Lara Croft

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HEADSTRONG

I was following an underground river, numbingly cold water already up to my bosom and a strong current to fight against. The best thing you could do against varicosities according to Dr. Kneipp, but I wasn't exactly doing something for my health in this uncomfortable, pitch dark, stalactite riddled hole. I had only just faced the options of blasting a hole into a sealed door that was easily three thousand years old or trying to find a devious route. As I wasn't exactly in a hurry, I had decided on playing the responsible Archaeologist for once. I only stopped to enjoy it when my maglite dropped into the water and left me alone in the dark, dumbfounded by disorientation.

That it had begun to heavily rain outside I was oblivious to, but that as a direct result the water was rapidly rising, in fact reaching my neck in under two minutes, THAT seriously picked on my nerves. Before I was going to be drowned dead I rather accepted that a whole day of cave lurking had been fruitless and gave up fighting to let myself flush out of the tunnel by the current. I got bonked around pretty bad, a lot of bruises and scratches. My head spun when I climbed onto dry land.

Ten minutes later I had plastic explosives planted all over the door and blasted a fine, well rounded hole into it, like I should have done right from the beginning.

It was a grave. A nice grave, a beautiful grave. Pretty, solid architecture, all made of rocks, cubic cut and hand polished. Perfectly fit together, hardly a fissure between them although there was not the hint of cement in use. Admitted, dust was piling to the ceiling, the cobwebs could almost be used as a hammock and half of the tombs living inhabitants could kill you with a single sting, but… classy. Hardly did I ever see a burial chamber not yet invaded by the elements, and believe me, shovelling a way through the mud is not quite what you came for when you're looking for antiquities.

As the Okawombee had been too primitive to construct effective traps, been a harmonic, pacifistic lot of people in general and my usual routine of trap detection (checking the floor for mossy fissures that could indicate pressure plates, the wall for holes where spikes or darts could emanate from and finally throwing a few heavy objects around for covering the unpredictable) had a negative outcome I decided to make camp here. Hey, it was dry, cool, the air bearable and all in all the most civilised surrounding I had been in since I set my foot to Zaire. I think they named it back to Congo some time ago, but that hardly interests me. When I've got used to see people die, why should I care for sleeping in a grave?

Maybe I should explain what I was doing here. Not that it was necessary, but it makes things easier to understand. Britain holds nothing that justifies spending those thirty lousy November days on the island, that's why you might stumble across the ingenious sight of a woman in boots and knickers gently swinging in a hammock at the moment, at least if you're nosy and happen to be on a hike through the rainforests of central Africa. Well, keeping dry is one of the prime rules to heed on expeditions, wear airtight Lycra on wet skin in a tropic environment and you will be rewarded a nasty case of jungle decay in no time. I just love the 'Democratic Republic of Congo' as it is called now. Simply because the five most beautiful national parks of the world are here, and they're all in rebel controlled area.

The fighting has been really bad in the early sixties, but even if the political situation is somewhat stable now, since it's discovery in 1876 by H.M. Stanley, the land had seen about as much peacetime as the Balkans. Independence from Belgium in 1960, free elections, the first prime minister Lumumba is obviously overtaxed by his job, the very same year you have the first military revolt, the rich province Katanga declares independence itself. Lumumba calls the UN for help, which probably results directly in him being assassinated. Violence and bloodshed everywhere. 1964 the Americans make Tschombe the new head of state, 65' we have Kasavubu, 66' General Mobutu Sese Seko and about a million dead people by now. 71' he renames the land Zaire, 97' after the fall of Mobutu, Kabila names it back to Congo. And so on, and so on...

I left my travel companions from BBC further down south, somewhere near Kolwezi, where they observe the tensions with Angola, to travel further north along the Lualaba river and through the Upemba-national park. They'll later follow me north to report about the aftershocks of the war with Rwanda, but I've already been there 98' and still have nightmares: what had started out as a rather tiny tribal conflict soon developed an unstoppable dynamic similar to a bushfire, the two biggest ethnical groups in the country started whacking at each other and every country in the surroundings rushed to butt in. Abracadabra, we have what soon will be called the first African world war. And its FAR from over yet, with entire landscapes stuffed with refugees, and even worse, a whole lot of marauding Hutu-militias still genociding through the jungle like a mob of angry leaf-cutter ants.

Upemba was nice, I found a whole lot of Hippos there, one of their ancestors is probably responsible for my grandfathers disappearance in this region. My destination was the upper valley of one of it's side arms that has yet to be named and the Kobutu waterfalls, probably one of the hardest to reach places on the globe, even if you were parachuting. Really peaceful there.