How to get beer around Congo, a country with hardly any roads

THE BARGE, weighed down by half a million bottles of beer, pulls out into the middle of the Congo river. At its tip, breezy rumba music drifts out of a small radio and a group of young men sit around grumbling about the hardships of life on board. “We stay on this boat until death,” claims one sailor (pictured, above right). In reality, the crew spends a total of only six months on the barge a year—although the risk of it sinking is not trivial. Laden with beer belonging to Bracongo, a brewery, the boat is travelling from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the city of Bandundu, 387km (240 miles) upstream.Omar Barcat, the barge’s owner, has been running a fleet of five cargo ships for 20 years. He predicts that various apparatchiks, some wielding Kalashnikovs, will intercept the boat at several points along the river. They will try to extort payoffs that amount to around $500. Unruly sailors are another problem. Far away from their bosses back in the capital, they are sometimes tempted to stop off in villages and visit friends. Occasionally they drink beers they claim have exploded or broken (which can lead to worse misdemeanours). “But they know that if anyone is caught doing that he will immediately be fired,” he says.