Oyo was not just another stop on the way; ever since I crossed Lake Togo with my bike on a pirogue (canoe) I had been thinking about doing something waterbound as part of the route, and my original thoughts about using a dugout had morphed into a more ambitious scheme.
Possibly as a result of reading (fairly horrific) books about the Belgian Congo, and the paddle steamers that used to ply the route between Leopoldville and Stanleyville (Kinshasa and Kisangani today) I decided that I could build my own paddle wheeler, using the motorbike to power the paddles, and looking at the map it seemed that Oyo was a good place to do this. Slap bang in the middle of the country (and the president's home village), Oyo is on the River Alima, which after 80km or so of meandering through the jungle feeds into the mighty Congo from where it is 400km or so to Brazzaville. Given that I had already discussed this plan with a couple of people, there was no way I could back out now.
I had arrived late in Oyo, and after a bit of aggro with some over zealous army types ended up at the police station where I made a new friend, Faye. A sergeant in the force and a very big guy, the first time I saw him he was in the cells handcuffing one of the slags (as in The Sweeney 'Shut it you slag!'), but later when we got talking and I said I didn't know where to stay he not only found me a hotel but offered to find me a mechanic to look at a bike problem I had. Sure enough, the next morning he appeared at the hotel with the mechanic, and while the bike was getting the once over I shared my pirogue plans with Faye. He said that he might know a guy who could help me find a boat to buy, and later that day we went down to the port before I knew it I was the proud new owner of 7 metre, solid hardwood dugout canoe. And a paddle.
The next step was to build the propulsion system. My plan was this: I would remove the rear wheel of the motorbike, and replace it with a drive shaft that I could attach a rubber drive belt to. This belt would be connected to a large wheel on an axle (in order to slow down the rotational speed a bit), and on this axle would be two paddle wheels that would provide the propulsion for the dream machine.
While a propellor based system would have been more efficient, for whatever reason I had my heart set on the more antiquated system and after doing some scouting round town for materials stopped in to a metal workshop (conveniently just down the road from the hotel) to outline my grand plans. The boss there was a very switched on and could see what I was aiming for, and after some poor French and even poorer drawing from me he seemed happy to get on with making my dream a reality.
While that was happening, I had some other bits to do. I needed to build a shelter from the rain (and more importantly the sun), and also a couple of platforms to keep myself and my luggage off the floor (since the bottoms of boats have a tendency to get a bit wet). Given that bamboo was in plentiful supply in the area, Faye found a guy to go an harvest some for me. I was somewhat surprised when he returned with a small truckload of the stuff, but thankfully the owner of the hotel was very understanding and didn't seem to mind us dumping a whole load of 4 metre bamboo trunks in the middle of his yard.
It took a few days for the metalworking crew to finish their work, and I filled the time by picking up some extra bits and pieces - plastic sheeting to cover the shelter and my luggage, extra bits of string, wire and glue, and some buckets for storage on the boat. Soon enough though, we were ready for a test run, but as luck would have it it was now market day at the port. The previously deserted site was now teeming with people, selling all sorts of weird and wonderful river creatures. I was sorely tempted to buy one the little crocodiles they had there, so that I could live out my Don Johnson/Miami Vice fantasy, but thinking about it a bit more I figured it would be massively inconvenient to have my leg mauled by a disease ridden swamp thing every time I weighed anchor so opted not to. In terms of the test run though, I needed somewhere more quiet, so I took my latest purchase out onto the water for the first time and paddled her over to the opposite bank. With a bit of help from some of the metalworking gang, we got the motorbike onto the canoe and set up; the only thing now was to test it out. I turned the key, the engine roared into life, the paddles started turning and we pushed out into the river. We were going!
In the wrong direction....
While the mechanism was working, there wasn't enough power in the water to drive the heft of the boat against the force of the fast flowing Alima river. With the sandy launch site disappearing into the distance, to be replaced on all sides by thick jungle, I revved the engine to see if that would help; there was an initial surge, but then the drive belt ripped through the rubber I had wrapped around the drive shaft (to increase friction and drive), and we were left with even less forward propulsion than before. I was on the boat with one of my friends from the metal workshop, and he was getting noticeably agitated. I couldn't understand why, and then I found out - he couldn't swim. We managed to paddle into the bank and he hopped out, opting to take the machete and hack his way through the jungle to the road rather than stay on the boat with me and tinker. I retrospect, I should have left too, but I had some ideas to try and so I decided to stay. I did a little reworking, doubling up the rubber to see if that would add more strength, but my efforts came to nothing and and I just ended up being washed further downstream. It was now getting dark, and while none of my options was particularly good I felt that sleeping on the boat and being eaten alive by mosquitoes was worse than fighting my way through the jungle. By the time I had tied the boat up it was dark, but according to the map it was only 50m or so of jungle to get to the road. As it turns out, trying to fight through 50m of swampy jungle in the dark with no machete (I had given it to my friend to make his escape) is harder than you might think. The compass on my phone was not working, it was virtually impossible to find anything to navigate by, and with every step there was the possibility of crashing through a floor of rotten foliage into the swamp beneath. At the same time I was getting scratched by all manner of thorny plants, and bitten by ants and mosquitoes alike. After 10 minutes of fighting through I eventually saw moonlight and fought my way out to...the river! I had gone in a bloody circle! With some very loud swearing I plunged angrily back into the fray and this time managed to fight my way through to the road. I squelched along the road for ten minutes until a taxi came along and transported me damply back to my hotel.
New day, new plan. If the rubber was too weak to take it I would get something tougher, so I bought a small drive belt made of a much more durable rubber to wrap around the drive shaft. Having got a couple of guys with a motorboat to help me rescue my dugout from the jungle I set to work back at the port, this time with plenty of advice from the men in the area (it seems men the world over are unable to resist giving advice to anyone undertaking any repair work in their immediate vicinity), and I was soon ready for another test. Africa being Africa, there isn't really much of a concept of personal space, and there were already about 5 people on the boat with me watching me work. When I shouted that I was ready to test I was anticipating a) that these people would get off and b) that I wouldn't actually go out into the river, just do a brief test close to the shore. However, the moment I shouted that I was ready, another five people jumped on and then with much cheering we were shoved out into the full flow of the river! Well, the extra weight of 10 people certainly didn't help, and soon enough the glue holding the new rubber to the drive shaft peeled off and we were once again going backwards. The cheers turned to consternation, and soon there were three guys paddling desperately to get us back into the shore. We eventually got in, and then pulled ourselves along boats already moored back to close to where we started.
By this time I had been in Oyo for well over a week, and I was keen to get going. While I could spend a few more days there and undertake a fundamental redesign to address the power issue (using a chain to drive the paddles and also make the paddles larger), my impatient side got the better of me and figuring that I didn't need that much power anyway since it was all downstream, I opted to make a couple more tweaks and see what happened. I made my tweaks, said my goodbyes, and set off into the sunset towards the Congo River and Brazzaville...
P.S. while doing my final tweaks I had some help from a bunch of local kids, and I noticed that they kept saying 'Um Bongo'; it turns out that this is local slang for money (1000FCFA) and they had never heard of the exotic 80s fruit juice (despite the lies sold to us by the TV adverts that 'they drink it in the Congo'). They did however enjoy the jingle when I sang it to them, and subsequently whenever I saw them they would sing out "Um bongo, Um bongo..." and fall about laughing.
Possibly as a result of reading (fairly horrific) books about the Belgian Congo, and the paddle steamers that used to ply the route between Leopoldville and Stanleyville (Kinshasa and Kisangani today) I decided that I could build my own paddle wheeler, using the motorbike to power the paddles, and looking at the map it seemed that Oyo was a good place to do this. Slap bang in the middle of the country (and the president's home village), Oyo is on the River Alima, which after 80km or so of meandering through the jungle feeds into the mighty Congo from where it is 400km or so to Brazzaville. Given that I had already discussed this plan with a couple of people, there was no way I could back out now.
I had arrived late in Oyo, and after a bit of aggro with some over zealous army types ended up at the police station where I made a new friend, Faye. A sergeant in the force and a very big guy, the first time I saw him he was in the cells handcuffing one of the slags (as in The Sweeney 'Shut it you slag!'), but later when we got talking and I said I didn't know where to stay he not only found me a hotel but offered to find me a mechanic to look at a bike problem I had. Sure enough, the next morning he appeared at the hotel with the mechanic, and while the bike was getting the once over I shared my pirogue plans with Faye. He said that he might know a guy who could help me find a boat to buy, and later that day we went down to the port before I knew it I was the proud new owner of 7 metre, solid hardwood dugout canoe. And a paddle.
The next step was to build the propulsion system. My plan was this: I would remove the rear wheel of the motorbike, and replace it with a drive shaft that I could attach a rubber drive belt to. This belt would be connected to a large wheel on an axle (in order to slow down the rotational speed a bit), and on this axle would be two paddle wheels that would provide the propulsion for the dream machine.
While a propellor based system would have been more efficient, for whatever reason I had my heart set on the more antiquated system and after doing some scouting round town for materials stopped in to a metal workshop (conveniently just down the road from the hotel) to outline my grand plans. The boss there was a very switched on and could see what I was aiming for, and after some poor French and even poorer drawing from me he seemed happy to get on with making my dream a reality.
While that was happening, I had some other bits to do. I needed to build a shelter from the rain (and more importantly the sun), and also a couple of platforms to keep myself and my luggage off the floor (since the bottoms of boats have a tendency to get a bit wet). Given that bamboo was in plentiful supply in the area, Faye found a guy to go an harvest some for me. I was somewhat surprised when he returned with a small truckload of the stuff, but thankfully the owner of the hotel was very understanding and didn't seem to mind us dumping a whole load of 4 metre bamboo trunks in the middle of his yard.
It took a few days for the metalworking crew to finish their work, and I filled the time by picking up some extra bits and pieces - plastic sheeting to cover the shelter and my luggage, extra bits of string, wire and glue, and some buckets for storage on the boat. Soon enough though, we were ready for a test run, but as luck would have it it was now market day at the port. The previously deserted site was now teeming with people, selling all sorts of weird and wonderful river creatures. I was sorely tempted to buy one the little crocodiles they had there, so that I could live out my Don Johnson/Miami Vice fantasy, but thinking about it a bit more I figured it would be massively inconvenient to have my leg mauled by a disease ridden swamp thing every time I weighed anchor so opted not to. In terms of the test run though, I needed somewhere more quiet, so I took my latest purchase out onto the water for the first time and paddled her over to the opposite bank. With a bit of help from some of the metalworking gang, we got the motorbike onto the canoe and set up; the only thing now was to test it out. I turned the key, the engine roared into life, the paddles started turning and we pushed out into the river. We were going!
In the wrong direction....
While the mechanism was working, there wasn't enough power in the water to drive the heft of the boat against the force of the fast flowing Alima river. With the sandy launch site disappearing into the distance, to be replaced on all sides by thick jungle, I revved the engine to see if that would help; there was an initial surge, but then the drive belt ripped through the rubber I had wrapped around the drive shaft (to increase friction and drive), and we were left with even less forward propulsion than before. I was on the boat with one of my friends from the metal workshop, and he was getting noticeably agitated. I couldn't understand why, and then I found out - he couldn't swim. We managed to paddle into the bank and he hopped out, opting to take the machete and hack his way through the jungle to the road rather than stay on the boat with me and tinker. I retrospect, I should have left too, but I had some ideas to try and so I decided to stay. I did a little reworking, doubling up the rubber to see if that would add more strength, but my efforts came to nothing and and I just ended up being washed further downstream. It was now getting dark, and while none of my options was particularly good I felt that sleeping on the boat and being eaten alive by mosquitoes was worse than fighting my way through the jungle. By the time I had tied the boat up it was dark, but according to the map it was only 50m or so of jungle to get to the road. As it turns out, trying to fight through 50m of swampy jungle in the dark with no machete (I had given it to my friend to make his escape) is harder than you might think. The compass on my phone was not working, it was virtually impossible to find anything to navigate by, and with every step there was the possibility of crashing through a floor of rotten foliage into the swamp beneath. At the same time I was getting scratched by all manner of thorny plants, and bitten by ants and mosquitoes alike. After 10 minutes of fighting through I eventually saw moonlight and fought my way out to...the river! I had gone in a bloody circle! With some very loud swearing I plunged angrily back into the fray and this time managed to fight my way through to the road. I squelched along the road for ten minutes until a taxi came along and transported me damply back to my hotel.
New day, new plan. If the rubber was too weak to take it I would get something tougher, so I bought a small drive belt made of a much more durable rubber to wrap around the drive shaft. Having got a couple of guys with a motorboat to help me rescue my dugout from the jungle I set to work back at the port, this time with plenty of advice from the men in the area (it seems men the world over are unable to resist giving advice to anyone undertaking any repair work in their immediate vicinity), and I was soon ready for another test. Africa being Africa, there isn't really much of a concept of personal space, and there were already about 5 people on the boat with me watching me work. When I shouted that I was ready to test I was anticipating a) that these people would get off and b) that I wouldn't actually go out into the river, just do a brief test close to the shore. However, the moment I shouted that I was ready, another five people jumped on and then with much cheering we were shoved out into the full flow of the river! Well, the extra weight of 10 people certainly didn't help, and soon enough the glue holding the new rubber to the drive shaft peeled off and we were once again going backwards. The cheers turned to consternation, and soon there were three guys paddling desperately to get us back into the shore. We eventually got in, and then pulled ourselves along boats already moored back to close to where we started.
By this time I had been in Oyo for well over a week, and I was keen to get going. While I could spend a few more days there and undertake a fundamental redesign to address the power issue (using a chain to drive the paddles and also make the paddles larger), my impatient side got the better of me and figuring that I didn't need that much power anyway since it was all downstream, I opted to make a couple more tweaks and see what happened. I made my tweaks, said my goodbyes, and set off into the sunset towards the Congo River and Brazzaville...
P.S. while doing my final tweaks I had some help from a bunch of local kids, and I noticed that they kept saying 'Um Bongo'; it turns out that this is local slang for money (1000FCFA) and they had never heard of the exotic 80s fruit juice (despite the lies sold to us by the TV adverts that 'they drink it in the Congo'). They did however enjoy the jingle when I sang it to them, and subsequently whenever I saw them they would sing out "Um bongo, Um bongo..." and fall about laughing.