We moved !
Category: About the project | Date: Sep 07 2008 | By: teresehart
You can now find us here: www.bonoboincongo.com.
Treking across Central Congo to Arrive Unannounced
Category: About the project, Places, wildlife | Date: Jul 24 2008 | By: teresehart
We are in the very center of Congo because we want to know where and how many bonobos remain in this forgotten forest of 50,000 sq km. What threatens them and other large animals like the elephant and the okapi? Our ultimate goal is to bring real protection to some part of the forest between these rivers: the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba (TL2).
The compass sets the direction, the observers follow and porters are last.
Our teams move out across the forest to specific locations, using GPS waypoints to guide them along a map-determined route. They follow a well-tested protocol of field methods to discover the presence and abundance of forest animals. In May and June two teams were doing just that, but Maurice’s circuit, described here, had a special mission.
A view towards Djonga as the team climbed the hills between the Tshuapa and Lomami watersheds.
Maurice was to lead a team to go to the far west of the TL2 zone to where there is a scattering of small communities called Djonga. Why? Because those communities were angry, angry about conservation. We had heard that a group from further west, one professing to work for conservation, had come to Djonga last year and something went wrong, very wrong. We rely on the good will and support of all the villages in this 3-river area. We need the Djonga population to protect the far west flanks of TL2.
The first stage of the trip was the trek from Obenge to the first Djonga village through the blocks of E15, D15 and C16. It took 11 days.
While Maurice’s team explored the Djonga forests, Crispin was put in charge of discussions with the villagers. Here is the first report of their trip to Djonga:
Crispin crossing forest towards Djonga. Although this stream has a white sand substrate it is clear unlike the black water streams in the north.
Djonga is a cluster of small settlements surrounding several islands of savanna near the Tshuapa River. It took Maurice, Crispin and their team eleven full days to march across uninhabited forest between Obenge and Djonga. This was a major trek with nothing but GPS guidance, even by the standards of these seasoned TL2 explorers.
A pre-dawn breakfast on one of the eleven days of forest-march to reach the villages at the western edge of TL2
The expedition encountered no people and very little sign of human passage in the crossing to Djonga. During the recent war years, however, army detachments, Mai Mai groups, and various armed men under minimal control crisscrossed this forest. They left their noms-de-guerre and often a date carved on tree trunks.
This graffiti tree is on the approach to Djonga
They also encountered little sign of animals. Tracks or dung of okapi, buffalo and bongo were rare. Was this because they had been hunted out, or because the forest soils were impoverished ? Only monkeys were abundant: including the new species of monkey, Lesula, first found close to Obenge.
Hardly a large mammal but this viper was worth a photo along the trek to Djonga. It’s not usual to see them climbing.
Exhausted the team finally marched out of the forest into the clearing of Bolota the most northeastern of the Djonga villages. They were a strange sight indeed in a community as insular as this! And it felt a bit dangerous considering the last visitors had indeed made themselves unwelcome….
Weary but cautious, Maurice prepares to meet the village elders.
Back from the Lomami, but soon to return
Category: About the project, Threats | Date: Jul 07 2008 | By: teresehart
Sorry for the Silence.
But silence is not absence. Ashley just returned to Kinshasa after first landing in Kisangani and disbursing the tired teams to their respective homes for a few weeks of much needed rest.
He is now emptying notebooks into the computer so the information can be sent to John who has already started a second step in the analysis. The two will meet in a couple weeks with some other colleagues to work through what the numbers all mean. Is this important? – VERY.
A carved okapi watches quizzically as Ashley pounds in the data
How many bonobo are there in the TL2? How many elephant? How many okapi? There is enough information so we can begin to look at these numbers – begin to find out what more is needed – where are the holes, what areas in the TL2 river basins are likely to be most important? And what areas are most threatened by bushmeat hunting.
Bringing home a bush pig in Katopa. That’s a lot of meat.
Then back up the Lomami in August for a final marathon push to get the remaining information needed to fill the holes. At the end of the year we will again lay all the information on the table.
THEN WHAT? Information is only a first step. Then (and now as well) we have to move towards protection.
How do we do that? One thing is certain, to get a protected area that is believed in on the ground and not merely a piece of paper in a distant capital city means we need a lot of support and at all levels — we will need a lot of people pushing with us.
Dugout Express and DHL Yamaha — Delivery up the Lomami
Category: About the project, Places, people | Date: May 24 2008 | By: teresehart
The Lomami’s long empty highway with forest curbstone…… two days to think of metaphor and hyperbole
We heard only one airplane fly overhead in the two weeks that I was finally up the Lomami. John commented on it immediately, “most unusual.” Planes stay away from the central forest between the three rivers. They fly north along the roads and Congo River or south along the savanna roads and forest border, but not over the TL2 where the few old colonial motor tracts are now foot-trails, too overgrown to be visible from above. More importantly, there is NO air strip for an emergency landing, NO open dirt road for the last-chance “soft” crash, nothing.
Our drivers (Albert, Nestor and Tipe) readying the motobikes for the first, Kisangani-Opala, section of the trip.
The only real highway is the waterway. Even the road north of Opala to Kisangani, is barely more than a bicycle trail.
The road itself was the main obstacle during the last 60 km of the return to Kisangani. We stuck to Congo’s west bank on the way back and reached Kisangani after 23 hrs.
In short, getting to Obenge and back was an adventure, an adventure that helped me to understand just how there can still be so many mysteries hidden in the TL2 forests.
Traveling by road between Kisangani and Opala, river-crossings become major delays. A storm put-off crossing the Tshopo by an hour then the “ferry” needed bailing.
After we finally loaded the motobikes into the dugout, the crossing was fast and efficient.
This is how we did it: From Kisangani to Opala we took rather unreliable rented AG 100s and 125s. Not much choice!! We started with three but only entered Opala with two as one had a complete breakdown part way through the second day. I was traveling with Ashley and we were bringing gear needed to keep the teams on the ground through June (and coffee and chocolate to John).
Crossing the huge expanse of the Congo at Yanonge, the helmsman and front paddle were also incredibly rapid and unhesitant.
With a combination of breakdowns and many river crossings (Tshopo, then Congo, then Lobaye and finally Lomami) between Kisangani and Opala, it took two days on motorcycle (“moto”). Then, two more days in motorized dugout south from Opala.
At the Lobaye River crossing we met some of Major John’s men patrolling bicycle packs to keep munitions from traveling south where they could be used for another elephant slaughter.
By far the most comfortable part of the travel was on the Lomami River, the dugout south from Opala. Also, the most informative. We were traveling with Madame the Territorial Administrator (A.T.) as well as other dignitaries from Opala. This was an opportunity to discuss at a higher level the pros and cons of conservation in this remote area. We were also providing a means of transport for the A.T. to visit this far flung corner of her territory, an area she had not yet seen but knew as the erstwhile hideout of the infamous Colonel Thoms , the brigand accused of over a hundred rapes in her territory just the year before. He and his men had held Obenge in their grip.
The captain for the Armed Forces posted in Opala accompagnied the A.T. as her bodyguard. Despite the appearance of shock-trooper he was the most enthusiastic natural history observer in the delegation.
There were particular perks in being with the A.T. It definitely gave us a certain status and also (no small thing) gave us access to a share in the gifts of fish, bananas and rice that were showered on her.
A local fishermen paddled up with a huge catfish gift for Madame A.T.
He then pushed off and continued checking his hooks and lines.
We passed scattered fisher families camped in lone shelters on the forested banks, one here and one there, continuously south of Opala. There were very few permanent settlements, even tiny ones, before we reached Obenge.
Obenge landing
The delivery of coffee and chocolate was finally effected four days after departure from Kisangani. Amidst great celebration of course!!
Belgian coffee and a sawed-off plastic water bottle for filter. Result: 4 star.
Coffee perched on knee, John works with Muhindo on bird identifications.
All One Congo : Kinshasa to Lomami
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.
TL2 Training in the Ituri
Category: About the project, Places, Threats, people | Date: Feb 20 2008 | By: admin
Ashley on his “moto” and my “moto” covered with dry season dust. Our trip took two days.
Ashley and I took off by motorcycle heading east from Kisangani and John came from the west with two experts in GIS and mapping. The team leaders were already at Epulu. The training has lasted two weeks…in fact it will not be over until tomorrow (this is posted from the Ituri Forest)
A second merchant is pushing his bike up the hill in the background
On the way from Kisangani Ashley and I saw the new Congo. Road repair to Epulu is more than 80% completed. There is one stretch of about 80 km that remains impossible for big trucks. This stretch keeps the bicycle merchants (batoleka) in business. But it is a disappearing profession.
Always a delight to take a “family photo” in front of the Epulu — John, Ashley and me
For John and me it was a thrill to gather again by the Epulu river – it has been the home of our hearts for years. And it was wonderful for all of us to see the rapid progress on TL2, not only in sharing and analyzing what has already been learned about TL2 but also in discussing what needs to be done next.
The trainees concentrating intently, each on his own project
With unexpected primates in unprecedented areas throughout the TL2 landscape, the ability of everyone in the field to identify monkeys from their cries and partial views is essential. A stint in the forest camp of Afarama (Okapi Reserve) was an important test run as there are 13 different species of monkey in this part of the Ituri forest.
Maria and Nick our two cartographic/GIS trainers on a primate transect. Nick is meticulously mapping the hydrology of TL2 to avoid more waterless days on the circuits. Maria is helping us see, through maps, the progress we have made
One of our goals is to map primate distributions. But the first critical step is ferreting out the new primate forms that are apparently up the Lomami
Dino a team leader helping perfect the field methods for primate transects
That requires an ability for quick accurate identification and documentation and that comes from practice, patience and determination …
Back at Afarama, one of the Okapi Reserve’s field camps, going over transect field notes
There is an urgency to all this effort at learning basic natural history. The urgency is Hunting. To our amazement hunting has reached into the most remote areas and spares neither primate in the trees nor antelope on the ground.
John going over field notes with team leaders at Afarama. Faustin and Bernard considering…
Where MUST HUNTING it be controlled? We need to know and map the most critical areas and then push for their protection.
A freshly killed owl-faced monkey being held by a hunter in the Ituri Forest.©Copyright_Reto Kuster. This is one of the unexpected monkeys we have found south of Opala in TL2. It was only known to exist 150 km and two giant rivers further east.
Dear Friends of the Lomami
Category: About the project | Date: Feb 05 2008 | By: admin
Today, I arrived in Kisangani where Ashley has been for nearly a week, preparing the next trip up the Lomami. Tomorrow the two of us leave on trail-worthy motorbikes for the Réserve de Faune à Okapi in the Ituri Forest. John is already there, getting a field training under way. We all return to Kisangani in a week. From Kisangani, this time we will launch a massive dugout up the Lomami River.
So for the next few weeks we will only rarely be able to get on line.
In the meantime, we are collecting pictures and trying to understand more about what is happening and how we can make things happen.
In a week I hope to post an update — and will catch-up on any thoughts you have had in the meantime.
Women of the Lomami Join our Teams
Category: About the project, Places, people | Date: Jan 22 2008 | By: admin
The story of Women in the Lomami and all of DR Congo is incredibly sad and incredibly inspiring. Even in the best of environments, they are set up to be victims, BUT, out of their stories, that often send shivers through the soul, comes a faith in the future of the Lomami, and — I believe it — in all of our futures.
Nyota (on the left) and Clarisse, women team members in the Lengola forest
Here are the stories of two Lomami-women that joined John’s teams on the trek through the Lengola Forest. This is as John explained it :
During these last circuits we had our first women join the team. This was a break from tradition because these marches are considered men’s work.
True, it is not a job for just any woman (or man): Tracking, portering and, after a long day, camp chores.
Lunch break and John passing around the peanuts Clarisse roasted the night before
“We are like the bonobo,” Mama Nyota, one of our woman recruits told me, “we sleep in a new place every night”.
Nyota in the dugout on the Ruiki River with the helmsman guiding the boat from the back
Women have to brave breaking from a cultural mold to come on our teams. They are with men all day every day, men who are neither spouse nor family; they are alone, away from their village.
A woman makes soap from palm oil and lye in a Lengola village. Life is not easy but it is familiar.
Two profiles:
Clarisse, was recruited in Kisangani, a high school graduate, who did not go on to study further following the death of her father, a traditional chief with multiple wives. Without his personal intervention, the meager family resources destined for her education came to an end. She is unmarried and 29 years old, but because she is so tiny looks younger.
Clarisse with some girlfriends. Of her friends, only she went to secondary school.
She has no children, and was never married, unusual for her age. Eventually she told us of what she considers her great shame, an ectopic pregnancy, out of wedlock some years ago. She now lives with her older brother. She came on as team cook, but was fascinated by the forest work and was soon contributing observations. It surprised me to find out how much she knew of the forest. She will use her salary to establish herself independently. Her hope, expressed shyly, is to become a long term team member
Clarisse, on bike, talking with fish-buyers on their way into the Lengola villages.
Nyota, lives in the Lengola village of Batiobeka. She volunteered to join the team during the two days we camped in her village. She came on to assist Clarisse with cooking. About 40 years old, she too is unmarried having left an abusive husband. Mother of three daughters, all grown and gone, she now lives with her mother and an elderly aunt. When she left us at Ubundu,after two weeks of work, to return to her village she carried 8 bricks on her head for her mom’s hearth (there are no stones, only sand-substrate in the Lengola forest). On her back she carried machetes and axes to give to her brothers and uncles in exchange for cutting her garden, traditional men’s work usually undertaken by a husband. She, too, wants to stay with the teams and is willing to travel many days on foot to Obenge to join the next forest trips.
Nyota with her brothers and nephews in Batiobeka
Both Clarisse and Nyota were hard working and respected by all the men on the team. Both spoke matter of factly about hardships common to Congolese women including poor health care and high risk gynecological interventions. Nyota described in graphic detail climbing on to an operating table to have ovarian cysts removed. It was still bloody from the woman before her in an operating theater lit by kerosene lamp.
A woman carrying Manioc tubers from her garden in the Lengola forest
John’s description above brought back memories of the 1970s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in eastern DR Congo and disturbed by how few girls were among my students in a secondary school. The classrooms were overflowing, but nearly all boys.
School boys in and around the school house where I taught in the mid-70s
I eventually started a little after school gathering just for my women students, and that is where I found out that of the six girls, one was in school because she had a child out of wedlock and was no longer considered marriageable, and three others were having sexual relations with my male teacher colleagues. I felt in over my head immediately.
During my Peace Corps days, John came out of the forest where he was living among the Pygmies to visit me in Nyankunde
I hope we can share more stories from women who join our teams, but this first post would not be complete without reference to the situation of women in much of eastern D.R. Congo. Climb out of the Lomami and the Lualaba river basins, going east and you will be in the lands torn apart by conflict. The women here, as in the Lomami and most of DR Congo, are second class citizens. Add that to a slow, ugly ethnic war and the women become targets. I say no more, but here are some websites.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/drc/Congo0602-03.htm#TopOfPage
http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/1561.cfm#down
http://www.womenforwomen.org/sfcongo.htm
I hope you, like I, find a faith in many of these stories, a faith that there is a vital, life-giving determination in these Congolese women that can and will survive. If hope is born out of hardship, surely this is a cauldron of hope.
Delighted to see women on the exploration team, village women from the village of Batiamoniga accompanied us through their village and part way down the path carrying Clarisse’s and Nyota’s packs.
Introducing a New Good Guy to the Lomami
Category: About the project, Places, people | Date: Jan 07 2008 | By: admin
Welcome John Hart
Actually he is not new….
Snap shot of John’s first trip into Central African forests as birdwatcher -freshman in college….
Two of our last posts were from John’s trip in the northern TL2 through the land of the Lengola. And we managed to get his input on earlier posts as well, but John has not had his proper introduction yet. Here it is:
John in teaching mode with two team leaders, Dino and Faustin, on his right….
Of the three of us (Ashley, John and me), John has spent the most years trekking through Congo’s forests. When I first came to the Congo (then Zaire) in 1974 as a Peace Corps volunteer, John was already in the Ituri forest. He had a special post-undergraduate grant to study the ecology of the Mbuti pygmies. The grant was to last one year and cover all travel as well as everything else. It was 6000 dollars. He made it last two and a half years.
A recent photo of John with Mbuti, Pygmy, elders in Epulu village in the Ituri Forest.
We returned to the Ituri together in 1980 for our doctoral research. We came with our first daughter, Sarah, and the second, Rebekah, was born in Epulu.
A snapshot of us in front of the Epulu River in 1983
While I looked at plants, John’s research was on forest antelope and the Mbuti were his guides and assistants. Having finished our graduate degrees we returned to the Ituri for another ten years.
A truly fuzzy snapshot of John putting a radio collar on a duiker in 1983.
Over the last ten years John has worked in the Salonga forest, the forests of Kahuzi-Biega, the forests of Itombwe and now he is with us in the Tshuapa-Lomami-Lualaba (TL2). He has been with international conservation NGOs and he led the CITES program to study the illegal killing of elephants.
Scrutinizing the canopy for primates and birds, binoculars at the ready…
Now – and we are delighted – John will be full time on the TL2 project. As Scientific Director he will hone our forest methods, oversee analysis and follow-through on discoveries. And already the file for the latter is getting thick.
One Down for the Lomami
Category: About the project, Places, Threats | Date: Nov 22 2007 | By: admin
BUT SO MUCH FARTHER TO GO!
Does someone in this photo look familiar?
He has his head tipped to the side and is NOT looking at us (Ashley corrected me).
He is also in the photo below. Big time elephant poacher, Colonel Tom (or Thomps) has a new – temporary? – persona. A small group of military were sent up the Lomami to bring the Colonel out of the forest. They did…in probably the only way possible : very civilly (He walked across the forest with an escort, but of his own “free will”). We are told he will soon be sent to military retraining camp many miles away. Hope so.
May he never reign in his forest camps again
Does this mean that the remaining Lomami elephants are safe now that the principal elephant poacher is out of the forest.
Safer, that is for sure , BUT the threats have not evaporated:
Ashley who is now in Obenge, a village well up the Lomami, says this:
“Colonel Thomps took 300 kgs of ivory out of Obenge just before he left the forest”
And Ashley adds that Colonel Thomps left his Major (maimai) and his Major is now in Obenge and has guns:
“…he is planning on going back into the forest in about 3 days to hunt more elephant…”
BUT WE HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE. Colonel Thomps is out and the Major “knows his time is coming to an end…”
Village meeting to discuss increased agriculture, decreased hunting. pros and cons.
Being on the ground and in the forest makes a difference. John is now west of Ubundu, Ashley at Obenge, Bernard on the upper Tshuapa, Dino and Faustin east of Opala, and Maurice north of Katopa. Each of these is a team leader and working at the head of a group. There are also two full time community conservationists, Lambert and Crispan, on the ground based out of Obenge.
This is the TL2 project. We work from the ground up.
One of the new agricultural plots TL2 is helping to establish in Obenge — there will be 150
Ashley is done in but the Obenge women carry on with the garden work
It is possible to start from the top and work down as well. With only token field work ahead of time, it is still possible to have a Protected Area Proclaimed. Has it protected the right area? will the village populations really accept it? does it have the international support it needs? will the government really follow through with Reserve infrastructure?
This is the situation of Sankuru Nature Reserve, a neighbor and overlapping the TL2 landscape. We make an interesting comparison of conservation approaches. May we both succeed.
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