International Highway

On Monday I went with Raymond (second in charge at the lab) and Sekoul (matainence guy at the lab) to Lubumbashi to do some shopping for the lab. Lubumbashi is the second largest city in the DRC and is about 185 km away from Fungarume. We took the international highway, which is a fairly well maintained road for the DRC. I took a whole bunch of pictures on the trip from the front seat of the truck; hence the windshield glare at times. This first half of the highway looked like this:

A portion of the middle like this: And the end portion like this:
The second half was a pretty good road minus the HUGE potholes every once in a while. There were almost always people walking or biking along the side of the highway and we passed through a good 25 villages. Sekoul was good at letting them know we were coming by honking; one time he honked through an entire village - and he was being serious. This highway gets quite a bit of use as it is the route for the acid, copper and other carrier trucks coming to the mine. Perhaps in time the entire road will be paved. Right now the first 85 km or so out of Fungarume is all dirt and gets very dusty, especially now during the dry season. When we were stuck behind a car/truck or being passed by a large truck this is all we saw...or didn't see:There were times when the dust was much thicker than this. It was like driving through a blizzard except the roads weren't slick.

The trip to Lubumbashi was full of adventure. More to come...