African Cup of Nations - blog

Hard to chill out in violence-hit Cabinda

by Paul Myers

Article published on the 2010-01-15 Latest update 2010-01-15 21:50 TU

Police guard a training session of the Ghanaian national soccer team in Cabinda
(Photo: Reuters)

What has always perturbed me about the politicans’ response to any kind of terrorist atrocity are the bold statements about "not letting these people ruin our way of life".

So we’re urged to carry on taking buses, trains and planes. However the same tough-talking politicians continue in their bullet-proofed cocoons. Ask yourself when was the last time you saw one of those lantern-jawed powerbrokers on the 06.54 into the central terminus ?

Here in Cabinda – apparaent hotbed of secessionist wrath - I have decided to adhere to the politicians’ exhortations.

As I sat by the pool at the hotel I thought, "Yes, these thugs will not stop this way of life". And I sipped on my iced drink and adjusted my sunglasses. We will not give in to their demands, I thumped on the sun lounger.

Driving through Cabinda from the airport, you don’t register a pervasive sense of foreboding or palpable tension. There’s building along the seafront and an easy bustle tempers the main drag.

I’ve been told the enclave’s anti-Angola lobby hang out north-east of the city in the country’s largest tropical rainforest, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo-Brazzaville.

That’s fairly logical. You don’t want to be doing the subversive stuff at a corner cafe in the city centre. But maybe that’s the future. Bring it into the mainstream and see if it chimes.

Maybe loads of people are really chuffed that an attack on the Togo squad buses left three people dead. If that’s the case, then the games should have been kept away from the province.

We’ve been guaranteed that all is safe here for the remaining matches to go ahead. And part of those assurances include stepping up security in a region where - at one soldier to every ten people - there’s already the world’s highest per capita ratio of military to civilians.

On my return from watching Côte d’Ivoire’s final training session before Friday night’s clash against Ghana, I noted the two tasty looking soldiers at the entrance to my hotel.

They weren’t there when I arrived in the afternoon.

I didn’t feel safer.

"This is not normal," I thought. I didn’t go and chill out by the poolside. I went into my room.

But the key wouldn’t lock the door from the inside. Suspecting a vile conspiracy between the separatists and the hotel owners to abduct RFI English service’s star journalist, I put the desk up against the door to block entry.

As I lay in bed, I considered that a desk that a weakling like me could lift and put against the door was unlikely to stop angular jungle-trained combatants.

I slotted the Seinfeld DVD into the laptop watched a bit and drifted off to sleep.

That’s what I do at night.