Searching the Elusive Bonobo in Congo

Category: Places, Threats, people | Date: Apr 30 2008 | By: admin

Actually not yet. …but it seems that he is looking for it.

The bishop visited Obenge. Crispin passed his boat when he was heading downstream towards Opala. Crispin was returning the Civil Society representatives and picking up Major John who promised to clean out the last of Major Ranger’s gang, those who had been off in the forest on his last “clean-up” mission.

The photo Crispin got of the Bishop’s boat is very reminiscent of the image from the 1951 movie, African Queen, with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

The view of the Bishop’s boat heading up-river towards Obenge

The African Queen was filmed on the Ruiki River which flows north between the Lomami and the Lualaba, dumping into the latter just south of Ubundu.

With a lot of fanfare, even if not Hollywood, the Bishop arrived in Obenge the evening of Tuesday, the 22 of April and very early in the morning of the 23rd took off with a guide and accompanying catechists into the forest. Mystery mission, of unlikely evangelical significance.

There was the appropriate pomp

Later that morning he called a town meeting where he made some comments not worth repeating about our Project TL2. He passed out salt and plastic buckets to the assembled and he met with the town leaders to tell them he was interested in a forest concession near Obenge. The town elders were non committal.

The giving of gifts

John was a half day’s hike into the forest at the Losekola Primate Camp and did not witness the visit.
Crispin was back in Obgenge on Thursday. He gathered eye witness reports, but despite his efforts to meet him personally, the Bishop was always asleep or indisposed. Crispin did however manage to talk to some of the catechists and to explain to them what we were doing. He showed our official papers.

Catechists: Why don’t you tell the Bishop what you are doing? You have not kept us informed and you are in our diocese. (comment: nor have we informed the Methodists, or the Baptists, or the Kibanguistes…. And the bishop’s base is 350 km north from Obenge as the crow flies)

John (later): Seems remarkable that the Bishop would come all the way to the southern limit of his diocese for a forest concession when the Lomami cuts through a couple hundred km of virgin forest further north.

Crispin : Let’s wait and see….it seems that he has other interests. He visited streams where it is said that the Belgian colonialists extracted diamonds and other unknown minerals.

A pertinent aside: This same Bishop of Isangi made another visit to a far corner of his forest diocese in February of this year. This time to the village of Yeikombo – west of Opala – on the road to Ikela.
He promised the village that he would build schools and hospitals. One night soon after his arrival he was caught by the PPRD (acting as local police) on a clandestine visit to a diamond mine from which a large “stone” had recently been extracted. Under interrogation, and in a very human fit of “passion”, the bishop said that with “this kind of reception” he would do nothing for the village.
And of course he hasn’t.

The last of Major Ranger’s poaching gang enter the Bishop’s boat.

Back to Obenge: Major John did round up the last three of the elephant poaching gang. With little ceremony, and to the surprise of the bishop, they became “guests” on his boat back down the Lomami to Opala.

Speechless, the bishop watches the operation.

As Crispin said, “Let’s wait and see.” If there is a follow-up you will know.

The Bishop of Isangi and a catechist wave farewell…”adieu” might be preferable.

A note: I am a Catholic and an adult convert at that. I could not write this without also giving testimony of some of the incredible sacrifice that catholic clergy made for their congregations during the recent Congo war. On the other hand the Catholic church is one of the most human. It has its underside.

19 responses so far

Category: Places, Threats, people | Date: Apr 26 2008 | By: admin

Next to the Lomami River, between the Tshuapa and the Lualaba Rivers, there is a mass grave.

Salumu Kalume, in front of the grave, tells what he witnessed

This is the third and last of three posts dealing with recent barbarity up the Lomami.
This history was revealed at the Obenge village meeting last week . The occasion was the civil society leaders John brought in the dugout 300 km from the town of Opala, their first visit in more than a decade. The village was called together by the dawn rhythms of the village drum, Bongungu.

More than six years earlier, Molangi beat the same Bongungu again and again , all day, five days in a row, calling to the terrified villagers of Obenge who had fled to distant forest camps.

This was the story that Molangi told with Salumu Kalume by his side, an Obenge villager who had fled into the forest :

During the year 2001, the RCD-Goma (one of the rebel armies) based at Opala had among its ranks a certain “Commander Dracula” who made three successive raids on the village of Obenge, ostensibly because he suspected it to be an outpost of resistance against the RCD-Goma.

Some people in Obenge knew Commander Dracula when he was a teacher at the Catholic primary school of Ubundu (!)

The Obenge villagers all managed to flee into the forest when Dracula raided the first two times, but his third trip, 7 August 2001, he came by night. He entered the village accompanied by about 35 military. A part of the village was able to flee, another part was trapped.

That same night, Commander Dracula and his military tied up 10 victims, twisted bands over their eyes and forced them to the edge of the village. They were killed with blows of a wooden pole to their neck. The bodies were left at the scene. The body of an eleventh victim, a teenage girl, was presumably thrown in the Lomami. Her clothes were found on the bank.

The next day, after looting the village, Commander Dracula and his team returned to Opala . They announced the massacre to the Territorial Administrator (powerless figurehead during war).

The Administrator sent Molangi to investigate. The small non-motorized dugout arrived in Obenge Friday 24 August 2001 (more than two weeks after the massacre). The two people who accompanied Molangi dropped him off and fled, traumatized by the scene.

The village was empty. He found 10 corpses in an advanced state of decomposition and the clothes of an 11th person on the banks of the river.

During five days, alone in the village, he beat the drum knowing that people had fled into the forest.After hearing the calls of the Bongungu again and again, a few took courage. One by one people returned.

Molangi, Kalume and three others dug a common grave and buried the corpses, little more than skeletons. They were identified by their remaining clothes. Kalume made a list of the people killed, that list is below.

Now, every year on the 7th of August the residents of Obenge have a solemn ceremony at the site of the mass grave in memory of the people who were massacred.

The victims of the massacre:

Jean Marie Ngandi, the leader of the delegation from Opala, stands in the new community gardens. He, too, sees this harvest as a hope for the future.

8 responses so far

Category: Places, Threats, bonobo, people | Date: Apr 23 2008 | By: admin

This reflective bonobo has no doubt seen a bit of the evil side of human nature, how else would he have been orphaned and finally ended up at LolaYa Bonobo

Elephant poaching and bonobo hunting were a major concern for us since we started exploring the TL2 river basins a year ago. We congratulated the military, and even ourselves, for managing to take off the worst offenders. But what we are discovering now leaves no room for self congratulation. A decade of anarchy and occupation by militias has led to a culture of rape, extortion and trafficking in military weapons. It is not just elephant lives and bonobo lives that are cheap – human life too, is cheap.
Poaching is a symptom of a deeper disease. And I fear that something must be done about that deeper disease to make the poaching controllable.

The Opala delegation in Obenge

When John came down from Opala he brought with him representatives of the “people”, what is called société civile here, including three well-respected men. This was the first such official visit since before the long civil war, more than ten years ago.
The visit of the delegation was also the first time that villagers in Obenge felt empowered enough to speak openly of some of what they have suffered. Five recent cases of rape, perpetrated by associates of Col Thoms were brought up. While some of the solutions proposed (“marriage” of one 12 year old victim to her teenage assailant) scarcely felt like justice, we have to accept that perhaps it is the best solution possible. And some families are indeed asking for public recognition of the crime with retribution.

The chef de secteur from Opala, wrote this in his report (my translation):
We have identified with the help of the community leader in our delegation, five recent and critical cases of rape. One case requires medical examination followed by psycho-social and medical care.
We also note that two of these cases were very recent, having occurred during this month of April.

One of Major Ranger’s gang and one of the rapists being interrogated. In the background the Lomami flows on.

John wrote, “Even more shocking were the revelations emerging today about the mass grave that we were shown at the edge of the village where the remains of ten people are buried who were massacred in 2001 by a Congolese rebel militia led by a commander with the sinisterly appropriate nom-de-guerre of Commandant Dracula. The interviews undertaken by our visiting delegation documented unimaginable barbarity. The fact that the perpetrators, including Dracula, remain not only at large and unpunished, but vested with posts in the national police force in Kisangani, does not give confidence that complete social recovery will happen quickly.”

John is sending on the Chef de Secteur’s report concerning the story of the mass grave. I will translate it and put it out in the next few days.

So, I am wondering: where does a conservation and development project such as ours go from here?
These problems are community problems and the Obenge villagers know, that to heal, they must find community solutions themselves. But they also feel that in a very basic way we have become part of this community – and indeed it does feel that way.

5 responses so far

Category: Places, Threats, people | Date: Apr 22 2008 | By: admin

They are more than just poachers…..

The village chief with the recovered weapon

The information below came as satellite email from John:

During the two and a half day trip from Opala to Obenge in the dugout we received a cryptic satellite message from Maurice, who was in Obenge having just gotten back from an inventory circuit:

“arme de guerre saisie, propietaire detenu” (seizure of a military weapon, owner detained)

We shared the message with the three members of the civil society, including the chef du secteur, who are traveling with us. They are the first official delegation not only to visit our project but even to come to Obenge since the civil war started more than 10 years ago.

The river from Opala to Obenge was deceptively peaceful

Maurice greeted us in Obenge that evening with the information that the weapon was with the Mere Cheftaine (village chief). The owner, the uncle of Major Ranger, was under surveillance.

We learned that this uncle had at first refused to reveal the whereabouts of the arm, but when bound and threatened with being hauled before the military unit based in Opala for interrogation, he agreed to lead the village chief and a small group of witnesses to a nearby forest site where the assault rifle was buried.

Covered with rust, the stock tunneled by termites, the clip still held four rounds. Kahindo, trained as an ICCN guard to handle firearms inspected the gun the next day and noted that it could still be made operational.

It was not empty

Against this background the chef du secteur spoke this morning, at a village reunion of the entire population , well over a hundred were present. The gathering started in the morning with singing and dancing and ended three hours later with a march through the village.

A number of revelations became public : three members of Major Ranger’s and Colonel Thoms’s gang were identified as still being in Obenge. ’

To add to the drama, Radio Okapi in a recent national broadcast carried a story about Colonel Thoms, reporting that MONUC investigations revealed that he and his gang had raped at least 135 women and girls, including 25 children.

“What if the parents of all those girls came together in one spot”, our team-leader Dino thought aloud (a father himself). “They would fill our camp. And then what if Colonel Thoms’s last three accomplices still here in Obenge were brought in front of that crowd…..”

I will have a follow up of the community meetings with more information from John in two days…..

8 responses so far

Category: About the project, Places, people | Date: Apr 17 2008 | By: admin

Which is more inscrutable?

I live in Kinshasa.

If you put your finger on the map at Kisangani (the town from which the dugout launches to go up the Lomami) and then you trace the Congo River first north and then around the long bend to the south, after 1500 km your finger will come to Kinshasa, village of 8 million, capital of the Congo – DR Congo. I live here.

Our house/gîte was once, I think, a small colonial office for collecting river port taxes.

Often it is just me, with our Kin-mutt Georg, camped out on Poids Lourd Road, with both John and Ashley up the Lomami

WHY here?
I have to ask myself that sometimes –but the answer is obvious:
This is where we get the official papers to go up the Lomami
This is where we can lobby to protect TL2 effectively
This is where most of our collaborators have a base

BUT STILL….
Kinshasa is an urban village, sometimes humorous, always up-front , but entirely inscrutable.
Here is a little picture gallery of what I see in a perimeter of ½ km from my house every day.

From the shanties where they live, just around the corner, these mamas make a life selling street-lunch to day labor on Poids Lourd Road.

This off-shore shanty town constructed on abandoned barges is just behind my port-side house. That’s a fish-trap in the water in the foreground

You can just see my river-view lookout between the two captain’s cabins on the docked, “Joseph Conrad” river barges. That is where I perch on top of an empty freight container in the atelier behind the house with an afternoon tea or evening Primus (local beer)

From my lookout I can watch the forest coming down river all day to the timber processing plant next door. It is very clear why the name of the road is Poids Lourd (heavy weight). Those timbers weigh.

So far – TL2 forests are not in that pile. There are no concessions and our goal is to keep it that way.

My morning alarm is the train (5:45 AM is the first one) on its way towards center town. It brings singing, shouting, banging, general cacophony

First class has got to be the roof

It brings the workers to the timber processing plant next door

Perhaps Calvin Klein really has diversified into tropical timber — ?? Never know? all part of the inscrutability.

A worker pauses by the railway wall to toke up before entering the processing plant. It takes a bit of courage…

The Poids Lourd military are unperturbed, inscrutable.

Much of the timber is for export and some is shipped out as logs.

The forests of congo being carried down Poids Lourd, through Kinshasa and on to Matadi, the Atlantic port

And a lot of sawn planks are pushed off by local transport, “pous-pous”, for local use.

Local “pous-pous” transport is half of Poids Lourd traffic and cause of its constant traffic jams

But the cacophony dies with the departing evening train.

Train passes an evening soccer, “football”, match, ubiquitous in all open lots

And then I do have my corner of peace, me and the evening-singing palm thrush, and the cordon bleus, and the weavers and mannikins — and Georg

The epiphyte covered avocado tree stands sentry over my quiet lawn between brick walls.
This is where I live,
on Poids Lourd in Kinshasa:
A very peaceful place between 7 PM and 6AM
And always inscrutable.

7 responses so far

Category: Places, wildlife | Date: Apr 09 2008 | By: admin

The team is mainly slogging through swamp. It is inundated forest southwest of Obenge: a lot of swamp forest, isolated dry hillocks, then again swamp and always another river to cross…day after day.

A wet “exploration circuit” between the Tshuapa and the Lomami

But this particular forest is extremely important. The forest of the Tutu watershed is the only remaining forest with a good elephant population in the whole TL2 landscape. In fact there are not many other forest elephant populations left in all of the DR Congo’s central basin…and that is a lot of forest ( more than 800,000Km² !)

Elephants are concentrated along the TuTu River, west of Obenge

The “Boussolier” with the compass calls out directions to the “pisteur” with the machete who is breaking trail up front: “Stay right” “Straight to that Apakipekipe,” (a big swamp tree). Slow going. Bernard and Muhindo are the observers behind the boussolier: one keeps his eyes in the treetops watching for primates, the other’s eyes are on the ground looking for tracks, elephant “rubbings” or dung. Both take notes. Seven porters follow behind with tents and food.

At least four more days of wet-knee transect before returning to Obenge, the village that is our current base.

It is the pisteur, stepping up on some nominally firm ground, who sees them first. “Pembe!! Hey, two pembe (tusks) right here”.

Pembe is white gold. You don’t find elephant tusks just lying around in the forest. But these were just lying there— actually half buried and they were huge, compared to the size of tusks found on the forest elephants hunted today.

They dug and pulled them from the muck and ground tangle. They were nearly black , with ruts and riddles from years, probably decades of slow weathering. Did some big elephant just come here to die? The team scoured the area for bones – none. Even teeth – none.

An elephant entering a marshy glade in the Ituri Forest, photograph © Reto Kuster

Or maybe it was some poacher — If so, how long ago? — and if so, why did he leave the tusks? Besides, there is no path near-by, nor a navigable stream, nor any kind of recognizable landmark. Even today the poachers of TL2 , have no compass, let alone GPS. They would not even temporarily leave such wealth in such an unrecognizable place. But maybe such obscurity is just the sort of place an old or wounded elephant would seek to die.

At 25kg those tusks would have fetched well over a thousand dollars just in Opala. In Kisangani? In Kinshasa? In Dubai? Before they had been so “weathered” on the outside, how much did they weigh?

Ashley got an SMS on his satellite phone sent from the team’s satellite phone. “What do we do, boss? Throw them in the river or bring them back?” They brought them back.

Crispin is holding one of the tusks to show to officials in Opala. John and Ashley in the background.

The tusks might be white gold, but they are also contraband and associated with the most unscrupulous of poachers. Obenge’s Chefitaine de Village said, “Take them to Opala”. In Opala the authorities said, “Take them down to Kisangani”. In Kisangani a very self-important Chef de Ressorts Désirables (= chief of desirable finds), signed for the ivory and took it, presumably, to the bank. Presumably.

7 responses so far