pot holes; women with baskets of fruit on their heads ambling along the roadside, goats and chickens and the occasional lizard darting across our path. At one point the landcruiser slowed to allow a long, glistening black mamba to cross (and to become cross when we got too close, twisting over itself in a spectacular display of "don't fsck with me"). The sight inspired me to ask about the local wildlife, whereupon I was told that hippos and crocs could be found in the river just outside my office window (which I can now confirm), and that leopards are occasionally glimpsed prowling the shadows in the very early morning.

Bossangoa itself is a small town, a village really, shaded by enormous mango trees and eruping with plumeria. It's actually quite pretty. At night, the stars are fierce white pin pricks in the sky, entirely unobstructed by electricity (only a handful of the buildings in town have generators). There are no stores to speak of, only roadside carts selling the basics (see above). And it's surprisingly safe, which means we can make our way through town on foot -- a luxury that I plan to take advantage of today.

The guest house is spacious and attractive, but I wouldn't call it comfortable. I have an ensuite bathroom, which has a defunct sink, defunct bathtub, and a toilet that only functions when I pour water in the tank from a bucket. As you can imagine, bathing is not a lot of fun. The water is so toxic that we actually have to purify it before bathing, lest we break out into a rash. There is no air conditioner, which is OK right now during the rainy season, but I can't imagine how the staff are coping with 40+ degrees in the dry season. Perhaps that's something I can rectify now that I'm in charge.

Speaking of which, it's good to be king. I have to say, as hard as the life is here, I could quickly acquire a taste for the work. I have near-absolute freedom to insitute whatever systems of organization I want, and the staff seem relieved at the promise of some impending order. (I am in turn relieved by this, because when I was given my mandate of getting things in shape, I feared revolution. It's still early days, but so far the changes have been heartily welcomed.)

More later, but for now I plan to get out of the office and take advantage of my Saturday, at least to the extent that such is possible in the bush...