Someday countries in Africa will figure out how to assign street numbers.

So, I arrived after dark. My favorite. Both google and booking.com could not identify the address. I tried each and drove in circles before finally contacting the host/manager, Mouinda…. Let’s just say I was on the other side of town – and Brazzaville is huge. The problem with navigating in most African countries is that people either just “know” the address or landmarks and expect you to know the place, or the address given is only the street, with no number or even a range. So, a street that’s 20 kilometers long takes a while to find the actual address, especially when you’re not from there.

My First Traffic Accident

After coordinating with Mouinda we decided on meeting up at the Super Marche Mbote, so I started making my way over. She told me it was a big supermarket with a big red sign. The place was just a large bodega.

Old photo, the sign is red now. I should have taken a picture, but that would have required standing in the middle of road.

On the way, some stupid taxi driver tried to hop the median to get ahead of the cars already trying to make a left turn and bumped into my pannier. It almost knocked me off my bike, but luckily I was leaning left and stationary when he bumped me.

Duplex Apartment

The place was nice, but swarming with mosquitos! Luckily they had a mosquito net around the bed.

Yeah, these were from the next day. I was able to get some laundry started.

The whole country runs on generators. Power outages are very common, like every 4-6 hours.

Gotta manually flip the swtich when the power goes out, and then back up when the light turns back on.

Time for bed.