Malu Airways is not one I was familiar with but the turboprop plane actually looked pretty spic and span + it had Rolls Royce engines, so it had to be OK. There were 11 of us plus a pile of freight (occupying what had been several rows of seats) and an elegantly dressed Congolese lady and her three young boys, one of whom was wearing a rather fetching full length fur coat - for no obvious reason. The potholes in the runway didn't appear to include any show stopp...

Another 0500 start and another airport - Ndolo, quite near our hotel and I am guessing probably the original Kinshasa airport - dusty dirt access road and a ramshackle collection of single storey corrugated roofed terminal buildings. We did a bit of sitting around whilst our agents guys sorted out the baggage and did battle with various blue, pink, green and white forms. Then our hand luggage was weighed (which was good because we were to fly in a 17 seater pla...

The city used to be known as Kin la belle, but is definitely more poubelle now. Most of it is a work in progress, because very few construction projects seem to make it to the completion stage. There is rubbish everywhere, cars everywhere and people everywhere. On the main boulevards its foot flat to the floor and at the intersections which don't have police manning them - its who blinks last wins. Actually, that also applies to junctions where there are poli...

The Congo is a massive river, but huge rapids downstream of Kinshasa mean that it's not navigable from the sea. The volume of water and the drop are such that a hydro plant would be able to supply most of sub Saharan Africa, but as you may have guessed, it's a work in progress - and one which hasn't really got far off the drawing board. Tomorrow we have another 0500 start - for the flight to Kisangani. The plane we were due to take has been commandeered by some ...

We had an expedition to the central market this morning - 10 white people in the most amazingly huge seething mass of black people selling everything imaginable, and quite a few things unimaginable - smoked monkey and live baby crocodiles were a first for me. We attracted a lot of attention - most of it friendly, but here and there an undercurrent of hostility. One group of young traders got upset at their photographs being taken (or more probably at not being ...