Lambaréné, Gabon

2019-09-25: Lambaréné. Visit to a Nobel Peace Prize : the Albert Schweitzer Hospital.

After leaving Libreville a little after noon yesterday we arrive today around 11:40 am on Lambaréné. We are of course entitled to a checkpoint where the policeman begins by asking us "permission to travel in Gabon". This is actually called a laissez-passer or carnet de passages. We handed him ours, opened on the “Gabon” page with the customs stamp. The way he looks at it, inspects it and turns it around makes it feel like it's the first time he's held one in his hands. He will even start flipping through the 25 unused and all identical pages. He falls back on the driver's license, but again he seems to be holding a European license for the first time in his fingers. What could he have verified in the end? All that remains is to take a look around the cabin. He asks us politely because obviously he knows he is not allowed to, only out of curiosity, he tells us, because he has never seen a motorhome for real, "only in the movies! ". 

Arrival in Lambaréné by the bridge over the Ogooué.

We can finally enter Lambaréné. After doing some shopping in the city center Christine suggests going straight to Dr. Schweitzer's hospital and eating there in the parking lot before visiting. Rather, I had considered settling quietly at Carpe Diem and crossing by canoe to the hospital, which is on the opposite bank of the Ogooué. But why not ?
We therefore retrace our steps and leave the peninsula via the large bridge by which we arrived. 

 

Unfortunately, we will not be able to reach the museum parking lot because, once again, of an electric cable which hangs too low above the access road. We’ll turn around the aisles of the hospital a bit before we find something to park pretty well for our lunch at the dental clinic.

Our parking space at the hospital.

We reach the museum on foot after the snack. The tour is guided and costs 5,000 CFA (€ 7.85) per person.
The Albert-Schweitzer Hospital was founded in 1913 by Albert Schweitzer and his wife Hélène Bresslau.

 
The first hospital was almost completely destroyed during the First World War, after the forced absence of its founders - as German citizens, they were expelled from French Equatorial Africa and interned in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
When he returned to Lambaréné in 1924, Albert Schweitzer then built the second hospital, which would be completed in September 1925, with a capacity of 150 patients.

Following a famine and an epidemic of dysentery which raged at the beginning of 1926, Albert Schweitzer realized that his hospital was too small for the needs and that he could not extend it on the ground that he owns ; he therefore decides to build a third hospital, a few kilometers further on, on a larger site. This is where we are today. The old hospital moved to the new buildings on January 21, 1927.
We start the visit with the old doctor's house. After the large room where period photos are displayed, various letters from personalities who supported the project, the biography of Albert Schweitzer and the history of the hospital, we move on to the living rooms. The old buildings are made of wood. The scenery hasn't changed much.

Albert Schweitzer was born in Kaysersberg in Alsace, then German, on January 13, 1875. His medical vocation was late, at the age of 30. He had initially turned to religious life. Doctor of philosophy and theology, he wanted to become a missionary within the framework of the Protestant missions.
After reading the article by a missionary stationed in Gabon, in which the latter spoke of the shortage of doctors, he resigned in 1905 from his post as professor at the theological universityof Strasbourg and began his medical studies. In 1912, he prepared his thesis and got married, before preparing to leave for Africa a few months later.
In 1952, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the money he received was used to build a district dedicated to the lepers he treated. 

No ! It’s not Parsifal, the doctor’s pelican, but maybe one of his descendants.

 

Built on the right bank of the Ogooué river, this wooden hospital is made up of blocks of several buildings painted white and covered with red painted metal sheets. The first block is that of the refectory. The second block is the museum, the house in which Albert Schweitzer himself resided. The most compact unit is the one linked to its functions (box for operated patients, consultation room, pharmacy, former cabin for European staff). The vegetable garden, the cemetery and the landing stage (at the time you came to the hospital by canoe, the road did not exist) constitute the last block, the grave of Dr Schweitzer is clearly visible there.
The staff came from various nationalities, funding came from several international donors, care was free.

The hospital buildings.

The consultation room.

 

The visit is very interesting and brings us to the fore a great human project that everyone knows by name but that few have had the opportunity to approach so closely. Too bad our guide is so lacking in enthusiasm, she just bravely recites her lesson! 

The operating room donated by Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1960.

The pharmacy.

 

Thierry at the dentist.

Christine in front of the doctor's grave.

Christine in front of the museum.

 Besides all the praise with which the "good doctor" was able to be covered, there are also many much less flattering testimonies which it is not superfluous to read (see Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/ wiki / Albert_Schweitzer # Reviews)

We are hosted at Carpe Diem in Said.

Said from Carpe Diem and Christine

 

 

Cap Esterias, Gabon

2019-09-17/23: Chez Mado, La Maison Bleue. 5 days of relaxation in the north of Libreville with old travel companions.

We were very surprised when, still at Lopé, Luc and Pascale answer a WhatsApp message and inform us that they are in Libreville. Me who though they were already in Namibia ! So we decided to join them in Libreville. They landed "Chez Mado" at the end of Cap Estérias north of Libreville.

The road towards Cap Estérias takes us along the Sibang arboretum, a forest with interesting hiking trails, according to our information. We fully intend to come back for a visit in the coming days.

September 19, on the parking of the arboretum

September 19. Nice walk in the arboretum.

 Our target, "Chez Mado" restaurant, is easy to find as it is located at the very end of the Cape Road. At 5:55 pm, no doubt, we arrived well: Luc and Pascale's Renault truck confirms it.

Gandalf has found his place next to Luc and Pascale's truck.

We park in reverse on the lawn in front of the restaurant next to the truck. The owner, Mado, welcomes us. She was waiting for us, warned by Pascale.
Luc and Pascale are quick to arrive with their quad. Today was their first official working day. Luc is in fact a lifeguard by training and profession. Having found great opportunities in Libreville, he decided to embark on the adventure. It offers courses in two hotels in Libreville, one to the north in the vicinity and another a little further south of Libreville. He rents their swimming pool there for his lessons. Pascale assists him in this project by serving as his secretary and accountant.

Luc and Pascale leaving on a quad

We discuss all of this at the restaurant in front of chilled bottles of Régab, Gabonese beer, and tasting delicious dishes of stuffed crabs and stuffed sword razor that Mado has prepared for us with rice and plantain.

Pascale and Thierry

Thierry and Luc

Pascale et Mado

The "Rouge"

For those who did not follow, we had met Luc and Pascale with their TRM 400 in January in Ziguinchor in Senegal. They had then taken a few weeks ahead by visiting Guinea and Ivory Coast while we waited for our windshield in Senegal. We also planned to cross Nigeria together but they preferred to speed up the pace to get through before the rainy season with "les Marioles", a young French couple in a van, they met in Côte d'Ivoire. They had suddenly passed Ghana, Togo and Benin in a gust of wind, which they regret a little today.

They have not given up on their plan to travel around the world which they intend to continue after this break in Gabon. They just got their residence permits for two years, that's how long they give themselves for this break.
One of the motivations that certainly influenced them a lot in their decision was the accumulation of technical problems on their 30-year-old truck. After repeated clutch cable breaks in Cameroon, the loss of the exhaust pipe, the fuel tank stalled, two belt breaks and a few other small problems, they broke the front axle at the exit of Ndjolé in the month of May. They had replaced the front tires of the truck in Abidjan, for lack of anything better with tires of smaller diameter than those of the rear, which with a permanent 4 x 4 is not without consequences, neither for the tires nor for the axles. Luckily they managed to find a second hand in Libreville to replace him. 

Christine, Pascale and Luc in our camper.

Mado is the diminutive of Madeleine. She is Cameroonian. She has just passed 40 and must have been around 25 years old when, with a friend, 17 years ago, she decided to leave her hometown in Douala to go and try her luck in Europe by entrusting her four-year-old daughter to her older grand-mother. With 180,000 CFA in their pocket, the equivalent of € 270, the two young women set off south and land in Ebolowa. They must then decide: Equatorial Guinea or Gabon. They choose Guinea, but first they need passports. Because they left without. They get them done very quickly in Ebolowa and soon find themselves in Guinea, with a serious language problem since Spanish is spoken there. She stayed there for two years doing odd jobs, mainly in shops in the economic capital, Bata. Two years after which Mado decides to go and try his luck in a French-speaking country because the Spaniard does not want to get into his little head enough. It is by plane that she arrives in Libreville. Her friend stays in Guinea where she will eventually find a Spaniard who will bring her back to Spain where she still lives. 

Christine and Mado.

As Mado does not know anyone in Libreville and does not know where to go, she hangs around the airport for several hours. An immigration woman, a certain Laetitia, takes pity on her and goes to put her up for a while. She is still extremely grateful to her today. It was thanks to her that she ended up finding a job as manager of a restaurant run by a Franco-Gabonese couple. She earned 50,000 CFA (approx. € 75) per month, fed and housed. One day a man offered her a job for 250,000 CFA, she thought it was a joke at first. She went to the office and got the job, waitress in the airport cafe. A golden job, well paid, social benefits and paid vacation ... For 7 years until the 2008/2009 crisis and the establishment of an employment policy prioritizing the Gabonese. She loses her job but goes to find something else, open a bar, then another, until she has put aside enough to invest in this small restaurant in Cap Esterias.

With Mado on the terrace of his restaurant.

Mado is a rather unusual woman, coming from a wealthy family she could have led a carefree life in Douala but she decided to do something with her life and set off on an adventure.
She seems to be handling her boat well because it is not always easy for a foreigner to find his place in Gabon, especially when you are a woman and you are not white. She manages her restaurant on her own, she has four employees who work mainly on weekends because during the week there are very few customers. She is raising her daughter on her own and her income is barely enough to pay her a private school at almost € 5,000 per year. 

On the beach at Cap Estérias

On the beach in front of the "Française" restaurant, Françoise.

 

 

La Lopé, Gabon

2019-09-12/14:

Elephants, buffaloes, chimpanzees, gorillas, mandrills etc. A national park that has unfortunately not kept its promises but where we still spent two beautiful days in the savannah and the equatorial forest.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019.

About fifteen kilometers after having crossed the equator we leave the beautiful national to take on the left the road towards the national park of Lopé. We cross the Okano River by a hazardous steel bridge and then find a road that is not one despite its pompous denomination of N3. It’s a terrible track, not very difficult but very uncomfortable and dusty where we very rarely can exceed 20 km / h.

Departure of the track to the Lopé national park.

The N3, an uncomfortable and dusty track.

I'm aiming for a wild bivouac barely 27 km as the crow flies. It is 15:45. The 27 km as the crow flies becomes 38 km on the road. We take 1h45 to go through them. It is 5.30 pm when we cut the engine a bit off the track. I've got my boots full of them! 

Our bivouac a little off the track.

Thursday, September 12, 2019.

 

Replacing the brake pads at the bivouac before starting.

After having replaced Gandalf's brake pads at the bivouac, we hit the track again. A track that doesn't really amuse me. It is very, very uncomfortable and we swallow a lot of dust there, especially when we pass the supply trucks which are tumbling down too fast for my liking.

Improvement work on the track which is in great need!

 Fortunately some beautiful landscapes and beautiful views of the river console us a little.
After two and a quarter hours of grueling driving for just 38 km, we arrive at the entrance to Lopé National Park on the other side of a 200m bridge over the Ogooué River. But we have not yet arrived, a sign indicates Lopé, our objective, 30 km away.

Entrance to Lopé Park after crossing the Ogooué by a 200 m bridge.

The Ogooué river

The ordeal continues, now skirting the railway line which links Libreville to Franceville. After a last small bridge over a tributary of the Ogooué, we finally arrive in Lopé. It is 4:45 pm and we have just covered 73 km in almost 4 hours!

We continue to swallow dust.

 

And still no elephant!

The fuel warning light has been blinking for a while. We do have a reserve of 20 liters which should be enough for us for the return trip, but I would be quieter with 20 liters more. So we join a small garage that iOverlander says sells fuel. But the information seems outdated because the young people who work here respond negatively to my request. Luckily we find a truck a few tens of meters ahead on the edge of the track filling up from drums loaded on a pick-up. I ask and they agree to sell us 20l for 15,000 CFA. It is of course more expensive than at the pump but reasonable (750 CFA per liter instead of 655 CFA).

In-flight refueling!

This done, we reach the Motel Lopé Okanda (Chez Paul) near the station, recommended by Luc and Pascale on iOverlander (the French couple in a Renault truck we met in Ziguinchor / Senegal in January). We only find a young girl there. The boss, her father, is away, traveling to Lambaréné to make purchases, and will not return until Sunday, she explains. His children call him and give him to me. He immediately agrees and asks me how much I'm willing to pay, 5000 CFA per night, for 3 nights with access to showers. Ok, I can even give more if I feel like !! he tells me. Of course! :-)

Brenda, a young son of Paul, guides us to Saturnin's, one of the guides, not to say "the guide", of the park. Once there, his wife explains to us that he is not there because on safari with a group.
I managed to contact him by WhatsApp and he joined us  Chez Paul at around 7:00 p.m. Saturnin tells us about the different activities he offers. We opt for the hike to the top of Mont Brazza above Lopé tomorrow morning and the 4x4 safari in the forest and savannah tomorrow afternoon from 4:00 p.m. with the hope of finding buffaloes, elephants and possibly a few monkeys. These two excursions cost 40,000 CFA (€ 62.82) per person.
For the day after tomorrow he suggests a continuous walk in the forest. Departure 8:00 am, return around 2:00 pm with picnic. For 45,000 CFA (€ 70.67) per person.

 

Friday September 13, 2019.

Mont Brazza:

The alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m. as scheduled and I get up 10 minutes later. The night was rather warm, we have 28 ° C in the cabin of the motorhome.
Saturnin picked us up at eight o'clock sharp, as planned, with a South African Toyota Land Cruiser specially equipped for safaris and driven by Keita.
We go to the park entrance where we have to register before we can enter. The general secretary of the park administration will accompany us. She was actually hired as a guide, but as she also has training as a secretary, the park decided to give her the administration secretariat.

Mont Brazza from the entrance to the park.

 

On the way to the foot of Mont Brazza.

 

Keita leads us in 900 m to the foot of Mont Brazza. The ascent can begin. It is done in three stages with a short break to recover and admire the panorama before each new section of ascent. The last one to the top is particularly steep with a hundred meters of vertical drop in 300 m that we need about twenty minutes to cover.
 

The climb to Mont Brazza. Christine and Nadège.

Halfway pause.

 

Arrival at the top: Saturnin, Christine and Nadège.

In all, we will have taken almost an hour to make this climb of 1.3 km. From up there, the panorama is immense on almost 360 °. It is from here that the mosaic of landscapes is best observed, the forest and the savannah sharing the terrain in an interesting patchwork on both sides of the Ogooué River. The Lodge of the Lopé hotel, superbly located on the banks of the river, stands out very well here with its beaches and swimming pool. A little behind we can clearly distinguish the village to the south of the railway line and the station.

The forest and the savannah share the landscape.

The Ogooué river, the forest, the savannah and the Lopé hotel on the banks of the river.

Except in the small private gardens where a few villagers insist on wanting to cultivate a little, there are no cultivated fields around the village, for the simple reason that the crops are systematically devastated by the animals of the park. There is indeed a government plan to create an associative zone protected by electric fences to allow the villagers to do some farming, but for the moment nothing is coming.

Aerial view of the region with Mont Brazza at the bottom left.

Saturnin explains to us that the depression in front of us where the Ogooué flows was, a few million years ago, completely locked by mountain ranges and that a large lake had formed there. It was a volcanic eruption that breached the mountain barrier and allowed the lake and river to flow west. It is in this narrow passage that the Ogooué is deepest, the river bed is 60 m below the surface! The savannah fires that we see all over the area are controlled fires. Saturnin explains to us that their aim is to protect the savannah against the advance of the forest. Apparently the rainfall is increasing in the region and favors the expansion of the forest.

Christine at the top of Mont Brazza.

This patchwork landscape has its origins in the Ice Age when the colder and drier climate caused large swathes of the rainforest to disappear some 18,000 years ago. At the end of the Ice Age, 12,000 years ago, the forest gradually regained land. But areas with too little rainfall, less than 1,500 mm per year, could not be recaptured.
We stay at the top for about ten minutes before tackling the descent via a much less steep path. We see a few buffaloes in the distance, at the edge of the forest where we heard earlier, during the climb, an acoustic fight between chimpanzees. A fight certainly provoked by a young chimp questioning the position of the dominant male, explains Saturnin.
The descent is much easier and Christine takes the opportunity to discuss with Nadège, the young secretary of the park. She is 34 years old and has worked in the park for two years. She has four children from a relationship with a Senegalese from whom she is now separated. So she brings up her children alone here with her aunt. Her mother is from the village. It is for this reason that she decided to leave Libreville to come and settle here after the separation.

In the descent, Nadège, Christine and Saturnin.

Keita comes to pick us up at the foot of the mountain, he drops Saturnin off at his home and then brings us back to our camper van where we will wait for the 4:00 p.m. safari.
The afternoon will be dedicated to a little recovery nap before the safari. It is hot, the temperature rises to 33 ° C in the motorhome.

Gandalf in the "parking lot" of Paul's Motel

Safari

While waiting for Keita to pick us up for the safari.

Keita collects us as planned a little after 4 pm. Two Romanian tourists will accompany us for this safari, Dan and Dania.
The safari will last about three hours. We are unfortunately not going to be very lucky with the animals. The buffaloes are not a problem, they are numerous enough and we will easily discover three small groups. This is the second group that we find the most interesting, about ten buffaloes are quenching their thirst at a waterhole.

Safari in the Lopé park.

Herd of buffaloes.

Greater spot-nosed monkey

 

As for the monkeys, we'll have to settle for a small group of greater spot-nosed monkeys barely visible in a large tree in the distance.

The search for elephants in the savannah and the forest will be very long. We start to despair in earnest when we finally find one with its calf at a waterhole. We are going to approach it a bit on foot to observe them from a distance, I did well to take my 600mm telephoto lens!
The forest elephants that we find here are, like buffaloes elsewhere, much smaller in size than those of the savannas of West Africa (Senegal, Ghana, Togo).
The sun is setting in the west and the full moon is rising in the opposite direction. According to Saturnin it is too hot today and there is too much ash in the air from the savannah fires, it irritates the elephants who prefer not to show themselves.

Finally ! An elephant and her cub.

 

The wife of Saturnin and Nadège.

Dan and Dania, our Romanian safari companions.

 

We drive back in the the semi-darkness by the light of the Toyota headlights. We have decided to keep the Romanians company for dinner tonight at the restaurant "La Maison-Mère".

We return at dusk by the light of the headlights.

We find them there, a dozen Romanians in all. We add a table to join them and order a sea bass and grilled chicken with rice. For beer we have to cross the street to buy it from the little shop across the street, I pay 1000 CFA for two cans of Castel.

"La Maison Mère" and its grill.

We spend a pleasant evening with this friendly group. They take the train back to Libreville this evening around 10 p.m. They will then spend a few days in Sao Tome and Principe, then 4 or 5 days in Angola before returning home.
We take our leave around 9 pm and walk back to our hotel.
It is still quite warm in the motorhome, but it will quickly become bearable after opening the windows.

Satrúrday, September 14, 2019.

We are ready at eight o'clock and we are waiting for the Toyota in front of the motorhome. A man who passes by there approaches us and comes to discuss with us a little. This is Jean-Pierre, a train conductor. He stopped his freight train from Libreville at Lopé station to wait for a passenger train coming from Franceville in the opposite direction. He explains to us that he has family in France, one of his brothers, in Lille if I remember correctly. One of his aunts is married to a French man. He photographs us in front of Gandalf because his French uncle apparently also owns two motorhomes.

Lopé station, heads and tails.

Keita and Nadège pick us up around 8:15 am. We then go to Saturnin's to embark him. Three quarters of an hour and 12 km later Keita drops us off at the edge of the forest into which we will enter for our excursion. He will come back to pick us up between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. 

On the way to the forest.

The Lopé Park is one of the oldest national parks in Gabon. It has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007. Its 5000 km² of equatorial forest and savannah are home to some fifty different mammals, including more than 5000 elephants. It is also home to large colonies of great apes such as gorillas, chimpanzees or mandrills but also a lot of small apes. The park is known worldwide as the place with the highest concentration of primates. 

We go deep into the equatorial forest.

With a little luck we will be able to meet all these animals during our excursion in the forest. It is of course much more likely that we will only encounter a few of them. And if we're having bad luck we might not see anything at all.
Unfortunately for us the results will be more of the 3rd type: only a few gray-cheeked mangabeys at the start of the course, a small colony that we disturbed. Saturnin is on the lookout and listening for the smallest clues to find the great apes, his main objective. The chewed stems of a certain plant that chimpanzees use to make their mattresses (the same plant we already know from the Mfou sanctuary in Cameroon) for example. 

Saturnin explains how chimpanzees chew certain plants.

We can tell by the smell of the recent passage of some elephants. Saturnin sets off for a few minutes to reconnoitre, asking us to wait for him where we are. When he returns he tells us that elephants are grazing a little further in the meadow. But instead of leading us there, he directs us in a parallel direction. We think he just wants to take a detour so he can approach them better. But no ! He pulls us aside. We don’t understand right away, but it is confirmed when he stops for a break near a torrent at 10:45 am. We are apparently not chasing elephants. 

Elephant Footprint ....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

... and another indication of the passage of elephants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nadège and Thierry in the forest.

Break near a torrent

The break lasts about twenty minutes. We are pleasantly seated at the edge of the stream tasting apples and oranges when we see an elephant and its calf passing about fifty meters away on the other side of the stream. It only lasts 3 or 4 seconds, they disappear in the thickets behind an embankment. But here again, Saturnin does not take the initiative to lead us to them to observe them. On the contrary, we pick up our bags and turn back to where we came. Either he wants to avoid any risk with elephants, or he has another priority: the great apes!

We will learn much later that the guides actually avoid any encounter with elephants in the forest. It's far too risky because the elephants have a decisive home advantage there.
We therefore return to the forest to take another break a quarter of an hour later sitting on a lying log. It is 11:20 am and Saturnin explains to us that this is the time when the monkeys are resting. The forest is surprisingly calm, only the birds can be heard.

New break during the monkeys nap.

We start again at 12:00. The monkeys don't seem to want to wake up, it is always the great silence in the forest. We're going to turn around for a long time, Saturnin still listening for any clue. The only monkeys we end up glimpsing in the distance in the trees are a few gray-cheeked mangabeys, monkeys with brown-black coats and graying cheeks (hence their name) typical of the rainforests of Congo, Cameroon and Gabon., as well as satanic black colobus with atrophied thumbs, better adapted to life in trees.
We leave the forest at 2:05 pm quite disappointed, even if we do not regret because these seven kilometers in the dense virgin forest were a rich experience.

Keita is not there. We will wait for him almost an hour, until 3:00 p.m.

Keita has finally arrived.

Back to the motel.

 

We return to Lopé in 30 minutes.
Paul, the owner of the Motel, returned from Lambaréné a day before he told me on the phone the day before yesterday. He greets us quickly but we are all a little too busy to discuss for long.
One of his daughters (12 years old) will show us how to prepare plantain, in fries, boiled and in cakes. What an honor for her to use the motorhome kitchen with all its comforts (running water, stove, fridge, etc.). She likes to show the equipment to her sisters and friends who are parading. Because of course we are the attraction of the neighborhood.

Preparation of the plantain in the camper van with one of Paul's daughters.

Paul and his children with Thierry.