CONGO to CONGO

My thumbs-up is answered with two honks, so I gently ease off the clutch. The slack goes out of the tow rope and I barely notice the additional dead weight the Jeep is hauling, such is low-range first gear in the Rubicon. I’m towing a pickup loaded with food sacks and locals that has broken down in the worst possible place. We’re on a narrow, slippery clay hill with dense jungle encroaching all around. We have stamped out of the first Congo, but are still crawling through the large no-man’s-land and so we are, legally, in no country on Earth.

Slowly but surely I climb, with the Toyota and its many passengers always looming large in my mirrors. I can’t help but smile as we crawl across the dotted line on the GPS indicating the international border between the two Congos.

A Jeep Wrangler is towing a stricken Toyota Land Cruiser from one Congo to the next. I’m certain the hundreds of people who told me to sell the Jeep and buy a Toyota didn’t see that coming.

Deepest darkest Africa

At almost two and half million square kilometres, the Democratic have been based there, and Africa was often referred to as ‘The Dark Continent’, because so much of Zaire went undiscovered and old maps simply showed enormous solid black areas. Modern-day DRC is widely believed to hold the richest mineral reserves of any nation on Earth: trillions of dollars’ worth of diamonds, gold, and rare earth metals lie undiscovered, and it’s estimated to contain over five billion barrels of oil. Despite this immense wealth – or possibly because of it – the DRC is one of the most dangerous and least functioning countries on earth.