Communication, part two
Before leaving civilisation, I put an entry into this blog explaining how I thought the communication infrastructure worked. I thought it was correct, and now know that it mostly was. There are a few details that need to be cleared up, however. Please read that entry first, and then read the following additional points.
1. I like emails!
It's basically the only connection we really have here to the outside world. Let me know what's going on in your lives, and what's going on in the outside world in general. We're really isolated here.
2. I'll probably write back
I may actually be better at responding to emails than I was in my suburban life, because I've got plenty of free time to sit at the computer and type stuff. I may not bother repeating stuff in personal correspondences that's already been covered in blog entries, but I'm open to suggestions for topics that may be of interest.
3. 20kb maximum per email
The maximum email size that can be sent or received by the camp's email address is 20kb.
4. 23kb packets, regardless of mail size
The messages are sent and received via satellite phone, in packets of information that are approximately 23kb each. This means that if I write a 1kb message, it is still sent out in a 23kb packet. So I am basically encouraged to write long messages!
5. The satellite connection is a total pain in the ass.
Sometimes it only takes 20 minutes or so to log in to the satellite, log into the server, download messages, and upload messages. Sometimes it's a two-hour ordeal that ultimately sees us give up until the next day (we chopped a tree down the other day to get a better opening for the receiver, and it's been working more efficiently since!)
6. Be brief
It is unclear as to whether or not incoming emails are lumped together in packets or if each one gets its own 23kb. It appears, from our end, that incoming messages are lumped together, suggesting that people sending us email are encouraged to write short messages.
7. About $7/MB
I pay for all the kb that are sent or received on my behalf. I am charged about US$7 per MB (deducted from my paycheque), in units of 23kb at a time. The IT guy in Leipzig (Alex) sorts through the messages and attributes each to different camp members, based on who he thinks they were sent to/from.
8. Put (RM) in the subject heading
I am adding "(RM)" to the subject line of all personal emails I send, and ask that anyone who sends email to me here also include my name or initials in the subject line. This not only facilitates billing, but also facilitates our sorting of incoming mail here at camp.
9. No emails are private
They are perused by Alex in Leipzig so he can determine who to bill, and they are perused by campmembers to determine who they are for. Putting a name or initials in the subject heading makes it easier to sort, so therefore less likely to be read by everyone else.
10. I favour Canadian spelling
In case you were wondering, I'm here with an international team, so I use the international (ok, Canadian) English spellings. So no, I am not misspelling 'favour,' 'paycheque,' or any other words that have different spellings in the States.
OK, to sum up, please write to me, don't send anything over 20kb, and put my name or initials in the subject heading.
-Ryan
Saturday, March 31, 2007
(RM) First bonobos
Bonobos
Upon arrival at camp, we were shown the calendar. The bonobos live in a group of almost 30 individuals, travelling generally cohesively throughout the forest that comprises our study site. The daily task of researchers at the camp is to go and find the bonobos, and to observe them throughout the day. In the evening, the bonobos generally make their way to a nesting spot, they make calls to gather the other bonobos, and they make their nests for the night around dusk. The researchers take note of where the nest is, and go home for the night with the knowledge of where to find the group the next morning. ‘Bonobos’ is then written in big red letters on the calendar, with a note numbering the nest site and the initials of who put them to bed in the evening. March had been a good month so far, with lot of red on the calendar.
The bonobos had been put to bed the evening before our arrival, so researchers were out following them around already that morning. They returned shortly after noon, however, because the bonobos had succeeded in evading them after the first hour or two. We all sat down together, discussing bonobos, their behaviour, their feeding habits, their travel routes, and so on. Andrew, the chimpanzee expert, was very interested and excited. He joined the afternoon outing to search for the group again. They were found and put to bed again that night. Andrew saw the bonobos on his first day here!
The days continued to proceed successfully, in terms of following the bonobos and following them to their evening nesting sites. It seemed that everyone in camp had spent at least half a day observing the bonobo group, with several people seeing them almost daily. I got increasingly frustrated that I was always at camp (I am the ‘camp manager,’ after all, and I was very busy learning and executing my various responsibilities.). Eventually, I determined an afternoon that I would be able to abandon camp for a number of hours, and at least go out into the forest. I joined Lambert on his outing to mark the previous night’s nest, which is a standard practice whenever the nest site is known. Lambert is a Congolese man from Lompole who went to university in Kinshasa, speaks very good French, and can identify the various tree species in the forest. He is our top Congolese bonobo worker.
Lambert and I started hiking on the main trail (‘B’) out of camp, with him pointing out the various other trails emanating from it. At the end of B-trail, at just over 6,000m, we checked out the Badzungu campsite, which had been cleaned up earlier that day by one of our workers. Nkuma trail starts there, and we took that in the direction of previous night’s nesting site. About 1,000m down Nkuma, shortly before our turnoff to the Meike-5 trail, Lambert heard a bonobo call. It was several hundred metres off of the trail, however, and we had work to do, marking the nest. We continued on.
Around 700m down the Meike-5 trail, we heard more bonobo calls, this time a larger group. Sensing my interest, Lambert led me off of the trail at around the point where the nesting site had been recorded a few nights before. A few hundred meters into the bush, we determined which tree they were in. The undergrowth was very dense, so it was actually pretty difficult to see the bonobos up there, but we got a few glimpses. We tried to be very quiet, and they didn’t even realise we were beneath them. At one point, though, we had made enough noise and cleared out enough vines and tall leafy things to have a clearer view up, and they saw us! Shriek!
Habituation of bonobos has been going on at this study site since 2002. This has been a very frustrating and laborious process, with the initial reactions to human presence simply being abrupt fleeing. For the first couple of years of habituation, I think the total observation time with the bonobos can be added up to a few hours. Slowly but surely, though, the bonobos have begun to get habituated to our presence. People show up, the bonobos take notice, and now they are less inclined to just hightail it outta there like they used to do. Real behavioural observations are now possible.
As soon as the bonobos noticed Lambert and me, Lambert started ripping the big harmania leaves that surrounded us. The leaves make a distinct tearing sound, and this signal has been used consistently by our research team to alert the bonobo group to our presence. A couple of the bonobos scurried around in the tree, looking intently down at us and making alarm shrieks, while we just stood there ripping leaves as we looked up. Apparently, their habituation level is pretty good, because they quickly went back to what they were doing and let us observe in peace. We switched spots to get a better view, though our distance from them was still about the same: close enough to hear every fart, but just far enough to not get peed on.
My favourite moment of this bonobo habituation day was early on in the observations, when the other group we had heard earlier made its way to join this one. We heard the bonobos approaching in the forest behind us, and Lambert and I got all quiet. We heard the footsteps in the leaves, and soon saw silhouettes. The bonobos approached slowly, and made their way around us. They walked upright through the woods; all I really saw were black silhouettes moving beyond rows of trees. It reminded me of Bigfoot.
We spent the next two hours or so under the bonobo-filled tree. It was a maku tree in fruit, and they bonobos were munching away. The makus look sort of hard, about the size of a big red grape, and in sparse clumps at the end of branches. Not too exciting for the bonobos, as far as food goes, but at least the fruits are plentiful.
For the most part, each of the bonobos remained in their own little spot of the tree, usually in groups of two or three, munching away and interacting with the bonobos they were congregating with. Many of the groups had infants or juveniles, who played around the groups with each other or just with the branches. Some of the juveniles explored the tree in pairs, away from the adults. Every once in a while, some commotion would erupt, of course obscured from view, and a bonobo or two would scamper up or down a branch to a new spot.
After about an hour and a half, some of the bonobos decided that it was time to move on. Mostly, this appeared to be the mature males, or at least the individuals without infants under their charge. They climbed down the tree and prepared to leave, but Lambert insisted that we stay put. The moms remained in the tree for a while with the young, continuing to munch maku fruits and allowing their kids to play some more.
It was another half hour or so by the time the remaining bonobos decided to climb down. That was our cue. We waited until the last mother with infant climbed down, and then we began our chase. Snippers are the tool of choice for clipping through the underbrush and the vines, so we passed swiftly under the maku tree. Bonobos walk very quietly, so it was fairly difficult to follow them; we stopped frequently to listen. Fortunately, they call each other in order to stick together, so we are given regular clues around bedtime as to their whereabouts. We hacked through a few hundred metres of underbrush on the heels of the last few bonobos, and then waited for their calls. Lambert finally snuck closer to the nesting site to take a GPS reading and start marking a path back to a main trail. We had successfully put the bonobo group to bed for the night, and we broke enough branches through the brush so that the location could be found again in the morning.
Upon returning to camp, we spoke with the researchers who had been following the bonobos in the early afternoon. They described when and where the bonobos had evaded them, which was not too far from where we picked them back up. It was fortunate that we had two groups of researchers in the right area of the forest at the time, so that the bonobos’ whereabouts was quickly redetermined.
And so the cycle goes at the LuiKotal research camp, with bonobo nests being visited by researchers first thing in the morning, with bonobos being followed by researchers as much as possible throughout the day, and with researchers putting the bonobos to bed at new nesting sites each evening. The bonobo group is currently moving around in a part of the forest some 8-10km from our camp, so the commute to and from work in the morning is around 1.5 hours of brisk hiking. Average workdays around here see each person who goes into the field walking some 15 to 20 kilometres through the forest.
The routine has been to leave sometime between 3:30 and 4am, in order to be at the nesting site when the bonobos first begin to stir. Nesting sites that are far from established trails take much longer to get to and from. In the evenings, the researchers putting the bonobos to bed often get home between 8 and 8:30pm. Often it is the same person or people with the bonobo group from sunup to sundown, although we have begun taking shifts to make the routine more manageable. The bonobos are also frequently lost during the day, so the afternoon shift gets the dubious task of trying to relocate the group by sundown. It is not always a successful mission, but at least nobody is obliged to leave at 3:30 the next morning in such instances!
Since I am the camp manager, and others within the research team have a lot of experience tracking and observing bonobos, they are generally the ones to seek out the bonobos each day. I have actually only been out on one other bonobo excursion so far, on an afternoon when the group had been lost, in the vain hope of hearing the calls and locating them by sundown. Fortunately, another pair of researchers were doing the same thing a kilometre or two away, and did indeed succeed in nesting the bonobos in the evening. That meant a fairly uneventful evening for us, though, 7km from camp, sitting in the forest attempting to hear bonobo calls in the distance. When the bonobos’ location is unknown, though, this is the method of finding them again. I imagine I’ll be enlisted to do more of this over the coming months as our research team size shrinks and it becomes more difficult to continually monitor the bonobo group’s whereabouts. I’m looking forward to it.
In the meantime, I have learned an incredible amount about the species. Dinner conversation invariably revolves around group dynamics, identifying marks of individuals, feeding habits, evolutionary cost-benefit analyses, fruiting patterns of feeding trees, variations in group size or nesting group size, and so on. I read a book, which I highly recommend, called “Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape,” by Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting. It has excellent photographs of wild and captive bonobos, and discusses much of their behavioural ecology. We continue to learn more about them, here at LuiKotal camp.
I’m glad to be able to contribute to the world’s knowledge of the bonobo.
Upon arrival at camp, we were shown the calendar. The bonobos live in a group of almost 30 individuals, travelling generally cohesively throughout the forest that comprises our study site. The daily task of researchers at the camp is to go and find the bonobos, and to observe them throughout the day. In the evening, the bonobos generally make their way to a nesting spot, they make calls to gather the other bonobos, and they make their nests for the night around dusk. The researchers take note of where the nest is, and go home for the night with the knowledge of where to find the group the next morning. ‘Bonobos’ is then written in big red letters on the calendar, with a note numbering the nest site and the initials of who put them to bed in the evening. March had been a good month so far, with lot of red on the calendar.
The bonobos had been put to bed the evening before our arrival, so researchers were out following them around already that morning. They returned shortly after noon, however, because the bonobos had succeeded in evading them after the first hour or two. We all sat down together, discussing bonobos, their behaviour, their feeding habits, their travel routes, and so on. Andrew, the chimpanzee expert, was very interested and excited. He joined the afternoon outing to search for the group again. They were found and put to bed again that night. Andrew saw the bonobos on his first day here!
The days continued to proceed successfully, in terms of following the bonobos and following them to their evening nesting sites. It seemed that everyone in camp had spent at least half a day observing the bonobo group, with several people seeing them almost daily. I got increasingly frustrated that I was always at camp (I am the ‘camp manager,’ after all, and I was very busy learning and executing my various responsibilities.). Eventually, I determined an afternoon that I would be able to abandon camp for a number of hours, and at least go out into the forest. I joined Lambert on his outing to mark the previous night’s nest, which is a standard practice whenever the nest site is known. Lambert is a Congolese man from Lompole who went to university in Kinshasa, speaks very good French, and can identify the various tree species in the forest. He is our top Congolese bonobo worker.
Lambert and I started hiking on the main trail (‘B’) out of camp, with him pointing out the various other trails emanating from it. At the end of B-trail, at just over 6,000m, we checked out the Badzungu campsite, which had been cleaned up earlier that day by one of our workers. Nkuma trail starts there, and we took that in the direction of previous night’s nesting site. About 1,000m down Nkuma, shortly before our turnoff to the Meike-5 trail, Lambert heard a bonobo call. It was several hundred metres off of the trail, however, and we had work to do, marking the nest. We continued on.
Around 700m down the Meike-5 trail, we heard more bonobo calls, this time a larger group. Sensing my interest, Lambert led me off of the trail at around the point where the nesting site had been recorded a few nights before. A few hundred meters into the bush, we determined which tree they were in. The undergrowth was very dense, so it was actually pretty difficult to see the bonobos up there, but we got a few glimpses. We tried to be very quiet, and they didn’t even realise we were beneath them. At one point, though, we had made enough noise and cleared out enough vines and tall leafy things to have a clearer view up, and they saw us! Shriek!
Habituation of bonobos has been going on at this study site since 2002. This has been a very frustrating and laborious process, with the initial reactions to human presence simply being abrupt fleeing. For the first couple of years of habituation, I think the total observation time with the bonobos can be added up to a few hours. Slowly but surely, though, the bonobos have begun to get habituated to our presence. People show up, the bonobos take notice, and now they are less inclined to just hightail it outta there like they used to do. Real behavioural observations are now possible.
As soon as the bonobos noticed Lambert and me, Lambert started ripping the big harmania leaves that surrounded us. The leaves make a distinct tearing sound, and this signal has been used consistently by our research team to alert the bonobo group to our presence. A couple of the bonobos scurried around in the tree, looking intently down at us and making alarm shrieks, while we just stood there ripping leaves as we looked up. Apparently, their habituation level is pretty good, because they quickly went back to what they were doing and let us observe in peace. We switched spots to get a better view, though our distance from them was still about the same: close enough to hear every fart, but just far enough to not get peed on.
My favourite moment of this bonobo habituation day was early on in the observations, when the other group we had heard earlier made its way to join this one. We heard the bonobos approaching in the forest behind us, and Lambert and I got all quiet. We heard the footsteps in the leaves, and soon saw silhouettes. The bonobos approached slowly, and made their way around us. They walked upright through the woods; all I really saw were black silhouettes moving beyond rows of trees. It reminded me of Bigfoot.
We spent the next two hours or so under the bonobo-filled tree. It was a maku tree in fruit, and they bonobos were munching away. The makus look sort of hard, about the size of a big red grape, and in sparse clumps at the end of branches. Not too exciting for the bonobos, as far as food goes, but at least the fruits are plentiful.
For the most part, each of the bonobos remained in their own little spot of the tree, usually in groups of two or three, munching away and interacting with the bonobos they were congregating with. Many of the groups had infants or juveniles, who played around the groups with each other or just with the branches. Some of the juveniles explored the tree in pairs, away from the adults. Every once in a while, some commotion would erupt, of course obscured from view, and a bonobo or two would scamper up or down a branch to a new spot.
After about an hour and a half, some of the bonobos decided that it was time to move on. Mostly, this appeared to be the mature males, or at least the individuals without infants under their charge. They climbed down the tree and prepared to leave, but Lambert insisted that we stay put. The moms remained in the tree for a while with the young, continuing to munch maku fruits and allowing their kids to play some more.
It was another half hour or so by the time the remaining bonobos decided to climb down. That was our cue. We waited until the last mother with infant climbed down, and then we began our chase. Snippers are the tool of choice for clipping through the underbrush and the vines, so we passed swiftly under the maku tree. Bonobos walk very quietly, so it was fairly difficult to follow them; we stopped frequently to listen. Fortunately, they call each other in order to stick together, so we are given regular clues around bedtime as to their whereabouts. We hacked through a few hundred metres of underbrush on the heels of the last few bonobos, and then waited for their calls. Lambert finally snuck closer to the nesting site to take a GPS reading and start marking a path back to a main trail. We had successfully put the bonobo group to bed for the night, and we broke enough branches through the brush so that the location could be found again in the morning.
Upon returning to camp, we spoke with the researchers who had been following the bonobos in the early afternoon. They described when and where the bonobos had evaded them, which was not too far from where we picked them back up. It was fortunate that we had two groups of researchers in the right area of the forest at the time, so that the bonobos’ whereabouts was quickly redetermined.
And so the cycle goes at the LuiKotal research camp, with bonobo nests being visited by researchers first thing in the morning, with bonobos being followed by researchers as much as possible throughout the day, and with researchers putting the bonobos to bed at new nesting sites each evening. The bonobo group is currently moving around in a part of the forest some 8-10km from our camp, so the commute to and from work in the morning is around 1.5 hours of brisk hiking. Average workdays around here see each person who goes into the field walking some 15 to 20 kilometres through the forest.
The routine has been to leave sometime between 3:30 and 4am, in order to be at the nesting site when the bonobos first begin to stir. Nesting sites that are far from established trails take much longer to get to and from. In the evenings, the researchers putting the bonobos to bed often get home between 8 and 8:30pm. Often it is the same person or people with the bonobo group from sunup to sundown, although we have begun taking shifts to make the routine more manageable. The bonobos are also frequently lost during the day, so the afternoon shift gets the dubious task of trying to relocate the group by sundown. It is not always a successful mission, but at least nobody is obliged to leave at 3:30 the next morning in such instances!
Since I am the camp manager, and others within the research team have a lot of experience tracking and observing bonobos, they are generally the ones to seek out the bonobos each day. I have actually only been out on one other bonobo excursion so far, on an afternoon when the group had been lost, in the vain hope of hearing the calls and locating them by sundown. Fortunately, another pair of researchers were doing the same thing a kilometre or two away, and did indeed succeed in nesting the bonobos in the evening. That meant a fairly uneventful evening for us, though, 7km from camp, sitting in the forest attempting to hear bonobo calls in the distance. When the bonobos’ location is unknown, though, this is the method of finding them again. I imagine I’ll be enlisted to do more of this over the coming months as our research team size shrinks and it becomes more difficult to continually monitor the bonobo group’s whereabouts. I’m looking forward to it.
In the meantime, I have learned an incredible amount about the species. Dinner conversation invariably revolves around group dynamics, identifying marks of individuals, feeding habits, evolutionary cost-benefit analyses, fruiting patterns of feeding trees, variations in group size or nesting group size, and so on. I read a book, which I highly recommend, called “Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape,” by Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting. It has excellent photographs of wild and captive bonobos, and discusses much of their behavioural ecology. We continue to learn more about them, here at LuiKotal camp.
I’m glad to be able to contribute to the world’s knowledge of the bonobo.
(RM) To LuiKotal
To LuiKotal
16-18 March
The airstrip was at the edge of a savannah area, adjacent to the forest. While dense forest is the dominant cover, patches of savannah nonetheless dot the landscape. Flying over them, I was able to make out individual trees, and even a few termite mounds when we were low enough. No roads though, still. Just untamed land.
The village of Ipope seemed to be just next to the savannah, although I soon found out that it was a couple of kilometres walk from village to airstrip. It seemed that the entire population of the village had already assembled at the airstrip in anticipation of our arrival. They knew what day our flight was to arrive, although the hour was as much a surprise to us as it surely was to them. The plane circled once, touched down past the crowd, and taxied back to where they were assembled. Then came the throng.
The job I accepted that brought me here is ‘camp manager.’ Suddenly, I became aware of my responsibility, with some 700kg of stuff being quickly surrounded by anyone and everyone who lived in the area. We managed to get it into a pile, and sort of made a cordon around it. Our local contact, Mara, was charged with doling out individual items to various people for the first leg of the journey to camp. Suddenly, men, women, and adolescents were carting our stuff into the forest down a trail. My heaviest bag was balanced on the rear rack of a bike, with one person trying to hold it steady while another pushed the bike. I joined the procession.
We got to the small village of Ipope in just 15 or 20 minutes. There, the stuff was reallocated, and some was repackaged. I really didn’t follow what was going on, exactly. I just sort of did what I was told, and tried to keep track of my personal belongings. Ipope was not our destination for the day.
The trail quickly plunged back into the forest, and was very clearly demarcated. Thick vegetation grew on either side, and foot and bicycle traffic was somewhat regular in both directions. The hike was over an hour, with me carrying more than I should have (given that we had porters, after all). Eventually, we arrived in the village of Lompole, and made our way to Mara’s home.
Slowly but surely, our things arrived. Mara checked peoples’ names off and I tried to take stock of what all had made it. Some stuff went into a depot building across the courtyard, and our personal things went into his house. We quickly got out tents and erected them in the grass before it got too dark and before the rain got too violent. My stuff was spread by weight over several suitcases, so it was a pain to find the right combination of mattress, clothes, toothbrush, and so on, but I managed. (I was less successful over the next day or two.) The rain came down hard!
But we were in Mara’s house, eating around his table, illuminated by his light bulb that’s fed by a car battery that’s charged by a solar panel. Mara is probably the wealthiest person in Lompole, as he has a very good job working for our camp. He is our local administrator, organising food and porters, and often wheeling and dealing with local government goons on our behalf. He is the only person from Lompole to have ever left the country, since he went to Sweden and a couple of other European countries a few years ago for some missionary thing or another. (Apparently, he spent every evening for a month recounting his foreign adventures to the rest of the village.) Mara’s is the only house in the village with a light bulb.
We spent that night in Lompole in our four tents in Mara’s yard. We got up at dawn, all hoping to go to the camp, but there was much business to attend to. Everyone in the village needs something, and Gottfried needs to address these needs.
The first drama that we got to witness revolved around our bonobo project’s contribution of building materials for the village to build a church/school (some people want a church, while others want a school – the project stance is that it will help with a building, which may be used by the villagers however they choose to). The first load of building materials (sacks of concrete for the floor, corrugated metal for the roof, along with nails and other accessories) had been bought in Kinshasa and sent by boat to Lokolama, which is 60km from Lompole. It had been stolen by the boat captain, however, and sold. The next load of building materials had been sent on another boat, and actually arrived in Lokolama around 10 months ago, where it has remained ever since. It is up to the village to arrange transport – basically they need to walk down there to get it, and walk back with it on their heads or backs. They have yet to do so. So the morning drama involved one faction of villagers pushing for the next load of materials to be delivered from Kinshasa to Lokolama, while the others agreed with Gottfried that they need to first pick up what’s been sitting in the Lokolama depot before that gets stolen too. The latter faction generally benefits from the bonobo project’s presence through employment or through the sale of produce, therefore seeing a longer-term benefit from good relations, while the former faction would rather ‘kill the cow for meat today, rather than keep it for milk all year,’ or something along those lines. My favourite moment was when Gottfried got all in Papa Cameroun’s face and basically told him off in Lingala, saying that the village needs to do their part in the transport before they can expect the bonobo project to give any more. Ah, the drama.
The next drama was inside Mara’s house, among a few men. Apparently, there is some bigshot in the area who claims to be the ‘chef du territoire,’ and who therefore needs some payment for any outsiders who somehow use the territoire. This was indeed a government function back in the day, when Mobutu was dictator and graft was the only real economy. The position has ceased to really exist for quite some time now though. Nonetheless, the guy still has his 20-year-old document proclaiming him as chef du territoire, and he therefore succeeded in extracting a good hour or two of our morning before finally giving up empty handed. Fortunately, nobody else really even takes the guy seriously, including the ‘groupement,’ which is basically the regional government (based in Lokolama) that really does have some legal grounding.
So the next drama involved the groupement, of course. Word had gotten back to the government folks there that four westerners would be arriving by plane on or around when we arrived, so they were apparently on their way to levy whatever fees they could think of. We couldn’t leave the village with the groupement people on the way, as that would appear to be fleeing, but on the other hand, we didn’t really know for sure if anyone was actually coming. Eventually, it was determined that Gottfried would hang out for another night in Lompole, while Ian, Andrew, and I would start the trek to camp with a few porters. It was already too late to make the whole trip, though, so not many porters wanted to even go. We finally ended up going with six porters, carrying three of our bags and three barrels of provisions from the plane. We hit the trail around 1pm.
This trail has been in existence for some 80 years or so, at least, to connect the village of Lompole with the fishing camp of Yaca and then onwards to the former village of LuiKotal. For the past four or five years, the trail has been used several times a week by porters provisioning our camp, as well as by other villagers heading to the fishing spots near Yaca. So it’s a fairly well-travelled thoroughfare, though not necessarily used on a daily basis.
The first stretch was through forest. The trail was pretty straightforward, though unmarked. It was probably about an hour and a half or two hours through there, when we reached the big savannah. The porters sat down and asked for a round of cigarettes, which I distributed.
Then came the plains. This means high grass, and no shade. Termite mounds dotted the landscape, and there was the odd tree every so often. The grass was often as tall as me. The trail through the grass was pretty difficult to see, since the grass was so high, but you could follow it if you were on it. Really, it’s just a strip of hardened soil about the width of a boot, so walking was a pain. And hot in the sun. Not too exciting.
After another hour or so, we were back to another stretch of forest. Another break by the porters, and another round of cigarettes. That forest entry actually had some benches built of the surrounding trees and other branches, so we could sit and chill. Then onwards. More forest trail, and I think even some wading. By wading, I mean that the adjacent river has inundated the surrounding forest, so the trail was then underwater. Boardwalks existed in a couple of places, but not much. By boardwalk, I mean lines of straightish branches forming a platform. Not too sturdy, but somehow better than being knee-deep in water and mud.
Our stopping point for the night was the fishing camp of Yaca. This spot is used seasonally by villagers who come to fish in the Bompindji River adjacent to it. There’s approximately one little hut per family, in various states of repair. I guess they need some touching up whenever the families actually use them. Our porters set up shop in one of them, where they built a fire and set up thatch cots to sleep on. I doled out another round of cigarettes.
The three of us went down to the end of the village and put our tents up in some (shortish) grass. Andrew and Ian tried to find the river, but were unsuccessful. I was led by one of the porters down a forest path towards the Bompindji, which was a good 15 or 20 minute walk. We came to a point where we had to wade in up to our waists before reaching the river proper. The river has a log wedged across it serving as a bridge. We perched on the log and collected flowing water in our bottles to drink for the night. The forest was dark as we walked back up to the camp.
As the sun set, the three of us white folks ate sardines with our fingers and tried to identify constellations. There were a lot of stars. It was a good first night in the bush.
Up at 5, the porters were ready to go as soon as enough light penetrated the forest path. I didn’t even bother putting on my boots, knowing that we would be trudging through inundated trails soon enough. We got to the log/bridge over the Bompindji, which was followed by a few ‘boardwalks’ of precariously-balanced horizontal branches. I imagine that people spill off of them fairly regularly.
This seemed a good time to take some interesting photos, so I lagged behind the group as I attempted to organise my gear. The water was also chest-deep in places, so I had to reorganise my bag to balance it on my head for the walk. But where was the ‘trail’? I headed down one stream, which soon closed up. I went back, and found a second, but that, too, soon closed up. I was lost. I had lost my group. I tried calling and whistling, but no response. Uh-oh. Where the hell is the trail!? Somebody eventually noticed and came back to fetch me, leading me on the ‘trail’ that is far from evident. But we soon caught up with the rest of the group. Soon we even hit high ground and got to put our pants and boots back on. Luxury.
Forest trails continued from the Bompindji to the Lokoro for an hour or two, and were fairly easy to follow. I think the inundated stretch immediately after log bridge is really the only spot where you definitely need to know the route, whereas the rest of the route is fairly straightforward. Soon we reached the river’s edge, and found the pirogue (dugout canoe) where it was supposed to be. The first load of passengers and luggage loaded up, and were ferried down the river. I waited with the rest of the porters and photographed the boat disappearing in the distance. They were gone for a while.
When it came back, the rest of us loaded in. The boat is pretty precarious, with the edges basically level with the river. Water came in when we wobbled. Down the river a bit, we headed into the forest, down what appeared to be similar to the trails we had walked down earlier in the trip. It would have been impossible to turn the boat around, and even navigating some of the curves was a multi-person task. The stopping point was a little less than waist-deep, with the trail continuing underwater for some time. The last stretch was dry, and we were soon at LuiKotal.
It was such great sight to arrive in our civilised little encampment. We were greeted by several of the local staff at their cooking hut, and then by Tim and Kek. I was so glad to see the size of Tim’s beard and afro – he’d obviously been here a while. We chilled out at the table in the shade, exchanging stories and drinking water. Andrew drilled the team about the bonobos, while Ian and I asked questions about life at the camp.
I had left Arizona over a month before. I’ll be here for nine months. It was good to be ‘home,’ after so much travel. Time to settle in.
16-18 March
The airstrip was at the edge of a savannah area, adjacent to the forest. While dense forest is the dominant cover, patches of savannah nonetheless dot the landscape. Flying over them, I was able to make out individual trees, and even a few termite mounds when we were low enough. No roads though, still. Just untamed land.
The village of Ipope seemed to be just next to the savannah, although I soon found out that it was a couple of kilometres walk from village to airstrip. It seemed that the entire population of the village had already assembled at the airstrip in anticipation of our arrival. They knew what day our flight was to arrive, although the hour was as much a surprise to us as it surely was to them. The plane circled once, touched down past the crowd, and taxied back to where they were assembled. Then came the throng.
The job I accepted that brought me here is ‘camp manager.’ Suddenly, I became aware of my responsibility, with some 700kg of stuff being quickly surrounded by anyone and everyone who lived in the area. We managed to get it into a pile, and sort of made a cordon around it. Our local contact, Mara, was charged with doling out individual items to various people for the first leg of the journey to camp. Suddenly, men, women, and adolescents were carting our stuff into the forest down a trail. My heaviest bag was balanced on the rear rack of a bike, with one person trying to hold it steady while another pushed the bike. I joined the procession.
We got to the small village of Ipope in just 15 or 20 minutes. There, the stuff was reallocated, and some was repackaged. I really didn’t follow what was going on, exactly. I just sort of did what I was told, and tried to keep track of my personal belongings. Ipope was not our destination for the day.
The trail quickly plunged back into the forest, and was very clearly demarcated. Thick vegetation grew on either side, and foot and bicycle traffic was somewhat regular in both directions. The hike was over an hour, with me carrying more than I should have (given that we had porters, after all). Eventually, we arrived in the village of Lompole, and made our way to Mara’s home.
Slowly but surely, our things arrived. Mara checked peoples’ names off and I tried to take stock of what all had made it. Some stuff went into a depot building across the courtyard, and our personal things went into his house. We quickly got out tents and erected them in the grass before it got too dark and before the rain got too violent. My stuff was spread by weight over several suitcases, so it was a pain to find the right combination of mattress, clothes, toothbrush, and so on, but I managed. (I was less successful over the next day or two.) The rain came down hard!
But we were in Mara’s house, eating around his table, illuminated by his light bulb that’s fed by a car battery that’s charged by a solar panel. Mara is probably the wealthiest person in Lompole, as he has a very good job working for our camp. He is our local administrator, organising food and porters, and often wheeling and dealing with local government goons on our behalf. He is the only person from Lompole to have ever left the country, since he went to Sweden and a couple of other European countries a few years ago for some missionary thing or another. (Apparently, he spent every evening for a month recounting his foreign adventures to the rest of the village.) Mara’s is the only house in the village with a light bulb.
We spent that night in Lompole in our four tents in Mara’s yard. We got up at dawn, all hoping to go to the camp, but there was much business to attend to. Everyone in the village needs something, and Gottfried needs to address these needs.
The first drama that we got to witness revolved around our bonobo project’s contribution of building materials for the village to build a church/school (some people want a church, while others want a school – the project stance is that it will help with a building, which may be used by the villagers however they choose to). The first load of building materials (sacks of concrete for the floor, corrugated metal for the roof, along with nails and other accessories) had been bought in Kinshasa and sent by boat to Lokolama, which is 60km from Lompole. It had been stolen by the boat captain, however, and sold. The next load of building materials had been sent on another boat, and actually arrived in Lokolama around 10 months ago, where it has remained ever since. It is up to the village to arrange transport – basically they need to walk down there to get it, and walk back with it on their heads or backs. They have yet to do so. So the morning drama involved one faction of villagers pushing for the next load of materials to be delivered from Kinshasa to Lokolama, while the others agreed with Gottfried that they need to first pick up what’s been sitting in the Lokolama depot before that gets stolen too. The latter faction generally benefits from the bonobo project’s presence through employment or through the sale of produce, therefore seeing a longer-term benefit from good relations, while the former faction would rather ‘kill the cow for meat today, rather than keep it for milk all year,’ or something along those lines. My favourite moment was when Gottfried got all in Papa Cameroun’s face and basically told him off in Lingala, saying that the village needs to do their part in the transport before they can expect the bonobo project to give any more. Ah, the drama.
The next drama was inside Mara’s house, among a few men. Apparently, there is some bigshot in the area who claims to be the ‘chef du territoire,’ and who therefore needs some payment for any outsiders who somehow use the territoire. This was indeed a government function back in the day, when Mobutu was dictator and graft was the only real economy. The position has ceased to really exist for quite some time now though. Nonetheless, the guy still has his 20-year-old document proclaiming him as chef du territoire, and he therefore succeeded in extracting a good hour or two of our morning before finally giving up empty handed. Fortunately, nobody else really even takes the guy seriously, including the ‘groupement,’ which is basically the regional government (based in Lokolama) that really does have some legal grounding.
So the next drama involved the groupement, of course. Word had gotten back to the government folks there that four westerners would be arriving by plane on or around when we arrived, so they were apparently on their way to levy whatever fees they could think of. We couldn’t leave the village with the groupement people on the way, as that would appear to be fleeing, but on the other hand, we didn’t really know for sure if anyone was actually coming. Eventually, it was determined that Gottfried would hang out for another night in Lompole, while Ian, Andrew, and I would start the trek to camp with a few porters. It was already too late to make the whole trip, though, so not many porters wanted to even go. We finally ended up going with six porters, carrying three of our bags and three barrels of provisions from the plane. We hit the trail around 1pm.
This trail has been in existence for some 80 years or so, at least, to connect the village of Lompole with the fishing camp of Yaca and then onwards to the former village of LuiKotal. For the past four or five years, the trail has been used several times a week by porters provisioning our camp, as well as by other villagers heading to the fishing spots near Yaca. So it’s a fairly well-travelled thoroughfare, though not necessarily used on a daily basis.
The first stretch was through forest. The trail was pretty straightforward, though unmarked. It was probably about an hour and a half or two hours through there, when we reached the big savannah. The porters sat down and asked for a round of cigarettes, which I distributed.
Then came the plains. This means high grass, and no shade. Termite mounds dotted the landscape, and there was the odd tree every so often. The grass was often as tall as me. The trail through the grass was pretty difficult to see, since the grass was so high, but you could follow it if you were on it. Really, it’s just a strip of hardened soil about the width of a boot, so walking was a pain. And hot in the sun. Not too exciting.
After another hour or so, we were back to another stretch of forest. Another break by the porters, and another round of cigarettes. That forest entry actually had some benches built of the surrounding trees and other branches, so we could sit and chill. Then onwards. More forest trail, and I think even some wading. By wading, I mean that the adjacent river has inundated the surrounding forest, so the trail was then underwater. Boardwalks existed in a couple of places, but not much. By boardwalk, I mean lines of straightish branches forming a platform. Not too sturdy, but somehow better than being knee-deep in water and mud.
Our stopping point for the night was the fishing camp of Yaca. This spot is used seasonally by villagers who come to fish in the Bompindji River adjacent to it. There’s approximately one little hut per family, in various states of repair. I guess they need some touching up whenever the families actually use them. Our porters set up shop in one of them, where they built a fire and set up thatch cots to sleep on. I doled out another round of cigarettes.
The three of us went down to the end of the village and put our tents up in some (shortish) grass. Andrew and Ian tried to find the river, but were unsuccessful. I was led by one of the porters down a forest path towards the Bompindji, which was a good 15 or 20 minute walk. We came to a point where we had to wade in up to our waists before reaching the river proper. The river has a log wedged across it serving as a bridge. We perched on the log and collected flowing water in our bottles to drink for the night. The forest was dark as we walked back up to the camp.
As the sun set, the three of us white folks ate sardines with our fingers and tried to identify constellations. There were a lot of stars. It was a good first night in the bush.
Up at 5, the porters were ready to go as soon as enough light penetrated the forest path. I didn’t even bother putting on my boots, knowing that we would be trudging through inundated trails soon enough. We got to the log/bridge over the Bompindji, which was followed by a few ‘boardwalks’ of precariously-balanced horizontal branches. I imagine that people spill off of them fairly regularly.
This seemed a good time to take some interesting photos, so I lagged behind the group as I attempted to organise my gear. The water was also chest-deep in places, so I had to reorganise my bag to balance it on my head for the walk. But where was the ‘trail’? I headed down one stream, which soon closed up. I went back, and found a second, but that, too, soon closed up. I was lost. I had lost my group. I tried calling and whistling, but no response. Uh-oh. Where the hell is the trail!? Somebody eventually noticed and came back to fetch me, leading me on the ‘trail’ that is far from evident. But we soon caught up with the rest of the group. Soon we even hit high ground and got to put our pants and boots back on. Luxury.
Forest trails continued from the Bompindji to the Lokoro for an hour or two, and were fairly easy to follow. I think the inundated stretch immediately after log bridge is really the only spot where you definitely need to know the route, whereas the rest of the route is fairly straightforward. Soon we reached the river’s edge, and found the pirogue (dugout canoe) where it was supposed to be. The first load of passengers and luggage loaded up, and were ferried down the river. I waited with the rest of the porters and photographed the boat disappearing in the distance. They were gone for a while.
When it came back, the rest of us loaded in. The boat is pretty precarious, with the edges basically level with the river. Water came in when we wobbled. Down the river a bit, we headed into the forest, down what appeared to be similar to the trails we had walked down earlier in the trip. It would have been impossible to turn the boat around, and even navigating some of the curves was a multi-person task. The stopping point was a little less than waist-deep, with the trail continuing underwater for some time. The last stretch was dry, and we were soon at LuiKotal.
It was such great sight to arrive in our civilised little encampment. We were greeted by several of the local staff at their cooking hut, and then by Tim and Kek. I was so glad to see the size of Tim’s beard and afro – he’d obviously been here a while. We chilled out at the table in the shade, exchanging stories and drinking water. Andrew drilled the team about the bonobos, while Ian and I asked questions about life at the camp.
I had left Arizona over a month before. I’ll be here for nine months. It was good to be ‘home,’ after so much travel. Time to settle in.
Monday, March 26, 2007
(RM) Kinshasa
13-16 March
The first welcome to the Congo came around an hour before Air France flight 898 landed, as the sun was setting and the captain came on the intercom to announce that it is illegal to photograph the country from the air. Ok, well it’s really too dark out anyway, and of course I’m in a middle seat.
I was the last passenger off of the plane. I had so much carry-on luggage, and my duty-free Bailey’s had been broken somehow as someone else grabbed their carry-on luggage from the overhead bin, so sticky sweet-smelling milky stuff was all over the place.
The heat was pretty prominent at the airplane door, as was the smell of the air. Clearly, this is a place where people burn wood a lot. The air was thick with the humidity and the smell of charcoal. Down the steps, onto the shuttle bus, and over to the terminal.
Kinshasa is not a popular destination. I gather that there is never more than one plane getting to the airport at a time, and I think our arrival around 7pm was the last of the day. Immigration was fun. Again, I was last in line, and it took a while. Lots of passengers, a few uniformed people trying to corral the various people into certain lines, and a few booths with officials and stamps in them. “Is this your first time in Congo? Oh, because for first-time visitors we stamp the entry stamp right over the visa, so it becomes illegible. But if you help me out with some money to take care of my kids, you can have the stamp on the opposite page.” “Yeah, whatever, put the stamp wherever you want to.” It eventually went on the opposite page.
There is a luggage carousel at this airport. Actually, there are a couple of them, although I wonder if the others work. The luggage is unloaded from the plane into a truck, the truck pulls up at the end of the carousel, and we all crowd around hoping to find our luggage. Again, mine seemed to be last. My new boss had gotten his two items first, and was not impressed with the amount of luggage I contributed to the pile.
Then was the trek from the carousel to the jeep. Really, the airport consists of just one big room with the baggage carousel and a door leading to the parking area. Three-wheeled luggage trolleys look familiar, and we loaded ours high with luggage. Little did I realize that the front wheel doesn’t actually turn. It needs to be pulled, not pushed. And what about the stairs from the door? At least the first few lanes in front of the airport had no traffic in them, just random kids asking for money or eyeing our luggage suspiciously. Two dudes were somehow recruited to navigate the trolley to the jeep, with one crouching in front of it to pull it from below, and the other pushing. They knocked it over at least twice. Thank goodness we made it to the jeep with everything! (It was little over an hour from plane to jeep, although, unobstructed, the walk would have taken about three minutes.)
The drive into town was hilarious. It was probably around 8pm, and the road was full of action. People walking along, people selling stuff off of blankets or little wooden boxes, the odd gas station or two, some gas lanterns, no streetlights. Several pedestrian bridges were in existence, although they were missing the cross spans; just the stairs remained on either side of the road. The other traffic on the road consisted mainly of VW busses filled with passengers. They all looked like they had been rolled down a hill a few times (imagine crumpling aluminum foil and then uncrumpling it, and that’s what the metal of these vehicles resembled), with all of the glass panes removed from the window spots, and all of the seats removed from inside and replaced with benches to stuff as many people inside as physically possible. The back doors were open, with a bungee keeping them from flying open, so that more people could hang out of the back but not be entirely outside. They rode pretty low due to the weight. I really wonder how often the axles just plain snap. In addition to the VW busses, whatever else could carry passengers did. My favorite was a semi cab pulling something of a hay wagon, with people actually riding the hitch between the cab and the trailer.
I got dumped at a place called CAP: Centre d’Acceuil Protestant. I was introduced to Andrew, a chimpanzee expert, who had been there for about 24 hours already. CAP is a nice little compound with several buildings of rooms, and walls all the way around. Guards stay at the gate all day and night. Andrew and I were taken by a guide to the nearest strip of wooden shack establishments a block away, where we went to drink Coca-Cola. Actually, I got a big cold Primus beer, while Andrew drank soda. The Primus hit the spot, although at 720ml it even hit me a bit. It was a nice welcome to the country.
The next day we were eventually picked up by our boss, since we needed to do a number of things. We were dropped at the British embassy, where we registered with our names and passports. We then went to a café where I ate a big cheese sandwich on a baguette and drank Coca-Cola from a bottle. Then we got dumped at CAP again, and didn’t really know what to do next. We didn’t do much, really. We did go searching for food, and ended up at a little restaurant where we were the only customers, but it still took something like an hour for them to make our chickens. Damn. We went back to the same wooden shack for Coca-Cola before going to bed.
The next day was to be our last in Kinshasa, and we had no idea whether or not we would be picked up and taken anywhere to get our errands done. So eventually we decided that we just needed to head out and figure things out on our own. We walked all over the downtown! The place isn’t that bad, and we actually didn’t get too hassled. We tried to do internet, but that place sucked. We’d sit for half an hour, and then the network would die or the power would go out or whatever. We tried that place three times, and I finally got an email sent. Yay!
Downtown Kinshasa appears to have one western-style supermarket, and another store that was somewhat like Target or Wal-Mart with all sorts of stuff in addition to all the groceries. I got some last chocolate and ice cream. I got malaria drugs at a pharmacy. We found a market near the port (Kinshasa is on the Congo River), and bought some soap and a padlock. The market had one monkey tied to a pole next to a huge birdcage filled with 20 or 30 African grey parrots. I wanted to go set them all free, but we probably would have been lynched.
There were UN tanks all over the place, and I actually felt bad for the Italians or Serbians or whatever other suckers were stuck sitting in them, getting heckled by the locals. Apparently the UN doesn’t have the authority to do anything but just be there, so if two local sides are fighting the blue helmets don’t intervene unless directly attacked, so the locals don’t attack and are therefore safe from UN retaliation. And if things get too dangerous, the UN leaves and goes to Brazzaville (in the other Congo across the river) to wait it out. Of course they don’t get much respect.
I personally didn’t really feel in danger while in Kinshasa, although I admittedly steered clear of potential risk. Andrew and I always moved around as a pair, and we never got in any vehicles. We didn’t go to the grand marché, because the guys at CAP told us we’d just be robbed there within minutes. And we didn’t hear a single gunshot. There were plenty of other white folks around (relatively), though presumably mostly expats who dealt with the place on a daily basis. No problem.
I nonetheless don’t recommend Kinshasa to anybody. I don't think there are any tourists. The place isn’t really all that interesting, and it’s not exactly inviting. We were on a mission to find a couple of basic things, and they were apparently nonexistent (except perhaps at the grand marché!): flip flops (there were some pretty cool sneakers though), a functional watch (there were hawkers selling ‘Rolexes’ everywhere, although the one Andrew bought gains or loses a few minutes every hour or so), and postcards (I got some, for a dollar each, but of course the stamps were even more elusive so none got sent). The place is also really expensive, so three nights was already more than enough. CAP is apparently the cheapest ‘safe’ lodging, and it’s over $50 a night. No thanks.
Friday morning was departure time. We got a ride to the MAF building to weigh all of our luggage, and ourselves. MAF is apparently the most reliable airline in the country. The plane we had chartered could hold up to 900kg, including passengers. Passengers included me, Andrew, my boss Gottfried, New Yorker reporter Ian, and a man we addressed as ‘Papa’ from the village where we were headed. Luggage included sacks of sugar, milk powder, a car battery, liquid nitrogen for field samples, biscuits, phenology workbooks, sardines, and so on. We loaded everything onto the roof of a minivan and headed to the city airport. That ride was the only time I was able to (surreptitiously) photograph Kinshasa city scenes. They didn’t come out very well. It was an interesting ride though, through quarters that we hadn’t crossed on foot the day before.
The city airport is about as formal as a neighborhood basketball court in the States. The migration office guy had avocado all over his hands as he flipped through my passport and stamped the hand-written ‘ticket’ I handed him. The health officer stamped my ticket, even though I admitted that my vaccination certificate was buried in my luggage. Then we sat at the hangar for hours.
The hangar next door seemed to be some sort of day care. Ragged kids ran amok, climbing the metal grate and waving at the white folks sitting and waiting. I didn’t see any adults; at least the kids didn’t come bug us. The hangar on the other side had a fire truck with someone lying beneath it. The thing actually started up while we waited (we were there a while), and drove few meters and back. Military guys walked by sometimes, or peed behind the shack on the other side of the pavement across from our hangar. Chickens mingled among the children, the shacks, and a parked plane. A couple of planes took off and landed during the hours that we sat there. Across the unmown expanse was a UN compound where, I guess, more international blue helmets sit and hang out. What a great posting. At least they don’t get heckled as much as the ones downtown.
One of the arriving planes was ours. Once emptied of its passengers and contents, it was ours! Too bad the promised fuel truck never came. Jerrycans of fuel were wheeled to underneath the wings, and people on ladders with suction pump things managed to get some of the fuel into the plane. Not enough to get us to our destination, but enough to get us to another airstrip with more fuel en route. We loaded up our stuff into the undercarriage compartments and into the rear portion of the cabin. I tried calling my mom with my cell phone one last time before leaving civilization, but it was too early in her time zone.
The captain offered us a last round of cold Coca-Colas and told us to pee before we boarded. In the plane, he turned around and pointed out the exits, through which we had just loaded our luggage. We asked if taking photos was ok. “Wait until the engines are going so we can outrun the military if they see you!” And we were off!
This is when my mom got my message and called back. I was amazed to still have service as we ascended, but it was good to say hi. The pressure also changed a bit, which caused the liquid nitrogen to offgas and fill the cabin with white smoke for a minute or two. I think it was shortly after I told my mom “oh, there’s smoke coming out of the liquid nitrogen canisters” that the connection finally cut off for good. Only on recounting the timing of the phone call to the others later did I realize that my mom might have suddenly freaked out from the context (she didn’t). Apparently the pilot’s reaction was “do you guys care? Ok, then I’m fine to keep going too.” No problem.
Kinshasa from the air was cool. You’d think waterfront property would be desirable, but it was clear that shantytowns ruled at the land-water interface. Then it was the boat graveyard, with rusted hulks stranded among mud and vegetation. People seemed to be farming some of the sandbars that formed in the river. Then civilization soon ceased.
I took some cool photos of various little villages along the way, although I later realized that I had forgotten to put the memory card in my camera. There weren’t many roads, but the land was nonetheless fairly tamed by man. We had yet to reach the forest. We landed in a largish village (though without roads) to refuel, and someone arrived at the plane with a small catfish in a bucket. Our captain bought it, and put it in the shell of an old shopvac for the flight, so he could put it in his garden pond at home. Gottfried bought a nice big papaya. We stood in the shade of the wings as they were filled with fuel.
Once airborne, the forest seemed to take over below us. Open land gave way to a carpet of trees. Villages were few and far between, and very small. There were no visible roads, and only a couple of rivers. I wondered how many groups of bonobos lived in the forest we were flying over. Ipope’s airstrip was the next stop, with the hike to our forest camp to follow soon thereafter.
Travel almost done, life in the forest almost begun.
The first welcome to the Congo came around an hour before Air France flight 898 landed, as the sun was setting and the captain came on the intercom to announce that it is illegal to photograph the country from the air. Ok, well it’s really too dark out anyway, and of course I’m in a middle seat.
I was the last passenger off of the plane. I had so much carry-on luggage, and my duty-free Bailey’s had been broken somehow as someone else grabbed their carry-on luggage from the overhead bin, so sticky sweet-smelling milky stuff was all over the place.
The heat was pretty prominent at the airplane door, as was the smell of the air. Clearly, this is a place where people burn wood a lot. The air was thick with the humidity and the smell of charcoal. Down the steps, onto the shuttle bus, and over to the terminal.
Kinshasa is not a popular destination. I gather that there is never more than one plane getting to the airport at a time, and I think our arrival around 7pm was the last of the day. Immigration was fun. Again, I was last in line, and it took a while. Lots of passengers, a few uniformed people trying to corral the various people into certain lines, and a few booths with officials and stamps in them. “Is this your first time in Congo? Oh, because for first-time visitors we stamp the entry stamp right over the visa, so it becomes illegible. But if you help me out with some money to take care of my kids, you can have the stamp on the opposite page.” “Yeah, whatever, put the stamp wherever you want to.” It eventually went on the opposite page.
There is a luggage carousel at this airport. Actually, there are a couple of them, although I wonder if the others work. The luggage is unloaded from the plane into a truck, the truck pulls up at the end of the carousel, and we all crowd around hoping to find our luggage. Again, mine seemed to be last. My new boss had gotten his two items first, and was not impressed with the amount of luggage I contributed to the pile.
Then was the trek from the carousel to the jeep. Really, the airport consists of just one big room with the baggage carousel and a door leading to the parking area. Three-wheeled luggage trolleys look familiar, and we loaded ours high with luggage. Little did I realize that the front wheel doesn’t actually turn. It needs to be pulled, not pushed. And what about the stairs from the door? At least the first few lanes in front of the airport had no traffic in them, just random kids asking for money or eyeing our luggage suspiciously. Two dudes were somehow recruited to navigate the trolley to the jeep, with one crouching in front of it to pull it from below, and the other pushing. They knocked it over at least twice. Thank goodness we made it to the jeep with everything! (It was little over an hour from plane to jeep, although, unobstructed, the walk would have taken about three minutes.)
The drive into town was hilarious. It was probably around 8pm, and the road was full of action. People walking along, people selling stuff off of blankets or little wooden boxes, the odd gas station or two, some gas lanterns, no streetlights. Several pedestrian bridges were in existence, although they were missing the cross spans; just the stairs remained on either side of the road. The other traffic on the road consisted mainly of VW busses filled with passengers. They all looked like they had been rolled down a hill a few times (imagine crumpling aluminum foil and then uncrumpling it, and that’s what the metal of these vehicles resembled), with all of the glass panes removed from the window spots, and all of the seats removed from inside and replaced with benches to stuff as many people inside as physically possible. The back doors were open, with a bungee keeping them from flying open, so that more people could hang out of the back but not be entirely outside. They rode pretty low due to the weight. I really wonder how often the axles just plain snap. In addition to the VW busses, whatever else could carry passengers did. My favorite was a semi cab pulling something of a hay wagon, with people actually riding the hitch between the cab and the trailer.
I got dumped at a place called CAP: Centre d’Acceuil Protestant. I was introduced to Andrew, a chimpanzee expert, who had been there for about 24 hours already. CAP is a nice little compound with several buildings of rooms, and walls all the way around. Guards stay at the gate all day and night. Andrew and I were taken by a guide to the nearest strip of wooden shack establishments a block away, where we went to drink Coca-Cola. Actually, I got a big cold Primus beer, while Andrew drank soda. The Primus hit the spot, although at 720ml it even hit me a bit. It was a nice welcome to the country.
The next day we were eventually picked up by our boss, since we needed to do a number of things. We were dropped at the British embassy, where we registered with our names and passports. We then went to a café where I ate a big cheese sandwich on a baguette and drank Coca-Cola from a bottle. Then we got dumped at CAP again, and didn’t really know what to do next. We didn’t do much, really. We did go searching for food, and ended up at a little restaurant where we were the only customers, but it still took something like an hour for them to make our chickens. Damn. We went back to the same wooden shack for Coca-Cola before going to bed.
The next day was to be our last in Kinshasa, and we had no idea whether or not we would be picked up and taken anywhere to get our errands done. So eventually we decided that we just needed to head out and figure things out on our own. We walked all over the downtown! The place isn’t that bad, and we actually didn’t get too hassled. We tried to do internet, but that place sucked. We’d sit for half an hour, and then the network would die or the power would go out or whatever. We tried that place three times, and I finally got an email sent. Yay!
Downtown Kinshasa appears to have one western-style supermarket, and another store that was somewhat like Target or Wal-Mart with all sorts of stuff in addition to all the groceries. I got some last chocolate and ice cream. I got malaria drugs at a pharmacy. We found a market near the port (Kinshasa is on the Congo River), and bought some soap and a padlock. The market had one monkey tied to a pole next to a huge birdcage filled with 20 or 30 African grey parrots. I wanted to go set them all free, but we probably would have been lynched.
There were UN tanks all over the place, and I actually felt bad for the Italians or Serbians or whatever other suckers were stuck sitting in them, getting heckled by the locals. Apparently the UN doesn’t have the authority to do anything but just be there, so if two local sides are fighting the blue helmets don’t intervene unless directly attacked, so the locals don’t attack and are therefore safe from UN retaliation. And if things get too dangerous, the UN leaves and goes to Brazzaville (in the other Congo across the river) to wait it out. Of course they don’t get much respect.
I personally didn’t really feel in danger while in Kinshasa, although I admittedly steered clear of potential risk. Andrew and I always moved around as a pair, and we never got in any vehicles. We didn’t go to the grand marché, because the guys at CAP told us we’d just be robbed there within minutes. And we didn’t hear a single gunshot. There were plenty of other white folks around (relatively), though presumably mostly expats who dealt with the place on a daily basis. No problem.
I nonetheless don’t recommend Kinshasa to anybody. I don't think there are any tourists. The place isn’t really all that interesting, and it’s not exactly inviting. We were on a mission to find a couple of basic things, and they were apparently nonexistent (except perhaps at the grand marché!): flip flops (there were some pretty cool sneakers though), a functional watch (there were hawkers selling ‘Rolexes’ everywhere, although the one Andrew bought gains or loses a few minutes every hour or so), and postcards (I got some, for a dollar each, but of course the stamps were even more elusive so none got sent). The place is also really expensive, so three nights was already more than enough. CAP is apparently the cheapest ‘safe’ lodging, and it’s over $50 a night. No thanks.
Friday morning was departure time. We got a ride to the MAF building to weigh all of our luggage, and ourselves. MAF is apparently the most reliable airline in the country. The plane we had chartered could hold up to 900kg, including passengers. Passengers included me, Andrew, my boss Gottfried, New Yorker reporter Ian, and a man we addressed as ‘Papa’ from the village where we were headed. Luggage included sacks of sugar, milk powder, a car battery, liquid nitrogen for field samples, biscuits, phenology workbooks, sardines, and so on. We loaded everything onto the roof of a minivan and headed to the city airport. That ride was the only time I was able to (surreptitiously) photograph Kinshasa city scenes. They didn’t come out very well. It was an interesting ride though, through quarters that we hadn’t crossed on foot the day before.
The city airport is about as formal as a neighborhood basketball court in the States. The migration office guy had avocado all over his hands as he flipped through my passport and stamped the hand-written ‘ticket’ I handed him. The health officer stamped my ticket, even though I admitted that my vaccination certificate was buried in my luggage. Then we sat at the hangar for hours.
The hangar next door seemed to be some sort of day care. Ragged kids ran amok, climbing the metal grate and waving at the white folks sitting and waiting. I didn’t see any adults; at least the kids didn’t come bug us. The hangar on the other side had a fire truck with someone lying beneath it. The thing actually started up while we waited (we were there a while), and drove few meters and back. Military guys walked by sometimes, or peed behind the shack on the other side of the pavement across from our hangar. Chickens mingled among the children, the shacks, and a parked plane. A couple of planes took off and landed during the hours that we sat there. Across the unmown expanse was a UN compound where, I guess, more international blue helmets sit and hang out. What a great posting. At least they don’t get heckled as much as the ones downtown.
One of the arriving planes was ours. Once emptied of its passengers and contents, it was ours! Too bad the promised fuel truck never came. Jerrycans of fuel were wheeled to underneath the wings, and people on ladders with suction pump things managed to get some of the fuel into the plane. Not enough to get us to our destination, but enough to get us to another airstrip with more fuel en route. We loaded up our stuff into the undercarriage compartments and into the rear portion of the cabin. I tried calling my mom with my cell phone one last time before leaving civilization, but it was too early in her time zone.
The captain offered us a last round of cold Coca-Colas and told us to pee before we boarded. In the plane, he turned around and pointed out the exits, through which we had just loaded our luggage. We asked if taking photos was ok. “Wait until the engines are going so we can outrun the military if they see you!” And we were off!
This is when my mom got my message and called back. I was amazed to still have service as we ascended, but it was good to say hi. The pressure also changed a bit, which caused the liquid nitrogen to offgas and fill the cabin with white smoke for a minute or two. I think it was shortly after I told my mom “oh, there’s smoke coming out of the liquid nitrogen canisters” that the connection finally cut off for good. Only on recounting the timing of the phone call to the others later did I realize that my mom might have suddenly freaked out from the context (she didn’t). Apparently the pilot’s reaction was “do you guys care? Ok, then I’m fine to keep going too.” No problem.
Kinshasa from the air was cool. You’d think waterfront property would be desirable, but it was clear that shantytowns ruled at the land-water interface. Then it was the boat graveyard, with rusted hulks stranded among mud and vegetation. People seemed to be farming some of the sandbars that formed in the river. Then civilization soon ceased.
I took some cool photos of various little villages along the way, although I later realized that I had forgotten to put the memory card in my camera. There weren’t many roads, but the land was nonetheless fairly tamed by man. We had yet to reach the forest. We landed in a largish village (though without roads) to refuel, and someone arrived at the plane with a small catfish in a bucket. Our captain bought it, and put it in the shell of an old shopvac for the flight, so he could put it in his garden pond at home. Gottfried bought a nice big papaya. We stood in the shade of the wings as they were filled with fuel.
Once airborne, the forest seemed to take over below us. Open land gave way to a carpet of trees. Villages were few and far between, and very small. There were no visible roads, and only a couple of rivers. I wondered how many groups of bonobos lived in the forest we were flying over. Ipope’s airstrip was the next stop, with the hike to our forest camp to follow soon thereafter.
Travel almost done, life in the forest almost begun.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Last week in France
The rest of my time in France was a pleasure. I spent Thursday evening on my own, walking around the Marais neighbourhood as people were congregating in the bars and restaurants among friends. I ended up finding a little hole-in-the-wall Irish Pub, Stoney's, where I managed to spend the rest of the evening drinking pints of a Belgian beer called 'Cheap Blonde' among a friendly crowd of expats from the US, Canada, and various European countries. The bartender was a Vancouverite by the name of Dave that didn't speak a word of French. It was a fun evening.
I spent Friday evening with friends at a nice restaurant in the Bastille neighbourhood, Café de l'Industrie, eating good food and drinking lots of red wine. They brought along a friend of theirs, Virginie, who had spent about two years studying the behaviour of bonobos in captivity. She was pretty jealous that I would be spending the next nine months in the middle of bonobo country - something that she had never managed to do, though always aspired to. It was good to hear some of her stories; it really makes me look forward to observing the species doing their thing in the forest.
After the café, I continued the evening with two friends at a 30th birthday party/ housewarming party at a Parisian apartment. I had actually studied in Montreal a few years ago with the woman of the couple hosting the evening. Overall though, I felt somewhat out of place. I guess I'm just used wilder parties, whereas this crowd seemed fairly muted. Plus, I hadn't shaved in about a week (I didn't pack shaving cream for the jungle!), so I felt pretty scruffy.
Saturday I went to Lyon again to visit Mélanie, and ended up at another 30th birthday party. This one was very structured, with the various courses of food being placed on the buffet table at clearly-timed intervals. Champagne was served when the cakes finally made their appearance, and the birthday girl, Lorraine, made a speech. I was really tired, but Mélanie still convinced me to dance the night away to the mp3 songs of her choosing until well after 3am.
Sunday was a day of field trips. We first visited St-Etienne, which is about an hour outside of Lyon. The town has a bit of a bad reputation among everyone I spoke to, and we soon realised that yes, the place could use a bit of help. Mélanie just started her job as the transport coordinator for the St-Etienne region, so perhaps she'll be able to contribute to the betterment of the place.
Once we had had enough of St-Etienne, we continued along the train line to Firminy. Firminy is a smaller town than St-Etienne, but we both found it to be more welcoming. It's claim to fame is a big site designed by Le Corbusier, who is pretty famous in urban planning and architectural circles. For us, it was a pilgrimage of sorts, to go check out his creations. What I found impressive is that the town recently completed the last building of the complex, although Le Corbusier died about four decades ago. It was a really cool-looking church that followed the original plans almost exactly. The interior was very serene, with holes pierced in the wall behind the altar to appear as a constellation.
I headed back to Paris on Monday, and prepared for my departure. Tuesday morning departure for Kinshasa!
I spent Friday evening with friends at a nice restaurant in the Bastille neighbourhood, Café de l'Industrie, eating good food and drinking lots of red wine. They brought along a friend of theirs, Virginie, who had spent about two years studying the behaviour of bonobos in captivity. She was pretty jealous that I would be spending the next nine months in the middle of bonobo country - something that she had never managed to do, though always aspired to. It was good to hear some of her stories; it really makes me look forward to observing the species doing their thing in the forest.
After the café, I continued the evening with two friends at a 30th birthday party/ housewarming party at a Parisian apartment. I had actually studied in Montreal a few years ago with the woman of the couple hosting the evening. Overall though, I felt somewhat out of place. I guess I'm just used wilder parties, whereas this crowd seemed fairly muted. Plus, I hadn't shaved in about a week (I didn't pack shaving cream for the jungle!), so I felt pretty scruffy.
Saturday I went to Lyon again to visit Mélanie, and ended up at another 30th birthday party. This one was very structured, with the various courses of food being placed on the buffet table at clearly-timed intervals. Champagne was served when the cakes finally made their appearance, and the birthday girl, Lorraine, made a speech. I was really tired, but Mélanie still convinced me to dance the night away to the mp3 songs of her choosing until well after 3am.
Sunday was a day of field trips. We first visited St-Etienne, which is about an hour outside of Lyon. The town has a bit of a bad reputation among everyone I spoke to, and we soon realised that yes, the place could use a bit of help. Mélanie just started her job as the transport coordinator for the St-Etienne region, so perhaps she'll be able to contribute to the betterment of the place.
Once we had had enough of St-Etienne, we continued along the train line to Firminy. Firminy is a smaller town than St-Etienne, but we both found it to be more welcoming. It's claim to fame is a big site designed by Le Corbusier, who is pretty famous in urban planning and architectural circles. For us, it was a pilgrimage of sorts, to go check out his creations. What I found impressive is that the town recently completed the last building of the complex, although Le Corbusier died about four decades ago. It was a really cool-looking church that followed the original plans almost exactly. The interior was very serene, with holes pierced in the wall behind the altar to appear as a constellation.
I headed back to Paris on Monday, and prepared for my departure. Tuesday morning departure for Kinshasa!
Upload test from Kinshasa
I've been in Congo for almost 48 hours now. Internet sucks, and I've been
busy trying to do some basic shopping before our departure for the forest.
We depart in the morning for the forest. I'll do more updating from there,
but needed to test if the email uploads work. This is a test; this is only
a test.
busy trying to do some basic shopping before our departure for the forest.
We depart in the morning for the forest. I'll do more updating from there,
but needed to test if the email uploads work. This is a test; this is only
a test.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Communication
The only means of communication with the outside world is a satellite phone, which is activated once or twice a week to upload and download text messages (basic emails) to and from the camp laptop. This is apparently a very slow and expensive process, so emails are brief and infrequent. It's like a 14k modem (from the '80s), charged by the second for all downloads.
I use this camp infrastructure to update this blog. I cannot access the internet at all, I can only send and receive basic text emails. But at least I can post stories here for people in the rest of the world to see. I cannot send photos or any other attachments. Sorry.
This also means that I can be contacted. But this is not email, it's a satellite phone that has an email interface. Please keep this limitation in mind! If you want to write to me, please do so, but don't abuse it. It's not my infrastructure - it's the camp's. If you write, please only include your message text, in text format only - no html. Don't 'reply with history' - just include what you want to write. Don't include internet links - I can't access the internet. Don't include attachments - they're huge relative to text. Put my name in the subject heading so we can easily sort the emails by recipient at the camp, and to recognise good messages vs. spam.
I am glad that this communication infrastructure exists, but again, it is not mine. If I get too many personal messages, I may be asked to curtail them. I don't want to have to do that. I've created this blog to be able to share my life in the camp with my friends and family in the outside world - in essence to respond preemptively to questions of the sort 'so how's life?'. By all means, I'd love to hear how your lives are going too, but please don't be offended if I don't respond personally.
Please please please DON'T ALLOW THIS EMAIL ADDRESS TO BE CAPTURED BY SPAMMERS. This goes as far as not putting it in your online address book, or even in your computer hard drive's address book. If spammers obtain the email address and start sending crap to the address, we will not be able to get any messages. In fact, please only write down this address on paper, use it only to write an email, and check back to this blog for the address again the next time you want to write.
Remember, this is a satellite phone uploading messages at 14k and operating on solar power from the middle of the jungle.
Sorry to be so paranoiac about it. It's just gotta be clear. By all means write; just be aware of the limitations and work with them. Reach me at luikotal (at) eva (dot) mpg (dot) de.
-Ryan
I use this camp infrastructure to update this blog. I cannot access the internet at all, I can only send and receive basic text emails. But at least I can post stories here for people in the rest of the world to see. I cannot send photos or any other attachments. Sorry.
This also means that I can be contacted. But this is not email, it's a satellite phone that has an email interface. Please keep this limitation in mind! If you want to write to me, please do so, but don't abuse it. It's not my infrastructure - it's the camp's. If you write, please only include your message text, in text format only - no html. Don't 'reply with history' - just include what you want to write. Don't include internet links - I can't access the internet. Don't include attachments - they're huge relative to text. Put my name in the subject heading so we can easily sort the emails by recipient at the camp, and to recognise good messages vs. spam.
I am glad that this communication infrastructure exists, but again, it is not mine. If I get too many personal messages, I may be asked to curtail them. I don't want to have to do that. I've created this blog to be able to share my life in the camp with my friends and family in the outside world - in essence to respond preemptively to questions of the sort 'so how's life?'. By all means, I'd love to hear how your lives are going too, but please don't be offended if I don't respond personally.
Please please please DON'T ALLOW THIS EMAIL ADDRESS TO BE CAPTURED BY SPAMMERS. This goes as far as not putting it in your online address book, or even in your computer hard drive's address book. If spammers obtain the email address and start sending crap to the address, we will not be able to get any messages. In fact, please only write down this address on paper, use it only to write an email, and check back to this blog for the address again the next time you want to write.
Remember, this is a satellite phone uploading messages at 14k and operating on solar power from the middle of the jungle.
Sorry to be so paranoiac about it. It's just gotta be clear. By all means write; just be aware of the limitations and work with them. Reach me at luikotal (at) eva (dot) mpg (dot) de.
-Ryan
En route (France)
OK, so I quit my job over two weeks ago now, and am well on my way to the jungle.
My last day at work was Thursday, February 15th. I hit the road on Saturday the 17th, and got to New Jersey on Thursday the 22nd after about 2,800 miles (about 4,500km). The first four days (2,000 miles) were spent on I40 in a rental truck with Marco, Dude (the dog), and Turtle (the cat), while the subsequent two were spent on prettier roads in a rental car with my mom, Peggy.
I spent all day on Friday the 23rd in New York, trying (unsuccessfully) to get a new passport (my existing one had never arrived in the mail from the Congolese consulate), and then spent the weekend at my mom's in New Jersey trying to do last-minute organisation of stuff. I succeeded (miraculously) in getting a new US passport in Philadelphia on Monday the 26th (after delaying my planned Saturday flight), and my mom dropped me off at my cousin Steve's place (actually his girlfriend Ellie's) in New York that night. I got a new Congolese visa on Tuesday morning, along with some binoculars, and got the plane to Paris that afternoon (with a heavy fine for bringing way too much luggage).
It's now Monday, March 5th, and I've been in France since last Wednesday. I've spent two days in Lyon, followed by a weekend in Paris, with Mélanie. I'm planning on spending most of this week in Paris with Chris and Lucie, with a Tuesday evening with my cousin Mélanie in the suburbs, and Wednesday trip to Lille (in the north of France) to visit an old high school friend, Mikki.
I depart Paris for Kinshasa next Tuesday, March 13th. I'm not sure how long it'll be before I arrive at my final destination, but it'll sure be good to settle down after all this craziness!
My last day at work was Thursday, February 15th. I hit the road on Saturday the 17th, and got to New Jersey on Thursday the 22nd after about 2,800 miles (about 4,500km). The first four days (2,000 miles) were spent on I40 in a rental truck with Marco, Dude (the dog), and Turtle (the cat), while the subsequent two were spent on prettier roads in a rental car with my mom, Peggy.
I spent all day on Friday the 23rd in New York, trying (unsuccessfully) to get a new passport (my existing one had never arrived in the mail from the Congolese consulate), and then spent the weekend at my mom's in New Jersey trying to do last-minute organisation of stuff. I succeeded (miraculously) in getting a new US passport in Philadelphia on Monday the 26th (after delaying my planned Saturday flight), and my mom dropped me off at my cousin Steve's place (actually his girlfriend Ellie's) in New York that night. I got a new Congolese visa on Tuesday morning, along with some binoculars, and got the plane to Paris that afternoon (with a heavy fine for bringing way too much luggage).
It's now Monday, March 5th, and I've been in France since last Wednesday. I've spent two days in Lyon, followed by a weekend in Paris, with Mélanie. I'm planning on spending most of this week in Paris with Chris and Lucie, with a Tuesday evening with my cousin Mélanie in the suburbs, and Wednesday trip to Lille (in the north of France) to visit an old high school friend, Mikki.
I depart Paris for Kinshasa next Tuesday, March 13th. I'm not sure how long it'll be before I arrive at my final destination, but it'll sure be good to settle down after all this craziness!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)