Our wake up call - at 0545 this morning - was the sound of a large group of men rapidly approaching our camp site singing/chanting loudly. Whatever their intentions were, it seemed best to get up fairly rapidly and that decision was vindicated by being witness to the sort of display of singing and dancing that you only get in Africa. They were all young lads - members of the local football team, kitted out in replica Manchester United, Arsenal and Barcelona tops - and what they were after was a new football. The word had obviously spread that we were around and it was a great entrepreneurial initiative on their part, but sadly we didn't have a football. The best I could manage was a Man U sweatband that I picked up at Heathrow (although I learned later that Sabine had actually given them 8000 francs - which would be enough to buy a football).

We were musing this morning on what if anything had changed in these rural areas of the Congo since Jack first came here 65 years ago. On the face of it, other than more people, not a lot - the vast majority of the people are still living in mud huts at or about subsistence level with poor access to health and education - but there are a few signs of the influence of the outside world. Some of the more obvious manifestations are the English and Spanish league football strips that the lads were wearing in the village this morning, the fact that everyone in town (and even some in the villages) have mobile phones and the ubiquitous Yamaha outboards on the bigger pirogues.

The kids in the villages always want their photos to be taken and to be shown the result. Most of the adults are the same, but occasionally some do object and yell out "pas d'image". Sometimes though the tables are turned and its young local lads with mobiles taking our photos.

At other times its our turn to be intrigued by their technology. We have come across little riverside clearings in the forest with the juxtaposition of mud huts in the background and solar powered speakers blasting out the Congo beat in the foreground. This afternoon, we even came across a mobile version - a couple of lads in a pirogue with a big solar powered speaker between them swinging their hips along to the beat of their music as they paddled down river.