Russians in the Jungle
A Brief Recounting of a Bizarre Trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Gunshots in Virunga. A large naked Russian man. An active volcano. A former Spetsnaz soldier. A massive gorilla.
That’s the overture to my trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo this past November. That was a weird couple of days.
Spetsnaz was sitting in the front seat and the other four of us — three Russians and myself — were squeezed into the back. Spetsnaz turned slowly toward the 16-year-old-looking skinny Rwandan driver and barked, “PAZHALISTA!” The driver flinched. We had to make it to the Congolese border before it closed at 9pm and we were sitting in standstill traffic in Kigali, 4 hours away.
Spetsnaz looked like an older, puffy version of Vladimir Putin. He he had about 15 years and 30 pounds on the Russian president, and somehow had a harder, more bitter face. Everything he said sounded like he was mocking someone, but not in a snide hipster way — it was the type of mocking tone that you might expect to come right before a punch in the gut. He really didn’t seem to like anything or anyone for almost the entire trip. I found out later that he was a former Spetsnaz soldier whose company we had on our trip as the result of a weird set of accidents.
We didn’t make it to the border in time. We stayed the night at a dinky hotel in the border town and tried to pass through in the morning.
The next day we arrived in Goma after hours waiting at the border and our group started to come apart. Spetsnaz was upset when we got to our hotel — for who knows what reason—and he was letting the rest of us know. I was sharing a room with one of the other three Russian men, Sergey. Sergey was a tall man with huge shoulders, a big belly, and skinny-as-a-twig legs. He had a big smile but it was cynical; despite being full of laughs and jokes, he wasn’t jolly: his laughter seemed derisive and mean, not hearty. He sneered at the subpar infrastructure in Goma and took pictures of the poor part of town, laughing at some of the poorly made bicycles and carts that people used.
We had just settled into our room when Spetsnaz came slamming on the door. Sergey answered it and the two exchanged a quick bout of angry Russian shouts—presumably Spetsnaz criticizing Sergey and the rest of the group for some bad planning. They parted ways and Sergey went into the bathroom to start a shower. Within five minutes, Spetsnaz was back banging on the door. I gently announced to the bathroom door that Spetsnaz was back and was upset, thinking that Sergey would instruct me to tell him to come back later. Instead, the door came swinging open and big naked Sergey filled the doorway wearing literally nothing, with the shower water dripping off of him. He marched over to the front door, threw it open to the hallway, and the two angry Russian men snarled and yelled at each other like fighting Russian bears — one in his touristy cargo pants and the other with all his business showing to the hall. Eventually Spetsnaz left with a huff, and Sergey nakedly stomped back to the shower without saying a word.
We split for the night to let things settle down. There was a constant rumble of thunder and lightning over Lake Kivu outside.
On day three we started climbing the volcano. Spetsnaz decided he didn’t need company or protection, so he was a full 300 or more yards ahead the entire time. At one point while we were walking along I stopped to take a rest and heard something off in the jungle to the right: “BOP BOP BOP BOP”. It was kind of distant but was without a doubt the sound of a few rounds shot off by a machine gun. I looked around and realized no one else had heard it, since they were all walking and crunching things under their feet. We were walking through Virunga National Park, which is far on the Eastern border of the DRC, and where the M23 rebels had hidden before and after their assault on Goma in 2014. I’d heard that most of the rebel activity had stopped but that there were still some small pockets of the group roaming around. My eyes locked with one of the park rangers, who had also stopped. I mouthed, “what was that?!” He looked at me for a moment with his own machine gun slung over his shoulder and then mouthed back, “I don’t know” with a shrug. We kept walking.
It started raining while we were climbing so we were drenched, and by the time we got to the top, we were absolutely freezing (kind of ironic, being on top of a volcano). The volcano was other-worldly.
Sergey and I were the last two to fall asleep on top of the volcano. We were standing on the rim of the volcano looking down on one side into the bubbling lava and on the other side at the sprawling city of Goma, which looked unsettlingly vulnerable at the foot of the mountain. Lake Kivu was in the distance behind Goma, laying under thick clouds with lightning pulsing through them. After a few minutes I asked Sergey what time it was. He looked up at the stars and said to me, “Do not think of time. Think of universe.” We didn’t say anything else to each other, just looked around at the universe in silence. He walked along the rim by himself for a while longer before going back to the tent.
The next day we finished the climb and our crew split up: one part stayed for the gorilla trek and the other part — Spetsnaz and one other Russian — went back to Kigali to make sure they didn’t miss their return flight (the risk of which was one of Spetsnaz’s most frequent gripes).
Just before he left the story, though, Spetsnaz revealed one little glimmer of character development. In the middle of a particularly energetic fit of Russian shouting — this time in the office of our guide company — he whipped off what sounded like a scarring blow of Russian mockery and humiliation towards one of our companions. During the tense silence that followed, he turned back towards my direction and must have seen that I looked tense. Without breaking stride he gave me a quick, effortless wink with a slight grin. It was playful and easy, and he tossed it my way without pausing for a second: as soon as he got to his seat he was shouting deep Russian again. For some reason, in that moment, he decided to tell me, “no, there’s nothing to worry about young friend. It’s ok.” And it worked. I was relieved.
With our journey’s antagonist gone, we went for the final leg of the trip: to see the mountain gorillas. I was told that in Rwanda, visiting the gorillas is treated very delicately — you need to be back 8 meters at all times and can’t make any sudden moves. But in the DRC, things are… relaxed. Our guides walked right up to the gorillas and swung their machetes to clear the brush around them to try to give us a better look. We walked up within two or three meters of these massive, beautiful creatures. The only guidance we were given was to look away if they looked at us in the eyes, and not to move if they charged us. This big guy caught my eyes at one point and I felt every organ in my body melt. He could have snapped me in half like the bamboo he was eating without standing up.
We left the gorillas and started a frantic rush back to Kigali to catch our plane. My friends ended up making their flight with 15 minutes to spare. My two coworkers and I returned to Tanzania, and the other Russians flew back to Russia.
I originally wrote this post as an answer to this question on Quora: What is your most bizarre travel experience or travel fail?
