Searching the Elusive Bonobo in Congo

First Explorer up the Lomami : 1885-86

Category: Equipment, Places, people | Date: Sep 26 2007 | By: admin

Today, an absolutely essential tool for exploration up the Lomami, or anywhere, is the GPS unit (Global Positioning System). One of the GPS units used by Ashley’s teams is pictured below marking my decimal degrees here in Kinshasa. John, my husband and good friend, just told me (Skype) that with those two strings of numbers you see at the top of the unit, you (or anyone) could set your own GPS unit and compass so that you could navigate amazingly close to me here on Poids Lourd Ave, next to the docks on the Congo River. Karibu!

This unit was as essential as the thuraya on Ashley’s first trip up the Lomami. Here it marks “home” by the docks of the Congo

I, myself, am just learning how to use one of these units, but already I cannot imagine how anyone could move around unknown forest or unknown waters without one.

So it is pretty amazing what the geographer-missionary Rev. George Grenfell was able to do back in the 19th century with compass, sextant, theodolite and immense patience and determination. His map of 1886, copied below, traces his discovery of many of the Congo’s major tributaries including the Kasai, the Ubangi and the Lomami.

Grenfell was very accurate in portraying the areas he actually explored, including the lower Lomami. (source: 1886. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, vol8, #10, pp 627-634)

The source of the Lomami remained uncertain, however, as there was no record beyond 1 degree, 33 minutes south latitude which was as far as he went because, as he wrote, “the course of the Lomami was very torturous, and its current very strong.” As a result, the upper part of the Lomami, known from the southern savannas was mistakenly thought to be a completely different river system that dumped into the Sankuru River.

Grenfell was a contemporary of H.M. Stanley who was the first explorer to follow the Congo River’s immense bend around to its outlet on the Atlantic. The discoveries of Grenfell and Stanley completely revised the map of central Africa, known only by outline 75 years earlier when people were plying the seas but not venturing into the interior. Map below from 1794.

Early maps of Africa had great detail for the coast line and a totally imaginary interior. (source: 1794. Schneider und Weigal - AMNH)

Ashley (taking a short vacation after three months on the Lomami) and John (who joins the Lomami teams at the end of October) are both so GPS-oriented that they must imagine their movements through the day in little fractions of decimal degree progression. I can just see Ashley jerking his way towards the underground in London (but soon here again and heading back upriver) and I can imagine John’s motorcycle jumping a bit between 10ths of decimal degrees past the money changers on the main drag of Beni (where he is finishing reports before packing his knapsack for the Lomami). But then the world hasn’t really changed at all, just how we understand it has changed.

Bernard locating himself with GPS unit up the Lomami. Chryso taking notes.

Back in 1886 Grenfell was particularly eager to meet the local villagers up the Lomami River as he learned that they were defending themselves valiantly and with some success against the Arab slave traders and Ivory hunters who had opened trade routes from Zanzibar. Unfortunately for Grenfell, the locals had heightened their defenses and were not about to ask whether this new stranger was any different from the others they had encountered:
“…they assailed us with flights of poisoned arrows”, he wrote, “but as we were well protected by arrow-proof wire netting we went our way…”

But Grenfell’s wire head dress did not keep out the mosquito vectors of malaria and Grenfell died of “blackwater fever”, still in Africa, in July 1906.

Ten years after Grenfell’s original explorations, the Lomami was accurately mapped as flowing parallel to the Congo River through the forest all the way from its origins out on the savanna. (source: 1895. Steileras Hand Atlas. AMNH)

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OKAPI - a Memory in Film from the Ituri

Category: people, wildlife | Date: Sep 21 2007 | By: admin

If I (and this is Terese Hart again) — If I start to reminisce about that first Okapi study to the east and north of where the Lomami dumps into the Congo River, I remember the film.

Soon after the birth of our youngest daughter, Eleanor (who turns 18 this weekend), Alan Root a maker of African nature films came to see what we were doing. With incredible patience, both for animals and researchers, and with incredible ingenuity both he and his young camera man Bruce Davidson set out to follow and record the okapi study and a study of rain forest antelope (duikers) we were just getting underway.

Some of the singers and some of the dear friends and colleagues of this film are no longer with us, but I think of “Hearts of Brightness” as a tribute to them all and to the way of life they still maintain.

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I Remember Okapi, First Epulu, Next Lomami

Category: Places, people, wildlife | Date: Sep 17 2007 | By: admin

On his trip up the Lomami, Ashley found Okapi where no one imagined they could be – as far south as the Luidjo tributary .
Mysterious animals! Solitary, cryptic giants of the forest.

Okapi at the Epulu Station in the Okapi Reserve of the Ituri Forest

In the 1980s neither John nor I (this is Terese writing, John’s wife and Ashley’s collaborator) thought Okapi were west of the Congo/Lualaba. But did we even think about it ? Probably not. We were completely concentrated on the okapi in the Ituri forest. By the third year of study, 1988, we had put radio collars on more than 20 okapi. Based at a remote research camp, we had a team of nearly 30 Mbuti pygmies and Bantu villagers. We followed these okapi daily over a grid of narrow foot paths laid out over a study area of more than 50 sq miles.

Earlier this year, John on the trail out to Afarama camp, the remote base set up for the okapi study in the 1980s

So we just assumed, like everyone else, that okapi were only on the right bank of the Congo – BUT ANCIENT reports from the center of the Congo basin said otherwise:

1. thongs made of okapi hide were sported by local hunters near Lodja,
2. a dead okapi was butchered south of Opala

but, hey, that was the colonial era. No photos , no instamatic, let alone digital! And what did a strap of okapi hide mean? It could have been like a cowry shell, a currency of trade that traveled kilometers. Besides, the 1920’s and the 1930’s are a long time ago.

But then again , the 1980’s are a long time ago too – so why remember our okapi study now? — Just reminiscing.

Pygmies carrying forage to the okapi in captivity at the station just as they have done since the first okapi were captured back in the 1950s

My youngest daughter, Eleanor, now in college, was born in the Ituri at the end of the okapi study. She asks if we will put radio collars on the okapi of the Lomami.

Eleanor on the bridge we built across the Edoro on the study area where we collared okapi in the 1980s when she was a baby

a day later, after a heavy rain

My eldest daughter, Sarah, now in journalism school, and 6 when we started collaring okapi says she will write about the Ituri.

Sarah with Eleanor and Gaston preparing tea in the Ituri on a visit a couple years ago

Sarah with two friends of many years: Masudi (household manager) and Gaston (playmate)

The middle daughter, Rebekah Sylvia, most Mbuti of them all, born in the village of Epulu on the Epulu river, is not pictured here. She returned to work in the Ituri. Forest nymph, she has her own story.

Sofi with Eleanor the youngest of the three Hart girls, all of whom she took care of as infants and youngsters

Dancing at Kenge’s camp. Sofi in blue top.

SO WHAT ARE OKAPI?
They are giraffe. They really don’t look like giraffe. Marching through the Ituri in the 1880’s H.M. Stanley wrote about a strange “forest donkey” the Pygmies described. But okapi are giraffe and when you see one up close, you see giraffe in the shape of the head, the short thick horns, and the incredible tongue.

Okapi cleaning its shoulders or maybe killing a fly

The real mystery of the okapi is the long muscular tongue. It even cleans its ears with its tongue. And to eat, it lassos small branches with its tongue and pulls off all the young leaves. It is the only ruminant eating understory leaves of the forest. The antelope eat fallen fruit, the forest buffalo graze in grassy openings and swampy glades.

This view of its head shows okapi grace and giraffe lineage (and thanks to Kim Gjerstad for this and the other excellent okapi photos)

Ashley’s discovery adds a new piece to the Okapi story.
We can now pencil in the new findings to the most recent map we have below (from Bodmer and Rabb 1992) .

Okapi sign (dung, prints) were found by WWF last year in the Semiliki forest of the Virungas (circle in the east). This year an okapi skin was reported by BCI near Lodja reconfirming the old Belgian sightings that up to now were “uncertain”, and now Ashley has found okapi up the Lomami (central circle).

It is our hope – all of ours– that these findings are not the marking of a range just before it contracts and disappears but rather a staking out for real conservation. And we know – all of us – that we have to make it happen.

A magical moment over the Epulu River — may there be many in many Okapi forests

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Diamonds up the Lomami

Category: Threats | Date: Sep 09 2007 | By: admin

There are not many diamond miners up the Lomami. But is that because there are not many diamonds? Or is it only because prospection is just getting started? There are some disturbing signs.

A diamond mining camp just north of Obenge
1. The gems are not small. At least they don’t seem to me to be small. This photo of two diamonds “in hand” is what they showed us at the camp on the Lokomue, a tributary of the Lomami just north of Obenge. We were surprised to see miners there. We thought we had seen the last of the miners 300 km and four days earlier. We thought the diamond “sluicers” on the Lutanga River just south of Opala were the last we would see. But not so.


Diamonds from a tributary of the Lomami River

2. There was a Congolese “prospector” looking for diamonds in the village of Lisala, not far north from Katopa. He said that he had not found much but there was every reason (like I might have been a competitor) that he would not tell me the truth.


Diamond miners with the tools of their trade

3. The chief of the village of Lisala told me privately “there are lots of diamonds in our river” , and he waved his hand in the direction of a tributary of the Lomami. “We are just waiting for you people to come and take them”.

This is the upper Tshuapa, the farthest south west that we got. There was one small diamond camp here as well.

This is what is disturbing in all of this. If there are really diamonds, soon there will be lots of artisanal miners. Just like Terese saw north of Kisangani. And remote diamond camps live off of bushmeat. For now the Lomami forests are still rich with animals, but diamond camps would turn them silent and still.

The oldest men remember diamond prospectors of the colonial era, but only from the northern Lomami

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Kisangani, Can It Bring Law to Out-Law Lomami?

Category: Places, Threats, people | Date: Sep 05 2007 | By: admin

There is no question, our main message to the governor, the general, and all provincial authorities in Kisangani: COLONEL TOM MUST BE STOPPED. He is master of elephant poaching and dominates bushmeat trade. Colonel Tom himself told Ashley, with a wave of his hand, “the forest is mine”.

Colonel Tom, maimai leader, holding court near Opala

Pockets of anarchy in DRCongo are of two types:

1. In the east, bandits like Nkunda head armies of guerillas, are backed by bank accounts in Rwanda, combat ethnic rivals, and threaten the last populations of Congo’s gorillas.
2. Dead center, bandits like Colonel Tom are on their own turf, terrorize neighbors, poach for ivory and turn wildlife to bushmeat in Congo’s unprotected forest core.

Of the latter type of bandit, Colonel Tom is top of the wanted list.

Barter for Bushmeat is the main currency of exchange south of Opala.

Ashley came to Kisangani by dugout. He shot the last 270 kilometers down the Lomami from Opala and then pushed the last 120 km up the Congo to the same small port he left two and half months earlier. I flew Bravo airlines from Kinshasa to Kisangani.

Incredible frontier town. In its backyard markets, Kisangani handles diamonds, bushmeat and any other natural resource pulled from the forest or dug from the earth. This is where Ashley and I conferred and this is where we worked with a first-rate collaborator, DP Malengani of Congo’s conservation institute (ICCN).

Terese and Ashley. Happy to see each other again.

Hours later and deep into it

Malingane described the new government. “Will we be heard “, we asked?

The old general ,Malingane explained, was a Maimai during the rebellion, like Colonel Tom himself. “That General has just been ousted”, he told us. The new General, J-C KIFWA, must now control a third of the country.

We saw General Kifwa the first day. He did not mince words. “First the government will try dialogue.” But, the General stated flatly, pinning us with an unwavering stare, “whether Colonel Tom listens or not, Colonel Tom will be removed.”

The General met us on our first full day in Kisangani.

The new administration was equally committed. All are young: the new governor, vice-governor, the provincial environmental officer, the woman who is territorial administrator of Opala. This junior government takes authority over an enormous province where schools don’t function and hospitals are without medicine and doctors.

DP Malingane (on left) and Terese with the Provincial Environmental Officer

Madame the Territorial Administrator from Opala meeting with Ashley and the two Team leaders, Maurice (glasses) and Bernard

They have heard us. What remains to be seen is action. Malingane remains in Kisangani. He will update us, and we will update this blog.

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