Um Bongo! Um Bongo! They drink it in the Congo!

Me: Lac Tele, Republic of Congo

Him: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Distance: 2,608km

Until recently my knowledge of the Republic of Congo[1] was limited to the jingle of a 1980s juice carton advert. According to this source, several animals came together and spontaneously created a tropical flavoured juice drink that was beloved by all children. I have spent the past 10 days exploring one of the more remote areas by canoe, and discovering a) a very small amount about its beauty, people, and need and b) that Um Bongo advertising is extremely suspect.

The purpose of our visit was to explore whether there may be the potential for our microenterprise development programme to work in the context of Lac Tele, a nature reserve based around a swamp in the north of the country. In order to do this, we visited nine villages, meeting with the chiefs and local people in each one, and having questions and answers interpreted from English, to French, to Lingala, and then back again. There is a very good chance this Chinese whispers approach to translation somewhat clouded any nuance (especially as the translator to English had a fairly limited grasp of the language), but through observations and patience (there were several moments I had to literally and metaphorically bite my tongue) I hope that we got a reasonable sense of the place.

The first thing to note was that the villages are extremely remote. They are based along a river in the reserve, with dug-out canoes the only means of transport from one place to the other. These are paddled in a punt like fashion (substitute strawberries with fish in your imagination) and it can take some villages several days of paddling to get to market: longer in the dry season. The villages themselves vary in size from a few hundred to a few thousand. Buildings are constructed of woven logs and mud daubing with palm thatches for roofs. There is no phone signal, internet reception, clean water, electricity, or, in many places, health facilities. News is spread by word of mouth. (Mid-week our guide discovered a well-known figure in the community had died and shouted this information to each canoe we past on the way up the river). One Chief said it was like living in the 16th Century.

We spent much of the day sat in our canoe motoring from village to village. Fortunately, we had a more luxurious canoe than most – it had a motor and actual seats, although after six hours of sitting in it we all started to wonder why USAID hadn’t also paid for some cushions. Once at the village we would then need to spend an unspecified, and often – to my Western mind – inordinate, amount of time waiting for the Chief to arrive and/or the Chief to round up some people to talk to. Our questions ranged from gathering basic data (such as literacy levels) to open questions (such as how did men and women interact in their community) to sensitive questions (such as how many people in your community hunt bushmeat and where do they sell this meat). In every case people were happy to give answers and debate, although in at least half of the villages there was also push back at the end that they were fed up of delegations like ours coming to talk, talk, talk and then not doing anything. A sentiment I could empathise with utterly through my experience of large corporations asking me to take a few minutes to give them feedback on a service.

When it came to dusk, we would pull into the nearest village and pitch our tents for the night. The first village we did this in was utterly crazy. I am reasonably used to being the only white person around for miles, but the children in this village responded in a way that made me wonder if they’d each had several espressos before we arrived. ‘Mondélé! Mondélé! [2]’ they screamed (to be fair, this happened for the entire trip, barring the few hours I was in a tent and no-one could see my white skin). I drew quite a crowd and they stood so close it was hard to make the room to lay down the tent ground-sheet. They then would not leave, but stood and stared until eventually the sun started to go down and they were presumably called back for dinner and bed. Fortunately, the other villages were all a lot calmer.

My favourite time came after setting up camp at the end of each day. With no running water, all washing (people, clothes, dishes) was done in the river. Men and women bathed in different areas, with women generally clothed to some extent (even if just a wrap). I washed in my running kit. For those few moments where I scrubbed my hair beneath the full moon, I felt like I was part of the way of life in the village, not merely a spectator. The moments were beautiful, precious, and I will cherish for a long time to come.

In terms of the feasibility of our model working in the Lac Tele context, I would say at this preliminary stage that I see this being a distinct possibility, although with some adaption to address issues that are problematic in the Congo compared to in East Africa – such as a reluctance to work in a group. One of the main reasons the potential partner is interested in setting up a programme is to limit the bushmeat trade, so this would also mean needing to adapt our model slightly. And brings me back to Um Bongo.

One of the main characters in the adverts was a grinning monkey, who is featured on the front of the carton. My surveys in the past week find this to be somewhat misguided, as gorillas and chimpanzees are hunted for food and I suspect would not grin in this manner if he were to be confronted with anything to do with the human species. It is anticipated that a huge number of animals are sold as meat over the border to DRC, and the partner staff described the ivory trade also being a concern, so the elephant presumably wouldn’t be so happy either.

Also, after surveying nine different villages, talking to 100+ individuals, and observing many hundreds more, I can confirm that they do not drink Um Bongo in the Congo. What they actually drink is river water and home-brewed maize ‘whisky’. However, given this whisky reportedly leads to all sorts of violent disputes and would definitely not be appropriate for a child’s packed lunch box, I suppose I can forgive Um Bongo for wanting to advertise tropical juice as a healthier alternative.

[1] A different country to the Democratic Republic of Congo that it borders. The DRC was formally known as Zaire and is the one more frequently featured in CNN and BBC for human rights atrocities.

[2] White perso