663 final...

I do have one final story from my travels. It involves our last journey of any significance and was from the border town of Bitam to Libreville. In order not to waste the day travelling we decided to take the overnight minibus which would get us to the capital early the following morning. As I’ve mentioned before, the Gabon we experienced, was essentially thick jungle with a few areas cleared to accommodate a village, town or city. As a result the perfectly maintained road cuts a black swathe through the lush green rainforest like a never ending mamba slithering through the grass.
The only other traffic on the roads at that time of night where colossal lorries carrying timber shorn, often illegally, from the surrounding forest. These giants ferrying ancient trunks, the size and weight that their age and majesty merit, labour like a rollercoaster to the crest before thundering down and around the hairpins and chicanes of the countless rises that line the route.
Of course this being Africa our route was punctuated with police and road blocks and we were regularly stopped for our now well worn papers to be checked. Ostensibly, this is to restrict entry for anyone trying to take advantage of Gabon’s oil rich prosperity, but is in effect the normal bribery and corruption associated with travel in Africa and just another way for the police and immigration officers to supplement their ‘supposed’ meagre wage packet. As a result, in what was tantamount to the sort of sleep deprivation the US jailers of Abu Ghraib would be proud, our sleep was interrupted at regular intervals on the near 12 hour journey.
By far the most memorable stop was around 4 in the morning in, literally, the middle of the African Jungle. I remember being roused, for the umpteenth time, from a fitful sleep and slowly making my way to the checkpoint. Those of you familiar with the painting by Gerard van Honshorst, ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds’ might have some sense of the atmosphere and scene I came upon.
My fellow travellers were already arranged in front of an open window which perfectly framed a ‘fat controller’ of a man seated in a tiny hut barely big enough to accommodate the desk at which he sat. There were no electric lights or lamps instead he had his head tilted at a curious angle, the folds of his cheeks preventing the torch, that provided his only light, from toppling from his shoulder. Thus, his hands free, he was able to scrutinise every detail of our passports and papers whilst the warm glow of his feeble torch was just enough to reflect from the bright pages and bathe his face in a warm light, but fought to infringe on the grey shadowy corners of his hut, let alone the still, silent, purple darkness outside.
I would have given anything to have been able to photograph the scene but that would certainly have incurred his wrath and cost us, at the very least, a fine... and probably a lot worse. As it was he pored over our documents going back again and again to check stamps and dates, seemingly determined on finding something awry which would warrant some cause for recompense. The eventual slump of his shoulders, not only nearly lost him his torch but, signalled his eventual defeat and our freedom to continue on our way...