Seat-Sore between Kindu and the Okapi Reserve
Category: Places | Date: Aug 19 2008 | By: teresehart
After Kindu I met John in Beni and we continued to the Okapi Reserve to meet with two TL2 team leaders. We arrived in Epulu completely beat and painfully saddle sore.
It was nearly midnight when we finally arrived at our home in the Okapi Reserve.
Traveling through Congo is never easy, but it should have improved along the RN4 (National Route 4) between Beni and the Okapi Reserve, after all the Chinese road crews had worked well over a year. What’s the problem? Since the war began and the road became impassable for bigger vehicles, John and I have ridden the backs of motorbikes more times than we can count. The war is now over and the road has been “repaired”. So, why is it worse?
Reason one: The Ituri River bridge is out so we decided to take the “short cut”. How so? Within weeks after the Chinese improved the bridge, a Kenya-bound truck carrying nearly twice the permitted weight in illegal wood tried to cross the bridge. The result below. And yes, lives were lost.
A week after collapse.
Compare this early picture of ferrying people across the Ituri to the busy commerce (below) that we found now, more than a year later
Reason two: Three days of rain had turned the “short cut” into a slick with soup filled pits. We were still traveling (sometimes on foot) well after dark.
Along the worst stretches we let the bikes struggle by themselves and we trudged behind. There were plenty of “worst” stretches.
Reason three: Face it – bad bikes. Even if the “motards” or drivers were courageous these flimsy Chinese-made SENKES did not measure up to our usual Yamaha AG100s.
So, for the return trip we followed the Chinese-repaired RN4 all the way back and crossed by boat at the Ituri.
Loading the motorbikes into a boat. It is no longer dugouts (see above) at the crossing. Big business deserves “big” boats.
Waiting our turn to pull the boat across this massive Ituri River, still 800 km upstream from where it dumps into the Congo River.
John perched in the bow as they begin to pull the boat across.
As we approached the east bank we could see the trucks lined up mainly waiting for wood.
Boys well under 16 were helping with the unloading.
The sacks on the left are full of palm oil, another forest commodity. And we are ready to take off.
We were seat sore when we got back to Beni anyway. So in the final analysis:
1. Chinese made SENKE – low grade
2. Chinese repaired Road – better than the Lebanese repaired section. The Chinese really worked!
3. Chinese repaired Bridge – it would have been fine if the Congolese military who policed it did not take bribes ….
Old Slave Capitals on the Upper Congo River
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).
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.
BUSHMEAT 5 : Ashley Goes South, Up the Lomami
Category: Places, Threats, bonobo, wildlife | Date: Jun 17 2008 | By: teresehart
And what do they find? More of the same. Alas.
Ashley, Bernard, Kahindo, Dino with all their field teams , headed south in both dugouts.
The teams heading south to do inventory circuits in new areas.
They stopped at the village of Ngoma Myuli, in the Province of Kasai Orientale and within the new Sankuru Reserve. It is a small village of just over 30 people. The ethnic group is Balanga.
Ngoma Myuli is a small pleasant village.
Ashley says this:
“They are friendly and open, but have no scruples about hunting. That’s how they make a living.
They proudly showed us yesterday’s catch. It includes monkeys and among them a bonobo.
They caught two black mangabeys, a black and white colobus and a local variety of blue monkey.
There is a 12 gauge shotgun. That is what killed all of them. There are no military weapons: No AK47, No FAL and no outlaws or brigands terrorizing the population.
The headman demonstrated his old 12-gauge for me — that was all he needed to make a life from bushmeat.
The bushmeat is carried to the village of Kindu. It takes at least 3 days to get there: pirogue and bicycle.
Sold in Kindu, the dead monkeys are each worth 8000 Francs Congolais or $14.50 That is more than twice the mark up from selling them here to a traveling merchant . But the bonobo – now that is real money – if smoked whole and sold in Kindu, it could get 50 US dollars, maybe even a bit more.
Head of male bonobo killed in same hunting trip as the primates pictured above.
This is the challenge to conservation. How do you turn good people away from a good living with no alternative of equal value to offer ??
How can the hands of these two species be made more equal in our use of this land?
For more information about bushmeat hunting in the TL2 landscape:
http://lomami.wildlifedirect.org/2008/03/09/bushmeat-4-tl2-in-the-middle/
http://lomami.wildlifedirect.org/2008/02/26/bushmeat-3-the-history-of-hunting-in-tl2/
http://lomami.wildlifedirect.org/2008/02/03/bushmeat-2-not-for-pot-species/
http://lomami.wildlifedirect.org/2008/02/01/bushmeat-1-a-healthy-lunch-from-the-tl2/
About bushmeat trade – general:
http://www.bushmeat.org/portal/server.pt
http://bushmeat.net/links.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080122-refugees-bushmeat.html
http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/ioz/projects/bushmeat.htm
Different views of bonobo:
http://lolayabonobo.wildlifedirect.org/
http://bonobo.wildlifedirect.org/
http://bonobohandshake.blogspot.com/
A House filled with laughter up the Lomami.
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.
Obenge : Most Distant Outpost of the Opala Backwater
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.
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.
Welcome to Losekola and the Mystery Monkeys
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”
Wealth comes for the Bishop up the Lomami
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.
Mass Grave Between the Three Rivers
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:
| Name | Sex | Age (Yrs) |
| ARUDI KITIKANYA | M | 39 |
| ALBERT YESSE | M | 30 |
| CLAUDE BEYAYA | M | 27 |
| GABRIEL NGOMA | M | 26 |
| KATIKA | F | 61 |
| BEYAYA LONGEMBENGEMBE | F | 53 |
| ELIZA MUSTAFA | F | 51 |
| BEFUE | F | 50 |
| MAMBEYA | F | 35 |
| BEIYO | F | 20 |
| BEYAUMO KOSILA | F | 19 |
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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