Geldolf in Africa

.....That madness is sometimes iffy. But there's great stuff going on in art. And there's the Congo river. It's hard to get up to Kisangani at the top but I loved it there. That was where Bogart and Hepburn did The African Queen. Stanleyville as was. Very beautiful. The UN is up there. But if you go out into the bush, you're into madness. It's very troubled, to use the euphemism. You're into Apocalypse Now stuff. You want to watch out if you're venturing out there.
There's Stanley Falls, which are just little rapids really. They'll bring you across in their canoes. When we filmed there [for the BBC], the crews were singing work songs to get across. The coxes in the boats were shouting "louez!", so I started singing "Louie Lou-aye, oh baaay-by, I gotta go...!" and the rowers immediately started joining in: "Louie Lou-aye, oh baaay-by, a-gargle-oh!" So I turned to the camera and said, "We came to the Congo. And found. An incredible story. The roots. Of rock'n'roll!" That bit ended up in the out-takes.
Anyway, they'll take you across the rapids to the villages over the other side, where they use tom-toms still - God knows what'll happen to that when they all get mobiles. And they do that fishing thing where they set these huge scaffolding traps out in the river just below the falls and they swing from them and the kids dive in and so on. Now that's great touristy stuff and it'll all going to go, all of it. You're looking at an entire continent in a state of flux. What'll change it is communications technology, mobiles, IT, that sort of thing, because as I've said, it has no structure. So virtual infrastructure is the key. Africa is the fastest-growing phone market in the world.....