This is the last of a spate of personal disclosure. What else does one do in a cold February suffering a case of terrestrial cabin fever but think back to warm places.

Morocco? Well, Elizabeth has some connection there, and that’s where Alice is. I suspect she might have failed to hang south after the Azores. Had she gone south, she could have visited her port of registry, Monrovia. No, not the one in Maryland.

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She could have visited the seaport of Matadi, Congo. I was a Peace Corps volunteer, starting in the Congo long ago and visited Matadi. It was my introduction to big waterways in Africa. I wanted to buy this pirogue, but my mentor Willie, paddling here, ruled that out for fear I’d be easy crocodile food. He was probably right.

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I steamed all about 1500 miles of the Congo between Kinshasa and Kisangani. For some background, check this link, this one, and this one. For a place without roads (I was northeast of Mbandaka at a school on the Lulonga), medical care came through once a year. Here was M/V Mama Yemo in 1974.

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Any readers there in Congo? Anyone know someone to forward to there?

Maybe Alice is leading me to where I need to go. Come to think of it, there was an Alice back then too, and she also had a connection with Morocco. That Alice too is long over the horizon.

Other great waterways to come.