Ouesso to Owanda

A shorter day was planned as it was too far to make Brazzaville in one day and we'd had a long day the previous day. Plan was to ride from Ouesso to Owanda. Hopefully arrive early afternoon and get a local sim card and find a hotel. The road was really good. Paved all the way with lovely views of dense green jungle on both sides. Lots of dwellings along the way. About 4 roadblocks but only one stopped us and asked for our passports. He took them into a hut and there was a long delay. Not sure what he was doing but he eventually gave them back and lowered the rope barrier.

In Owanda we found a hotel but it didn't have internet so we went up the main road to the local sim card booth. While buying sim cards we were accosted by a uniformed police man and two non uniformed guys. Uniform 1 advised we had to give our passports to non uniform man 1, then go to the police station. After getting sim cards they escorted us to the police station. Some confusion followed and clearly we were not being given a choice of leaving.

To cut a very very long story short, they accused us of being in the country illegally, claiming we didn't have visas, even though the chief was looking at the clearly legible Congo visa page in our passports. It was a tense time which ended when Richard overheard something in French about a stamp. Evidently they couldn't find the border post entry stamp and assumed we had somehow sneaked into the country without crossing an official border post. Once Richard found the relevant stamp and pointed it out the chief did lighten up and say everything was in order. Then there was a further delay due to form filling but we were relieved to be leaving the police station with our passports in hand.

It was all conducted in French, it is a French speaking country after all, but it does heighten the tension when you're in a police station and don't know what's going on. At one point a policeman came in and asked if I spoke English, I said yes and he asked what I wanted, i.e what was I doing at the police station and what did I want from them. A perfect question, now if only he could could find out the answer and let me know! After it was all settled we went back to the hotel we had found earlier and checked in.

The hotel had a patio area which overlooked the river, a lovely spot for a sundowner although the edge had been taken off the whole experience by the earlier events. While sitting on the patio, the English speaking policeman turned up to say hello, not in uniform now he took a seat at our table. We had a social chat and bought a round of drinks. We asked why we had to register and he explained they had a foreigner go missing sometime ago but nobody knew anything about him so now they keep tabs on all foreigners in town. We learned a lot about the town and what the police there deal with. Drownings in the river, snake bite deaths, road accidents, crime etc. For a 28 year old he's seen quite a bit.

He did WhatsApp me frequently after that asking where we were and where we were going so it may not have been a purely social visit.

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