Update Gabon to Congo to DRC:Part Nine. Are we on the home run yet?

The next day we were at the Angolan consulate bright and early – here no problem getting in at the gate and once inside chairs to sit on in the shade while waiting to be seen by one of the three people in the office. Phew! What a difference! The first time I was called in it was only to be told that our forms should be each in a separate folder. So, quickly out the gate again and down the street where the vendors are standing at their small tables, selling their wares – and find a vendor that sells files.

No problem. Back in at the consulate again and wait another couple of hours – entertained by the reactions of people every time a mango falls on the corrugated iron roof under which we are sitting! The first time I thought it was a gunshot and if I had not been immersed in the book I was reading, or,if I had still been immersed in the weird and wonderful ways of South African city life, or, if had we had just recently during our military convoy episode been immersed in a little more action, I would probably have fallen to the ground in a second. But I hadn't and I didn't – and than goodness for that for neither did anyone else, and I would have looked the proper clown if I had.

However, everyone did jump up and shout and cry out and act quite silly in general – as they did every time another mango fell down with a big bang! Later, I was again called in to the office and a *kind, **helpful ***Angolan man (*really) (**trust me, it is true) (*** well, what else), called Monsieur Emile, who went through the 13 individual files and informed me that we need photocopies of every single visa of every single country we have thus far travelled through.

Once again dash outside the gate, down the road, into the open piece of walled land which, it seems, is waiting building approval, but which is now, in the interim, used as a mammoth photocopying production line. Under the trees, in the dust, all around this 3-4 acres plot of land are hundreds of small trestle tables, each with a photocopy machine connected to an electric wire that leads to a multi board, connected to more wires which all disappear, in thick bundles, somewhere over one of the walls. Where the electricity comes from , remains a mystery, but wherever the main source is, is as susceptible to the vagaries of a country which does not maintain its power stations (ask a South African to explain that one to you!) and every half an hour or so the electricity cuts out for anything from ten minutes to a few hours. Fortunately for us, the electricity only cut out for very short spells at a time, albeit quite often, and the ten visas in each of the thirteen passports were copied in record time. Back to the consulate and back into the office of Monsieur Emile and finally the thirteen applications are safe and sound and accepted in the hands of a kind friendly Angolan man – with the promise that he would try to make sure that these are submitted into the process as soon as possible.