A 55-ton boat is nearly ready to begin hauling cargo on the Lua River, thanks to a microenterprise loan from the PCP. The contractor, a Catholic priest living in the Gemena area, constructed the boat from scratch at Bogilima, on the Lua River, northwest of Gemena on the road towards Libenge and Zongo.

The boat will run on the Lua River from Bogilima down to where it empties into the Ubangi, near Banza. At that point the freight will be transferred to one of the larger boats that ride the Ubangi down to Kinshasa. The Lua boat will then pick up manufactured goods at that point and bring them back up the river. Bogilima's location right at a major road will enable connecting transit to and from the city of Gemena.

All that remains to be done is to purchase and install motors for the boat. It will make its run nine months of the year; during the dry season the water levels are too low. It will carry agricultural products grown by the small farmers of this part of the Ubangi region on their way to market in Kinshasa. Linking the farmers and the markets will be a corps of wholesalers who will be trained and given start-up loans by PCP.

A set of photos  on PCP's Flickr page shows the building process from start to finish. To spot the location on a map, see our Google map of the region. While the road markings in this particular area are fragmented in places, Bogilima is marked. Using the satellite view, you can roughly follow a river flowing southwest. Banza, where the Lua meets the Ubangi, is not marked, but it is due west of Kungu on the map.