Arrival in Libreville
After almost two days spent on planes traveling from Eugene to Africa, we didn’t hesitate to dive into the diverse array of offerings at the Addis Ababa airport in Ethiopia, our last stop before arriving in Libreville. Hungry from the longest leg of our flight (Washington D.C. to Addis Ababa), many of us went out in search of food and drink. We didn’t find too much. A lucky few did find something called an “Ethiopian trio” to eat. However, while on the search for bathrooms, we did find rooms at one end of the shopping concourse meant for Muslim travelers to use for prayer.
The plane that took us to Addis Ababa
Then it was just a “short” 4 hour flight to Libreville. Partially open-air, the airport was built with a series of giant glulam beams atop tall glulam columns, with concrete rooms cradled in-between. A couple of us who tried to take photos too close to airport security got yelled at and made to delete our pictures. Not quite the friendliest introduction to a new city.
Zoe, our contact in Gabon, met us at the airport and immediately helped us to exchange a few US Dollars for the local currency, Central African Francs, or “cefa”. We only had carry-on bags (other than the design bags that hadn’t made the connection between planes in San Francisco), so gathering our things was easy. Before we knew it, our bags had been tossed in the back of a truck and we were all packed into a van driving down the boulevard that parallels the beach between the airport and downtown Libreville. After a turn in the center of the city onto the Boulevard Triomphal, the largest road in the city, lined with gigantic object buildings housing many different government ministries and departments, we made it to our home base, the Hotel Hibiscus.
Riding in the van to Hotel Hibiscus
Quickly we were given our room assignments and split into pairs to throw our stuff into the rooms. Up in the rooms on the second and third floors, there were good views across Triomphal to the Russian Embassy, the city, and the ocean beyond. There was only a little time to decompress before we headed back downstairs for our first walk to the Universite Omar Bongo.
Small shopowners stared and yelled as we snapped photos along our walk to campus. The walk was at dusk and the chaos of the streets was an entertaining show as we entered through the main university gate. A tall white, yet tarnished wall formed the perimeter of campus, sturdy enough to keep out the noise and hectic atmosphere of the streets on the outside. Our tour around the campus opened many eyes: piles of trash scattered across the grounds and intermittent narrow sidewalks lined the main road into the school. We headed towards the school restaurant (the cafeteria), where we would spend much of the next week.
By this time the hours of the long flight were starting to hit us, so Mark treated us to Vietnamese at a little place in Quartier Louis (the hub of nightlife in Libreville) imaginatively named “Saigon”. As we wrapped up dinner, other people began to enter and the previously dead restaurant began to come to life. Eventually, a man walked across the room from another table to chat with Mark. Revealing himself as an American geophysicist for a British mineral company, he asked us “since I noticed you just tripled the American population in Libreville, what are you guys doing here?”
Mark, ever professional, told him of our purpose to come to Universite Omar Bongo to work together with the students and faculty in order to create a master plan that would bring the university up to an international standard and fulfill the expectations that the students had of their education. The man seemed impressed and ended up giving our group some great suggestions for places to dine in Louis, and recommendations of the best beaches and rainforest destinations. Not our reason for visiting Gabon, but nice to know since we would have one more free day before beginning the design process.
Even with most of us going out afterward further into Louis, staying up late to experience Gabonese nightlife, Saturday night was still the most sleep most of got all week.