Volume 50 Issue 3 - March 2012 : Sports

 Kutlwano photojournalist Gothusang Lesego set  out on a trip to cover the Zebras in the just ended  2012 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon and Equatorial  Guinea. He shares his experience.

 We travel to open hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than what newspapers can accommodate and to sharpen the edge of life and taste hardship.

 For in traveling to a truly foreign place, we our hearts and inevitably travel to moods and states of eyes and learn mind and hidden inward passages that more about the we would otherwise seldom have caused world than what to visit.

 Abroad is a place where we live newspapers can without a past or future, for a moment accommodate, and to sharpen the at least, and are ourselves up for grabs edge of life and taste hardship. For in and open to interpretation.

 We may even become mysterious to others, at first, and sometimes to ourselves. Thus, as the sun began to paint the horizon gold, I peered out the window to see what the night of January 18 and the next 26 days held for me. As our plane cruised through a sea of white clouds, I began to feel a little discontented while uncertainty clouded my mind as I pictured life ahead.

After what seemed like eternity the plane began to make a descent, flying over a swampy thick and dense forest that looked like the Amazon forest before eventually touching down at Libreville, the capital city of Gabon.

Libreville is on the west coast in the north. Those who have travelled to the city centre which is along the seashore have been captivated by a gigantic metal sculpture of human figure which stands majestically on the coastline symbolising freedom of black people from slavery. Where the sculpture stands was the landing place for a ship of freed slaves in the 1800s.

I rushed to collect my luggage and asked a bunch of young men who looked like airport porters whether there were any hotels nearby. They seemed baffled for they did not understand what I said. I realized that
I spoke to them in “Greek” while they spoke French. I felt as if I had landed on a different planet and they doubtless felt like they were being visited by an extra-terrestrial.

What we often ignore when we visit foreign countries is that we are objects of scrutiny as much as the people we scrutinize, we are objects of speculation and we seem exotic to the people around us.

However, I found solace in the
fact they brought a young woman who spoke a little English. We spoke Pidgin English though - mix of French and English - but at last she managed to get me an apartment in a small hotel owned by some Chinese people. A wooden wardrobe one corner and a wooden double bed completed stuffy little room. I switched on a small
air conditioner hanging above my headboard to get some fresh air.

Early next morning I prepared for my next trip. I arrived at the airport at 7am but take off was a good six hours away. However, waiting was something I had gotten used to and time was something I knew I would spend out during this trip. I was on my way to Bongoville.
I sat there quietly, as if my time was some kind of a currency to be offered to those who would demand for it.

After hours and hours of waiting I finally boarded to Franceville. We landed
in what was ostensibly a huge forest.
At least that is how far the airport is from the city. I never thought I still
had another hour to travel to reach my destination. The two-lane road to my final destination was freshly tarmacked in some areas, and brightly painted. Suddenly we were driving along a road lined with trees as if we had left the track and dipped back into the forest.

We passed some dwellings that evoked memories of typical Nigerian villages portrayed in Nollywood movies. The architecture was different a mixture mud houses and some covered in palm fronds while others built from wood, bark, and brick.

We passed through Franceville before finally arriving in Bongoville,
a small village on the periphery of Franceville. I tried to book in at one of the hotels but they would only accept cash. Not even a credit or debit card would rescue me. I was forced to return to Franceville to draw some cash from one an ATM.

Yet again I found myself stranded. Invalid card was all I got in red letter. Suddenly, I was struck with fear, doubt and a tinge of apprehension. Questions ran through my head. What am I doing here? Did I travel this far only to feel pain and hardship? In the middle of this hopelessness I remembered the words of my father: “the comforter always be with you my son, to guide you in your journey, be watchful, cast away fear, be sober and hope to the end.” I wondered where I was going to lay my head amid people who speak a strange language.

After hours and hours of searching I cast my eyes afar and I saw a red and orange neon sign. On it was a hand holding a bankcard. It drew me closer only to realized it was a small bank building. This was my last hope. I slotted in my card and prayed for the best. “Hope maketh not ashamed,” the Bible says.

One Friday morning I visited a local market. I immersed myself in the exquisite culture of the local people. On display were various cultural artifacts and food that embodied
the life and culture of my hosts. The streets were full of animated souls of people selling traditional dishes.

Rows and rows of small time vendors selling bananas, papayas, manyoko (Cassava) Gabonese favourite dish, a tuber with little nutritional value but fills the stomach, created a tapestry of a tale of people trying to eke out a living.

I made effort to speak to them in their language and felt like a child learning to speak. It threw me back to my formative years. I was concerned not with expressing myself but simply making sense.

I remember, in fact, after returning from the market, I lay back in my apartment and played back over and over, all that I had experienced that day, reciting the new words that I learned and perusing wistfully through my photographs I took as if to extract some mystery from them.

I see myself now at the end of my journey. My toilsome days ended. Initially, all I thought I knew was either hear-say or second hand information. However, after this odyssey, I fill fulfilled for I visited the place where I lived by sight. Perhaps, it was my lot to go that way, that I may give those that desire, a first-hand account of what I encountered and experienced.

 

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