A Little Overview

The Niger Delta… The mention of this wild land conjures up images of destitute, lawless millions; massive industrial complexes and lush green areas that can easily conceal both oil spills and bodies. Why is this Africa’s answer to South Louisiana, USA?

Now, for an individual with a truly ambitious exploratory nature, this is a land that is still far from conquered. Even getting here is a truly wild ride in itself, and just being here is an incredibly high and accurate indication that one has truly lost his grip on reality.

Nigeria is, of course, world renowned for corruption that begins at the top and permeates society at every level and facet. This is an area where con men and thieves change and alter their means and methods as often as bacteria mutate in a laboratory petri dish. The country gives the resemblance of a hierarchal, oversized rat cage that has been denied food for two weeks. Babies are still being born in mass and whichever rat does not have his back strategically placed into a corner has probably been jumped and eaten alive.

Although Nigeria’s problems are too numerous to list, the relatively wealthy Delta region is free of religious violence between Christians and Muslims that plagues areas to the North. However, it has all the rest of the problems and one large one that is exclusive to the area: The warring Itsekiri and Ijaw tribes. Yes, it is comforting that the more this crazy world changes, the more it stays the same. As the 21st century is dawning and globalization is undeniably taking us in the direction of global government and unification, there are still tribes fighting over the same patch of jungle that they have competed for, for a thousand years.

Thank God someone holds on to their traditions. Heated competition for land and resources that result in the deaths of hundreds takes place as often as and with the international attention of a Red Sox-Yankees baseball game. It is cyclical and will not go away. Though the excuses used change frequently enough, the basic hatred and revenge that drives these warring factions will never go away. It is a sad epiphany but soon after arriving in the country it occurs to the visitor that Nigerians have learned the only way to gain anything in this life is to outmuscle the next man. Very few are ever provided with an alternative opportunity and the communities prey upon each other.

Delta Geography

The Delta is dominated by two large cities. The first and more dirty, dangerous, and lawless of the two is Warri. This is the area where Itsekiri-Ijaw violence is localized and is also the area where offshore and swamp oil field development was first established. Following years of difficulties in the Warri area that included seizure and mutinies of oil field facilities and installations, murder and kidnapping of expatriates, and the eventual completion and utilization of local swamp oil field developments, most oil companies relocated to the second city of the Delta, Port Harcourt. Port Harcourt is a well-established city of the Delta with good port facilities that offered an escape from the tribal violence that plagues Warri. Not that Port Harcourt is without its fair share of problems. This becomes blatantly apparent as one sits in “no-go” traffic at Elimay Junction watching your mobile policeman whip fellow motorists that have not gotten out of the way quickly enough, being extorted for money by customs officials in the Port Harcourt international airport at gun point, or having the infamous skateboard boys accost you outside of “Cheers” or “The Barracuda” after an evening of cocktails and discussing world affairs with Nigeria’s young socialite ladies.

Three-Day Cruise (A Short Narrative).

If you have ever gone on a vacation cruise, it usually begins something like this: In early, celebratory exuberance, one wakes up slightly hung over. After fighting against slight traffic and dealing with the hassles of the ticketing agencies, one is at ease taking a slow, rolling ride out to sea. That does not even come close to this morning. While the hangover (compliments of the Tiki Bar and the boys at Intel camp) is equivalent, the similarities begin to diverge from there.

Travel via the roadway in Port Harcourt is a wonder to behold. Not only are there literally hundreds of thousands of 30 year old compact cars, transport and tanker trucks, motorcycles, bikes, people and animals on the road, they are all on the same road.
Why? Two reasons: The Saturday marketplace where many will end up is located along this road, and most of the other roadways are impassable to all vehicles except the 4×4 wheel drives due to the rainy season. All relief this morning stems from the fact that the vehicle of choice is a 4×4 Land Cruiser.

While a Land Cruiser was available, unfortunately a mobile policeman was not. The concept of a mobile policeman is an interesting one. This is an individual that was formerly in the Nigerian military and was recruited to be an autonomous civil authority within a given state of Nigeria. They are employed by companies to circumnavigate the street-level incompetence of local policing authorities. In practice, they range from compound security to traffic directors to hired muscle. The only ones that can be trusted, and that is a relative term, are those in your employment. All others will rob and kill you. The most highly visible, public action taken by these individuals is traffic direction. It is often achieved with rapid results due to the three-strand horse haired whip that they carry to flog those that do not immediately respond to their directives. It also helps as an initial attention grabber. While these men are vicious and despisable, they are also indispensable for security reasons. They are armed at all times with an AK-47 with three taped together clips and dissuade all but the most determined attackers.

After a 45-minute ride along every side road and two bit jungle trail that my driver knows while pushing through five foot, rain filled pot holes that would give most overland adventure race expeditions a run for their money, there is the port terminal entry. Now to check in with dispatch and away we go. But, not so fast! The customs agent at the entry is looking for passport and visa papers and in the rush to leave the office before sunset last night, none were photo copied. After a brief conversation, the fact that this agent is an easy man to get along with is expressed to me with the price of his ease being something in the $5-10 dollar range. What a day to have no money. After hours of trying to contact associates and a belligerent, threatening attempt by the officer to separate me from my driver and only eye witness in order to achieve getting me into the customs house all by my lonesome, contact is established, papers are received, and the prey slips away. The parting is a smiling-through-gritted-teeth wonder to behold.

Finally, up the gangplank and onto the back deck of the workboat that serves the capacity of supply and lifeline for the offshore workers. The Captain is American, the Chief Engineer English, and the First Mate Peruvian. All are great individuals and there is not another passenger onboard. The boat itself is new. It is capable of reaching 35 knots when pushed to full throttle. This is highly desirable for several reasons. First, crews and equipment can be moved around the contracting companies’ fields at a much greater rate. Secondly, if a smaller, lighter boat with a motor and boarding party gives chase, it will be easier to throttle the engines and build escape speed quickly. This speed is specifically why this boat is here.
While pirating is always an unspoken concern, there are also legal requirements within the Delta. These regulations deal with the locals concerns for travel, fishing, and commerce, which utilize the Delta regions with only canoes. From sunrise to sunset, ships and vessels have the right of way on the Delta waterways. The other half of the day, the right of the way belongs to the canoes adrift on the waterways. This effectively requires ships to be in the Delta waterways by 1600 hours or to spend the night at sea and come in the morning. It also means that once in dock, no matter what the reason (such as attack), a ship cannot cast off from its moorings.

The ride through the delta and out to sea is relatively serene. The tide is out, storms are sitting on the coastline, and the traffic on the waterway is light. Lush green foliage, picturesque, National Geographic style fishing villages, canoes, and rolling brown water is the view for the most part. Occasionally, port facilities and scuttled ships pulled to the shore and left to rust on sand bars are passed. The sea is calling. The calmness is overwhelming. Out there are men and equipment pushing frontier boundaries. Was this the way Ishmael felt coming from New Bedford? Thank God this time all the Quequeg’s are still on shore.

Eight years ago there was almost nothing. Now a bustling hub of activity called Malabo, Equatorial Guinea is located on the volcanic island of Bioko in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa. What was the change that brought this agrarian society of coco and banana plantations into the Industrial era with a rather abrupt shove? Oil, Texas Tea, Black Gold, the natural resource that in the later half of the twentieth century has caused some of the largest disparities in wealth between populous and leaders on Earth. This familiar scenario is playing itself out once again in the small backwater of Equatorial Guinea, West Africa.

Equatorial Guinea: A Brief History

The history of Equatorial Guinea is one filled with European Colonization, violence and tribal war, and frequently changing, brutally repressive leadership.

The origins of the current day capital of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo, stem from Spanish Colonization of West Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. This was followed by the subsequent development of Malabo into a trading outpost for the Spanish crown as the lucrative commodities, bananas and coco, were grown for Spanish Europe’s consumption.

With the demise of colonial Spain and subsequent power struggles for dominance and power among the African nationals for Bioko Island, tribal warfare’s face appeared on the island. It did not last long. The originally native, peaceful Bubi tribe was displaced by the aggressive, warrior Fang tribe that originated from mainland West Africa. Today, the displaced Bubi’s still exist in more remote areas of Bioko Island either in the jungles or the elevated denizens along the side of the volcano. The Bubi’s are not necessarily privy to the national infrastructure system delivering clean water or electricity (not that all of the Fang descendants are either) and their communities tend to have a higher incidence of disease (i.e. cholera, tuberculosis, etc.). The Bubi’s have become the second class citizens of Equatorial Guinea. They are treated as such.

Following the securing of Equatorial Guinea by the Fang tribe, internal struggles for power were the next inevitable step. Many figure-heads rose to power only to be replaced by the next flavor of the week in leadership. The cycle of African power snatching succeeded by more African power snatching was interrupted in 1972 when mercenary, Alexander Ramsey Gay, a Scotsman, along with 13 other white western and 50 black African mercenaries appeared and took control of the island nation. Control was eventually relinquished back to the locals and The Dogs of War was authored about the entire sequence of events permanently making the small nation infamous in mercenary circles.

A return of control to the African Nationals meant a return to African politics. Corruption, inept leadership and brutal elimination of dissidents were the order of the day. From the current period of the late twentieth century when General Mbasogo seized power in a military coup to rule from 1979 to the present day, two pieces of anecdotal evidence help to give an apt characterization of the long lived and current Government. First, in the early 1990’s, ExxonMobil preformed a feasibility assessment of Bioko Island that concluded it was possible to spray and eliminate the current mosquito population from the island thereby eradicating the malaria problem. Equatorial Guinea is reported to be home to the greatest concentration of malaria cases involving P. falciparum, the chloroquinine resistant malarial strain that causes cerebral malaria, brain hemorrhaging and death. ExxonMobil also offered to pay for the eradication costs therby benefiting local expat population, as well as the local population. It is rumored that in close door meetings between ExxonMobil and extreme top national officials that the only question that was ever actually pursued was “What will you give me to spray my island?” The island was never sprayed and the mosquitoes still rule the day (and night) in Equatorial Guinea.

The second bit of anecdotal evidence is mainly rumor and unsupported claims said to be factual. It comes from the heavily shark infested blue waters surrounding the island. The current mythology is that the old practice of elimination of dissidents by shooting them on the cliffs of Malabo and throwing their bodies into the waters below gave rise to the large shark populations now in Malabo Bay as an extremely plentiful feeding ground was formed. This makes for a good story and Equatorial Guinea does routinely make the Amnesty Internationals list of Human Rights Violators.

Equatorial Guinea: Politics and the City of Malabo Today

Today, President Mbasogo has been in control of Malabo and the rest of Equatorial Guinea for nearly 30 years. However, a change in leadership may not be very far in the future. It is rumored by island nationals that the President’s colon cancer and HIV is acting up again. While the best healthcare in Europe is being utilized to delay the inevitable, the president is in his 70’s and may be close to exhausting his human faculties. Although Equatorial Guinea appears to be a representative democracy, it is becoming apparent with current rhetoric that an attempt will be made to transition power from the president to one of his sons. What will happen is anyone’s guess but, it would not be surprising to find a relative of the current president in the position of control in the government.

Although the president and family live in the lap of luxury and the majority of the country’s populous live in squalid conditions, the president is viewed as a national hero. In fact, there is only rousing support for current leadership. Why is it so rousing? Well, when any verbal criticism at all of the current government can lead to your personal elimination, these factors help to build nothing but the most verbose and enthusiastic support possible for the current regime. Beyond that, to those without the benefit of satellite television and the internet (which is almost everyone), media and the flow of information is severely curtailed. There is one local station that is governmentally operated and praises the king, (Oops…sorry, err…president) fairly often. There also no international media present or allowed on the Island, not that there’s much happening anyway. With these policies in play and combined with a small, traceable population of only around 30,000 to 40,000 people that is divided along ancient tribal lines, keeping control over the local, relatively unsophisticated and uneducated population would not appear to be of much difficulty. This should make for an easy path to keep control of Equatorial Guinea “in the family”.

The city of Malabo itself, despite its pest control issues, is a rather quiet if not quaint West African city. It is not very dangerous and still dominated near the center of the city by architecture influenced by the Spanish colonization period. A set of antiquated cannons from colonial times act as a centerpiece for the skyline from the water as they face out over the Port and Malabo Bay aiding in the historic feel of the area. Bars and restaurants abound although only a few are fit for expatriate consumption as the others often contribute to food poisoning or worse. The Pizza Place and Banana Bar are the cervezerias of choice with the only clean, non-insect infested hotel accommodations being located in the hotel that plays hosts to the Banana Bar (and luckily the cannons are located adjacent to the hotel). These are all located in the center of town.

From the airport, the major port of entry from Europe and most of Africa, the center of town is not difficult to find as the one major thoroughfare on the island is three miles long and (you guessed it) connects the airport and the town. The only other method of entry to the island is by ferry from EG’s mainland city of Bata. This runs once a week and has all the trappings of an African ferry service. Dilapidated equipment, overcrowding, no safety procedures or equipment and the ride is a time consuming process. A vague specter, reminiscent of the Senegalese ferry disaster, seems to hang over every boat ride. To complicate matters, the waters off of Equatorial Guinea give themselves to unpredictable and violent changes in weather as hurricanes bound for the Caribbean and Southeastern US begin here when warm water currents collide with cooler weather patterns coming down from Mount Rainer in Cameroon or Bioko, EG. If capable, the preferred method of travel would have to be by air.

Other than working, drinking, and short term site seeing, local expat populations have expressed interest in hiking, mountain climbing, and other exploratory activities to pass the time. This has been met with limited success due to the surrounding jungle being filled with mosquitoes, multiple species of poisonous spiders, green mambas and other tougher than average biological barriers. A Frenchman set off on a climbing expedition to the summit of the volcano several weeks ago. If he ever shows up again, we’ll find out how adventure sporting is on EG. Most local expat sentiment is to enjoy the bars and view down by the water or from an elevated patio at the base of the volcano.

Equatorial Guinea: Future Hopes, Possibilities, and the Reality of It All

With only eight years since the discovery and beginning of further exploration and development of offshore oilfields in Equatorial Guinea, little time has passed for EG’s population to become disillusioned to the same degree as some of their other West African counterparts. But, give it time – Nigeria and Cameroon, geographically, are not that far away. Dissention and the “What Do You Have for Me?” mentality seem to originate at the top and cascade ever further downward (the trickle down economic theory was embraced whole heartedly in Western Africa) until completely pervading and permeating the West African society and psyche. Equatorial Guinea is still, metaphorically speaking, on the beginning of the road to future natural resource wealth. As 800,000 barrels of oil are flowing daily out of EG waters with an eventual goal of 1 Million, the hope is that EG will take the proverbial road less traveled for the good of the country and citizenship.

If a word could be used for this small, mostly island, West African nation, it would be “Potential”. Equatorial Guinea could, theoretically, become successful on the order of and by similar development to Singapore. Equatorial Guinea’s largest advantage is its location. The initial wealth afforded to the country from the development of offshore oil reserves and the possession of a deep water port along the West Coast of Africa are the country’s two largest assets. How can these assets be developed beyond a multi-billion dollar GDP for the country to a multi-trillion dollar GDP and the possibility of one of the highest average incomes among the civilian population in the world?With long range governmental planning for populous education, business and infrastructure development, an aggressive campaign to eliminate corruption from the president down (most importantly with the customs service) coupled with the establishment of transparent government and business practices, the only competent and dependable shipping hub in all of West Africa could be established. This would give access and a secure area for both regional management and staging activities for the Sub-Saharan portion of the African continent within close but inaccessible proximity of the mainland. This would be advantageous for oil, telecom, and other multi-national entities that currently base themselves out of Lagos, Nigeria, Doualla, Cameroon or Europe for their African operations.

Unfortunately, this type of development takes foresight and an altruistic view for country and fellow citizen. None of the potential future leaders appear to have the foresight or education comparable to a contemporary like the Emir of Qatar who took a spit of sand in the Gulf of Arabia all the way to international affluence while working within similar parameters. As the younger of the two sons that seem poised to assume leadership from their father races his new Ferrari up and down the only three mile stretch of road in Equatorial Guinea, the other son is disrupting truck shipping into the port demanding tolls be paid so that he can buy a Ferrari of his own. Albert Schweitzer they’re not.

I am now getting ready for my hour of departure to come. Sitting in the terminal built solely for the oil workers that come and go from Equatorial Guinea, I have a sneaking suspicion that ExxonMobil is responsible for the signs that read “Please Don’t Bribe the Customs Officers” behind the counter and not the government. Well, so much for anti-corruption policies being initiated by the EG regulatory bodies. My only other thought before my last three Heineken’s hit me on this warm, humid African night is to wonder if any of my other friends or colleagues went through the regular terminal at the airfield and got robbed at knife point by the customs official there? It happened to a friend of mine in November and is always a possibility in the “uncontrolled” terminal. The robbery was silently supervised by the police/ military official standing by the counter with the assault rifle. Se la vies, EG.