Equator (2006) s01e01 Episode Script
Africa
- We're right on the equator
at 0.0 degrees, according to this
clever gadget.
We're off the coast of West Africa and
about to land on a beach
in Gabon and begin our journey
following the equator across Africa.
Into six feet of water!
Right in the middle of the world!
The equator, zero degrees latitude.
It's a journey of nearly 25,000 miles
through a unique region of the planet,
and countries suffering from war,
poverty, disease, and corruption.
I began my journey in Africa, where I
had to cross a war zone and came face
to face with a killer disease.
Still, it all started rather
promisingly.
At first glance, the capital
Libreville looks pretty prosperous,
even glitzy.
My guide Linel, a local journalist,
told me Libreville,
with its miles of sandy beaches,
nightclubs and casinos
is one of the most expensive cities in
Africa.
The reason Gabon is fairly well off is
its huge oil reserves, which have made
a few people here very rich.
But critics say Gabon's President,
Omar Bongo, has failed to spend the
oil money wisely.
The President has ruled Gabon since
1967, making him Africa's
longest-serving leader,
but he's still very paranoid about how
he's portrayed.
We've been told not to film that
building because it's President
Bongo's Presidential Palace.
But the real reason they don't want
anybody to film it is that they've
spent
of millions of dollars on it and the
architecture is rubbish.
There's a lot of expensive cars in
this car park.
We've got a Land Cruiser here, a
customised Mercedes here,
we've got a Lexus here and this is
just the local supermarket car park!
Linel took me to buy some provisions
as we began our trip across this old
French colony.
Now, where are these?
- From France.
- Oh, that's ridiculous! You're
You're importing food from Europe.
- From Europe, from everywhere because
we're not producing things here.
- Look at this! Produce of Chile.
That's slightly mad to be doing that,
isn't it?
- But when you have oil you can do
anything you want!
- Gabon's oil wealth has encouraged a
flood of imports,
and over the past 30 years, Gabon's
farming industry has slowly collapsed.
We've got some pate - whole goose foie
gras.
Does it get more French? £43.00!
- £43, yes.
That's the salary of a worker, it can
be the salary
- That's a huge sum of money.
- Yeah, it's a huge sum.
- Now hang on, is this Is this
Have we found something that is made
in Gabon?
- This is made in Gabon.
- We've finally found something.
- It's a kind of um, local spice.
- We should support the fledgling
Gabonese agricultural industry.
- Local flavour. Yeah. Yeah.
- I think we should get some of
this
This will be
- The fledgling agricultural industry.
- What else is this?
- I like that Simon, I like that, the
fledgling industry!
- Prices are so high in Libreville
that this supermarket has
to have a man with a shotgun just to
make sure everybody coughs up.
Bonsoir, monsieur.
- Bonsoir.
- Merci!
But the oil reserves are now starting
to run out, and without
much of a farming industry, this
spells serious trouble
for the 1.5 million inhabitants.
Linel took me to a more typical street
market,
just a mile from the supermarket.
These bananas are about they're
about two British pounds.
They're still expensive, I would have
thought
they would be cheaper in a street
market.
- Bananas are expensive.
- But we are in Africa! Surely
- Yeah, we're in Africa but Gabon is
not
These bananas, most of the bananas
come from neighbouring Cameroon.
- Is this the reality of Gabon, or is
the reality of Gabon the big
supermarkets?
- This is the reality of Gabon,
because most of the people,
the majority of the people live in
this kind of conditions.
- There's only one railway line here
and trains run just three times a
week.
If you miss one, it's a two-day wait
for the next, so Linel and I were in a
hurry!
Hopefully, we've made it but we
haven't got much time.
- Vous etes en retard.
- You are late, but exceptionally!
- You are very kind! Thank you very
much.
We're going to be the last passengers
on.
With oil reserves starting to dwindle,
President Bongo has come up with a
plan.
He's decided eco-tourism could be the
new money-earner,
and recently, almost overnight, he
turned 11% of the country into
protected national parks.
It sounded great for Gabon's wildlife,
but what about the people who used to
live off that land?
I headed east along the equator to
find out.
Right now, we're racing towards the
equator,
23, 14, 4 We've just crossed it.
We've just crossed the equator!
As you can see, everybody in the train
is very excited by this event,
everybody's up in arms having
traditional celebrations for the
equatorial crossing(!)
If the President's eco-tourism plan is
to work, he might need
to modernise the railway.
The trains were beginning to show some
wear and tear, and then I saw the
track.
- This bridge is very dangerous,
that's why the train is slowly moving.
- (Is that why you're talking so
quietly?)
- Yes, maybe the noise might
just cause an accident.
- (And the water looks quite deep.)
- Yes, of course.
And I cannot swim.
- Sticking to the equator was never
going to be easy.
The train headed north, so we had to
hire cars to carry on towards the
village of Makougue.
But even 4x4s struggle on these roads,
especially after it's rained.
- The road is really, really bad - we
cannot go on in the car,
we will have to stop and walk.
- I think it'll be all right, we
should be able to get out of there.
These cars don't have winches on them,
so if one gets stuck,
we can't pull the other one out.
The villagers in Makougue lived off
the land until last year, when the
president turned the surrounding
area into a national park and stopped
people hunting animals
as part of his eco-tourism plan.
Because the local wildlife is now
protected, the villagers have to find
a new way of earning a living,
in this case putting on traditional
dances for tourists.
The Chief and his village are making
the best of it.
Enchante Simon.
- Simon.
TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:
They banned us from killing animals in
the forest.
So we've stopped hunting and allowed
tourists to come and visit us.
We need you to give us publicity.
You should say that tourists are
welcome in Makougue.
They must come here.
SINGING AND DRUMMING
- I'd only been travelling along the
equator for a week, and knew
it was never going to be easy.
But the next morning, I discovered it
was about to get even harder.
We have a bit of a problem with our
vehicles.
Last night, the owner of the cars
announced
that we would have to pay over a
£1,000, so nearly $2,000,
if we wanted the cars to stay with us.
It's basically bribery.
The drivers have been told they've got
to go back to Libreville,
and the owner of the cars just seems
quite happy just to abandon us,
completely abandon us, in the
rainforest.
Well, the drivers are nice guys, but
their bosses are complete thieving
- BEEP!
- I mean, what a bunch of
- BEEP!
- I wouldn't pay them £1,000 - $2,000!
Absolutely outrageous!
We'd been abandoned in a remote area
under potential threat from the deadly
Ebola virus.
It can spread to humans from apes, and
has killed a third of the world's
gorillas in the past decade.
Ebola victims can bleed from every
orifice until they die.
Something I was hoping to avoid.
You've gone immediately for the very
lightest one!
Finally we made it out of the jungle.
Our rescuers ran an ape research
centre monitoring the local gorilla
population.
This is a gorilla's head, this is a
chimpanzee.
- It's not good touching that.
- Oh, sorry, for me or for them?
- Ebola!
- So it's not good for me to touch it
because of Ebola.
- Right.
- Great(!)
Luckily, for emergencies like Ebola, I
have my special disinfectant.
- He was joking. He was joking.
- I'm not taking a chance, you can't
joke about Ebola!
After trekking for miles through the
lush rainforest, all I wanted to do
was cool off.
Bye-bye!
In the end, it wasn't Ebola that
stopped me in my tracks.
Where we were planning to go next, the
um,
Start again, shall I? My brain's not
working. I feel so rough.
After I vomited blood, Linel called in
a doctor.
What do you think it is?
- Ermalaria.
- It's malaria,
according to him.
- He thinks it's malaria?
I keep getting that rush of saliva
into my mouth that you get when you're
about to vomit.
It's horrible.
- HE SIGHS
- So much for travelling round the
equator.
After treatment, I was told to rest
until I was strong enough to head
to my next stop, the Democratic
Republic of Congo,
one of the most dangerous countries on
the planet.
First we had to fly south of the
equator,
to the capital Kinshasa, to clear
immigration.
I'm just getting ready to fly up north
into the equatorial bit of DRC,
going to a town called Mbandaka,
but, luckily,
we're not going in this plane, we're
going in this nice shiny one.
We're off up the River Congo.
On our right, we've got the Democratic
Republic of Congo and on the left is
Congo Brazzaville.
The equator crosses part of Congo
Brazzaville, but local villagers blame
foreigners
for recent Ebola outbreaks, and we
were told that if we landed there, we
might be attacked and killed.
So instead we carried on along the
equator to the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
It's a country the size of Western
Europe.
A terrible war here has led to at
least four million deaths since 1998.
Well, the heat certainly would suggest
that we're back on the Equator.
Let's see what the technology says
Just got to get a signal first of all.
Actually, when you've been away from
it for a short while,
you start to forget just how just
how hot it is - absolutely scorching!
There are very few cars on the roads
of the Congo,
but my guide Emery was taking me to a
village on the equator that had
suffered during Congo's civil war.
I wanted to see what life was like in
the aftermath
of the deadliest conflict on the
planet since World War Two.
As we drove east towards the village,
we passed by
a once-famous botanical garden.
Many of the trees have been cut
down, and I soon discovered why.
How far have you had to carry this?
- EMERY TRANSLATES
About four kilometres so far.
- Nogozi seemed relieved to stop for a
chat.
- Merci beaucoup.
- It was heavy for me.
It was heavy for me.
Can I ask you a cheeky question?
How old are you?
- 68. I would look much younger if I
hadn't had to work so hard
It's weakened me.
- How much money do you get for the
wood that you've been carrying?
- 400 to 500 francs a day.
400 francs is not a lot.
- 42p.
- You can't buy enough to eat with 400
francs.
- Merci, monsieur, merci.
To reach the village of Ngamba
Kinshasa,
we had to travel on the Congo River,
the second longest in Africa.
With just 300 miles of paved road in
this vast country,
the river is one of the few ways of
getting around.
The mighty Congo River.
I thought the locals bathing by the
river were pleased to see us,
until their chant was translated
If the Congolese want to trade or
travel,
they have to go from town to town on
huge barges that moor by the riverbank
until they have a full load.
Have you travelled on a barge up and
down the river?
- Of course, many times.
- And how long have you had to wait
when you're
on the barge until it leaves?
- Um
Minimum is a month.
- A month?!
- Maximum is three months.
The conditions are terrible, you can
have 400, 500 people, two toilets.
- The Congo has a tragic history.
Up to 10 million people died under
Belgian colonial rule.
After independence from Belgium the
dictator Mobutu then plundered Congo's
resources.
Villages like Nganda Kinshasa have
suffered further in recent violent
conflicts.
But the fighting has now stopped in
this part of the country.
The village teacher Jose hasn't been
paid for months.
The Congo is fertile enough to feed
all of Africa and provide
power for much of the continent, but
you wouldn't know it here.
How many children will be in this
room, in the church, when it is
operating as a school?
- About 60.
- 60 children.
- Yes.
- There's nothing to write on, no
paper?
- They write on paper, put it on their
legs, the paper.
- They write on their legs?
- Yes.
- What do you need?
You need a blackboard, you need books,
you need chalk.
- We need everything - blackboards
and documents like books.
Yeah, like books, because you see, the
school is broken easily
and now we study in the church,
but we mix all pupils in the same
housein the same church.
We put third form aside and second
form in another side and so on.
- Average male life expectancy in the
Democratic Republic of Congo is just
42 years.
Jose invited Emery and me to meet his
family.
He is raising three children of his
own, as well as three children
of family members who have died
from malaria and other diseases.
So this is actually your nephew?
- Yes, my nephew, yes.
- Do you feel that you've got a lot of
responsibility?
- I can't refuse, because they are all
of them, our family.
- Jose's one-year-old son Johnson
has malaria.
The reality of life in post-war Congo
is that
six out of ten children won't live to
see their fifth birthday.
The west of the country is now
relatively peaceful.
But I was heading to the east, where
it isn't
So we're now heading east along the
equator.
We're going in the right direction and
we're going quickly
so our journey will speed up a little
bit.
This is our direction of travel,
the pink line here,
and the equator line is just slightly
to the side.
Hitching a ride into a conflict zone
isn't that easy.
One of the few people flying there is
Dan, a missionary from Colorado.
It's a cliche really. Do you think
you're doing God's work here?
Do you feel that this is your calling?
- Oh, yeah, definitely. If I didn't,
there'd be no reason to be here.
I'm not getting paid enough to do
this.
- We're heading east now, I mean we're
going in that direction.
- Well, on the east they just have
these continual conflicts.
You know, they have Ugandans coming
over,
you have the Hutus and the Tutsis
fighting it out.
You have the cattle people and the
farmers fighting for their land,
andit's just a lot of anarchy over
there.
- Dan was taking us to the safety
of the United Nations main base, just
north of the equator.
The UN has thousands of soldiers here,
right at the heart of the conflict.
We've now just landed safely in the
east of DRC in Bunia.
So for all of us, it's slightly
nerve-racking being here
because of the threat of military
activity,
I suppose, what I really mean is the
threat of or risk of any of us getting
shot!
The largest UN peacekeeping force in
the world is here trying to disarm
powerful local militias
and prevent the country sliding back
into a massive civil war.
UN forces are also training
the Congolese army, but it still has a
terrible reputation.
So those were Congolese army soldiers.
- We are in the middle of the town, so
there are so many people - no reason
to be afraid,
but if we met them in the bush, I
wouldn't be as happy as I am now.
- Why?
- Because it's common knowledge that
the Congolese army,
some of them at least,
do, errob the population.
- Behind the conflict in the DRC are
some of Africa's richest deposits of
diamonds and gold.
I wanted to get to a mine, to see what
so much of the killing has been about,
but with outbreaks of local fighting,
the only one safe enough to visit was
just north of the equator,
and even then we needed an armed UN
escort.
I'm trying to get to one of the big
goldmines in this area,
but all the roads are blocked so we're
going to travel by helicopter,
and the Pakistani army has kindly
arranged for us to travel on this one.
At the moment, we're not actually
going anywhere - they're just pressing
buttons and
playing with some of the electrical
connections.
- We make delay - our radio is failure
- ten minutes I will try to repair.
- Good luck.
A small problem, hopefully, Inshallah.
And then we'll be on our way.
Thankfully, the chopper was repaired
and we were soon safely on our way to
a goldmine in an area
that changed hands five times during
intensive fighting between warring
factions.
The UN now takes no chances here.
Soldiers guarding the landing strip,
waiting for us to come down.
During the fighting that took place in
this area, at least 2,000 civilians
were killed.
The fighting was about control of this
mine.
Today, it's safe enough for locals to
work here again.
For 12 hours a day, seven days a week,
men dig through
the mud with their bare hands, hoping
to strike it lucky.
This is really what the conflict in
the Congo has been all about,
the natural wealth of the country.
The mine is now under the control of
one of the militias,
which charges locals a fee just to dig
here.
And if they find any gold, the militia
takes a cut.
So we need to keep our eyes open on
here.
- TRANSLATION:
- Gold is mixed with mud.
We use a bucket with holes in the
bottom to get rid of the mud, and keep
the stones.
We purify it over this waterbed, which
is padded with carpet, on which the
gold stays.
We then empty the carpet in clean
water to get the gold.
- Do you think the gold has been
a benefit to this area, or has it been
a bit of a curse?
- It's really a blessing, as there's
no other work for us except digging
this gold.
If it weren't here, our suffering
would be unbearable.
For us, it's a blessing.
- But gold, which fuelled the war,
has definitely been a mixed blessing
for the Congo.
The mine provides work for locals but
they earn a pittance, and it's not
just men who dig here.
You've got kids working here!
Children just behind us here.
Do you work in the mine?
- Oui.
- Yes.
- How long have you been working here?
- Deux ans.
- Two years.
- That's quite a long time. How old
are you?
- 13.
- And you how old are you?
- Douze.
- 12.
- And you?
- Dix ans.
- 10.
- During the last war, the Congolese
people had to put up with seven
different foreign armies invading
their land, killing them and
plundering their natural resources.
Now there are 17,000 UN soldiers here
not just as peacekeepers,
but peace-enforcers,
authorised to fight warring factions
and militias that refuse to disarm.
Dozens of UN soldiers have been killed
in the Congo, and they take no chances
when out on patrol.
We're now travelling in the back of a
Pakistani armoured personnel
carrier and they're really just trying
to show the local population
that they're here and they have a lot
of force with them, so they've got no
reason to be subtle.
Apart from deaths caused by warring
foreign armies, much of the
slaughter in the DRC has been the
result of local tribal conflicts.
It was shocking to discover how often
ethnic groups here
have been massacring each other
in battles between those who want land
for crops,
and those who want it for cattle.
50,000 died in this district.
And in this village, called Nizi,
locals from the Hema tribe
said they had been attacked by the
nearby Lendu tribe.
This gentleman here is the village
chief
and he's just taking usit sounds as
though he's taking us to see a mass
grave, actually.
- We buried 114 people here.
It's mostly women and children in
there.
They came very early in the morning
with machetes.
They came from where the Lendu tribes
are
and just massacred people in the
village.
- What do you think they were trying
to achieve?
- Nizi was well known. We were a
prosperous village.
People were doing well, that was why
they came here.
- Survivors here bear the scars.
This man's whole family was
slaughtered. He was left for dead.
You can see the machete mark on
his hands, look at all the scarring
My God!
- TRANSLATION: During the attack, they
tried to kill me by hacking at me with
a machete.
- How many members of your family did
you lose?
- My wife and family were all killed.
And I suffer - I am alone.
All I live in is a hut.
They took all the people who could
have helped me.
This is the life that I have been left
with.
- But there is hope.
The UN have upped their presence here
to try and keep the peace
in the run-up to the country's first
democratic elections in over 40 years.
A whole generation of Congolese were
about to get their first taste of
democracy.
So, this is the rather glamorous
hotel bar -
shall we get a drink?
- Yes, let's go.
- Tell us what this is, Emery.
- This is my voter registration card,
it allows me to vote during the
elections.
- Are you excited about this?
- I'll very soon turn 30,
and I've never been to any ballot box.
- You've never voted?
- Never voted, and I think that these
people that we're going to vote are
going to be accountable and they're
going to do the will of the people.
So I'd better keep it.
- Keep it safe! Keep it safe.
- Until the D-day arrives.
- Cheers.
- So, here's to Simon.
Thank you as well for travelling
across the Congo and good luck for the
rest.
- Thank you, mate. Thank you.
I left Emery and the war-torn DRC, and
continued along the equator
towards the relative safety of
Southern Uganda.
We've just arrived in Uganda
and over here is Bart.
Bart, come and say hello!
- Hi, how you doing? Welcome!
- Thank you very much.
- It's nice to see you, good.
- Actually, at first glance Uganda
looks a lot nicer than
the Congo where we've just come from -
the shops are open, people are out and
about
- HORNS BEEPING
- ..the traffic is pretty crazy.
Look at this Look, arrgh. !
This is the first time in many years
I've enjoyed been in a traffic jam
because in the Congo the only vehicles
were really United Nations vehicles
or cars belonging to aid agencies -
here in Uganda it's just people
moving around, it's normal life.
We left the capital, Kampala, which is
just north of the equator,
and made our way back to the magical
line.
- Three,
twoone
andzero!
- Just about round here! Shake my
hand!
- We've just made it to the centre of
the world!
- Before we get run over, let's get
over here!
In Uganda, the equator seemed to
operate as a business opportunity.
I think we should have the experiment,
really.
An enterprising man had set up a
demonstration of one of the great
myths about the equator - that it can
affect how water goes down a plug
hole.
On the north side of the equator, the
water went clockwise,
and on the other side, it appeared to
flow anticlockwise.
And sure enough on the equator line
itself, it went straight down the
hole!
Although it does look impressive, I'm
not entirely convinced.
Whatever my doubts, I was still
awarded a certificate of authenticity.
Thank you.
I've officially crossed the equator! I
haven't just crossed it and
I've been awarded this geographic
certificate by the equator Club!
We left the monument and headed
further along the equator line,
towards the main source of the Nile
River.
In Uganda, the equator runs through
Lake Victoria, the largest tropical
lake in the world.
And the water from here is the
starting point for the 4,184 mile long
river.
It will take about three months,
apparently, for the stick to travel
all the way down the Nile
and reach Egypt and then come out into
the Mediterranean.
Bart had arranged for us to go out on
part of the Nile known as Rafter's
Paradise.
Initially, it didn't look too
threatening.
Well, here it looks OK.
But we know it's not going to be all
like this, don't we?
- Here you go, I am making it tight.
If you can't breathe, it means you're
not gonna drown, OK?
- What are you doing?
- I am trying to learn.
- He's learning how to paddle.
- Practising.
- Yeah, he's practising.
- You need to worry more about this -
"I'm over here, I'm drowning."
- Team equator!
THEY CHEER
- As we began celebrating, none of us
noticed Bart
drifting down the river
However, Rafter's Paradise is under
threat.
The Ugandan government plans to build
a massive hydro-electric dam here.
They already have two dams on the
Nile,
and Egypt downstream has threatened
dire consequences if Uganda further
interferes with the flow of the river.
But Uganda wants to use the Nile to
create more power,
and they are the ones who control the
source, as we discovered
when Bart and I were shown round one
of the dams.
Do you have the power to cut off the
water here?
- We can do it, but not the power,
because
it's an agreement, whatever, but you
can cut off the water if you want.
- So if you wanted to, you could turn
off the taps on the Nile.
- Yeah, you can, but why would you do
it?
- Back in the car, Bart was still
upset about his unscheduled swim
earlier in the day.
What did you say then, Bart?
- I'm still being troubled
bothered by the water which entered my
nostrils
when I fell into the rapids.
- Do you think you might have suffered
some long-term damage?
- Yeah!
- Do you need urgent medical
attention?
- Nah.
- Are you sure?
- Africans don't need much
medicalurgent medical attention
like you do.
How can you suffer from a bout of
malaria?!
I've had malaria about 50 times and
I'm fine.
- This is from a man who's been
complaining for the past
eight hours about the fact that he got
some water in his nostrils!
- Water and malaria are different
things.
- Well, which is more severe?
- You can fight malaria, you can't
fight water!
- We headed east again, with a short
stop to look for some wildlife.
Just heard this crashing in the trees
and now we're
We're realising there's monkeys all
around us, but, of course,
since we've tried to film them the
little buggers disappear.
Banana!
The producer has just thrust a banana
into my hand - somehow I'm
supposed to attract these monkeys out
of the trees with one banana.
Come on, monkeys!
In the end, the banana actually
worked!
What's great about travelling around
the equator - you're never far from
wildlife.
Soon I was surrounded by dozens of
vervet monkeys.
They don't like being far from a tree
because of predators
..but visitors with bananas are just
too tempting.
So this is like the equivalent of
feeding the ducks in England.
Come and bring some bananas and feed
the monkeys!
What have you got? New Vision?
I'll have the Red Pepper, please.
This paper just shows immediately two
of the big problems
in Africa at the moment -
but particularly in East Africa.
Corruption - "A corrupt official cried
before me."
And Museveni, that's the President
here, to rule for life!
This is President Museveni who was
seen as the great hero of the
independence movement
and once said that the big problem
with African leaders
is that they don't want to give up
power and now he's become what he
always said he wouldn't.
Museveni's held power for 20 years.
He's failed to stop a devastating
conflict in
the north of the country, but he 's
had some success tackling HIV/AIDS.
I was shocked to see just how many
coffins are on sale in every town,
but things are getting better - a
massive public awareness campaign has
had a dramatic effect.
- Everybody in this country knows
about AIDS and the dangers -
you walk into any of these shops and
ask for a condom, you'll be shocked
- you'll find everyone has a condom.
- And is that Is that a major
change?
- In 1988 the
the level of the growth at the rate at
which AIDS was developing was 35%.
- 35%?!
- 35%, and today Uganda has been able
to reduce the level,
the rate of growth of AIDS from 35% to
currently 6%.
- That's quite a unique achievement
really.
- I lost my sister to AIDS, and she
died and
and today I would find it difficult
for my younger sister to die
out of ignorance because they know,
they know the dangers.
- My next stop on the equator line was
Kenya, one of Africa's major tourist
destinations.
This was meant to be a fairly relaxing
stop before I finished my journey in
war-torn Somalia,
but on a trip like this, of course,
nothing goes to plan.
Travel the world, they said,
meet interesting people
push your trolley for miles across the
hot tarmac.
It's all right, Brian, don't help,
it's OK.
I'll do it on my own, no problem!
My Kenyan guide, Michael, wanted to
take me to a village famous
for its traditional circumcisers.
For boys aged around 12, it's part of
becoming a man.
But as we approached the village,
there was chaos on the streets.
We just saw a lot of activity by the
side of the road,
so we've just stopped, Michael do you
know what's going on?
- Yeah, it's bullfighting.
They're on their way for a
bullfighting session.
- And is this why everybody's
gathering over here?
- Yes.
- Let's go and have a look.
- Yeah, OK.
Basically, what they do now is they
are prepping the bulls,
preparing them, you know, psyching
them up.
- There's a pretty fearsome-looking
bull in there.
Local tradition means each bullfight
is attended by people dressed in
animal skins or as animal spirits.
- Follow me!
Follow me!
- I'm following a man dressed up as
a woman wearing a gorilla outfit
towards two fighting bulls.
- Come! Come!
- How do you decide who wins?
- Yeah?
- How do you know who wins Who
wins?
- When When one of them goes
faster.
- So when one bull races off.
- Yeah.
- Oh, right.
Oh! And there they go, whoa!
I think the black and white bull
has won
and now everybody's celebrating around
it.
Presumably, this is the owner of the
winner - he looks very happy!
He's got the strongest bull.
Congratulations! Well done!
- Very Very, very good, I am happy!
- Do you win a lot of money, oh, be
careful!
- The winner gets quite a lot.
And even the loser gets something
small.
In the old days, a winner would be
given a sheep, and the loser, a
cockerel.
- Amid all the chaos, I was on the
lookout for
the circumcisers I was supposed to be
meeting.
See that guy over there moving through
the crowd?
He's a circumciser.
Would you trust him with your todger?
I wouldn't!
As the bulls became more aggressive, I
realised that bullfighting in
Kenya is dangerous for the crowd
as well as for the animals.
What's happened here?
- He's broken his leg.
- I don't know how we're going to get
him in!
Oh, dear.
Michael volunteered our car as a
makeshift ambulance.
OK, so we're now
I think we are now going to the
hospital.
We've got a bloke who's fractured his
leg. Are you his cousin?
- Yeah.
- Cousin, OK, and we've got
two circumcisers here as well.
I'm a bit scared to be in the back
with you.
Don't go practising on me, please!
We were the only ones who had a
vehicle,
which is why we've brought Magnus to
the hospital.
He's the son of, actually, the son of
the Chairman of
the Bullfighting Association, so it's
a little bit ironic, really.
Despite appearances, Magnus was fine a
few days later.
With the hospital taking good care of
him, I had a chat with Thomas the
circumciser.
That looks really painful!
- TRANSLATION
That's how he becomes a man. He can
also sit with the other men.
We can circumcise around 100 boys in
an hour.
- You can circumcise 100 boys in an
hour!
Do they mind you working so quickly?
I mean, don't they want you to take
your time?
I mean, that's sort of
that sort of speed?
- It's a must. You can become crazy.
- What? What do you mean you can
becomeyou can become crazy?
- There is normally frantic singing
that gets into your head.
You go into a frenzy and just continue
to cut, cut, cut!
- By this point, I'd heard enough.
The next day, and another early start
for Michael and me, as we headed to
Lake Nakuru.
This national park is famous for being
"the most fabulous bird
"spectacle in the world," and it
didn't disappoint.
Steve, our guard, the ranger, has
allowed us to get out.
Can you see the hyenas over here?
It's just an amazing sight,
it leaves me slightly
slightly lost for words almost,
it's so beautiful.
- Like a plantation of flowers, you
see.
- That's a nice one - I like that.
How many do you think there are here
now?
- I can say there are about
about one million.
- About one million.
- About one million.
- But the flamingos here at Lake
Nakuru are threatened by bird flu,
which has already struck in a number
of African countries, including
neighbouring Sudan.
- So far we have not detected any bird
flu in this park,
and we are very much monitoring them.
- How are you monitoring them, in what
way?
- By daily patrol, coming around and
if we found any
Any dead, we take it
We don't take it, we call the
veterinary department, but so far we
haven't had cases at all.
- I imagine, if you did get
bird flu in the population here, it
could be devastating.
- Yeah, really devastating.
- But not all the animals here are
quite as charming as the flamingos.
Well, this one doesn't seem to be
going away,
I hate to mention this, but he looks a
little bit excited as well.
Oh, dear.
Yes, he is quite excited.
Put it away!
I mean, we don't want to have to watch
that, it's half past nine in the
morning!
My God, come up! Come up, there's a
rhino!
They've been trying to secure all of
them from poachers
so they've built an electric fence all
the way around the park.
It's the only park in Africa which is
enclosed in that way -
it means that animals like this
huge beastie are well protected.
The solar-powered electric fence
runs for 74km and encloses the whole
park,
protecting hundreds of species from
gangs of poachers who still operate in
Kenya.
This is just a spectacular view.
It's just Just awe-inspiring,
really.
There's a giraffe just out for a
stroll.
People in the park are saying that
their great problem now is
as the population of Kenya increases,
who uses the land?
Is the land here in Kenya for the
wildlife in the park that we
see here, or is it for the people in
the city just over to our left?
Nakuru is only 4km from the park and
is home to nearly 300,000 people.
We've just had to leap out of the car
because we've got to get
a new one of these, a sort of adaptor
for the cameras.
Now this is Nakuru, this is the town,
you can see how many
people are living here - it's quite
chaotic.
- Where are you going?
- Well, what is interesting about this
place is how busy
the town is now, and how close it is
to the park, to the wildlife park.
- Don't touch me now!
- He's threatening us now.
He's a bitHe's a bit intoxicated.
Off we go. Poachers and pollution are
a constant threat to Kenya's parks.
But outside the parks there are still
wildlife surprises.
Can you just slow down for a second?
All the zeros - we've just crossed the
equator line again,
but this time I don't think we are
going to stop.
Stop! Stop! Stop!
In Britain, if you take a drive out
into the country
and go down a dusty road you're lucky
if you see a fox -
here in Kenya you get to see
elephants!
The further east you go in Kenya,
the more people you see chewing miraa
-
a natural stimulant derived from a
shrub that flourishes here.
Miraa is so popular it has become one
of Kenya's chief exports,
even ahead of coffee.
I came to meet a local farmer who
grows miraa right on the equator.
- Simon.
- Yea, I'm Simon - my name also.
I'm Simon as well then, that will make
things less complicated.
We'll just leap up into the tree.
- Yes, and then you start harvesting
now from all the branches now.
- Do you harvest it by hand?
- It's just harvested by hand.
- So you are just plucking them off.
- Yes.
- So here we go this is miraa, they
call it here in Kenya -
in Somalia this is known as khat.
You just chew this?
- You started chewing, yeah. It's very
sweet, it's not nasty.
- How much will I have to chew for it
to have an effect on me?
- Oh, just a bundle, a small bundle.
- As much as that?
- Yeah! Lots of it, you must eat a
bigger bundle.
- I'm not sure we've got enough time
to chew all that!
Miraa has been grown for centuries in
this part of Kenya, and has become
part of local traditions.
- If you want to marry my daughter,
I'll let you bring this one.
I will not give you my daughter before
you bring
as the first dowry to open the speech.
- So I
If I want to marry your daughter, I
need to bring a lot of miraa.
- Not so much, just a small bundle
like that one.
- Come on your daughter must be worth
more than that!
- No, just to open the negotiation.
- Open the negotiations, right, OK.
Then other things follow later.
What else will you expect?
- That's a ram, five cows.
- Five cows!
- Yes!
Simon, you are striking a hard
bargain, I haven't even met your
daughter!
- But there is a serious downside to
the drug.
Regular use of miraa can lead to
insomnia and anxiety.
Often, it can make people feel more
irritable, and even violent.
You can see everybody's got They've
got miraa to sell, basically.
- Yeah.
- There's a slight edge here, because
you can sense that people
feel a little bit uncertain about
whether they should be filmed holding,
what in many countries,
is a drug.
Miraa passes through this market on
the way to Somalia,
where local warlords control the
lucrative trade.
So we're now being told we should get
out quite quickly.
We've been told we should leave the
market. So I'm going to go that way
and you're going to follow.
Kenyans chew miraa occasionally, but I
was due to head for chaotic
Somalia the next day, where most men
chew it incessantly.
The drug has helped to destroy the
country.
We've just had some bad news this
morning - the equator line runs
through southern Somalia
and our plan was to travel across
Somalia and then get to the coast,
where we would finish our journey
across Africa,
but there's been an outbreak of quite
serious heavy fighting in
Somalia, just in the last few days.
So I decided to fly as close as I
could to the border between Somalia
and Kenya.
Somalia has no proper government, and
years of fighting between
rival warlords has forced Somalis to
flee into the Kenyan desert.
Smack bang on the equator lie the
Dadaab refugee camps.
We're now going to try and find some
of the new arrivals in the camp.
Because of the situation in Somalia
now, there's been fighting there very
recently,
people have been coming into the camp
just even in the last few days.
I passed a weary group who had just
made the long trek to the camp
and were still waiting to be processed
by UN workers.
Where did you come from, and why did
you come to the camp?
- I came from Mogadishu because the
fighting was so bad.
- Are your children here with you?
- I was forced to leave two of them in
Mogadishu.
- Do you know what's happened to them?
Have you been able to make any contact
with them?
- No, I lost them in the attack.
- The group walked for 20 days through
the desert to reach the camp.
After their food ran out, they
survived on rainwater.
People have forgotten about the chaos,
the crisis in Somalia.
You look into their faces, and you
just realise that they're hoping and
waiting
for the rest of the world to come and
give them some assistance.
This camp was opened 25 years ago.
For the people who arrived in the
early years this is
the only life they know.
Fatima, who is now 23, has been here
since she was six.
When you think of the future, do you
feel positive or negative about the
future?
- I am always positive about my
future, always positive.
- Do you think you will go home to
Somalia?
Would you like to go home to Somalia?
- No, I will not. For that one I
will never go back to Somalia.
- Why not?
- Will never.
- Why not?
- Because I know the problems I faced,
I know more people have been
killed there. Even if there is peace,
better I stay in Kenya and integrate
with these people.
- But the refugees cannot integrate
with the Kenyan population, because
the Kenyan government won't let them
go more than 20km outside the camp.
I can travel anywhere in the world.
I have this magical thing called
a British passport and it means I can
just travel around.
Are you're confined here in this, it's
almost like a prison,
it sounds like, does it feel like a
prison?
- We say the "open prison", that's
what we normally tell people.
- What would happen to you if you just
kept on walking,
if you wanted or tried to go to
Nairobi or a local town?
- You can't go to Nairobi or even the
nearest, 90 kilometre town,
which is called Carisa - because to go
there you have to use
a vehicle and in between Carisa and
here there is police patrolling.
They will stop the vehicle they will
ask everybody, "ID card".
We don't have that ID card - we are
refugees.
- Fatima was knowledgeable and
well-educated thanks to the staff who
run the refugee camp.
And there were many more like her.
It was depressing to see them all
stuck-out in the middle of the desert.
Thanks to an accident of birth,
I was lucky enough to be able to
leave, and continue my journey around
the world.
So here we are - 00.00.000.
Right on the equator now - the line
runs "thattaway".
This is the end of my journey across
African now
and my next stop is Indonesia.
And I'll walk all the bloody way!
Join me next week when my journey
around the equator
takes me across Indonesia.
at 0.0 degrees, according to this
clever gadget.
We're off the coast of West Africa and
about to land on a beach
in Gabon and begin our journey
following the equator across Africa.
Into six feet of water!
Right in the middle of the world!
The equator, zero degrees latitude.
It's a journey of nearly 25,000 miles
through a unique region of the planet,
and countries suffering from war,
poverty, disease, and corruption.
I began my journey in Africa, where I
had to cross a war zone and came face
to face with a killer disease.
Still, it all started rather
promisingly.
At first glance, the capital
Libreville looks pretty prosperous,
even glitzy.
My guide Linel, a local journalist,
told me Libreville,
with its miles of sandy beaches,
nightclubs and casinos
is one of the most expensive cities in
Africa.
The reason Gabon is fairly well off is
its huge oil reserves, which have made
a few people here very rich.
But critics say Gabon's President,
Omar Bongo, has failed to spend the
oil money wisely.
The President has ruled Gabon since
1967, making him Africa's
longest-serving leader,
but he's still very paranoid about how
he's portrayed.
We've been told not to film that
building because it's President
Bongo's Presidential Palace.
But the real reason they don't want
anybody to film it is that they've
spent
of millions of dollars on it and the
architecture is rubbish.
There's a lot of expensive cars in
this car park.
We've got a Land Cruiser here, a
customised Mercedes here,
we've got a Lexus here and this is
just the local supermarket car park!
Linel took me to buy some provisions
as we began our trip across this old
French colony.
Now, where are these?
- From France.
- Oh, that's ridiculous! You're
You're importing food from Europe.
- From Europe, from everywhere because
we're not producing things here.
- Look at this! Produce of Chile.
That's slightly mad to be doing that,
isn't it?
- But when you have oil you can do
anything you want!
- Gabon's oil wealth has encouraged a
flood of imports,
and over the past 30 years, Gabon's
farming industry has slowly collapsed.
We've got some pate - whole goose foie
gras.
Does it get more French? £43.00!
- £43, yes.
That's the salary of a worker, it can
be the salary
- That's a huge sum of money.
- Yeah, it's a huge sum.
- Now hang on, is this Is this
Have we found something that is made
in Gabon?
- This is made in Gabon.
- We've finally found something.
- It's a kind of um, local spice.
- We should support the fledgling
Gabonese agricultural industry.
- Local flavour. Yeah. Yeah.
- I think we should get some of
this
This will be
- The fledgling agricultural industry.
- What else is this?
- I like that Simon, I like that, the
fledgling industry!
- Prices are so high in Libreville
that this supermarket has
to have a man with a shotgun just to
make sure everybody coughs up.
Bonsoir, monsieur.
- Bonsoir.
- Merci!
But the oil reserves are now starting
to run out, and without
much of a farming industry, this
spells serious trouble
for the 1.5 million inhabitants.
Linel took me to a more typical street
market,
just a mile from the supermarket.
These bananas are about they're
about two British pounds.
They're still expensive, I would have
thought
they would be cheaper in a street
market.
- Bananas are expensive.
- But we are in Africa! Surely
- Yeah, we're in Africa but Gabon is
not
These bananas, most of the bananas
come from neighbouring Cameroon.
- Is this the reality of Gabon, or is
the reality of Gabon the big
supermarkets?
- This is the reality of Gabon,
because most of the people,
the majority of the people live in
this kind of conditions.
- There's only one railway line here
and trains run just three times a
week.
If you miss one, it's a two-day wait
for the next, so Linel and I were in a
hurry!
Hopefully, we've made it but we
haven't got much time.
- Vous etes en retard.
- You are late, but exceptionally!
- You are very kind! Thank you very
much.
We're going to be the last passengers
on.
With oil reserves starting to dwindle,
President Bongo has come up with a
plan.
He's decided eco-tourism could be the
new money-earner,
and recently, almost overnight, he
turned 11% of the country into
protected national parks.
It sounded great for Gabon's wildlife,
but what about the people who used to
live off that land?
I headed east along the equator to
find out.
Right now, we're racing towards the
equator,
23, 14, 4 We've just crossed it.
We've just crossed the equator!
As you can see, everybody in the train
is very excited by this event,
everybody's up in arms having
traditional celebrations for the
equatorial crossing(!)
If the President's eco-tourism plan is
to work, he might need
to modernise the railway.
The trains were beginning to show some
wear and tear, and then I saw the
track.
- This bridge is very dangerous,
that's why the train is slowly moving.
- (Is that why you're talking so
quietly?)
- Yes, maybe the noise might
just cause an accident.
- (And the water looks quite deep.)
- Yes, of course.
And I cannot swim.
- Sticking to the equator was never
going to be easy.
The train headed north, so we had to
hire cars to carry on towards the
village of Makougue.
But even 4x4s struggle on these roads,
especially after it's rained.
- The road is really, really bad - we
cannot go on in the car,
we will have to stop and walk.
- I think it'll be all right, we
should be able to get out of there.
These cars don't have winches on them,
so if one gets stuck,
we can't pull the other one out.
The villagers in Makougue lived off
the land until last year, when the
president turned the surrounding
area into a national park and stopped
people hunting animals
as part of his eco-tourism plan.
Because the local wildlife is now
protected, the villagers have to find
a new way of earning a living,
in this case putting on traditional
dances for tourists.
The Chief and his village are making
the best of it.
Enchante Simon.
- Simon.
TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:
They banned us from killing animals in
the forest.
So we've stopped hunting and allowed
tourists to come and visit us.
We need you to give us publicity.
You should say that tourists are
welcome in Makougue.
They must come here.
SINGING AND DRUMMING
- I'd only been travelling along the
equator for a week, and knew
it was never going to be easy.
But the next morning, I discovered it
was about to get even harder.
We have a bit of a problem with our
vehicles.
Last night, the owner of the cars
announced
that we would have to pay over a
£1,000, so nearly $2,000,
if we wanted the cars to stay with us.
It's basically bribery.
The drivers have been told they've got
to go back to Libreville,
and the owner of the cars just seems
quite happy just to abandon us,
completely abandon us, in the
rainforest.
Well, the drivers are nice guys, but
their bosses are complete thieving
- BEEP!
- I mean, what a bunch of
- BEEP!
- I wouldn't pay them £1,000 - $2,000!
Absolutely outrageous!
We'd been abandoned in a remote area
under potential threat from the deadly
Ebola virus.
It can spread to humans from apes, and
has killed a third of the world's
gorillas in the past decade.
Ebola victims can bleed from every
orifice until they die.
Something I was hoping to avoid.
You've gone immediately for the very
lightest one!
Finally we made it out of the jungle.
Our rescuers ran an ape research
centre monitoring the local gorilla
population.
This is a gorilla's head, this is a
chimpanzee.
- It's not good touching that.
- Oh, sorry, for me or for them?
- Ebola!
- So it's not good for me to touch it
because of Ebola.
- Right.
- Great(!)
Luckily, for emergencies like Ebola, I
have my special disinfectant.
- He was joking. He was joking.
- I'm not taking a chance, you can't
joke about Ebola!
After trekking for miles through the
lush rainforest, all I wanted to do
was cool off.
Bye-bye!
In the end, it wasn't Ebola that
stopped me in my tracks.
Where we were planning to go next, the
um,
Start again, shall I? My brain's not
working. I feel so rough.
After I vomited blood, Linel called in
a doctor.
What do you think it is?
- Ermalaria.
- It's malaria,
according to him.
- He thinks it's malaria?
I keep getting that rush of saliva
into my mouth that you get when you're
about to vomit.
It's horrible.
- HE SIGHS
- So much for travelling round the
equator.
After treatment, I was told to rest
until I was strong enough to head
to my next stop, the Democratic
Republic of Congo,
one of the most dangerous countries on
the planet.
First we had to fly south of the
equator,
to the capital Kinshasa, to clear
immigration.
I'm just getting ready to fly up north
into the equatorial bit of DRC,
going to a town called Mbandaka,
but, luckily,
we're not going in this plane, we're
going in this nice shiny one.
We're off up the River Congo.
On our right, we've got the Democratic
Republic of Congo and on the left is
Congo Brazzaville.
The equator crosses part of Congo
Brazzaville, but local villagers blame
foreigners
for recent Ebola outbreaks, and we
were told that if we landed there, we
might be attacked and killed.
So instead we carried on along the
equator to the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
It's a country the size of Western
Europe.
A terrible war here has led to at
least four million deaths since 1998.
Well, the heat certainly would suggest
that we're back on the Equator.
Let's see what the technology says
Just got to get a signal first of all.
Actually, when you've been away from
it for a short while,
you start to forget just how just
how hot it is - absolutely scorching!
There are very few cars on the roads
of the Congo,
but my guide Emery was taking me to a
village on the equator that had
suffered during Congo's civil war.
I wanted to see what life was like in
the aftermath
of the deadliest conflict on the
planet since World War Two.
As we drove east towards the village,
we passed by
a once-famous botanical garden.
Many of the trees have been cut
down, and I soon discovered why.
How far have you had to carry this?
- EMERY TRANSLATES
About four kilometres so far.
- Nogozi seemed relieved to stop for a
chat.
- Merci beaucoup.
- It was heavy for me.
It was heavy for me.
Can I ask you a cheeky question?
How old are you?
- 68. I would look much younger if I
hadn't had to work so hard
It's weakened me.
- How much money do you get for the
wood that you've been carrying?
- 400 to 500 francs a day.
400 francs is not a lot.
- 42p.
- You can't buy enough to eat with 400
francs.
- Merci, monsieur, merci.
To reach the village of Ngamba
Kinshasa,
we had to travel on the Congo River,
the second longest in Africa.
With just 300 miles of paved road in
this vast country,
the river is one of the few ways of
getting around.
The mighty Congo River.
I thought the locals bathing by the
river were pleased to see us,
until their chant was translated
If the Congolese want to trade or
travel,
they have to go from town to town on
huge barges that moor by the riverbank
until they have a full load.
Have you travelled on a barge up and
down the river?
- Of course, many times.
- And how long have you had to wait
when you're
on the barge until it leaves?
- Um
Minimum is a month.
- A month?!
- Maximum is three months.
The conditions are terrible, you can
have 400, 500 people, two toilets.
- The Congo has a tragic history.
Up to 10 million people died under
Belgian colonial rule.
After independence from Belgium the
dictator Mobutu then plundered Congo's
resources.
Villages like Nganda Kinshasa have
suffered further in recent violent
conflicts.
But the fighting has now stopped in
this part of the country.
The village teacher Jose hasn't been
paid for months.
The Congo is fertile enough to feed
all of Africa and provide
power for much of the continent, but
you wouldn't know it here.
How many children will be in this
room, in the church, when it is
operating as a school?
- About 60.
- 60 children.
- Yes.
- There's nothing to write on, no
paper?
- They write on paper, put it on their
legs, the paper.
- They write on their legs?
- Yes.
- What do you need?
You need a blackboard, you need books,
you need chalk.
- We need everything - blackboards
and documents like books.
Yeah, like books, because you see, the
school is broken easily
and now we study in the church,
but we mix all pupils in the same
housein the same church.
We put third form aside and second
form in another side and so on.
- Average male life expectancy in the
Democratic Republic of Congo is just
42 years.
Jose invited Emery and me to meet his
family.
He is raising three children of his
own, as well as three children
of family members who have died
from malaria and other diseases.
So this is actually your nephew?
- Yes, my nephew, yes.
- Do you feel that you've got a lot of
responsibility?
- I can't refuse, because they are all
of them, our family.
- Jose's one-year-old son Johnson
has malaria.
The reality of life in post-war Congo
is that
six out of ten children won't live to
see their fifth birthday.
The west of the country is now
relatively peaceful.
But I was heading to the east, where
it isn't
So we're now heading east along the
equator.
We're going in the right direction and
we're going quickly
so our journey will speed up a little
bit.
This is our direction of travel,
the pink line here,
and the equator line is just slightly
to the side.
Hitching a ride into a conflict zone
isn't that easy.
One of the few people flying there is
Dan, a missionary from Colorado.
It's a cliche really. Do you think
you're doing God's work here?
Do you feel that this is your calling?
- Oh, yeah, definitely. If I didn't,
there'd be no reason to be here.
I'm not getting paid enough to do
this.
- We're heading east now, I mean we're
going in that direction.
- Well, on the east they just have
these continual conflicts.
You know, they have Ugandans coming
over,
you have the Hutus and the Tutsis
fighting it out.
You have the cattle people and the
farmers fighting for their land,
andit's just a lot of anarchy over
there.
- Dan was taking us to the safety
of the United Nations main base, just
north of the equator.
The UN has thousands of soldiers here,
right at the heart of the conflict.
We've now just landed safely in the
east of DRC in Bunia.
So for all of us, it's slightly
nerve-racking being here
because of the threat of military
activity,
I suppose, what I really mean is the
threat of or risk of any of us getting
shot!
The largest UN peacekeeping force in
the world is here trying to disarm
powerful local militias
and prevent the country sliding back
into a massive civil war.
UN forces are also training
the Congolese army, but it still has a
terrible reputation.
So those were Congolese army soldiers.
- We are in the middle of the town, so
there are so many people - no reason
to be afraid,
but if we met them in the bush, I
wouldn't be as happy as I am now.
- Why?
- Because it's common knowledge that
the Congolese army,
some of them at least,
do, errob the population.
- Behind the conflict in the DRC are
some of Africa's richest deposits of
diamonds and gold.
I wanted to get to a mine, to see what
so much of the killing has been about,
but with outbreaks of local fighting,
the only one safe enough to visit was
just north of the equator,
and even then we needed an armed UN
escort.
I'm trying to get to one of the big
goldmines in this area,
but all the roads are blocked so we're
going to travel by helicopter,
and the Pakistani army has kindly
arranged for us to travel on this one.
At the moment, we're not actually
going anywhere - they're just pressing
buttons and
playing with some of the electrical
connections.
- We make delay - our radio is failure
- ten minutes I will try to repair.
- Good luck.
A small problem, hopefully, Inshallah.
And then we'll be on our way.
Thankfully, the chopper was repaired
and we were soon safely on our way to
a goldmine in an area
that changed hands five times during
intensive fighting between warring
factions.
The UN now takes no chances here.
Soldiers guarding the landing strip,
waiting for us to come down.
During the fighting that took place in
this area, at least 2,000 civilians
were killed.
The fighting was about control of this
mine.
Today, it's safe enough for locals to
work here again.
For 12 hours a day, seven days a week,
men dig through
the mud with their bare hands, hoping
to strike it lucky.
This is really what the conflict in
the Congo has been all about,
the natural wealth of the country.
The mine is now under the control of
one of the militias,
which charges locals a fee just to dig
here.
And if they find any gold, the militia
takes a cut.
So we need to keep our eyes open on
here.
- TRANSLATION:
- Gold is mixed with mud.
We use a bucket with holes in the
bottom to get rid of the mud, and keep
the stones.
We purify it over this waterbed, which
is padded with carpet, on which the
gold stays.
We then empty the carpet in clean
water to get the gold.
- Do you think the gold has been
a benefit to this area, or has it been
a bit of a curse?
- It's really a blessing, as there's
no other work for us except digging
this gold.
If it weren't here, our suffering
would be unbearable.
For us, it's a blessing.
- But gold, which fuelled the war,
has definitely been a mixed blessing
for the Congo.
The mine provides work for locals but
they earn a pittance, and it's not
just men who dig here.
You've got kids working here!
Children just behind us here.
Do you work in the mine?
- Oui.
- Yes.
- How long have you been working here?
- Deux ans.
- Two years.
- That's quite a long time. How old
are you?
- 13.
- And you how old are you?
- Douze.
- 12.
- And you?
- Dix ans.
- 10.
- During the last war, the Congolese
people had to put up with seven
different foreign armies invading
their land, killing them and
plundering their natural resources.
Now there are 17,000 UN soldiers here
not just as peacekeepers,
but peace-enforcers,
authorised to fight warring factions
and militias that refuse to disarm.
Dozens of UN soldiers have been killed
in the Congo, and they take no chances
when out on patrol.
We're now travelling in the back of a
Pakistani armoured personnel
carrier and they're really just trying
to show the local population
that they're here and they have a lot
of force with them, so they've got no
reason to be subtle.
Apart from deaths caused by warring
foreign armies, much of the
slaughter in the DRC has been the
result of local tribal conflicts.
It was shocking to discover how often
ethnic groups here
have been massacring each other
in battles between those who want land
for crops,
and those who want it for cattle.
50,000 died in this district.
And in this village, called Nizi,
locals from the Hema tribe
said they had been attacked by the
nearby Lendu tribe.
This gentleman here is the village
chief
and he's just taking usit sounds as
though he's taking us to see a mass
grave, actually.
- We buried 114 people here.
It's mostly women and children in
there.
They came very early in the morning
with machetes.
They came from where the Lendu tribes
are
and just massacred people in the
village.
- What do you think they were trying
to achieve?
- Nizi was well known. We were a
prosperous village.
People were doing well, that was why
they came here.
- Survivors here bear the scars.
This man's whole family was
slaughtered. He was left for dead.
You can see the machete mark on
his hands, look at all the scarring
My God!
- TRANSLATION: During the attack, they
tried to kill me by hacking at me with
a machete.
- How many members of your family did
you lose?
- My wife and family were all killed.
And I suffer - I am alone.
All I live in is a hut.
They took all the people who could
have helped me.
This is the life that I have been left
with.
- But there is hope.
The UN have upped their presence here
to try and keep the peace
in the run-up to the country's first
democratic elections in over 40 years.
A whole generation of Congolese were
about to get their first taste of
democracy.
So, this is the rather glamorous
hotel bar -
shall we get a drink?
- Yes, let's go.
- Tell us what this is, Emery.
- This is my voter registration card,
it allows me to vote during the
elections.
- Are you excited about this?
- I'll very soon turn 30,
and I've never been to any ballot box.
- You've never voted?
- Never voted, and I think that these
people that we're going to vote are
going to be accountable and they're
going to do the will of the people.
So I'd better keep it.
- Keep it safe! Keep it safe.
- Until the D-day arrives.
- Cheers.
- So, here's to Simon.
Thank you as well for travelling
across the Congo and good luck for the
rest.
- Thank you, mate. Thank you.
I left Emery and the war-torn DRC, and
continued along the equator
towards the relative safety of
Southern Uganda.
We've just arrived in Uganda
and over here is Bart.
Bart, come and say hello!
- Hi, how you doing? Welcome!
- Thank you very much.
- It's nice to see you, good.
- Actually, at first glance Uganda
looks a lot nicer than
the Congo where we've just come from -
the shops are open, people are out and
about
- HORNS BEEPING
- ..the traffic is pretty crazy.
Look at this Look, arrgh. !
This is the first time in many years
I've enjoyed been in a traffic jam
because in the Congo the only vehicles
were really United Nations vehicles
or cars belonging to aid agencies -
here in Uganda it's just people
moving around, it's normal life.
We left the capital, Kampala, which is
just north of the equator,
and made our way back to the magical
line.
- Three,
twoone
andzero!
- Just about round here! Shake my
hand!
- We've just made it to the centre of
the world!
- Before we get run over, let's get
over here!
In Uganda, the equator seemed to
operate as a business opportunity.
I think we should have the experiment,
really.
An enterprising man had set up a
demonstration of one of the great
myths about the equator - that it can
affect how water goes down a plug
hole.
On the north side of the equator, the
water went clockwise,
and on the other side, it appeared to
flow anticlockwise.
And sure enough on the equator line
itself, it went straight down the
hole!
Although it does look impressive, I'm
not entirely convinced.
Whatever my doubts, I was still
awarded a certificate of authenticity.
Thank you.
I've officially crossed the equator! I
haven't just crossed it and
I've been awarded this geographic
certificate by the equator Club!
We left the monument and headed
further along the equator line,
towards the main source of the Nile
River.
In Uganda, the equator runs through
Lake Victoria, the largest tropical
lake in the world.
And the water from here is the
starting point for the 4,184 mile long
river.
It will take about three months,
apparently, for the stick to travel
all the way down the Nile
and reach Egypt and then come out into
the Mediterranean.
Bart had arranged for us to go out on
part of the Nile known as Rafter's
Paradise.
Initially, it didn't look too
threatening.
Well, here it looks OK.
But we know it's not going to be all
like this, don't we?
- Here you go, I am making it tight.
If you can't breathe, it means you're
not gonna drown, OK?
- What are you doing?
- I am trying to learn.
- He's learning how to paddle.
- Practising.
- Yeah, he's practising.
- You need to worry more about this -
"I'm over here, I'm drowning."
- Team equator!
THEY CHEER
- As we began celebrating, none of us
noticed Bart
drifting down the river
However, Rafter's Paradise is under
threat.
The Ugandan government plans to build
a massive hydro-electric dam here.
They already have two dams on the
Nile,
and Egypt downstream has threatened
dire consequences if Uganda further
interferes with the flow of the river.
But Uganda wants to use the Nile to
create more power,
and they are the ones who control the
source, as we discovered
when Bart and I were shown round one
of the dams.
Do you have the power to cut off the
water here?
- We can do it, but not the power,
because
it's an agreement, whatever, but you
can cut off the water if you want.
- So if you wanted to, you could turn
off the taps on the Nile.
- Yeah, you can, but why would you do
it?
- Back in the car, Bart was still
upset about his unscheduled swim
earlier in the day.
What did you say then, Bart?
- I'm still being troubled
bothered by the water which entered my
nostrils
when I fell into the rapids.
- Do you think you might have suffered
some long-term damage?
- Yeah!
- Do you need urgent medical
attention?
- Nah.
- Are you sure?
- Africans don't need much
medicalurgent medical attention
like you do.
How can you suffer from a bout of
malaria?!
I've had malaria about 50 times and
I'm fine.
- This is from a man who's been
complaining for the past
eight hours about the fact that he got
some water in his nostrils!
- Water and malaria are different
things.
- Well, which is more severe?
- You can fight malaria, you can't
fight water!
- We headed east again, with a short
stop to look for some wildlife.
Just heard this crashing in the trees
and now we're
We're realising there's monkeys all
around us, but, of course,
since we've tried to film them the
little buggers disappear.
Banana!
The producer has just thrust a banana
into my hand - somehow I'm
supposed to attract these monkeys out
of the trees with one banana.
Come on, monkeys!
In the end, the banana actually
worked!
What's great about travelling around
the equator - you're never far from
wildlife.
Soon I was surrounded by dozens of
vervet monkeys.
They don't like being far from a tree
because of predators
..but visitors with bananas are just
too tempting.
So this is like the equivalent of
feeding the ducks in England.
Come and bring some bananas and feed
the monkeys!
What have you got? New Vision?
I'll have the Red Pepper, please.
This paper just shows immediately two
of the big problems
in Africa at the moment -
but particularly in East Africa.
Corruption - "A corrupt official cried
before me."
And Museveni, that's the President
here, to rule for life!
This is President Museveni who was
seen as the great hero of the
independence movement
and once said that the big problem
with African leaders
is that they don't want to give up
power and now he's become what he
always said he wouldn't.
Museveni's held power for 20 years.
He's failed to stop a devastating
conflict in
the north of the country, but he 's
had some success tackling HIV/AIDS.
I was shocked to see just how many
coffins are on sale in every town,
but things are getting better - a
massive public awareness campaign has
had a dramatic effect.
- Everybody in this country knows
about AIDS and the dangers -
you walk into any of these shops and
ask for a condom, you'll be shocked
- you'll find everyone has a condom.
- And is that Is that a major
change?
- In 1988 the
the level of the growth at the rate at
which AIDS was developing was 35%.
- 35%?!
- 35%, and today Uganda has been able
to reduce the level,
the rate of growth of AIDS from 35% to
currently 6%.
- That's quite a unique achievement
really.
- I lost my sister to AIDS, and she
died and
and today I would find it difficult
for my younger sister to die
out of ignorance because they know,
they know the dangers.
- My next stop on the equator line was
Kenya, one of Africa's major tourist
destinations.
This was meant to be a fairly relaxing
stop before I finished my journey in
war-torn Somalia,
but on a trip like this, of course,
nothing goes to plan.
Travel the world, they said,
meet interesting people
push your trolley for miles across the
hot tarmac.
It's all right, Brian, don't help,
it's OK.
I'll do it on my own, no problem!
My Kenyan guide, Michael, wanted to
take me to a village famous
for its traditional circumcisers.
For boys aged around 12, it's part of
becoming a man.
But as we approached the village,
there was chaos on the streets.
We just saw a lot of activity by the
side of the road,
so we've just stopped, Michael do you
know what's going on?
- Yeah, it's bullfighting.
They're on their way for a
bullfighting session.
- And is this why everybody's
gathering over here?
- Yes.
- Let's go and have a look.
- Yeah, OK.
Basically, what they do now is they
are prepping the bulls,
preparing them, you know, psyching
them up.
- There's a pretty fearsome-looking
bull in there.
Local tradition means each bullfight
is attended by people dressed in
animal skins or as animal spirits.
- Follow me!
Follow me!
- I'm following a man dressed up as
a woman wearing a gorilla outfit
towards two fighting bulls.
- Come! Come!
- How do you decide who wins?
- Yeah?
- How do you know who wins Who
wins?
- When When one of them goes
faster.
- So when one bull races off.
- Yeah.
- Oh, right.
Oh! And there they go, whoa!
I think the black and white bull
has won
and now everybody's celebrating around
it.
Presumably, this is the owner of the
winner - he looks very happy!
He's got the strongest bull.
Congratulations! Well done!
- Very Very, very good, I am happy!
- Do you win a lot of money, oh, be
careful!
- The winner gets quite a lot.
And even the loser gets something
small.
In the old days, a winner would be
given a sheep, and the loser, a
cockerel.
- Amid all the chaos, I was on the
lookout for
the circumcisers I was supposed to be
meeting.
See that guy over there moving through
the crowd?
He's a circumciser.
Would you trust him with your todger?
I wouldn't!
As the bulls became more aggressive, I
realised that bullfighting in
Kenya is dangerous for the crowd
as well as for the animals.
What's happened here?
- He's broken his leg.
- I don't know how we're going to get
him in!
Oh, dear.
Michael volunteered our car as a
makeshift ambulance.
OK, so we're now
I think we are now going to the
hospital.
We've got a bloke who's fractured his
leg. Are you his cousin?
- Yeah.
- Cousin, OK, and we've got
two circumcisers here as well.
I'm a bit scared to be in the back
with you.
Don't go practising on me, please!
We were the only ones who had a
vehicle,
which is why we've brought Magnus to
the hospital.
He's the son of, actually, the son of
the Chairman of
the Bullfighting Association, so it's
a little bit ironic, really.
Despite appearances, Magnus was fine a
few days later.
With the hospital taking good care of
him, I had a chat with Thomas the
circumciser.
That looks really painful!
- TRANSLATION
That's how he becomes a man. He can
also sit with the other men.
We can circumcise around 100 boys in
an hour.
- You can circumcise 100 boys in an
hour!
Do they mind you working so quickly?
I mean, don't they want you to take
your time?
I mean, that's sort of
that sort of speed?
- It's a must. You can become crazy.
- What? What do you mean you can
becomeyou can become crazy?
- There is normally frantic singing
that gets into your head.
You go into a frenzy and just continue
to cut, cut, cut!
- By this point, I'd heard enough.
The next day, and another early start
for Michael and me, as we headed to
Lake Nakuru.
This national park is famous for being
"the most fabulous bird
"spectacle in the world," and it
didn't disappoint.
Steve, our guard, the ranger, has
allowed us to get out.
Can you see the hyenas over here?
It's just an amazing sight,
it leaves me slightly
slightly lost for words almost,
it's so beautiful.
- Like a plantation of flowers, you
see.
- That's a nice one - I like that.
How many do you think there are here
now?
- I can say there are about
about one million.
- About one million.
- About one million.
- But the flamingos here at Lake
Nakuru are threatened by bird flu,
which has already struck in a number
of African countries, including
neighbouring Sudan.
- So far we have not detected any bird
flu in this park,
and we are very much monitoring them.
- How are you monitoring them, in what
way?
- By daily patrol, coming around and
if we found any
Any dead, we take it
We don't take it, we call the
veterinary department, but so far we
haven't had cases at all.
- I imagine, if you did get
bird flu in the population here, it
could be devastating.
- Yeah, really devastating.
- But not all the animals here are
quite as charming as the flamingos.
Well, this one doesn't seem to be
going away,
I hate to mention this, but he looks a
little bit excited as well.
Oh, dear.
Yes, he is quite excited.
Put it away!
I mean, we don't want to have to watch
that, it's half past nine in the
morning!
My God, come up! Come up, there's a
rhino!
They've been trying to secure all of
them from poachers
so they've built an electric fence all
the way around the park.
It's the only park in Africa which is
enclosed in that way -
it means that animals like this
huge beastie are well protected.
The solar-powered electric fence
runs for 74km and encloses the whole
park,
protecting hundreds of species from
gangs of poachers who still operate in
Kenya.
This is just a spectacular view.
It's just Just awe-inspiring,
really.
There's a giraffe just out for a
stroll.
People in the park are saying that
their great problem now is
as the population of Kenya increases,
who uses the land?
Is the land here in Kenya for the
wildlife in the park that we
see here, or is it for the people in
the city just over to our left?
Nakuru is only 4km from the park and
is home to nearly 300,000 people.
We've just had to leap out of the car
because we've got to get
a new one of these, a sort of adaptor
for the cameras.
Now this is Nakuru, this is the town,
you can see how many
people are living here - it's quite
chaotic.
- Where are you going?
- Well, what is interesting about this
place is how busy
the town is now, and how close it is
to the park, to the wildlife park.
- Don't touch me now!
- He's threatening us now.
He's a bitHe's a bit intoxicated.
Off we go. Poachers and pollution are
a constant threat to Kenya's parks.
But outside the parks there are still
wildlife surprises.
Can you just slow down for a second?
All the zeros - we've just crossed the
equator line again,
but this time I don't think we are
going to stop.
Stop! Stop! Stop!
In Britain, if you take a drive out
into the country
and go down a dusty road you're lucky
if you see a fox -
here in Kenya you get to see
elephants!
The further east you go in Kenya,
the more people you see chewing miraa
-
a natural stimulant derived from a
shrub that flourishes here.
Miraa is so popular it has become one
of Kenya's chief exports,
even ahead of coffee.
I came to meet a local farmer who
grows miraa right on the equator.
- Simon.
- Yea, I'm Simon - my name also.
I'm Simon as well then, that will make
things less complicated.
We'll just leap up into the tree.
- Yes, and then you start harvesting
now from all the branches now.
- Do you harvest it by hand?
- It's just harvested by hand.
- So you are just plucking them off.
- Yes.
- So here we go this is miraa, they
call it here in Kenya -
in Somalia this is known as khat.
You just chew this?
- You started chewing, yeah. It's very
sweet, it's not nasty.
- How much will I have to chew for it
to have an effect on me?
- Oh, just a bundle, a small bundle.
- As much as that?
- Yeah! Lots of it, you must eat a
bigger bundle.
- I'm not sure we've got enough time
to chew all that!
Miraa has been grown for centuries in
this part of Kenya, and has become
part of local traditions.
- If you want to marry my daughter,
I'll let you bring this one.
I will not give you my daughter before
you bring
as the first dowry to open the speech.
- So I
If I want to marry your daughter, I
need to bring a lot of miraa.
- Not so much, just a small bundle
like that one.
- Come on your daughter must be worth
more than that!
- No, just to open the negotiation.
- Open the negotiations, right, OK.
Then other things follow later.
What else will you expect?
- That's a ram, five cows.
- Five cows!
- Yes!
Simon, you are striking a hard
bargain, I haven't even met your
daughter!
- But there is a serious downside to
the drug.
Regular use of miraa can lead to
insomnia and anxiety.
Often, it can make people feel more
irritable, and even violent.
You can see everybody's got They've
got miraa to sell, basically.
- Yeah.
- There's a slight edge here, because
you can sense that people
feel a little bit uncertain about
whether they should be filmed holding,
what in many countries,
is a drug.
Miraa passes through this market on
the way to Somalia,
where local warlords control the
lucrative trade.
So we're now being told we should get
out quite quickly.
We've been told we should leave the
market. So I'm going to go that way
and you're going to follow.
Kenyans chew miraa occasionally, but I
was due to head for chaotic
Somalia the next day, where most men
chew it incessantly.
The drug has helped to destroy the
country.
We've just had some bad news this
morning - the equator line runs
through southern Somalia
and our plan was to travel across
Somalia and then get to the coast,
where we would finish our journey
across Africa,
but there's been an outbreak of quite
serious heavy fighting in
Somalia, just in the last few days.
So I decided to fly as close as I
could to the border between Somalia
and Kenya.
Somalia has no proper government, and
years of fighting between
rival warlords has forced Somalis to
flee into the Kenyan desert.
Smack bang on the equator lie the
Dadaab refugee camps.
We're now going to try and find some
of the new arrivals in the camp.
Because of the situation in Somalia
now, there's been fighting there very
recently,
people have been coming into the camp
just even in the last few days.
I passed a weary group who had just
made the long trek to the camp
and were still waiting to be processed
by UN workers.
Where did you come from, and why did
you come to the camp?
- I came from Mogadishu because the
fighting was so bad.
- Are your children here with you?
- I was forced to leave two of them in
Mogadishu.
- Do you know what's happened to them?
Have you been able to make any contact
with them?
- No, I lost them in the attack.
- The group walked for 20 days through
the desert to reach the camp.
After their food ran out, they
survived on rainwater.
People have forgotten about the chaos,
the crisis in Somalia.
You look into their faces, and you
just realise that they're hoping and
waiting
for the rest of the world to come and
give them some assistance.
This camp was opened 25 years ago.
For the people who arrived in the
early years this is
the only life they know.
Fatima, who is now 23, has been here
since she was six.
When you think of the future, do you
feel positive or negative about the
future?
- I am always positive about my
future, always positive.
- Do you think you will go home to
Somalia?
Would you like to go home to Somalia?
- No, I will not. For that one I
will never go back to Somalia.
- Why not?
- Will never.
- Why not?
- Because I know the problems I faced,
I know more people have been
killed there. Even if there is peace,
better I stay in Kenya and integrate
with these people.
- But the refugees cannot integrate
with the Kenyan population, because
the Kenyan government won't let them
go more than 20km outside the camp.
I can travel anywhere in the world.
I have this magical thing called
a British passport and it means I can
just travel around.
Are you're confined here in this, it's
almost like a prison,
it sounds like, does it feel like a
prison?
- We say the "open prison", that's
what we normally tell people.
- What would happen to you if you just
kept on walking,
if you wanted or tried to go to
Nairobi or a local town?
- You can't go to Nairobi or even the
nearest, 90 kilometre town,
which is called Carisa - because to go
there you have to use
a vehicle and in between Carisa and
here there is police patrolling.
They will stop the vehicle they will
ask everybody, "ID card".
We don't have that ID card - we are
refugees.
- Fatima was knowledgeable and
well-educated thanks to the staff who
run the refugee camp.
And there were many more like her.
It was depressing to see them all
stuck-out in the middle of the desert.
Thanks to an accident of birth,
I was lucky enough to be able to
leave, and continue my journey around
the world.
So here we are - 00.00.000.
Right on the equator now - the line
runs "thattaway".
This is the end of my journey across
African now
and my next stop is Indonesia.
And I'll walk all the bloody way!
Join me next week when my journey
around the equator
takes me across Indonesia.