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  We returned to the clearing and I told Porte-Parole what we could offer. Bulldog would now not even look at us and Crazy had gone nuts again. He shouted and screamed for about five minutes until even the other elders looked a little disturbed by whatever it was he was shouting. Porte-Parole looked a little embarrassed and gave us what was clearly an edited version, saying, in effect, that we should get back on our boat and leave, pronto.

  JP stood up again and laid on some more flowery prose. This was becoming like a weird poetry slam. He laid on the flattery very thick and basically said that we were now in a situation where they either got something or nothing. A couple of the elders seemed to accept this logic but Crazy and Bulldog were now competing with each other to shout at us. Finally JP played his last card. He offered 80,000 Congolese francs and said that this was the final offer: they should either take it or leave it – but, whatever, if we didn’t leave immediately there would be no point in any of this. Porte-Parole spoke and I sort of felt that he pleaded our case a little as Crazy and Bulldog calmed down a little. Porte-Parole told me they were going elsewhere to discuss things. All the elders got up and disappeared into a nearby hut. Porte-Parole stood outside a little awkwardly as a guard.

  They spent fifteen minutes in there and then emerged to return to their seats. Crazy stood up and spoke quite pompously for about eight minutes. Porte-Parole listened intently and then turned to us and said, ‘They accept.’ He smiled at me.

  It had taken about two hours but we finally had a decision and we were good to go. We looked over at Snoop Dogg and asked him how long it would be before we could get going. Snoop looked at his watch, except he didn’t have one, and then said, ‘Soon, but first we celebrate.’

  Porte-Parole had slipped into a hut and was now coming out with about five bottles of something very dirty and visibly home-made.

  ‘Oh no . . . Jungle gin,’ said JP ‘We are all supposed to drink to the agreement.’ He grimaced.

  Now, having done a whole TV series for which I went round the world drinking revolting local alcohol, I do have some form in this area and I doubted anything would be more lethal than the 90-per-cent-proof Samagon that I drank outside St Petersburg. I was wrong.

  Snoop poured me some jungle gin and I sipped it. It was quite horrific and I felt dizzy. JP pretended to drink but didn’t swallow anything. The rest of the elders weren’t so reticent and started knocking it back like it was Happy Hour at Hooters. More worryingly, so did the whole village. We tried to leave the circle but this was considered bad form so we had to stay and watch as everyone got blind drunk and started stumbling over spears and fighting and generally behaving like they were at a lock-in at the village pub. After a desperate hour of this, during which we pretended to drink along, we managed to slip away back to the main village to get ready.

  We were done in ten minutes and we then stood around outside Snoop’s hut looking hopeful. Our boat driver wanted to know if he could leave, as he wanted to get back to Epema before nightfall. I realized that once he’d gone we would have no way of contacting him until he came back to pick us up in five days’ time. There had been no mobile reception since Epema and I was very wary of letting him go until we knew what was happening. I asked him to wait. He wasn’t happy about this but I had a feeling that things were going to go weird.

  I sat down with JP and Sylvestre and tried to make a plan. The big problem seemed to be that nobody was prepared to be specific about how long it took to get to the lake. Some people were saying two days while others were saying three. If it was three days each way, then we wouldn’t have enough time to get back to catch the plane. I needed someone to give us a definite answer so we could make a decision.

  Snoop Dogg turned up with three men whom he informed us were our porters. They were all totally drunk and stumbling about. It was becoming very clear that whatever happened nobody was going anywhere today. I needed to know if it was possible to do the trip if we left the following morning but Snoop wouldn’t give me an answer. Finally I’d had enough and sat Sylvestre down in front of me. He’d been to the lake three times and was our best bet.

  ‘Sylvestre, can we make the lake in two days’ walk? Yes or no?’

  Up until now he had been hinting strongly that it was possible in two days but we had never really pinned him down about it. He looked shifty and started to talk about how we’d need some manioc for the porters . . .

  I ignored him and asked him again: ‘Sylvestre, can we make the lake in two days’ walk? Yes or no?’

  Sylvestre’s eyes flickered around in panic looking for a distraction but there was none. He looked at me, and his face dropped.

  ‘No, it is impossible in two days; it is at least two days and a half.’

  We were fucked. JP and I both knew that this news, plus the fact that we couldn’t leave today because the whole village was blind drunk, meant we were not going to be able to get to Lake Tele.

  JP and I went for a walk around the village to discuss our next move. I told him that I was there to get information about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. We had to accept that we couldn’t go to the lake but, since there was nobody living around the lake, I could still get some answers from the villagers . . . If they sobered up.

  JP looked at me with worried eyes. He knew I was right – that we couldn’t make the lake – but he’d promised to get me there and I could see he felt bad. I told him not to worry: shit happens. The important thing was to see what I could get out of the villagers about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. JP agreed and we decided that, whatever happened, we would spend the night in the village and take it from there.

  We returned to Snoop Dogg’s hut, where a quite drunken crowd had now gathered and were hanging about. JP announced to them that the trip we had spent three hours negotiating was now off. There was an immediate air of great tension and too many machetes and spears suddenly appeared for my liking. Snoop went mental and asked us if we were mad – which was a fair question. JP tried to calm people down by explaining how our series of delays – first with King, then Moneyman, then the WCS, and now the drunken initiation – had left us with no time left to do the journey. He then attempted to explain the concept of Western time to the villagers, who looked absolutely bemused by the whole idea.

  ‘You wanted to go today and you can go today?’ said the chief suspiciously.

  ‘We wanted to go today, early this morning, not today, this evening. We have no time left to go to the lake and back,’ said JP.

  ‘Why not? You can be there in three days?’ said another villager.

  ‘Because we have only five days in total for the journey now . . .’ said JP desperately.

  Everyone nodded wisely and then asked what time we now wanted to leave.

  JP calmly explained again that we would not be going to the lake but that we wanted to talk to them about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. Snoop Dogg now realized that we were serious and seemed to sober up quite quickly. JP and I sat down and opened a couple of beers while the Snoop discussed this peculiar new state of affairs with the drunk porters. We watched them all try to make sense out of this group who had suddenly arrived out of the blue one morning, organized porters, spent a spirited three hours negotiating forest access with the tribal elders, paid the money, and then cancelled the whole trip. It was clearly something that they would talk about for years to come but, for now, most of them were still a little ripped to the tits on jungle gin to really think about it.

  An hour passed during which we had a bit of lunch from our plentiful supplies. Then a stressed-looking Porte-Parole appeared to inform us that the elders wanted to see us again. We groaned inwardly but trooped over through the forest to their part of the village. As before, the elders were sat around waiting for us. Bulldog, however, was not there – but Crazy was and he was waving an empty bottle of jungle gin. Crazy launched straight into Porte-Parole for about four minutes. Porte-Parole then told us that Crazy was confused by this extraordinary situation and that he was worried that they h
ad taken money and not done the job. This was technically illegal and they feared that the police would come.

  This was a lot more rational than I’d anticipated and, through Porte-Parole, we assured Crazy that this would not be the case. We told him we would not complain and that circumstances had just conspired against us to make us run out of time. He could, of course, simply return the money should he so wish . . .

  JP launched into some flowery French again. He told Crazy that sometimes travel plans go wrong. Maybe God himself did not want us to make it to the lake and we would have been struck down by giant pythons?

  Crazy nodded and confirmed that January and February were the very worst time for pythons.

  JP was now on a roll: ‘Maybe one day the elders have gone into the forest to cut down a tree. They cut a little one down and carry on. Then they find a medium-sized tree, cut it down and carry on. Finally they come across a huge tree and start to try to cut it down but it takes ages and they there all night and their food and water run out and they are are in trouble . . .’

  Crazy nodded at this story which appeared to be the same one that JP had told earlier. Crazy said that he understood the point – although he personally did not cut down trees, as he was a tribal elder.

  The elders then asked for a final promise that there was no problem between us and we assured them that all was fine. They could even keep the money: all we asked was that we could talk to them about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé.

  Crazy agreed immediately and told us that the village was at our disposition. He went further: he said that he would personally get a group of elders together at five p.m. and they would tell us everything they knew about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. He warned me that I would run out of pages in my notebook as he personally had so much to say on the subject. Porte-Parole told him that I had a magic notebook that used electronics and had no limits. Everyone nodded. Porte-Parole slammed his spear into the earth: the meeting was over.

  We returned towards the main part of the village where tents were to be set up near Snoop’s hut for us to sleep in that night.

  On the walk back JP apologized for talking too much.

  ‘I have to talk in pictures here – like with the tree story – it is the way an African speaks and it can be very long-winded.’

  We laughed and followed Porte-Parole along the open scrub area that linked the parts of the village. We walked past a cool, shady spot under a tree where they were making palm roofs. Five kids ran out of a house and started shouting ‘Hello’ at us.

  ‘My kids,’ smiled Porte Parole. ‘Petits Porte-Paroles.’ We all laughed.

  Once back at Snoop’s hut we sat down at a table that Snoop had put under the cool shade of the tamarind trees. Snoop was looking concerned again and asked if he could speak to us. We nodded wearily.

  He consulted a little child’s maths exercise book in which he had written down our names.

  ‘Mr Dominic Joly et Mr Jean-Pierre Samon . . . I will not talk for long . . .’ he said, before talking for a very long time. The gist of it was that the village of Boha did not receive many tourists (sixteen in the last thirty years) and he wanted us to help him start a tourist industry there. JP and I nodded enthusiastically while looking at each other and thinking that this was probably not the best time to have this discussion. After a good twenty minutes of non-stop fast French patois it was as though we had been hit with a verbal machine gun.

  ‘I am not the sort of person to talk for an hour . . .’ he said, looking like he was winding himself up for another round. I told him that I had to talk to villagers about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé and slipped away, leaving poor JP to round two.

  I talked to a man in a bright-yellow shirt emblazoned with photographs of the president. I had not seen this man before and he appeared to be the most sober man in the village. His name was Mandzamoyi Marcelin and he said he was the secretary of the village, whatever that might be.

  He told me that Lake Tele was originally a little pool that their tribe, the Bakolou, would all hunt and fish around. Then the lake started to grow in size because the Mokèlé-mbèmbé would dig channels to allow themselves in and out. These channels obviously allowed more water into the lake and it got bigger and bigger. The Bakolou were unhappy with the Mokèlé-mbèmbé coming into the lake because they ate all the fish. So, in the time of Marcelin’s great-grandfather, the tribe built nine wooden dams in an attempt to stop the Mokèlé-mbèmbé.

  They soon spotted a Mokèlé-mbèmbé trying to come in and it managed to break through eight dams before the tribe managed to spear it to death at the ninth. People dived in and cut bits of the flesh off the huge body. The whole village celebrated the kill by cooking a great feast with the Mokèlé-mbèmbé meat. Unfortunately, everyone who ate the meat died. Marcelin said that it killed more than a hundred people. He said the channels were still visible around the lake.

  JP came over as the story was finishing and I filled him in on the rest. I asked him why they wouldn’t have dragged the creature out of the water on to land. He said that this was a very Western attitude. If an elephant was killed in the forest people would come with knives and cut off the flesh to take back home to cook.

  Sylvestre suddenly piped up. He had been very quiet since the whole cancellation debacle. He said that on his first trip to Lake Tele he had brought a man from Congolese TV. They had got to the lake and had just made camp when they spotted a huge shape in the middle of the lake. He said the Congolese man had filmed it and the footage was often shown on local TV. I thought this sudden admission to be a little odd, since I’d already asked him if he had seen the Mokèlé-mbèmbé and he’d said no. I wondered whether he was now trying to get back into our good books. (I have since searched for this footage online but have found nothing.)

  At around five p.m. Snoop Dogg asked us to sit down at his table. Our boat guy had zoomed off to get some beer. Forty minutes later, he returned with a carton of Congolese red wine made in Pointe-Noire called, rather confusingly, Baron of Madrid. It was the single most revolting thing I have ever drunk – and I’ve had Irn-Bru.

  Crazy limped his way over and sat down. He looked angry, but then he always looked angry. He spotted the wine and announced that it was a woman’s drink. He then poured himself a large glass and downed it. Snoop launched into a long introduction as to why Crazy was the man to tell us about the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. Crazy had another large glass of wine and looked out towards the river disinterestedly.

  When Snoop finished, Crazy started speaking. He spoke fast with loads of gesticulations and I got quite excited, feeling sure he was telling of some epic encounter with the Mokèlé-mbèmbé. When he eventually drew breath I looked expectantly at Sylvestre for a translation.

  It turned out that Crazy was very annoyed that he had invited us to the elder’s area and was then told that he must come to Snoop’s hut.

  ‘Lui, c’est l’état!’ he screamed in French in case I hadn’t understood his beef.

  Crazy announced that he would not say a single word unless we came over to his area. Snoop laughed, obviously quite enjoying Crazy’s discomfort. He said that it would soon be dark and that he did not go over to the elders’ area in the dark because it was via a forest path and he worried about his security at night. Crazy shouted back at Snoop that us being at Snoop’s table was an insult to the elders. Snoop told him to leave if he didn’t like it, but we were his guests. Crazy crossed his arms in an overly dramatic gesture and sat sulking.

  Nobody was going to give in. Then a man in another vivid-yellow Nguesso shirt stepped in and, in perfect French, explained that this had become a fight between the state and ‘tradition’.

  He looked at me and said: ‘Get in your boat and leave. Your mission has failed and you are causing a fight between the chief and the elder.’

  Crazy stood up and hurled abuse at Snoop before storming off with Porte-Parole. We all got up and followed him, including a very reluctant Snoop. Rather than walk the five minutes it took to get to Cra
zy’s area, we all trooped down to the river-bank – where our boat guy was ordered to take everyone about 300 yards upriver, where we disembarked and walked into Crazy’s clearing. The whole thing was getting ridiculous but we were now at least in the correct place and were going to get some great Mokèlé-mbèmbé stories.

  Crazy sat down in his favourite place under a tree and grabbed a spear for effect. He started by admitting that he had never actually made it to Tele himself because of his bad foot (and attitude). He said that we had gone about the search for the Mokèlé-mbèmbé in the wrong way. We had come in a hurry and wanted to leave immediately. The correct way was to come and spend three four nights (the very thought!) in the village and then set off on our trip with their blessing.

  At this juncture Snoop interrupted and shouted at Crazy, saying that he was not setting the story up properly. Crazy ignored Snoop and carried on talking.

  ‘In the old days the Badzama, who lived by the lake, would put their manioc in the water but every day it disappeared and they couldn’t work out why. They accused another tribe . . .’

  At this point an elder sitting next to Crazy tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the sky. It was nearly dark and he reminded Crazy that tradition dictated that they should stop telling stories at this time. This was a full ten minutes after we had finally begun. I started to wonder whether I was the victim of Congolese Candid Camera. You couldn’t make this farce up. The elders disappeared into a hut for some more jungle gin and we were left to troop back through the forest with a nervous Snoop.