The interesting think about Bandundu is that people like it. Their voices take on a warm tone when it is mentioned. Which is odd, because there’s very little there.
We arrive in the late afternoon, and are proudly escorted by our staff to the top hotel. It’s existence is proclaimed by a painted sign on a metal gate, Auberge Madame Bugongo. Written in French fairgound lettering, set at a diagonal, the word Bienvenue is written on one side and Welcome on the other. The gate is set in a high, white painted wall, topped with razor wire.
It is locked, but we hear people on the other side, so bang on the door, which is duly opened. We are now in a courtyard. On one side is a row of seven rooms, each with its own door, and on the other a strip of immaculate green grass, about 4 metres wide. So immaculate and fine is the grass that one suspects, at first, that it is Chinese fake grass.
We are sat down at a small plastic table while the management organises the rooms. My colleague’s is identified quickly and her suitcase duly delivered. It is boiling hot outside, so we ask to sit inside the reception area which has a fan. We ask for a beer, which is taken from a huge glass fronted fridge. The request “make sure they’re cold” turns out to be redundant, as they are indeed cold.
As one beer turns into two, my room is also announced. Geographically speaking it is clear that this property has the disadvantage of being rather narrow. The rooms therefore can only have openings on one side – the garden side. But clearly, it is not really decent to have bedrooms opening directly onto the public space. How to solve the problem? Have a grand sitting room, with solid sofa and chair, a small plastic table as a desk, and a television, BUT, behind the bedroom is a small curtained alcove in which there is a double bed.
To one side of the sitting room is a bathroom of vast proportions as it is the same length as the sitting room; and behind the bathroom is another windowless alcove for another bed, maybe.
There’s something quite touching about the lack of skill with which the space is used, but it feels quite grand, and I’ve no complaints.
As the day cools off we are ushered into the garden. Towards the other end is a group of people having a late lunch or early dinner. It is being cooked for them on a double electric ring, placed on a little wooden table in front of one of the rooms. Next to this table is another one which is being used to iron some laundry.
Question: is there a restaurant? What about breakfast? The answer is no, they don’t do breakfast, so if we want it we have to order it in advance, and someone will bring it to the hotel. Who the someone is is not clear, but we are assured that it will be done. We blithely assume that if we say we want it at 7.30 it will be there at 7.30, but later I wonder whether we should have listened to our colleague who suggested 7.00.
Meanwhile there is the subject of dinner. There is, apparently, another hotel which does have a restaurant. We phone them and place an order. What do you want, fish or goat or chicken? The airline-style choices are made. Bandundu lies at the confluence of three rivers, so the fish are plentiful, but I stick to the usual chicken.
We drive the short distance to the other hotel, the Hotel Bondo. It is in the midst of renovation and is terrifying in its stark lack of everything. The once manicured garden onto which the chalet-type rooms look, lies dying and broken under assorted bricks and concrete dust. Most of the rooms are in the hands of the builders which gives it a ghostly look. We choose to sit outside and eat in the semi-darkness.
The next day we are taken on a short tour. The main village street is lined with tiny shops selling a variety of clothing, food drinks and cell phone air time. There are also pharmacies, shoe shops and a photographic studio. Off the main street are dusty but clean earth roads flanked by huge mango trees which half hide modest mud-walled houses. There is an arcadian atmosphere. I’ve no doubt that the houses leak, that men beat their wives, and people are sick, but the atmosphere is so calm and pretty it is hard to think that any bad things happen.
This main shopping street, with government buildings and schools on one side, is tarred, of course. We drive at ceremonial speed to the end, where there is a large statue in the centre of a roundabout, and a notice proclaiming that this is the Place de la Femme.
Half way around the roundabout we stop. I wonder what the driver is thinking. Hoping that we will study the statue more? No, no. It’s a traffic policeman who has stopped him – the second or third car to go around the roundabout today. The policeman stands proud, in an immaculately pressed uniform, his whistle at his mouth. After a suitable interval, he blows his whistle, and we are free to move once more.
In truth this is the perfect post-Copenhagen town. Ten cars and ten thousand bicycles. They are the personal and public transport. For 200 francs, about 20 US cents, you can get a taxi to anywhere, sat on the back of a bicycle. You can easily tell a bicycle taxi because the luggage rack behind the saddle is padded. Women, of course sit side saddle, so relaxed, with or without baby, shopping and a host of other encumbrances.
So is less really more. Honestly, as a visitor it’s tough. Nothing is organised and it takes patience and understanding to get used to it. But if you live there, I think for a lot of people it is the perfect existence. We drive past a Belgian nun. She has probably been here since she was twenty, and now, in her sixties, I would be surprised if she wants to go anywhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment