Kisangani Soccer

Kisangani, DRC
14 April 2011

Most of my crew was worn out after a late night at the Texas A&M house and cruising a couple bars until the early hours of the morning so we took it easy today. We toured the UN logistics base on the river, then drove downstream and ate lunch at a restaurant in a bamboo forest overlooking the river. The food was outstanding, with fresh beef imported from South Africa, and monkeys in the trees provided the entertainment.

The main event for the day was soccer match featuring the local military team against a civilian team from another city. Since it was a Thursday afternoon the crowds were light but there were lots of armed Soldiers and police to keep order. The visitors won with the only score of the match but whenever the crowd got rowdy security would beat them with long sticks from their position on the walls.

After dinner groups of vendors tracked us down at our hotel to sell us all kinds of tourist crap- swagger sticks, carved monkeys, masks, paintings, and so on. Surprisingly they knew where we were staying and that we were leaving in the morning. But in our three days here we had seen less than a dozen other muzungos so I reckon we weren't that hard to find.