Pierre of the Forest: The Stranger Who Saved Our Lives in the DRC

Tonight, we will have a personal story as part of

#VCDigest

… an experience I had back in 2010 and I wrote it here during the corona period… Some followers have requested I retell it… So let me take you back… to a different chapter of my life… a story of risk, resilience, and the haunting jungles of the DRC.

This is a very random long story… Few years ago my team and I were contracted by an American publishing company who were working on an Exclusive Production about the illegal Gemstone trade in the DRC and complicity of some Multinational Telcos in the ‘blood mining’ of Coltan, Tantalum and Tin minerals… It was such an eye opener in regards to how Africa is exploited and robbed with violence by some of your favorite tech companies… I promise to revisit this story some other time…

For now I’d like to focus on another interesting experience I had on that expedition… Since the production required us to go to DRC for the filming and ground production, we needed a Fixer on ground to take us to areas where we could get material…

On such an expedition, one does not have the luxury of making an advanced trip for a Recce of the area and production set… This is a strictly touch and go experience because the mining regions were controlled by rag-tag militia… Any suspicions on our intended purpose would cause us risk, not from the militias, but the Multinational Mafia running the illegality for foreign companies…

In the DRC, rebels control many mining sites in direct collusion with international gemstone brokers… Where the government chased them from sites, the smart rag-tag militia found a new way to finance themselves… Roadblocks… crude yet effective. The scent of sweat and gun oil… the weight of eyes in the shadows… all of it was real.

The rebels figured out that the best way to outsmart the government forces was to erect roadblocks… If you finance the transport routes to the mines, and levy taxes, then you control the mining… The DRC is heavily forested and the road infrastructure is almost non-existent out of the towns… DRC is also too vast and as thick as it can get… These factors make it too expansive and expensive for the government to patrol… giving rebels control over swathes of area… and leaving travelers like us to the mercy of fate.

To penetrate into one of the sites at North Kivu, we had to be ingenious about it… Our Fixer introduced us to a domiciled Dutch NGO which had made friends with rebels by giving them free medical supplies… After negotiating with them and explaining our mission, they gave us a supply landcruiser and gave us their T-shirts and badges and a driver, Pierre Lokanda… a man with a calm demeanor but eyes that seemed to hold a thousand secrets… Pierre was a friendly and interesting character… yet there was something about the way he surveyed every bend in the road… as if he’d lived a hundred lives in these jungles.

On our 400KM of harsh forested terrain… dorned in disguise… on a mission to make secret audiovisuals, Pierre entertained us with Rhumba oldies from the stereo… His voice rose and fell with the songs, a melody of old Kinshasa… He sung along and occasionally communicated with other vehicles through radio calls speaking impeccable Francois… In his land cruiser were 3 Americans, 1 Dutch, one Ugandan and 2 Kenyans… each of us carrying our own fears… our own prayers.

About 50Kms to our destination, we encountered one of the scariest situations since we landed there… A road Barricade with mean looking thugs dressed like the army… their uniforms dusty and their eyes glinting with suspicion and something darker… They ordered us out for a ransack but Pierre told us to stay put…

With his hands in the air he walked out to meet them… the sound of boots crunching on gravel… the cold glint of rifle barrels in the dying light… Ng’ash, my fellow countryman, was shaking and making silent prayers… his lips barely moving… I was not shaken per-se… (that’s my story and I’m sticking by it)… just that, I knew my chances of returning to Nairobi in one piece was now about 30%… I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t shake my knees and pee on myself until those chances reduced to 15% and if I saw a gun barrel on my forehead…

I succeeded… No pee…

Pierre went to meet the mean looking militia all pointing rusty guns at our vehicle… It looked eerily like a scene from a Bruce Willis movie… the kind where the hero never returns… After some inaudible conversation, we saw them put down their guns and one of them gave Pierre a fist bump… Pierre said something to them and they all laughed heartily… the sound of laughter in the midst of danger… I was confused…

He walked back to the vehicle and drove off past the now opened roadblock… They waved past us all smiling… the night had swallowed their cruelty as quickly as it had arrived… We didn’t bother to ask Pierre what he told them or how he easily got us out of the jam… Who was this guy… this man who danced with death and made it look like a waltz…

We all kept quiet in anticipation of our next stop… The trees loomed like sentinels in the fading light… It was getting dark and we needed to get to camp on time because the nights were very dangerous… Running into a random herd of mad elephants was a very real possibility… Road mines and IEDs were also a possibility… the sort of things you only read about… until they’re under your tires.

About 10KMs to camp, we had a loud bang and our car stopped… Baas… Kwisha sisi… Now we were scared… I was down 5% and I knew by another 5% pee would wee… No Nairobi… What if we ran into a bad group of militia… What if Pierre fooled the last ones and they were behind us… What if a mad Hippo or Elephant came from out of nowhere… The forest seemed to close in around us… breathing… waiting.

But it was a close shave… The land cruiser had blown something in the engine… a hiss of steam and the scent of burnt oil filling the air…

The funny thing though, was that everyone seemed calm and the Americans were chatting heartily… We were all laughing at our proximity to instant death considering that our filming would be the most dangerous thing yet… Ng’ash and I pretended to be calm… We were scared witless… But we were not about to show the Americans that… We needed to show them Africans were tough… Wapi…

Matt, one of the Americans chimed in and told us that this was by far one of his riskiest endeavors… Now, coming from someone who had spent much of the journey narrating to us his near death experiences in Brazil and some Colombian drug dens and routes, I knew my 15% threshold was just about…

All this time Pierre had walked out with a pliers and a torch and opened the hood (Bonet) of the truck… the yellow glow of his torch flickering against the ancient trees… the night watching…

He requested us to stay in the car and not to make very loud or sudden noises…

Great… We’ll just die in our seatbelts… the joke that became a silent mantra in the dark.

After what seemed like an hour, though it was just 15 Minutes, Pierre walked back, revved the engine and smiled to himself as we drove to the camp… the old Toyota grumbling but alive… Genius… absolute genius.

4 days in camp distributing paracetamol and Band-Aids and helping the Dutchman who accompanied us… (he was a real doctor)… in his wizardry to the miners, we finished our set production and returned back to Kivu… On our way back we encountered 2 roadblocks about 100Kms apart and in both instances, Pierre handled it well… I didn’t see him bribe them, what was he telling them… Was he a witch doctor… or something more… the man who whispered to death and was never refused.

When we arrived back in town, we all thanked Pierre for his brevity because without which, we’d have probably remained in the forest as skulls… white bones in the green expanse…

When I shook his hand to thank him as we had Kenyan beer froth on our hotel, he broke into perfect Kenyan Swahili and said…

“By the way, Pierre ni jina tu ya hapa… Mimi ni mkenya Kama wewe nimekuja hapa kuhustle… My real names ni Peter Odhiambo… Natoka karibu na kwenu huko Sondu, Kisumu side but tulihamia Eldoret when I was a teenager”…

I was dumbstruck… All this time this dude had deciphered our sheng and ‘msengenyo’ with Ng’ash… WTF… the man of many faces… many lives.

Peter had been in the NGO world as a fixer and driver for many years working in many war torn francophone countries and had assimilated well with his working environment… I also learned that day that he was also a certified twin engine Private pilot who occasionally did medical evacuations with the NGOs rugged Cessna Caravan… He was a genius and a life saver… He was very brave and conversant with handling all small arms… In fact we spent the next day before our travel back to Kisangani in the NGO camp breaking apart his AK 47s… He loved the thrill of his life… every rattle of the bolt a hymn to survival.

Peter then said something funny yet true to me that has stuck in my mind to this day…

“Mnasemanga mumekatwa ndio maana mko brave… Kilasiku tunaitwa ‘ngetai ama Kihii, lakini hamuezi toboa hapa”… Ng’ash and I looked at each other feeling awkward because he was addressing our respective tribes… True, I come from a brave community raised on a war doctrine by cultural identity, but the jungle of Zaire (DRC) navigating through territories ran by Tutsis and Congolese rag-tag isn’t something the Kipsigis in me signed up for… I’m sure Ng’ash felt the same…

“Being a man takes more than having a cut, being man is in the heart… Kama huwezi jitoa kwa shida yeyote hapa, wewe ni maiti tu…

I have no clue why he brought that up at all… But I guess he had always kept it in his heart waiting for the perfect opportunity to say it… Yay… What a perfect opportunity…

This had been the best time to tell us this because Ng’ash had sworn never to enter the DRC again and so scared had he been on one instance that he told me that if we had made it out alive, he’d be saved and become a pastor… Never mind that a week later after getting to Nairobi he was dundaing like the sinner he was… the same jungle of Nairobi swallowing his fear.

This story came back to mind one day as I was reading an engagement on David Ndii’s Twitter wall and was saddened at how quickly debates degenerate into some juvenile insults… The worst is when grown men keep referring to other grown men’s genitalia as a way to expose their inability to hold a debate… ‘Get circumcised first before addressing us’… A grown educated man told another on that wall… so empty, so cheap… an echo of hollow manhood.

I quote Peter ‘Pierre’ Odhiambo who told us as a parting shot…

‘Hiyo kitu umebeba iko na kichwa ndogo na jicho kimoja lakini haina akili… Wakenya watumie ile kichwa kubwa iko na macho mbili na akili… Kukua mwanaume ni kukua na roho mzuri na roho shujaa, hiyo ingine ni ya kuzaa na kuleta utamu”…

He was right… Absolutely right… his words still echo in my soul.

When it comes down to it, those who repeat this insult are small boys themselves… They lack any substance… Debates should be about the power of the mind… Keep away from the basement… and let your courage… like Pierre’s… speak in the quiet moments when the night is darkest.

This… was another

#VCDigest

story… and a personal one I carry with me like a heartbeat.