So it all rolls down like this. You side with the rebels, against some idiot who thinks he has the authority to run this country because of some stupid ritual called an “election’ – the nerve! You know you can do better, people’s will be damned, once you’re in the driver’s seat this backwater of a country can get where it’s supposed to go.

Pass out the rest of your cigarettes to eager passengers, and if it’s a federal crime to kill terrorists and smoke on an airplane afterwards, then I don’t want to be right.

So, you look to the sea. Oddly enough you ain’t ever eaten fish, certainly not the swimming sea-going type, having goats all at your bidding for your entire life. But there is this vast thing on the horizon, a big blue undulating mass, beckoning you. You can stick some wood in it and get happiness – which is sort of similar to a goat, but just a little more complex.

You’ve all done it before, been there done that, gotten bored, got the “mzungu” t-shirt and picked a few tourist pockets yourself while hanging out in the African market. Hey, things do go both ways in these places, damned straight, and it’s worth your while to understand that the local yokels can be hosed out of their money just as effectively to them as they do it to you. My good old friend George W. Bush used to call this a “pre-emptive strike” or something to that effect, but I just call it by that good old fashioned British English word, pragmatism.

Making money on the arse-end of Africa.

Leopards and dreadlocks just don’t mix, and I remember once out in the parklands an elephant sneaking up on a few of us cheap-like-free hostel travellers: it could have easily gored us all. An inconvenient truth for sure.

Touring lessons for our modern age.
I don’t want to be too presumptuous, but hell I will be. I’m damned sure if you’re in front of the computer often you’ve gained a few pounds in between pints of ale or gallons of ice cream, a few burgers, the occasional full-pig barbeque, dozens of hot dogs, and [...]

PBs’ very own crackpot, the inimitable Dean Farisian, reviews the latest offering from the Bradt Guides collection – The Bradt Travelguide to The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)