Something went Wrong in the Middle of Congo
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
Diamonds are Small Stuff on the Lomami
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
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.
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/
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.
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.
The Crimes They Commit in the Lomami Wilderness
Category: Places, Threats, bonobo, people | Date: Apr 23 2008 | By: admin
This reflective bonobo has no doubt seen a bit of the evil side of human nature, how else would he have been orphaned and finally ended up at LolaYa Bonobo
Elephant poaching and bonobo hunting were a major concern for us since we started exploring the TL2 river basins a year ago. We congratulated the military, and even ourselves, for managing to take off the worst offenders. But what we are discovering now leaves no room for self congratulation. A decade of anarchy and occupation by militias has led to a culture of rape, extortion and trafficking in military weapons. It is not just elephant lives and bonobo lives that are cheap – human life too, is cheap.
Poaching is a symptom of a deeper disease. And I fear that something must be done about that deeper disease to make the poaching controllable.
The Opala delegation in Obenge
When John came down from Opala he brought with him representatives of the “people”, what is called société civile here, including three well-respected men. This was the first such official visit since before the long civil war, more than ten years ago.
The visit of the delegation was also the first time that villagers in Obenge felt empowered enough to speak openly of some of what they have suffered. Five recent cases of rape, perpetrated by associates of Col Thoms were brought up. While some of the solutions proposed (“marriage” of one 12 year old victim to her teenage assailant) scarcely felt like justice, we have to accept that perhaps it is the best solution possible. And some families are indeed asking for public recognition of the crime with retribution.
The chef de secteur from Opala, wrote this in his report (my translation):
We have identified with the help of the community leader in our delegation, five recent and critical cases of rape. One case requires medical examination followed by psycho-social and medical care.
We also note that two of these cases were very recent, having occurred during this month of April.
One of Major Ranger’s gang and one of the rapists being interrogated. In the background the Lomami flows on.
John wrote, “Even more shocking were the revelations emerging today about the mass grave that we were shown at the edge of the village where the remains of ten people are buried who were massacred in 2001 by a Congolese rebel militia led by a commander with the sinisterly appropriate nom-de-guerre of Commandant Dracula. The interviews undertaken by our visiting delegation documented unimaginable barbarity. The fact that the perpetrators, including Dracula, remain not only at large and unpunished, but vested with posts in the national police force in Kisangani, does not give confidence that complete social recovery will happen quickly.”
John is sending on the Chef de Secteur’s report concerning the story of the mass grave. I will translate it and put it out in the next few days.
So, I am wondering: where does a conservation and development project such as ours go from here?
These problems are community problems and the Obenge villagers know, that to heal, they must find community solutions themselves. But they also feel that in a very basic way we have become part of this community – and indeed it does feel that way.
These are criminals up the Lomami
Category: Places, Threats, people | Date: Apr 22 2008 | By: admin
They are more than just poachers…..
The village chief with the recovered weapon
The information below came as satellite email from John:
During the two and a half day trip from Opala to Obenge in the dugout we received a cryptic satellite message from Maurice, who was in Obenge having just gotten back from an inventory circuit:
“arme de guerre saisie, propietaire detenu” (seizure of a military weapon, owner detained)
We shared the message with the three members of the civil society, including the chef du secteur, who are traveling with us. They are the first official delegation not only to visit our project but even to come to Obenge since the civil war started more than 10 years ago.
The river from Opala to Obenge was deceptively peaceful
Maurice greeted us in Obenge that evening with the information that the weapon was with the Mere Cheftaine (village chief). The owner, the uncle of Major Ranger, was under surveillance.
We learned that this uncle had at first refused to reveal the whereabouts of the arm, but when bound and threatened with being hauled before the military unit based in Opala for interrogation, he agreed to lead the village chief and a small group of witnesses to a nearby forest site where the assault rifle was buried.
Covered with rust, the stock tunneled by termites, the clip still held four rounds. Kahindo, trained as an ICCN guard to handle firearms inspected the gun the next day and noted that it could still be made operational.
It was not empty
Against this background the chef du secteur spoke this morning, at a village reunion of the entire population , well over a hundred were present. The gathering started in the morning with singing and dancing and ended three hours later with a march through the village.
A number of revelations became public : three members of Major Ranger’s and Colonel Thoms’s gang were identified as still being in Obenge. ’
To add to the drama, Radio Okapi in a recent national broadcast carried a story about Colonel Thoms, reporting that MONUC investigations revealed that he and his gang had raped at least 135 women and girls, including 25 children.
“What if the parents of all those girls came together in one spot”, our team-leader Dino thought aloud (a father himself). “They would fill our camp. And then what if Colonel Thoms’s last three accomplices still here in Obenge were brought in front of that crowd…..”
I will have a follow up of the community meetings with more information from John in two days…..
Two Down for the Lomami
Category: Threats, bonobo, people, wildlife | Date: Mar 20 2008 | By: admin
And gone their guns and ammunition…
The forests are quieter, the forests are safer and that is thanks to a massive united effort including collaboration from the village of Obenge all the way to the top military, hundreds of km further north in Kisangani.
And none too soon. We had gotten One Maimai Down but there was One Central Pin left behind.
Major Ranger, wearing his hallmark “99″ t-shirt, in the central Obenge baraza where he was arrested.
Ashley left Obenge in December fearing the worst. And the reports that we received back from Lambert, who was planting and tending the gardens, were not good. From December ’07 through February ’08 Major Ranger and his boys were responsible for the killing of fourteen elephants and two bonobos. At least that is how many we know about; we fear the Obenge forests may well have lost more.
True to his word, General Kifwa in Kisangani acted.
One of his men, Major John, wearing plain clothes, accompanied Crispin of TL2 to Obenge in order to verify the presence of illegal military arms and terrorism of the population. With the report from his own man, the general sent Major John back with 70 military to clean up the territory of Opala.
Seventy troops were chosen in Kisangani. Major John in the red beret with hands on hips.
Fourteen from this unit, including Major John himself, continued to Obenge to apprehend Ranger. Ashley arrived to find them already present.
Major John, I presume?
This was Ashley’s assessment:
“ Major John has done really well down here including good control of his troops.
No one in Opala or Obenge has any problems with him or his soldiers and he
has got rid of quite a few undesirables that were big time hunters and their guns.”
A group of Obenge women assured that the military were well fed. They too benefited from the TL2 gardens.
The whole village joined in to help Major John’s unit find the various military weapons hidden in the surrounding forest.
The chefitaine or woman village chief with Major John (arms crossed) and some of his unit in Obenge
A total of 10 Kalachnikovs were removed from the village. Another 11 military arms, included two FAL along with the usual AK-47s, were taken from the same inter-connected band of poachers in Opala.
A last photo opportunity for a few members of the unit and Kahindo (TL2) before Ranger is taken off to Opala and then to Kisangani.
We hope that this is the end for a while of the worst high-end elephant poaching up the Lomami.
Ashley saw them off:
“The pirogue left this morning for Opala with the military and Major
Ranger. So it is goodbye to him forever.
The village is understandably very happy.”
And so is the forest…….
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