Where are you going madam?" wonder the driver of a jeep in French ...

I just walked across the Angola-Congo border and the crowd of street vendors to start hitchhiking at the exit of the village. It has been exactly four years since I went to a French-speaking country, since I left Quebec in March 2016. It is so strange to speak French that my tongue creates funny Belgian intonations and lets escape a few words of English. The Congolese punctuate their sentences with "sir, madam", speak very polite and handle the words elegantly. It is like in a movie in black and white ... It don't remember that French people were so polite, or maybe the years made me become familiar.

An hour later, I am in Pointe-Noire and I meet Esther, the couchsurfer who hosts me for the weekend. She takes me to karaoke and explains all the secrets of Afrohairs by the hairdresser. The women's rights day is celebrated as a women's day. With beautiful colorful dresses printed "March, the 8th", women go out to meet their girlfriends and wish each other "happy woman day". During this day, the husbands stay at home to take care of the housework. It is not a matter to ask for equal rights for the whole year, but just to ask for a day of privileges ... Esther takes me to a  a conference about gender equality in a  business school. She does not agree with everything that is said (me neither) but she recognizes that this kind of event has the merit to exist because students talk about feminism, something that has never seen before. We share a lot of conversations and opinions with Esther : about Congo, Africa, France, mentalities ... After a visit to the beach, I continue my hitchhiking world tour to Brazzaville, the capital.

I aget a ride from Bruno, a Congolese pediatrician who speaks Chinese and complains about the lack of material at the hospital. He must buy it himself. I also meet Florent, who studied in Orléans, my hometown ! He drops me off at the French Allianz where I meet Emanuele, an Italian couchsurfer who is going to host me. By motorbike, he show me around Brazzaville : the Congo river sides, the view of Kinshasa (the capital of the DRC on the other side of the river) and the Embassy of Cameroon (to apply for my next visa). We explore the villas of an abandoned district and spend the evenings at the French Allianz, the main cultural center of the capital. We talk a bit about Congo and a lot about coronavirus. His family lives confined in northern Italy. The French president has just announced the closure of the schools. Angola has just closed its borders to Europeans ... So I crossed it just in time. In grocery stores, the French TV programs show apocalyptic images of an empty France. The crowd and the choas of Brazzaville market feel soothing.

Emanuele has just finished his civil service in an NGO. He propose to hitchhike with me to the north of the Congo. He contacts Eddy, an old Italian businessman who lives in Oyo, a village 400 km away, to ask if he can accommodate us. This is how we learn that he leaves there the next day and has room for us in his car. After 9 hours spent on muddy roads, we pass an airport, a large four star hotel, several white villas, a brand new hospital, swept sidewalks, a church and giant posters of a woman ... Oyo is the second home of the president and his court. Tomorrow he is organizing a big ceremony to commemorate his daughter, dead ten years ago. So all the hotels are busy. I decline Eddy's invitation to sleep in one of the presidential residences. I feel more comfortable with his employees and Emanuele.

Dressed in a vest and cap of the Italian Air Force, he gives the image of a ladies'man and a smacker-colon. He talks about about his ten children scattered all over Africa, like his businesses. But his generosity and his "teddy bear attitude" makes him sympatic. Eddy invites us for dinner, for breakfast and insists to give me a bunch of CFA Francs. He warns me against the diamond traffickers in the north of the country. They may use foreigners as mules or sometimes sell them diamonds to report them to the police. My bag is quite heavy, I did not intend to collect shiny stones anyway.

Eddy drops us off at Oyo, not far from the cemetery where the commemoration takes place. While waiting for the president, women dance to the rhythm of the djumbe. I start to film, the soldiers reacy quickly : we are chassed away.

We continue the trip hitchhiking an ambulance towards Makoua. We stay by nuns who speak Italian with Emanuele. Makoua is an extremely hot and humid village, located on the equator. On the banks of the Likouala river, people wash themselves next to the wooden canoes. This is where a small monument indicates the invisible line of thezero latitude.

The next day, sitting in the back of a jeep, we enter the northern hemisphere. The freshly paved road goes into the jungle. Villages are rare. Cars too. Emanuele receives messages on his smartphone: cases of coronavirus have just been announced in Congo. His NGO and his mother urged him to return to Italy. He hesitates to abandon me to go back the other way. Fortunately, an overloaded truck passes by and stops his hesitation and panik. They can take us further north to Ouesso. Sitting comfortably on bags of cement, we listen to music for 7 hours, the necessary time to travel 200 kilometers! The road is empty, only one car goes faster than us  and an elephant comes out of the jungle at the nightfall.

At midnight, we fall quickly in sleep in a small hotel in Ouesso. The next day, everybody is looking at us with surprise, some of them scream : "coronavirus, coronavirus" ... They think that it is the white people who brought the disease. France has just closed its borders and imposed quarantine. Emanuele offers to go back to Brazzaville (800 kilometers away) where he could host me. After hesitation, I decide to continue the road to Cameroon and Nigeria. I have already gotten the visas of these two countries in embassies. They are expensive and already activated. So I will move quickly, avoiding the big cities where the virus is starting to spread. In 10 or 15 days, if the situation is getting bad, I will take refuge in the calm of Benin.

I say goodbye to my new friend and hope to see him again in Europe one day in better times.
The director of works for the new border road  and his family give me a ride. To help me to move forward and to show the border to his enthusiastic wife, my driver makes a detour of 70 kilometers. Nobody seems to pass by here, so I accept and thank him. In a wooden hut, customs officials slowly write down my passport informations on a large notebook. No sign welcomes me to Cameroon, but the children do it. At nightfall (6 p.m.), I reach the village of Djoum. A street vendor sells me a local simcard and datas. I discovered on the internet that the Cameroonian president has just announced the closure of the country's borders for an indefinite period. Already? I am upset. I regret not having stayed in Congo. I am now stuck in Cameroon and I don't know anyone to host me here.