The Trip from Zongo

I left Michelle and Soleil in Bangui on January 14th and headed across the river back into Congo along with our first short-term team to ELIKYA. It's just one couple but they will be in-country for 5 full weeks. More on their ministry to come. We crossed the frontier in the morning and before long had cleared customs and immigration and were on the road from the river town of Zongo towards Gemena. We made it 50km and came upon this scene:

Apparently this truck had tried to cross the bridge without unloading all of his cargo and paid the price for his motu makasi (hard head).

There was no getting past this so we turned around and headed back to Zongo where we spent the night in the mission guest house. We were surprise guests and the accomodations at the guest house being minimal we had something of a long night. For my part, I slept fine, finding my queen size foam mattress on a twin size bed quite comfortable. I woke in the early morning surprisingly cold and as there was no blanket and I was wearing my only warm shirt I ended up wearing a pair of shorts over my head to keep in my body heat. But morning did come and we loaded our stuff back onto the truck and set out for our second attempt.

We arrived at the site at around 7 AM and shortly thereafter work began to make a road down one bank, through the water and up the other side. Most of the morning was spent waiting as the passengers of the large trucks that were waiting were chopping out some tree roots on the far side so that the trucks could pass through. This would only be a temporary road as in rainy season the water level would prohibit crossing through the flow. A small hut near the road also had to be dismantled and torn down.

Finally we got our opportunity and Edison, the CECU driver, drove down, gunned through the stream and up the other side. He almost made it but got held up here...so close.

They ended up hooking a cable up between our vehicle and one of the big MAN trucks and it pulled us the rest of the way. That was around 1:30 PM. From then on it was smooth sailing to Gemena. Comparatively. We arrived around 8 PM.