Searching the Elusive Bonobo in Congo

Category: Places, people | Date: Aug 07 2008 | By: teresehart

This note is from the far southeast corner of the TL2 “Wilderness” where the internet connection is as fickle as the electricity. I am in Kindu. From the viewpoint of “government” hill I have a panorama of the Lualaba (=Upper Congo); in the foreground red brick walls of new government buildings rise against crumbling old colonial structures.

Looking left (insert) utilitarian Belgian colonial stucco next to the government’s new utilitarian brick. And in the background the Lualaba flows past from the South.

The colonial buildings, built in the 1930s, rose with equal enthusiasm among the even older edifices of the Congo-Arab era. Just upstream from Kindu, in the 1870s, Tippo Tib reigned from Kasongo and Nyungwe over an undisputed Congolese sultanate, sending huge caravans of slaves and ivory back to Zanzibar.

The crumbling colonnade of an ancient Arab structure. An old man told me that this used to be a “barazza for the ‘Bahindi’”. And before that?

Kindu is a place for history to swirl, fossilize, and be ignored.

One Kindu fossil from the middle of the last century: this horse, now nearly extinct in its new world home, used to announce the presence of fuel. Not here. Not now. You are lucky if you can find someone with a battered barrel of fuel and a length of hose with which to siphon it.

But nobody is looking to the past here. The determination and need for a new Congo and a new province of Maniema (Kindu is its capital) are almost a physical force in the air.
Exciting for us: there is a real openness to a new national park in Maniema’s TL2 wilderness. Fingers crossed.

The governor on the left and the minister of mines and energy listen to my little presentation two days ago.

The audience was gratifyingly interested.

The governor’s attentiveness and the large attendance at my little presentation were very promising. But fingers are still crossed.

In his closing remarks the governor gave a personal commitment to eat no more bonobo meat. May his example be followed by the whole province.

In Kindu I sleep in a neat Islamic guest house where three parrots in the courtyard parody life around them. At first light they mimic the nanny shrieking endlessly after the child “babu, babu, babu, babu” until finally sleep is no longer possible. At last light the parrots mimic exactly the click of a mobile phone at the end of its electric charge. “Choeet, choeet, choeet”, they screech at an insanely loud volume reminding us that no electricity for the recharge can be expected for at least another two hours.

This is a very alert parrot with a sense of the absurd

Hey, I’m ready to move to Kindu, but hopefully with my own generator and a stock of fuel.

A few more photos from this, my first-ever stay in Kindu:

Above: a view of our guesthouse. Straight ahead the kitchen and on the left the little interior court.

A view of the Lualaba from a little restaurant outside town, dugouts are taking farm produce to market.

The mosque in Kindu

Dedieu (ICCN) and Germain (local NGO) at a buvette in Kindu. Just behind them an old boat that used to bring beer from Kisangani.

With the director of Maniema’s environmental minister’s cabinet (in colored shirt) and the legal counsel (in suit).

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Category: Threats, people | Date: Jul 29 2008 | By: teresehart

In a remote western corner of our vast nearly trackless study area – something was not right. We had been hearing rumors for almost 7 months that in a series of isolated villages, the Djonga villages, something had gone wrong for conservation. We had to find out what.

That was why we sent Maurice and Crispin on their 11 day trek to the west. Maurice was to find out what wildlife was in the forest, Crispin, who is a biologist with a flare for social work, was to find out if what we had heard was true ie, a conservation NGO was “tarred and feathered” or at least banished from Djonga.

Crispin explaining in Djonga what TL2 motives are and how we work

Maurice and Crispin got an icy cold reception in Djonga – the villagers thought, at first, that they worked for ACOPRIK, the local NGO whose reputation is in tatters.

This is what Maurice and Crispin were told about the ACOPRIK event in November 2007 when all hell broke loose:

• Lambert Papesola an ACOPRIK employee who came from another province was shot in the legs.
• Other ACOPRIK employees were chased off a study area in Djonga forest.
• Even now, if a certain Andre , the president of this ACOPRIK, so much as sets foot in any Djonga village, he can expect far worse than bullets in the legs….

But what did ACOPRIK do?

• Did they steal chickens or goats from someone in the village? NO
• Did they make off with village women? NO

Papesola showing the scars from gunshot wounds in his legs.

It was something more subtle… something that I had a lot of trouble understanding. This is what the villagers said:

• ACOPRIK had been well received by the village on several visits between 2005 and 2007.
• ACOPRIK came to get the Djonga chiefs to sign documents saying they would not hunt bonobo or okapi.
• ACOPRIK deceived Djonga by using these signatures on a different document in distant Kinshasa, with the result that
• ACOPRIK sold their own Djonga forest and officially lost their traditional rights.
• Word of this fundamental deception swept like wildfire over radio and word of mouth from the capital of Kinshasa.

Is that what really happened?
A little research here in Kinshasa , revealed that AKOPRIK’s president, Andre, did push through a decree creating the Sankuru Reserve. He did this just before the last minister of the environment left office. The Djonga villages are indeed within this Reserve on its eastern edge.

I read the ministerial decree creating Sankuru Reserve (attached here at the very end of the post). Did it take away all the Djonga villagers’ rights? NO. In fact I don’t think anyone could create a more meaningless Protected Area. Limits are drawn on a map but there are in fact no restrictions inside the Sankuru Reserve at all : not on hunting, fishing , farming nor even logging. The statute says nothing except that restrictions are possible at some later date. Good grief.

It all seems incredibly ridiculous. What is the point of the joke? Was ACOPRIK and the American NGO, BCI, that backed it, trying to delude Djonga for some reason? And delude us? After all this Reserve was announced in National Geographic (Conservation, June 2008, vol. 213, #6 ), in Science magazine (Vol 318, 30 November 2007, p1365 ) and in Time. Or is ACOPRIK planning some second step we don’t know about? Please, if you know the answer, leave a comment.

But in the meantime – last night at about 11 PM – I finally got a spark of insight into the origins of this incredible tension. It is on page 633 of the 955 page tome sited below. My translation and interpretation follow:
“In Sankuru (district) a latent and murderous opposition developed between the Tetela of the savanna and those of the forest…..”
This was during the years of the 1960s. The president of ACOPRIK, Andre, is from the savanna section of the Tetela tribe. Djonga and all of the Sankuru Reserve is the forest section. The problems then and now are those of power and control. What’s more, Andre inspires little trust in his fellow countrymen with a long background in war-time politics (RCD Goma) before moving to conservation.

Quote from
Histoire générale du Congo. De l’héritage ancien à la République Démocratique. 1998. By Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem. De Boeck & Larcier s.a. Paris, Bruxelles. 955 pp



The ministerial decree creating the Sankuru Reserve

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Category: people, wildlife | Date: Jul 19 2008 | By: teresehart

The TuTu River is fast, deep and difficult to cross

There is a remote forest west of the Lomami and sheltered between the TuTu tributaries that is amazingly rich in wildlife.

West of the Lomami and east of the Tshuapa, block E15 has amazingly little hunting compared to adjacent blocks of 900 sq km.

The Tutu bends 90 degrees and the feeder rivers of its basin bend with it, so as Bernard’s team followed the compass line of their transect, they negotiated many difficult rivers. They found a forest rarely frequented by bushmeat hunters: too difficult to be worth it?
Crossing a Mutoto ya TuTu, or TuTu’s child, the name our porters gave all the streams and rivers of this unknown area of forest

A red colobus overhead follows the progress of Bernard’s “caravan” beneath him

Primates peered from the trees. There were bonobo nests, forest antelope, okapi and more sign of forest elephant than they had found anywhere before.

A fresh okapi print near one of the many Mutoto ya Tutu

Bonobos were feeding here. The evidence is the ripped and stripped Marantaceae fronds.

But what made this circuit memorable were the ivory tusks found lying in the mud on the 8th day of the circuit (4 days from the return to Obenge). They had been there a long time, mottled orange like the earth itself and no bones were in sight.

The porters gather round one of the tusks where it lay along their path.

Perhaps an elephant, wounded or just old, came to this secluded area to die. It is not often that ivory is found — anywhere in the wild. Usually elephants are killed, their ivory hacked out, their flesh stripped, and the bones left to molder.

This is the more usual scene of elephant remains found along a transect. There was an elephant slaughter here, more than a year ago, and the ivory was carried away by the poachers leaving the bones to slowly decay.

This time ivory was found after the bones were completely gone. Old ivory, but heavy. One tusk was 19 kg (42lbs) and the other 19.5 kg (43lbs). Can you imagine carrying that around like your teeth, day after day !!

This photo by Reto taken of an elephant family in a baie in the Ituri Forest. kuster.reto@gmx.net

I first wrote about this after the tusks were brought out, Ashley and John told me about presenting the tusks in Obenge, and then in Opala and finally in Kisangani. But now I have had a chance to sit down with Bernard, go through his photos and his account of carrying the ivory back. They were even bigger than I had been told before!

The porter Kasidi resting against the two tusks.

This is what happened
The trail-blazer and observation team were following the compass bearing.

Omene with the compass, directing the trail-blazer who is ahead of him. Bernard follows.

At particularly dense areas the porters skirted to one side to avoid crawling through the worst liana tangles with their loads. This was such a place. Bonne Année who was in the lead spotted the first tusk and Kasidi the second. They all gathered to consider the best move. Should they bury them? Throw them in the river? Take them back? Ivory could be big trouble…

At the site of the find. Bonne Année is on the left.

And so I add the photos below to the previous post about the ivory’s fate. I do so with a special appreciation for the forest and a special awe for its ivory seeking history: The slave caravans of Ngongo Luteta lugging loads of ivory to Zanzibar and, later, the ivory barges of the Belgians shipping more loads of ivory, now in the other direction to the Atlantic. And with a renewed commitment to help assure that elephant will have a place in the basins of the TL2 (Tshuapa-Lomami-Lualaba) carrying their own ivory for many years to come.

Carrying the ivory out.

Crossing a stream, now with the ivory.

Helping each other with the ivory across a bigger river.

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Category: Threats, people | Date: Jul 12 2008 | By: teresehart

but when the diamond camp, MOPAYAZOBA, attacked us, it was almost bloody – almost….

The Lomami diamonds are small. Notice the size of the threads!

A diamond village “supermarket”

These are not big-money diamonds. To live in a Lomami diamond village year after year, like many do, you need a substantial garden for daily food. Then, if you are lucky, the diamonds you dig up and sieve out will provide enough for the extras of life: sugar, batteries and an occasional new cloth. That is how many live in the small diamond camps that are sprinkled through the forest of the D12 block.

The white hatchings are the blocks that we still had not explored at the end of 2007. D12 is the far north west of those blocks.

Below is the story Bernard told me about when his team of 11 men explored “D12” in May of this year. (Picture of Bernard at end of this Post)
Their initial reception was hardly warm.

Throughout D12 the stream-beds are pocked with diamond - diggers’ pits and trenches.

“We are always quiet in the forest. That is one of the rules, otherwise we don’t see monkeys. Even the porters who follow behind are quiet. This time they were whispering together soon after we started. I was up front with the compass-man and the trail-breaker. None of us knew that we were only a kilometre from a diamond camp, Mopayazoba, and a couple of miners in the forest had heard our whispering.”

All of a sudden Bernard heard yelling, and clanging and the most incredible scuffle.

“I hurried back to find two of our porters, Vava and Hussein, pinning someone flat to the ground with his arms twisted.

‘This little **@** tried to kill us”, they told me, “There were ten maybe twenty of the **@**’″

The porters had been charged with sticks and machetes. They met the charge with machetes and their own greater brawn. Brawn won before blood was shed and the attackers fled.

Bernard and the whole team couldn’t carry-on without knowing why the sudden assault.

Their captive, now apologizing and saying it was all a mistake, led them to Mopayazoba.

The diamond village of MopayaZoba

As Bernard explains it the diamond village had thought they were poachers. Just a month earlier poachers had come through, killed five elephants, taken their diamonds and even taken women. So when they heard people, the village men came out with machetes and sticks.

Tensions were high at the beginning of the “peace talks” in Mopayazoba. The shit-faced grin behind our team is the fellow they pinned to the ground

Perhaps if the village PDG, Président Délégué Général, or headman had been present the response would have been more measured, but in any case in the course of a couple hours the atmosphere went from very tense to very friendly.

Albert became our escort, assuring our safe passage through diamond country.

Diamonds are a pretty poor way to make a living in Lomami, so Bernard had no trouble hiring a local miner, Albert, to guide them through the diamond villages that lay ahead. Their new friends told them there would be a lot. They were right!

A miner greets Albert as we arrive in his diamond-village, AfrikaMoto.

Every village was dirt poor. Diamonds are WHOSE best friend – really!!

But the rest of the circuit was quiet : here are a few more pictures:

Big storm in the afternoon = a forced halt = an opportunistic (much needed) nap

Small mammal snares were found throughout D12. Bushmeat is an important part of the diet in the diamond-villages.

The teams share the usual candle-lit meal of beans and fufu after a long day on the trail (candle stuck in a split sapling in the middle).

Crossing the Loli river on the return towards the Lomami.

In the prow of the dug-out, heading back up the Lomami towards Obenge after completing the D12 circuit.

Bernard (with blue plastic mug) taking a little breather

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Category: Places, people | Date: Jun 08 2008 | By: teresehart

Of Laughter, there is an abundance. Of Happiness?

The women grabbed our red plastic chairs and heaved us up over their heads. We were marched about like queens in the cheering throng.

Our dugout had barely landed in Obenge when the women of the village came dancing and singing to greet us. They surrounded me and the Mama A.T. where we were sitting in the plastic chairs that we had just carried up from the dugout. The chairs were lifted again, this time with me and Mama A.T. in them. And the women carried us around over their heads, singing and dancing the whole time. Quite the enthusiastic greeting ! I guess we were almost unimaginable to them: two women who represented authority, state authority and project authority. Something for the village women to dance about!

From the start, it was the women of Obenge who interested me the most. In some ways they are so strong and determined, in other ways so powerless.

Madawa holding her nephew, Washi’s, son.

John had a joking relationship with Madawa, the woman who managed the Losekola primate camp. As we hiked out to the camp she and John were constantly teasing each other “Ahh, Madawa I think I dropped some money would you go back and find if for me” “If you dropped any money it is already in my pocket and you won’t find it again.” She had an irresistible smile. At Losekola we ate her food and drank the water she carried.

We arrived exhausted in camp in the late afternoon. Madawa, who walked out with us, prepared hot bucket baths, fetched drinking water and heated supper. A fine woman of great stamina.

I was eager to get to know her. We could communicate in simple Swahili and she also spoke some broken French. Kinyamituku was her native language. She and all of her family came from the north edge of TL2 – between the Lomami and the Lualaba.

Not surprisingly, as I ask her about herself, it is “her men” she wants to talk about.

She points out her son in a distant field as we return to Obenge from the Losekola primate camp.
He is now almost 20 and it is he (she tells me several times) who built their house that she proudly shows me.

Madawa in front of the house her son built.

And who were the other people living in the house?

Willy Conader closing up camp at Losekola. He and Washi stay in their Aunt’s, Madawa’s, house.

Conader. Remember Willy Conader? His wife was stolen by the Maimai and his youngest son died a couple months later in “captivity”. Conader is the nephew of Madawa. Like her he is of the banyamituku ethnic group and born in the village of Kobekobe further east in the forest towards the Lualaba. Conader works hard to please Ashley and John. His goal is to earn enough money to bring on another wife so that he can reclaim his two older surviving children, a girl and a boy. Now they are in Kobekobe with Madawa’s brother.

Conader helping me search for primates in the forest canopy.

Washi. Washi, another porter with the project seemed the happiest of Madawa’s family. He too is a nephew of Madawa but his wife and children are living with him in Obenge.

Washi lived with his wife and baby and delightful son, below, in Madawa’s house.

Most living happens outdoors so not much room is needed indoors, just a space to sleep.

It was Madawa’s own story that I really wanted. When their son was just two years old, Madawa’s “husband” left her near Kobekobe and came with their son to Obenge. It was his right. The children belong to the husband. He was a bushmeat hunter but when the boy was barely ten years old his father died. Madawa got the information and immediately came to live with her son. Together they built the house where they now live.

The painted church in KobeKobe where Madawa was born and where she waited until she could rejoin her son in Obenge.

This almost seems like a story with a happy ending –except, according to Madawa: After the Obenge massacre of 2001, at which time Madawa and her son had managed to flee into the forest, they were left with absolutely nothing. Dracula took or destroyed everything in every house in the village. Then Colonel Thoms came and he was the “colonial” master of Obenge. All the young men worked for him including, of course, Conader and Washie.

Left to himself, Conader quickly becomes pensive, never sullen but rarely jovial.

Now maybe things will change. Even if it is only slowly. Madawa laughs and hugs Wahsi’s son, Sahive. I hope it is a justified optimism. We all like happy endings, and how could fate resist a smile like that??

Madawa in the Losekola kitchen. There is always hope where there is a smile like this.

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Category: Places, Threats, people, wildlife | Date: May 30 2008 | By: teresehart

Mama A.T. visits her impoverished but prodigal brood

A red colobus monkey, with baby in its lap, watches us at Losekola

The territorial administrator or Mama A.T., as she is called, greets an Obenge child. The TL2 compound is in the background.

Adele, the territorial administrator from Opala left a devoted husband and two adoring toddlers in order to accompany us to Obenge. She was more than a week away, not only from her family, but also from the territorial administration. WE appreciated it; the visit was a good thing for the TL2 project and definitely put Obenge on the map of the local administration.

We started looked for a campsite as night fell. Mama A.T. was sitting just in front of me in the dugout.

Over the years, John and I have known many territorial administrators who used their position to gain gratuities and beltline. But Mama A.T. from Obenge did not invite bribes …. This was business.

I accompanied Mama A.T. on her stroll through Obenge. People were amazed and delighted that she had come to visit them.

Mama A.T. took full advantage to warn the citizen’s of Obenge to stay away from brigands and the illicit activities by which they live. Her examples were Colonel Thoms and Major Ranger, the two Maimai that recently “ruled” this little village. We toured Obenge together and she questioned many of its inhabitants.

The whole village of Obenge gathered to listen to the Mama A.T.’s message.

All of this was to be expected, after all she did come as far as Obenge, but what really surprised us is that she agreed - and eagerly – to accompany us to the primate camp, Losekola, a ten kilometer trek through the forest. She really wanted to know what we did, what we were all about.

There is no short cut for dignitaries. The territorial administrator crosses the Losekola River on her way to our camp.

Afterwards I wondered if part of the reason she pushed all the way to Losekola was because the Bishop of Isangi told her that our real activity was diamond mining – and she wanted to see for herself. If so, we congratulate her. It is always easier to just believe rumor.

Together with mama A.T. on the primate study site near Losekola camp.

Whatever reason she came, we were able to show her the trail grid, the monkeys, and importantly, the skeletons left from the elephants poached by Colonel Thom and Major Ranger.

With bones from a poached elephant on the Losekola trail grid.

We were not the ones to tell Mama AT about the elephant killing but rather Jean Mutetela. He was at his forest fishing camp when the poachers came. We stood around a knee-high skull from which the ivory had been severed while Mutetela told us how it took a full day to flay and hack the meat from the carcass.
He told how Colonel Thoms’s men made a two night camp at the site of the slaughter then carried the meat back to his own camp where they built several large smoking racks to dry it. The whole camp was buzzing with flies.

Jean Mutetela, in front of the destroyed shelter, explains the poaching epidsodes.

And how the elephant family returned to the scene.

The surprising bit of the story was what happened afterwards. Mutetela described this with wide open eyes. The family of elephants came back. He pointed to the destroyed shelter the poachers had built. The elephants trampled the shelter and they scattered what was left of the carcass. And – Mutetela paused , “ they still come back sometimes – just to visit their mother’s bones.”

Mama A.T. recovers from a wasp sting at Losekola camp.

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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.

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Category: Places, bonobo, people, wildlife | Date: May 05 2008 | By: admin

Those Puzzling Primates of TL2 !

Waiting for the UNKNOWN. Conveniently this unknown is a ground monkey (Lesula) so John’s comfortable position is appropriate with a cup of coffee to keep the eyes keen.

There are monkeys out there between the three rivers that no one recognizes. They are not in our field guides. We’ve sent photos to the most renown of African Primatologists. Result: a lot of raised eyebrows. And the more we find out the higher our eyebrows go.

The field teams cover hundreds of kilometers on each exploration circuit, and always with limited supplies and limited time. If they see something bizarre, unidentifiable, they will write it down, try to get a photo but then move on.

The mystery monkey, ngoyi-blanc, looking down on the field teams.

If we suspect something really unknown (and we do), we have to be in one place to watch, to record and to watch some more. We have to send samples for genetic analysis. Are we sure these primates are not just a handful of hybrids? What do they eat? How do they forage? How social are they?

Losekola has a great field team. Kahindo, standing, has been receiving dawn to dusk training from John who says he is well on the way to being an inveterate naturalist.

The following is from John’s notes:
We explained our needs in Obenge. Jean Mutetela , a local hunter-fisherman, suggested we set up a study area at his camp in a stretch of forest, west of Obenge, along the Losekola river. When we described our two biggest mysteries – he said we would find them there.

Jean Mutetela holding Lesula-shedded stems of their favorite Marantaceae food

The two mystery monkeys are Lesula – a secretive ground monkey and Ngoyi a confusing canopy species. We eventually realized that the confusion came from the fact that the same local name- Ngoyi - was given to two different monkeys. Ngoyi 1 is a little known variety of the blue monkey and the other -Ngoyi 2 - well, whatever it is; it is certainly less known than Ngoy1.

We were first alerted to the unknown, Lesula, when we saw this captive in Opala.

Not only was Jean Mutetela happy to come on as a guide, he quickly agreed that there would be no further hunting on the study area. “I’ll stay busy with my fish traps on the Tutu River, when I am not with you looking for monkeys.”

Mama Madawa from Obenge tends the Losekola kitchen and about everything else that needs tending in camp

Over the past week Kahindo and I, accompanied by Washie, local guide and experienced monkey hunter, have developed a profile of the Losekola monkey community. Eight species of monkey along with the bonobo roam the 4 km2 study area.. The red colobus is the most spectacular with startlingly bright russet coat. They travel in large loose groups of up to 75 animals or more, invariably accompanied by one or two other species spread through the tops of many trees. Because of the thick fretwork of branches and leaves, it takes a lot of watching to see who all is above us.

The red colobus taking a closer look

Washie uses hunters’ tricks to excite the animals into calling, so that we can locate and identify them. One of the more effective is his imitation of the rasping squeal made by fighting monkeys, which invariably elicits “comment” from other monkeys hidden in the treetops.

My favorite though, is Washie’s imitation of the shrill call of the Crowned Eagle, Africa’s largest raptor, and a monkey-hunting specialist. Using a leaf blade to gain the proper cadence and tremolo, Washie produces a remarkable eagle imitation that raises a chorus of alarm from dispersed monkeys. Amazingly, they don’t flee.

Washie in perfect imitation of the Crowned Eagle

Sometimes Washie will rapidly whip a thin branch, with a tuft of leaves at the tip to imitate the sound of the powerful wing beats of the eagle. His finale (performed only rarely so as not to habituate the monkeys to the “cry wolf”) is his combination of wing beats, foot stomping and the anguished cry of a monkey in the talons. The sound of the combat is irresistible, especially to the red colobus, some of whom swing down close to peer at us.

Terese: Can you tell from the above? John is very excited. As he says, these new discoveries send his old field naturalist blood racing. HOW IS IT THAT THESE NEW MONKEYS WENT UNDISCOVERED. John’s assessment : this area is so remote that we are the first binocular sporting biologist to venture into the depth of the TL2 and any primate specimens from Obenge arrived as heavily smoked and unrecognizable bushmeat in centers like Kisangani.

And here is the thrill: I (Terese) am on my way to Losekola tomorrow. First to Kisangani, then a very long day on a motorcycle to Opala and three days in the dugout to Obenge, then a day on foot to Losekola. This will be my last post until the end of the MONTH but then – a first-hand account!

A beaming John sending me an email from Losekola via Bgan. “Make sure you and Ashley bring chocolate and good coffee”

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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.

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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.

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