Life in the forest

One productive day

2008-05-06T01:53:00.002+02:00

I rounded up my team. They scattered. Most were ready to go but one had to repair the generators. I carried some fuel to the dock to go in the little aluminum boat. The mechanic was continually delayed. The other three of the team were loitering, asking me to buy them coffees. I stole some bread and cheese from the kitchen, and got a lecture from the head chef afterwards. We carried a bunch of poles and other steel down to the dock, loaded them in the aluminum boat, and took them across to the other side of the lagoon. The steel tripod didn't fit into the Toyota, but it squeezed in enough to not fall out. We went back to the restaurant. The aluminum boat driver told me he was taking the powerful fiberglass boat with the two 80HP motors so he could fit more food. I tried to convince my team to help me bring more food down to the dock and load it. They refused. I went up and down those stairs like twenty times with tinned peas and sardines and milk powder and whatnot. The fiberglass boat left and I was dripping in sweat. The mechanic was ready when I started descending the food, but still nobody helped. We crossed the lagoon and tied the metal to the Toyota frame and drove. We got to Ozouga about 1h20 later. We set up the tripod on the ground, with the two 6m poles extending from it. One kid fed the cable through the poles while another guy moved the poles. I sledgehammered stakes into the sand at a distance from the center. We decided the tripod was misplaced to guy it well. We tried digging but had no shovel. Another kid spent a while fabricating a shovel out of a stove cover and a branch, since all I gave him was a machete and a rake. I raked, and it worked alright. Somebody cooked some chicken. We attached three guywires, carefully but surely; they lay on the ground. The mechanic still couldn't get the quad to go. We attached the poles to the tripod, I affixed the antenna to the top of the pole and installed the horizontal poles to the antenna, we moved the tripod to the hole, and then we gathered for brute force to erect the tripod support. It went up, but the 12m pole's own weight kept it from going up. The bend was permanent. We laid the tripod down and tried to straighten it by jumping on the bent bit with a big case just up the pole from it. It worked a bit, but not entirely. Enough. We devised a new plan, to push the upper section of the pole with wooden posts, so someone went to get bits of wood to attach to the end of the wooden post. I attached the radio wires to the battery terminals. We gathered again to erect the antenna support. I was near the base giving brute force, while others were pusing the upper ends with the modified wooden rod. The wood snapped and the metal all fell down. My wrist got a shock, and two of the four horizontal antenna bits snapped. Shit. We focused on the quad and discussed. Third try: Two guys pushing the base with brute force, two guys pushing the upper end with a newly-cut wooden post, and one or two guys each (a forest team returned in the middle of the erection) on two of the three guywires to pull. They lifted, we pulled, and we pulled and pulled and pulled. When it was partially erected, one of the stick guys ran to the third guywire to balance it. The tripod sat in its pit, we held it from three sides, and we adjusted tension to make the not-straight 14m upright post stand as vertical as possible. We attached the guylines to the stakes. One stake had to be moved. Somebody cooked some spaghetti. I attached the antenna cable to the radio and tested it by calling Yatouga. Loud and clear. Applause among the team. The mechanic got the quad started and left with one guy to find the other quad which had broken down several kilometers from camp. I cleaned up the tools and excess guywire and such, and raked sand over the bottom posts of the tripod. I fetched two buckets of water from the well in the forest, and bathed. We ate spaghetti and chicken. The mechanic said he wanted to bring the crappier quad back to do better repairs and fully charge the battery. I sat in the back of the Toyota and we raced the quad. It was ridiculous. It took just under an hour back to the lagoon. We called a boat, crossed to the Lodge, and dispersed. I showered and went to the bar. One Fanta, one rumandcoke, some peanuts, a couple of ginandtonics, French onion soup, a meal of fresh fish with rice, and plenty of conversation with the French expat. And now internet. I have a new FaceBook friend who gave himself a silly name so I didn't originally find him when I joined. And my sister posted photos of her New Jersey trip on MySpace. I think I'll go to bed now. Hopefully I can board a boat for Akaka tomorrow to discuss construction work with the Sao Tomeans. Or at least get a Toyota to the forest to get some wood and deliver gasoline to the guy with the chainsaw. But probably I'll be stuck here with nothing worthwhile to do with my day but surf the interent. Again. Dammit.

First month in Gabon

2008-03-03T12:34:00.001+02:00

Hello again. Yeah, I’m back in the forest. Gabon this time. I got here on January 25th, and this is the first time I post here. Sorry. I guess I’m just sort of in my new groove here. I guess I’m all used to living in the jungle now, and now’s just another jungle experience that I find myself in for the moment. The jungle is what occupies my thoughts and my time, and I really haven’t been spending too much time at the computer at all. Plus the issues, as usual, with limited power and competition for the computer when there is enough battery.

Camp life is alright here, though very dissimilar to what I was formerly accustomed to in Congo. When I got there I was immediately made responsible for the numerous day-to-day tasks that were necessary for the smooth running of the camp. Here, however, many of those things just don’t exist. Our employees are fixed in number, so there’s very little to-and-fro of staff to deal with. And the work plans and salaries are organized by others, so I barely even deal with employee stuff at all.

The camp itself is very rudimentary, so making it more liveable and efficient is more what I’ve been brought here to accomplish. It’s pretty cool, on the one hand, because many practices and installations just plain don’t exist, so I’m the one to devise and put into practice new stuff. On the other hand, it’s difficult to install anything new because the people here have been set in their ways for a while already. Not they’re not open to change, just that there’s not necessarily a good reason to modify existing comportments.

An exciting part of what I’m here to do, though, is to actually build the camp anew. At our main base camp, Yatouga, there are just two structures at the moment, and two access points to the lagoon. Before I leave in July, the goal is to have a few more structures to live in/out of, and hopefully have some easier methods of dealing with water.

But therein lies a big problem, because building requires materials, and those are in very short supply. Can you believe it, that a country which exports literally shiploads of hardwoods has essentially none available on the local market? How are we supposed to build shelters without a decent supply of wood!? The sun is brutal on the tents, as is the rain, so the hope is for each tent to be placed on a raised platform with a roof over it. Platforms require many planks though, as do the overhead frames supporting any roofing. I think we’ll probably be able to acquire decent quantities of plywood for the roofs, but I’m beginning to have serious doubts about the likelihood of seeing any platforms built during my time here. I think I may need to resort to bamboo for the overhead frames. We’ll see.

What I think I will be able to accomplish in the coming month is the installation of water systems. Like I said, we currently rely mostly on the lagoon for bathing and for washing dishes, so that can easily be tapped and piped up to the camp for easier use. We capture rainwater for drinking, so we’ll need some better gutters and filters to make that more usable.

We’ve got a second camp about 10km from Yatouga, called Ozouga. It’s in the southern reaches of a long skinny savannah, surrounded on three sides by the forest. We get our water there from two wells dug in the adjacent forest, but they are apparently seasonal and they’ve been getting fairly soiled with fallen leaves and such. Rainwater has been relied upon for drinking, but it’s frequently been necessary to have water delivered in jerrycans from the Lodge. So there I plan on cleaning and protecting the wells, bringing one or two 1000-litre reservoirs for the dry spells, and piping the water up to the camp for all of our needs.

So yeah, I get to go to Port-Gentil again tomorrow (I write this on Sunday the 2nd of March). I went there a week or two ago to pick up a bunch of camp supplies and to get a better understanding of how exactly things like groceries make their way to our camps. Finding the components of our water systems is my main goal, but I also hope to work out some better communications between the two camps. We currently have a radio at Yatouga that can communicate with the Lodge, and there’s also a cell-phone tower nearby, but Ozouga only has satellite phone access. So I’ll be going to the radio store and seeing what sort of antenna or radio or whatever would be needed for the two camps to be able to talk easily.

The Lodge is my other main place of work, mostly just for logistics runs. It’s about an hour by boat from Yatouga, or 1.5 hours by quad from Ozouga. It’s a 2.5-hour walk through the forest between Yatouga and Ozouga. The airstrip is a further 10-minute drive or so from the Lodge. Any deliveries of people or stuff arrive overland at the Lodge, and I go pick them up there. That includes employees, groceries, and fuels. We use about nine different types of fuels for our various needs. Crazy, eh?

So I guess that’s what my life’s been consumed with as of late. Cleaning up the camps and seeing what’s needed, trying to determine what of the necessary things are actually available, and then trying to get them at camp. It’s not quick, but I’m still confident that the camps will be in better long-term shape when I leave than when I arrived.

As for the great apes, I really don’t have much contact with that side of things. Unfortunately, even our forest teams haven’t had too many chimp or gorilla contacts lately, which reflects the stage of habituation so far. It’s really tough to actually find the same communities repetitively, particularly since their ranges overlap somewhat and the IDs aren’t yet clear. So the norm has been to follow a group for a few days or a week or two, then lose them, and then to go apeless for another week or two before finding some more. But are those ones the same ones that were followed previously? If not, it doesn’t really help in the habituation process because the individuals of each group don’t get enough constant human contact. That’s how the work goes right now though, and we can only hope that with a few more years of such perseverance the habituation will improve.

I’ve nonetheless had a number of forest days, which obligatorily mean full days in the forest. It seems that 15 to 20 km is very normal, despite the initial morning commute by boat or quad to the trailhead. Whether from Yatouga or Ozouga, the forest teams leave between 7 and 7:30am, and return sometime around 5pm. The forest is sometimes quite open, with clear views often exceeding 50 or even as much as 100m. Other areas are very swampy, so days out rarely involve dry feet. I went out the other day and was already walking on a floating mass of thick grass over a body of water before 8am, with every step submerging the grass mat in the brown water. The subsequent trail was reached by balancing across an arced mangrove branch across the dry land (where a small monkey skull had been perched on a stake to mark the forest entry!).

We spent majority of the day following swamp edges in search of gorillas or their traces. We found recent nests in several locations, as well as plenty of footprints, feeding signs, and so on. But no gorillas. For me that was just one day, but it’s been getting old for the gorilla teams who search in vain day in and day out.

I did encounter chimps a couple of times on another outing. Hearing their screeches as we approached in the forest were my favourite moments, whereas actually catching fleeting glimpses of them look at us and run away was less thrilling. We did eventually catch up with a few chimps feeding high in a fruit tree, but the view through the understory was pretty covered. I wish they had spent more time screeching! The chimp teams have been similarly discouraged to the gorilla teams lately though, with too many days spent seeing little more than nests or feeding signs, with the occasional chimp just walking by for a matter of seconds seemingly just taunt them.

We got another tease last night too, as we heard a raucous group of chimps break out in cacophony a couple of times at around 10pm, just as I was getting ready to retire to my tent. The sky was about as clear as I’ve seen it here, with the Milky Way clearly streaking through the rest of the stars, and I found the calls of rowdy chimps echoing across the lagoon to be a poignant close to the evening. (Judging by the direction, the community is not one of our target communities for habituation, though news from Ozouga has our chimps being contacted over the past couple of days in the forest along the beach.)

As for communication, I think I prefer just to forgo use of the camp email system, given that I’m expected to pay for it (I got a fat email bill for Congo recently) and that the camp computer is often at the camp where I’m not. The Lodge actually has internet access, so I try to check my Hotmail whenever I visit. I’m not always able, because my Lodge visits are always pretty hectic and the network is sometimes down anyway, but I can at least check it every week or two.

The Lodge itself is pretty cool vacation destination for tourists from around the world with a week or more to spend. They’ve got the main Lodge, as well as several satellite camps throughout the park. Tourists do safaris and see elephants and buffalo and red river hogs, and there are nightly excursions to see crocodiles. It’s rare for tourists to encounter chimps or gorillas, but they’ve apparently been seeing them about as much as we have lately. The Lodge’s camps all have such luxuries as running water, reliable electricity, and cold drinks, so visits there are a nice respite from our rustic camps. It’s also good to have a chef-prepared meal of fresh produce from time to time as well.

So voilà. My life lately. Perhaps I’ll get all motivated and write more frequent entries from time to time, but I haven’t really been into it lately. Life is pretty nice here though, despite the conditions, and the beauty of my surroundings is just amazing. So yeah, next time perhaps I’ll write more about the animals I encounter, or the people I work with, or the projects I undertake that actually get done. We’ll see. Write me at Hotmail if you want to say hi, or even text my Canadian phone at 1-514-586-2470 – I usually turn it on daily to check for text messages.

Later,
Ryan.

Rabies?

2007-11-07T23:53:00.000+02:00

Rabies?

Wendesday, 7 November 2007

I got bitten by a dog around noon on Monday, the 22nd of October. Sistebol and I had left the village of Ioko a few hours before, and were approaching the next village of Elema-Impata. The first hour of trail was through dense forest, with the next 30 minutes or so trudging through knee- to waist-deep water of the inundated Lokeli River.

When we neared the village, the dense forest gradually gave way to slashed-and-burned agricultural fields on either side of the trail. We started passing villagers going to and from their fields carrying machetes, hoes, and baskets filled with manioc tubers or firewood. I saw the three dogs ahead on the trail, but had little choice but to pass through their huddle. Sistebol went ahead without incident, with me close behind. It was only once I had passed that one turned back to bite my leg. When I turned around I didn't even know which of the three had bitten me.

Sistebol was surprised, and several passing farmers and children seemed so too. Several people gathered around as I cleaned the wound with my water bottle. Blood flowed cleanly from the wound, directly from the muscle that showed below the skin. The bite wasn't very broad, just a bit deep. No major veins or arteries. I dabbed it dry, applied some antibiotic ointment, and put on a band-aid.

Of course, as any foreign traveller in Africa is trained to think, my first concern was the possibility of rabies. Sistebol was nonchalant: "Don't worry, the dogs around here don't have rabies, they have tetanus!" Oh great. At least I know I have an effective vaccination against tetanus. We continued our trek, and I changed the bandage and ointment regularly over the coming days.

This incident happened on my first actual vacation from LuiKotal. The destination was Lokolama, which is the only town of any consequence in the area. Aside from our Camp, Lokolama is the only place where any of the villagers that work for us are able to acquire any consumer goods like machetes, buckets, soap, or clothing. It is also the seat of various governement offices, so our camp maintains relations with many of the officials based there. I had heard a lot about this great metropolis over the months at Camp, so was determined to pay the place a visit.

In order to leave my post for a few days, I had been training our interim Camp Manager, Babs, for a couple of weeks. Things at camp were to be fairly calm during the week of my absence, so Babs would mostly just need to manage its day-to-day running. It would be good practice for her, and we would have the opportunity to discuss any problems before they got out of hand. (In fact, this is precisely how it worked - things went relatively smoothly, Babs was able to learn from the things which didn't go well, and I was able to help clear things up when I got back.)

Well Lokolama is about 83km from Camp. From Lompole, which is a 20km walk from Camp, the local people generally make the trip in two days. Elema-Impata is often the halfway point, though Ioko is also feasible. Both days of walking are very long, and the trail ranges from bad to horrendous. Some stretches are good enough to pedal a bicycle on, but most bikes are just used as overburdened carts with people pushing the loads along the same route most people walk.

So Monday I got bitten by a dog en route around noon, and we arrived in Lokolama shortly after sundown. Tuesday was my touristing day, when I saw the sites of the city and greeted every single government official there. The regional leader, "le Chef de Secteur" invited Sistebol and I for breakfast "a votre honneur" on Wednesday, and then we started the walk back. We got back to Ioko that night, after around 40km in about 9 hours of non-stop speedwalking. Thursday we kept walking, and I left Sistebol in the last village before Lompole. I got back shortly before 3pm, and wanted nothing more than to just keep going to reach camp. I greeted the villagers, was fed a small meal, picked up my tent, and continued on my way. It was another day of about 40km by the time I pitched my tent at Penge, which is a small clearing about an hour before the Lokoro. Friday morning I walked the last hour, yelled at the top of my lungs for a while, and waited for someone from camp to show up in the dugout canoe to take me across the river. After waiting for over an hour, it was clear that nobody could hear me, so I left my bag and started swimming. The water was high, so it ws a good 30 minutes of swimming within the inundated forest before I could even touch bottom, with frequent breaks holding on to trees to catch my breath. I stumbled the last kilometre or so into camp, soaking wet, arriving about 48 hours after leaving Lokolama. Someone went to fetch my bag on the far side of the river, and I spent the rest of the day relaxing, recovering, and treating my wounds.

I had been away for exactly one week. The whole trip constitutes enough of an exciting adventure to warrant its own blog entry, but this one is supposed to be about rabies so the trip gets abbreviated to one long paragraph. Sorry. I may or may not get back to that later.

On my weeklong trip, the dog bite was really just one little ailment among many. My feet had plenty of blisters, my arms and legs got loads of other scrapes, cuts, and bites, and my guts had been periodically rebelling against me. While travelling as well as once back at camp, I spent every evening applying ointment and bandaids to various wounds. The dog bite was just one among many.

Back at camp, though, I read a bit more about rabies. It seems that the vaccine (which I got some doses of but not all) offers somewhat of a shield, but that immunity is impossible. It also seems that the incubation period can vary, depending on health, the pre-exposure vaccines, and whatever else, and can be as long as a year. Post-exposure treatment can be taken any time during the incubation period and eliminate the possibility of the bite incident leading to rabies. Once symptoms start to appear, it is too late for treatment and, as one of the books describes, "a slow painful death is inevitable."

The first symptoms are apparently some tingling around the wound, and general pain in the affected limb. Well of course I immediately started noticing that my leg was sore, and that the bite spot hurt. Yeah, all the other cuts and blisters and overworked muscles and joints hurt a bit too, but they wouldn't indicate anything besides a tired body.

One way to determine if rabies is present is to monitor the dog for a couple of weeks. I started writing a letter to Lompole, asking our collaborator there to ask the people of Impata-Elema to let me know if any dog turned up dead in their village within a couple of weeks of my bite. The letter wouldn't be sent to Lompole until Monday, when the porters came with our food transport.

I discussed the dog situation of the region with our local workers. They said that rabies isn't common, and several of them pointed out spots where dogs had bitten them. I asked about the dogs in the village of Impata-Elema, and they said the place probably has 150 of them running around. The village probably has around 40 homes, so I assume this is an overestimation of of the dog population, but the conclusion is that there are too many dogs for the villagers to really keep track of any of them. The dogs are used for hunting, so they have a lot of contact with all of the local wildlife, particularly anything that is on the ground. Based on this, I assume that if any nearby village's dogs were to end up with a few rabid individuals, Impata-Elema is the most-likely contender.

This is basically all the information available to make a decision. The decision basically comes down to two choices: do nothing, or leave camp to go for the post-exposure treatment. It basically comes down to weighing the risks. Given the information, it appears that risk is low. The bite wasn't that nasty, and rabies isn't common in the area anyway. Low as the risk may be, however, it is not zero: the possibility of rabies remains. And given the consequences ("slow painful death is inevitable"), I came to the decision that the risk warranted my evacuation.

This decision was not an easy one, and was not taken without a lot of thought and discussion with a couple of my campmates. I got back from my trip on Friday morning, read about rabies on Friday night and Saturday afternoon (in different books), and finally decided to contact my travel insurance company on Monday morning. My time at camp was to last another six weeks, and I had a number of big projects to accomplish still. So both professionally and psychologically, I wasn't ready to leave yet. Monday was a sad day.

This was the first test of Camp's means of emergency evacuation. I started with my travel insurance, since I needed to convince them to pay the flight bill. It took several phone calls, numerous agents and supervisors, and way too much explanation of how stupid they were being. "Before we can authorise an evacuation, we need you to consult a medical professional who agrees that your case could be improved with an evacuation"; "No, I need the evacuation so that I can get to the medical professional." Ridiculous. The satphone had hundreds of dollars wasted on such stupidity that day.

Eventually they agreed that I needed to be evacuated to seek medical attention, but they couldn't figure out how to evacuate me. In the end it was me organising the plane out, with the insurance company just contacting them to promise payment. The plane was scheduled for the next morning from the Ipope airstrip, 27km from camp. I had packed my things quickly in between phone calls, and sent them ahead with the porters. Andrew and I left around 5pm with one of our plant experts, Kabongo. We did most of the walk at night. In one of the knee-deep stretches of inundated trail, I got a massive electric shock up my left leg from the Nina, one of my favourite meals (the electric fish). We got to Lompole around 10pm, and everyone in the village had already gone to bed.

A few people were awoken, and we ate some rice. Andrew and I were totally beat, and shared my little tent for the night. Finally crashing after midnight, it was the latest Andrew had ever stayed up in the Congo.

We were up by 5:30 on Tuesday morning. A number of people came to greet me, all in shock at my sudden departure, and all sincerely disappointed. Given my position as everyone's boss around here, I've had, at times, tenuous relations with pretty much everyone. When it came down to it though, I was touched that the people genuinely respected me, despite the official role I was obliged to maintain. Yeah, it was often pretty frustrating to work with these people, but in the end we all understood one another. I was certainly disappointed to be extricating myself from their lives so suddenly.

Eventually we left for Ipope, with several people coming just to see me off. Andrew and I sat in a house for a while as we waited for word of the plane's progress, and our local friends came and went. We started the walk along the last two kilometres once we heard the plane overhead; it was waiting on the airstrip when we got there. At perhaps a dozen adults and fewer than 20 children, this was by far the smallest crowd I had ever witnessed at the airstrip. I got a couple of last photos, and got in the co-pilot seat. I was the plane's only passenger.

The flight was uneventful, with beautiful weather. The plane's GPS had been removed for repairs, so it was interesting for me to observe the pilot navigate visually with his maps and compass bearings. The forest has no roads and few major rivers, so landmarks are extremely limited. We made one stop at Semendua for gas, and arrived in Kinshasa by mid-afternoon.

The insurance company had asked the pilot to organise an ambulance to pick me up, but this would have been overkill. Instead, the GTZ sent a driver, Serge, over and we went to the Centre Medical de Kinshasa. (I walked into the lobby, and two teenage girls who were waiting there litterally broke out laughing as they stared at me - this was a precurser of what was to come in Kinshasa as people saw my huge beard.) One doctor sat down with me and talked about rabies, and basically said that the protocol is to watch the dog for a while. The CMK had no other means of testing or treating rabies. He called a veterinary doctor he had worked with in the past, and made me an appointment for the next morning.

Serge then took me to a bakery so I could indulge in a baguette with cheese, a chocolate eclair, and an apricot pie. I pigged out in the jeep as he navigated the rush hour traffic to where I'd be staying. The residents were surprised to see me show up, but they took me in. The house is my director Gottfried's, and it is currently occupied by a German couple, Kristian and Julie - Kris works at the GTZ. I finished my eclair, ate their leftovers, and we went for cold beers.

I went with Kristian to work on Wednesday morning, leaving by around 6:15 to beat the traffic. I did a lot of loitering around the GTZ office, as well as a bit of internet when one of the computers was free, and eventually convinced a driver to take me to the vet clinic.

The place was a joke. It basically consisted of a couple of rooms with people sitting at tables, with all the doors and windows wide open. I was directed to the bench in front of the Doctor, who opened his briefcase to get the information. The doctor had a facial expression and hand movements that reminded me of Mr Bean. The briefcase was basically filled with little scraps of paper, one of which was the folded insert from a Verorab treatment. He said it would consist of five shots over the coming 28 days, with a sixth one after 90 days, and that he had the shots available. A woman brought over a thermos to show me that yes, there was indeed a stock of them being kept refrigerated. He needed $420 though, and no, insurance or credit cards were not accepted. What a ridiculous proposition.

So I got my first shot on Thursday morning, when I returned to the clinic with a stack of American bills. This was November 1st - the 10th day since the dog bite. The first shot was a serum, whereas the next four are vaccinations. I don't really know what this means, exactly, except that the first one was really big and made my arm hurt for the rest of the day. 5ml into the muscle. My next appointment was for Monday, and three more were foreseen over the rest of the month. If I didn't want to stick around Kinshasa I could just pick up the remaining doses and take them with me, but they needed to be kept refrigerated (not frozen) to ensure their viability.

So Monday would be my next appointment, and I could leave town anytime after that. I changed my outgoing international flight for the following evening. I spent the weekend enjoying the company of Kristian and Julie, meeting several of their friends each day. Friday we even went to an expat party, so I met a few dozen diplomats, aid workers, and other random white folks with jeeps who live in Kinshasa. On Saturday we went to the market to get fresh produce for the week, and on Sunday we lounged around most of the day. Sunday night we went to a concert of Congo's foremost musician, Werrason, though we were so tired by the time he finally graced the stage sometime after 11. All in all, it was a good weekend.

On Monday I first went to the market to find a thermos, and settled for a funny purple one from China. I got to the vet clinic around 3:30, and the doctor was waiting for me alone. Everyone else had gone home, but he knew I'd be back. He also wanted me to exchange a bunch of the American bills I had paid, since many had little rips in them. I got the shot, we exchanged bills, and he gave me the three remaining syringes with vaccine vials for my thermos.

Tuesday was my last day in Congo. I checked my bags at the Air France office downtown in the morning, and accompanied the driver on a few of his other errands. I searched for lunch with Julie, who had also come to the GTZ for the day, and finally settled on the restaurant next to the office where I had been twice already. Kris joined us, as did Gaby, a friend who was at LuiKotal for several months. A kid walked by selling shoes, and I bought a pair - I'd been trying on such shoes all week, to no avail. Another kid repaired my other shoes, whose previous repair job had finally come apart again.

Before I got the ride to the airport, Julie and Kris and I went for a last round of drinks at a stall around the corner. It was a pretty anticlimactic finale, but entirely relaxing. At least we had had the Werrason concert on Sunday night, which was even preceded by a couple rounds of (excruciatingly pitiful) pool games. I headed to the airport Tuesday night.

So now I'm in Europe. I arrived in Paris this morning, Wednesday the 7th of November. I spent a few hours repacking my luggage, and I left the majority of my belongings at a storage place in the airport. I then flew to London's Luton airport on EasyJet, and took a bus downtown. I'm spending the night at the Museum Inn Hostel tonight, and will be paying the University College of London's Travel Clinic a visit in the morning. As a British citizen, I should receive free treatment, as long as they decide to admit me on the spot. My intent is not only to get more-professional attention to the rabies situation, but also to get the standard post-tropical screening that is necessary after an experience such as I just had. It remains to be seen what they'll decide to accord me.

The conclusion of all this, though, is that my time in the forest is now over. I still had a lot of stories that were unwritten, given my lack of adequate time to write while at Camp. I'd still like to share them, but as time goes by they may just get dropped. Sorry. We'll see.

The other thing is that I can no longer receive emails at LuiKotal. Anyone wishing to write me should revert back to my hotmail address: professionalnomad.

As for my travel plans, my first plan is to see what this travel clinic says tomorrow. From there, I probably won't stay too long in London. My trans-Atlantic flight is from Paris, so I'll be back there soon, and I certainly need to make a pilgrimage to Amsterdam while I'm in the area. My mom wants me in New Jersey for American Thanksgiving, which is realistic but not definite. But sometime around then is likely. Then what? Any suggestions?

-Ryan à London

(RM) Snail mail - last chance

2007-09-15T12:03:00.000+02:00

Snail mail - last chance

Saturday, 15 September 2007

Last time I posted this type of message was in late April, about three weeks before Grit left Germany for LuiKotal. A few people sent small parcels to Germany at that time, which were much appreciated when they finally got here - Thanks!

Since then, there has not been another opportunity for me to receive any physical mail here until now. The director of our field site will be arriving from Germany in a few days, and he indeed has a care package of specific little things that I asked my mom to send me. In a few weeks, another plane will come to take him out, and will bring in Joel, a new member of the research team. Joel is currently in the US, and has graciously agreed to accept personal mail for me until is departure.

Soooo.... If you're feeling like it, please send me some mail via Joel. I've promised him that anything that arrives for me will be very small, basically limited to the size of a CD. What I would really love are CDs of photos. Please share your lives with me, showing what's been going on over in North America since I was last around to participate. Yeah, that means photos of family gatherings, photos of vacations, photos of mad partying, and yes, even baby photos.

In addition, I've got a specific request for any and all photos of the 2007 Burning Man festival. If you went, please share your photos with me! If you're a burner who's connected to other burners, please pass the message on - Hello AZBurners! I've asked my little sister to put a bunch of burncasts on a CD for me in that care package from my mom, but if you want to ensure I get some of those send them too.

We're really starved for any current events info or photos, so if you want to mine the internet for some interesting tidbits of news and burn that onto a disc, that would be cool too. Maybe copy some of the latest photo montages of big stories from the news sites? I don't know, get creative.

If you've got a few choice DVDs to send, we can watch them on the laptop. Nothing too risqué! Selections of mp3s you'd like to share will also be appreciated. The laptop can read DVDs or CDs for data and music, and my mp3 player has over 80GB of space left.

Alternatively, just send a simple postcard, or a handwritten letter with a couple of cut-out newspaper clippings or printed-out photos. As long as the physical contents are minimal, Joel should be able to pack it in his luggage, and I'll be happy to receive it:) Again, please keep the weight and volume to a minimimum - I've asked Joel to open everything and repackage it all together, so superfluous elements like cardboard or cases will probably be discarded.

Deadlines: The latest any mail should reach him is September 28th! Sorry that's such short notice, but at least his address is within the continental US. He'll be en route for most of the following week, and should be here around October 5th or so. If it arrives after he leaves, I'll probably get it around next summer.

If you decide you've got time to burn something onto a CD for me and send it by then, here's the mailing address:

------
Update:
Joel never made it. His visa application was rejected, and if he had delayed his arrival in Congo the charter plane to the forest would have been long past. Too bad. He's sending my mail to my mom, and I'll get it in early December when I return to North America.

Thanks in advance!

-Ryan à LuiKotal

(RM) What to bring

2007-09-09T12:04:00.000+02:00

Sunday, 9 September 2007

What to bring

This entry wasn't written specifically for the blog, but I think it's interesting enough to be posted here. What follows is actually an email that I'm sending to two people that will be joining us here at camp in the next couple of weeks. Cintia will be arriving in mid-September, and Joel gets here in early October. Both had the foresight to write for advice on what to expect, and they certainly get an earful.

So if you're interested, read through my response. To put it in context, try to picture your imminent departure for a stay of six to nine months here. I include tons of details because I think they're useful - I got practically none of this info before arriving, and wish I had.

Enjoy,

Ryan

Hi Cintia, Hi Joel,

My name is Ryan Matthews (a languid Canadian of 30), and I'm currently working as the camp manager at LuiKotal. I am writing both of you at once, because you are both arriving here shortly and will therefore benefit from the same information. Cintia will be flying from Kinshasa to Ipope with Gottfried on the 17th of September, and Joel will be flying in on the plane that takes Gottfried out in early October. We look forward to welcoming you here.

VISAS
If you haven't already procured your visas, you'd better do so. They are extended once you're here, so it doesn't really matter if your initial visas are for one month or six. The original single- or multiple-entry status of the visas remains once they are
extended, so plan accordingly if you hope to leave the country and return again within the validity of the visa.

PASSPORTS
We have our passports here in camp, and send them to Kinshasa with outgoing planes before the visas expire. If your visa will not be valid beyond the time of the following outgoing plane (December sometime), you ought to leave it with someone from the GTZ before coming to LuiKotal. If it will be valid for several months still, bring it to camp and we'll send it out later. The visa cannot be extended until shortly before it expires. The GTZ representative that handles our visa extensions is Noel Duli.

PLANE TICKETS
If you plan on staying in Congo for more than 6 months, your plane ticket will likely cost a lot more and have a validity of up to one year. This is what I got. I was obliged to name a return date, although I still have no idea when this will be exactly, so I just took the latest date available.

When you come here, I recommend that you bring all of your documents to LuiKotal with you. For the plane tickets, try to bring an email address through which you will be able to make changes to the departure date. Some people email their family members to make the changes on their behalf; I can email the travel agent through whom I bought my ticket. Plan accordingly.

KINSHASA
Avoid looking like military when you arrive at Kinshasa airport. This includes your luggage. For your profession, say "biologist". Be patient with customs. Don't pay them. Keep a good watch on your luggage from the moment you first spot it getting thrown onto the baggage carousel until it's in the back of the jeep (the one you're getting into) with the doors shut and locked.

You will be given some logistical support by a GTZ representative on your arrival, which is essential. You will be met at the airport and transported into the city, and accommodations will be arranged for you. When I arrived, my accommodations were at the Centre d'Acceuil Protestant (CAP). I was expected to pay for these accommodations, so you will likely be so as well. It was around $50 per night. I recommend asking if there are any cheaper rooms than the one they first stick you in. They are all bland and adequate.

Another researcher will be joining us along with you, Joel, so she will likely also be staying at CAP when you are there. The rooms each have two single beds, so I recommend sharing a room and splitting the cost, rather than getting two separate double rooms. Her name is Julia and I don't know anything else about her.

The city is expensive and not very user-friendly. I recommend avoiding a long stay there, if at all possible. It is possible to get a few provisions there, but nothing can really be guaranteed. Try to complete all of your shopping before getting to Kinshasa. Don't count on doing any internet in Kinshasa, although you may succeed. The place I found was so slow and kept suffering power outages that it wasn't even worth attempting any more.

Cintia, although Gottfried may be in Kinshasa at the same time as you, he'll be busy taking care of stuff and you won't likely see him much between your arrival and your departure. Bring a book to pass the time at CAP, or brave the city and roam around.

Joel, you can probably expect the same lack of hand-holding. Really, you're basically on your own there. At least you may have Julia to commiserate with. It would be prudent to roam the streets together rather than solo anyway.

Changing money is easy in Kin, although shop around to discover a reasonable rate for dollars. There are literally women sitting on the sidewalk with stacks of bills and calculators waiting to exchange currency, though you may be better of at an indoor place for security’s sake. Don't bring any bills that have any rips, as they won't be exchanged. Singles ($1 bills) are basically useless too. Different rates are often offered for different $ denominations. Other currencies are difficult. Credit cards are essentially useless. Cash is not really needed once you get to LuiKotal.

GETTING HERE
You'll be brought to the domestic airport early on the day of your internal flight. You'll sit there for a while. The flight is pretty cool - hopefully the weather will afford you a nice view over the forest. You'll probably stop en-route for refueling.

You arrive at the airstrip of a village called Ipope. That will be chaotic, with over a hundred locals turning up to greet the plane. Watch your own personal belongings, and let someone else deal with the rest. Porters carry everything to Lompole.

Lompole is about an hour's walk from Ipope, which itself is about 20 minute's walk from the airstrip. It's an easy route. In Lompole you'll be staying at Mara's. He's our main collaborator in the village. He's likely going to be getting on the plane to fly back to Kinshasa on the 17th, so Cintia you'll only be meeting him and his wife for a handshake. He may fly back to Ipope with you, Joel, if there's space.

There will be tents for you to sleep in on Mara's lawn. All of the plane's provisions go into a depot building for the night, also at Mara's. The tents might be really shitty, but it's just for one night. You'll probably be fed something the evening of your arrival, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to have something with you.

You might be fed coffee the following morning, and possibly papaya or avocado and maybe even some rice. I feel like there's never enough food in Lompole. Bring snacky things if possible. The morning after the flight will see dozens of people assembling at Mara's. Many are porters, many are just random hangers-on. Some are employees that aren't currently at camp. Danilo's the deaf kid in red and black that always smiles and wants to set up your tent and asks to keep whatever cool thing he sees you with. Everyone will be friendly with you, as newcomers, but Gottfried will surely be engaged in heated discussions with village elders and other people with some issue or other. Don't get involved. Cameras are fine, and the kids love getting photographed. Don't be shy with the cameras if you want to take photos. Just show them the little screen with their image on it afterwards, and they'll giggle with joy.

Depending on the number of porters, the plane stuff from the depot will be doled out and start getting transported to camp. This will happen anytime between 6am and 9am. I don't know who will be orchestrating this if Mara is off in Kinshasa, but it'll probably be Mama Mazeya. It may be Lambert. Lambert speaks really good French.

If there aren't enough porters, some stuff will stay in Lompole for undefined periods of time. Hopefully this doesn't apply to your personal luggage. You should try to make sure you actually see your things being carried off into the forest before you leave, or it just might not make it to camp on the same day as you. If a given bag is around 15kg, it has a good chance of getting carried. If it's over 20kg, it has a good chance of being left behind. Maybe there will be lots of porters when you arrive, but maybe not - I spent a couple of days at camp when I first arrived before most of my stuff joined me.

You can leave Lompole once you're ready to go (unless instructed otherwise). Again, plan your eating accordingly. The walk takes me about five hours, including the pirogue (dugout canoe) crossing. You leave the village via some agricultural fields, which offer the only point to get lost. Be with someone for that bit. Once you're in denser forest, there's only one trail - the main one. If you see tiny side trails, don't take them. The only place where you may get confused is if a treefall has altered the trail, in which case there's a newish detour. No worries.

Inevitably, there will be a whole team of people who will want to walk with you (or rather for you to walk with them), thinking that you'll get lost if you're alone. If you want this, go for it. But really, try to take advantage of the fact that it's such an easy trail to follow, and put at least two minutes between you and anyone else. Two minutes! That's all it really takes to feel some peace out there, instead of feeling someone on your heels. It takes some convincing to get the people to give you two minutes of space, but trust me, it's worth it.

After a bit more than an hour, you get to the first big savannah: Savane Bokapu (there's also a tiny stretch of savannah in between, with a really wide path where people write their names in the sand). It's about an hour across Bokapu, in the beating sun.

Then there's about 30 minutes of dense forest, with the first river crossing: the Lomenie. The deepest bit of channel is a good spot to refill your water bottle, so you don't need to carry a full one the whole way. It's also one of the best spots for a cool swim that I know of around here. There was a cool bongo skull on a tree just at that spot (though it may have been absconded with in the past month) - look behind you when you're at the swimmable spot of the channel. It's about waist-deep at the deepest spot.

The following savannah is called Savane Iaka, and is a bit less than an hour from one end to the other. At the far end is the seasonal fishing village of Iaka that Lompole's residents have populated for the past couple of months. Most will probably have left by the time you walk through, but some families will likely still be there. Take plenty of photos if you want - the kids love it. You'll probably meet an employee or two of our camp that introduce themselves to you, or at least some of their extended family. On the other hand, the place may be deserted. It is possible that you'll start the walk to camp on the same day you land, in which case you'll have to spend the night at Iaka.

At the other end of Iaka the trail goes down to the next river crossing: the Bompindji. The trail heads right from the lower end of Iaka, and into the forest. The bridges through this section are currently under repair, so it won't be quite as difficult to slog through by the time you cross. If the bridges are usable, the deepest bits will be about waist-deep. The final bridge is a sturdy one over a small channel, where it's a good idea to wash your feet off before continuing. A bit more mud follows, but you can put your shoes back on at this last bridge if you chose to do this way.

For both the Bompindji and the Lomenie, if you wonder which way to go just follow the most obvious path. You'll often see mud in suspension as evidence of the porters passing ahead of you.

There's about one more hour of forest hiking between the Bompindji and the Lokoro. You'll suddenly hit a section of trail that's really wide, which starts at the turnoff to the seasonal fishing village of Boele. When this really wide one turns suddenly to the left, and gets even wider, you need to follow the narrow forest path straight (the wide trail to the left goes to another fishing village called Bampfumbe). For the remainder of the walk to the Lokoro, bear right if in doubt, unless it's a deviation around a treefall (which will be obvious once you hit the tree).

At the Lokoro River, you'll need to wait your turn in the pirogue. Members of the research team take priority over porters - accept this and take the lift. Depending on the number of porters, there may be several crossings. The actual river crossing isn't very long, especially in that direction with the current, but then the pirogue navigates a smaller channel towards camp. Depending on the water level, the pirogue will have to discharge its load sooner or later. Again, you can expect nearly-waist-deep water from the point you get out, but it'll probably only be knee-deep or so. You've got perhaps 20 minutes more to walk, and you'll be with someone who knows the trail. We'll have some food ready for when you get here.

ACCOMMODATIONS
Each person gets their own 2/3-person tent to live in. Some are newer than others, but the main thing is that the zippers work. The tents are under roofs against the sun and rain, and everyone's got a little table to put their stuff on next to their tent. Bring your own mattress, pillow, and bedding. Remember that you’ll be living here long-term rather than just camping for the weekend, so bring a bed you’ll be comfortable sleeping in every night.

CLOTHING
We have laundry done by the local staff here about twice a week, so bring enough clothes to last about five days or so. Perhaps a couple more. Weather affects laundry being done, and affects it's drying. Everything gets really stained, whether you like it or not. The local staff will not wash women's underwear (or men's underwear that looks like women's underwear), so it's recommended for women to bring tons of pairs so they don't have to do their own washing as often.

Humidity is extreme here. It can take days for things to dry. Keep this in mind when choosing what clothing/fabrics to bring. The same goes for your towel and pillow.

Pants that zip off into shorts are great. Long-sleeve shirts are useful against evening insects and against scrapes in the forest. Bathing suits are useless, because there's nowhere to swim (and you'll be fully dressed in those places anyway). Rain pants are useless - quick-drying things are better.

Hats aren't that useful, unless you like the style. I wear a bandana at all times, but mostly because I've got too much hair. I find the bandanna good when working in the forest, because it catches the spider webs and branches and such. Sunglasses are pretty much useless - camp is the only place with direct sunlight, and we stay in the shade when it beats down.

The weather's almost always hot, so only one heavier layer will probably suffice. There's no need to ever dress up nice.

The threat of rain is omnipresent. If there's a downpour we don't bother going out in search of bonobos because we won't hear them. But if it's raining and we're already out, or if it's raining in the morning and the plan is to greet the bonobos at their nest, we generally just get drenched. Raincoats come in handy in such situations, more to keep warm when drenched rather than to avoid being drenched in the first place - bring a raincoat. We have two umbrellas for use at camp.

FOOTWEAR
This is the toughest thing to plan. For camp, a basic pair of sandals or flip flops is essential. You'll wear them nearly all of the time when at home. You may use some sort of sandal for walking the trails, depending on how comfortable or sturdy they are. For forest days though, plan on walking ten to twenty kilometres a day - you need happy feet.

A lot of our trails include stream crossings, and many include deep mud. Sandals get sucked off deep in the mud, so you end up going barefoot through those stretches anyway. Lighter shoes also get sucked off in the mud, but they don't carry around as much water when they're wet. Heavier boots don't necessarily get sucked off in the mud, but they're really heavy when wet and a pain to get little branches out of. Sneakers are a good bet for most of the time, as they can handle getting wet, they're not too heavy on the feet, and generally pretty comfortable. Heavy boots are also heavy when dry, so they're not that great for long days.

Your shoes will die while you're here, so bring a couple of pairs at least. They get wet, then you dry them in the sun, and then you repeat the process over and over until they're dead. Bringing a pair or two of spare insoles wouldn't be a bad idea.

Not all days include treks through mud or even through streams. Most don't, actually, but the possibility is always there. If you're following bonobos through the bush they like to drag you through swampy bits early so your feet get wet. Ok just kidding, but it's not unlikely. Fortunately, most of the terrain around here is relatively flat, with only a few steep bits across the whole study site.

For days when I know the terrain, I sometimes bring two sets of footwear: a dry pair of shoes with socks, and a pair of sandals. This is how I do the Lompole-LuiKotal walk, as well as a few other of our regular trails with stretches of mud and stretches of dry trail. It's up to you.

FUN
For fun around here, we follow bonobos around the forest. Ok, well at camp we've got a few other things, like reading books, lying in hammocks, and using the computer. There's a deck of cards, and I play rummy. There are three tennis balls for juggling or throwing back and forth. There's a frisbee, but we don't have enough space to throw it here. Same problem with the soccer ball. If you've got other great pastimes to share, perhaps they'll catch on here. Maybe bring an origami book. And spare paper.

There are two libraries (big metal boxes filled with reading materials): the scientific one and the leisure one. Our scientific library has plenty of photocopied articles on bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos, and lots of books about bonobos, chimpanzees, and a few other random African creatures. Some of the books in there are owned by individual members of the field staff, while others will remain forever in the box. Some permanent fixtures are the field guides to African mammals, to East African reptiles (not very useful), and all of the bonobo/chimp compendiums. The Birds of Africa book and the behavioural guide to African mammals won't be here as long as you, but are still useful for a while.

The leisure library works similarly, though its permanent collection is pretty significant. Most books are in English, though there are several in German and a couple in French. They cover a variety of genres, so we can generally find something appealing when it's time. There are also a lot of magazines, though none very current. We'd love a few recent issues of some current-events magazines, particularly The Economist or something of similar stature (please not Newsweek or Time!), if either of you are able to pick any up.

If you've got particular ambitions for reading, bring those books. Be prepared to share. We read a lot here. It would be nice to get some more variety, though there really is a decent selection already.

Translation dictionaries include English-French, English-German, English-Lingala, and French-Lingala. The local language is called Kikundu, but the workers all speak Lingala too. I doubt a Kikundu dictionary even exists.

There will be two hammocks up when you arrive, with a great pair of trees for a third if you want to augment the collection. I may or may not take mine away with me when I leave in December - I'll decide then. We also have two chairs at camp - they sort of recline comfortably. Otherwise it's benches only.

There is no alcohol here. I repeat: There is no alcohol here. Get over it. I definitely recommend bringing a little stash of some sipping liquor, but I'll warn you right now it'll never be enough. Gottfried frowns on bringing liquor to camp, and suggests that whatever is consumed openly is shared with everybody, so keep your stash discreet. But really, the value of a couple of bottles should not be underestimated. Pick up some duty free on the way to Kinshasa, and try to get some while you're in town. From CAP, turn left out the gates, take your first left, and then take your first left. When you see the row of stalls on both sides, the one with glass walls on the left sells liquor for good prices. They accept single dollar bills.

If at all possible, please bring me a bottle of Grand Marnier! I'll pay you back, no problem. Please!!!

There are no mixers here, so alcohols that can't be consumed straight aren't too useful. Unless the mixers are water, milk (from powder), coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: those are our only drinks.

We do have cigarettes here, that are distributed free to all the smokers in camp at a rate of one per day. If you think you'll need to smoke more than one per day, please bring your own supply (you can still have the daily one though). The local Congolese brand that's most-smokable appears to be Tumbaco Legere. A carton of 10 packs should cost around $7 or $8 in Kinshasa.

If you want to smoke anything else, don't bring it. But do bring plenty of decent rolling papers. All we have here is tracing paper and leaves. Actually, could you please try to bring a few packs of rolling papers regardless? If you want to bring a narguihle and some flavoured tobacco, that would be classy and appreciated, though bulky. Bring a good supply of tofahtein. We'd use coals straight from the fire.

FOOD
We don't starve here, and that's the important thing. After that though, there's not a load of variety. It's fish, some green mushy vegetable stuff, a couple of tubers (potatoes, etc), and chikwanga (you'll see). Sometimes we eat beans or spaghetti, imported from Kinshasa. The only non-fish "meat" available here is corned beef. Breakfast is rice. There's plenty of coffee, tea, and Nesquik. A few fresh fruits are available - bananas are generally always at hand. We take little packs of biscuits to the forest for energy, or we eat them at camp when we're bored.

If you want anything else, bring it. I've still got a healthy stash of atomic fireballs that I enjoy every now and then, for example. If you're some sort of ingenious creative in the kitchen, bring some spices and go for it when you get here. Or just eat what you're given and enjoy your stash of indulgences when your spirit needs it.

You'll be flying in with our resupply loads of food. The next plane after your two will be in December sometime, so we're likely to run out of many things before getting more. Get over it. We won't starve - the menu will just get even more monotonous.

MEDICAL STUFF
Camp has some first aid supplies. If you have specific needs, bring it. It's a good idea to have a few basic painkillers and such. You'd better have insurance. In case of emergency, we can hook up the satphone and get your insurance to send a plane. It's about 27km to the airstrip though. Usually we just spend a week in camp getting better.

Malaria exists around here, and you're at risk whether you're taking prophylactics or not. For a while, I was the only one taking any (Larium), and then I got malaria. So now none of us takes prophylactics. Our defence against malaria is to treat it when we fall ill with it. I used Arsumax last time. This is generally accepted here as the best course of action. Otherwise you're ingesting some pretty harsh drugs on a regular basis, whose side effects can sometimes almost compare to the symptoms of malaria itself. You've got time here - if you fall ill you'll be out of commission for a week or two, and then you'll be fine. Yeah, your doctor somewhere may insist on the prophylaxis, but they're just going by the WHO book's recommendation anyway. (Finally, if you really insist on taking Larium, I've got nearly a year's supply I'd be happy to sell you!)

Multivitamins wouldn't be a bad plan, but I don't know if it really matters. Like I said, our diet is pretty basic, but I think we probably cover the majority of a body's needs.

You don't need sunscreen, because there's not much exposure to direct sunlight. Insect repellent is also pretty pointless - just tuck your pants into your socks and don’t impose the nasty odour on the rest of us.

TOILETRIES
We actually sell some basics here, so you don't need to bring a supply to last your entire stay. They're free for use by the research team, and sold cheap to the general population around here.

We sell toothpaste (Maxam) and toothbrushes (real basic things from Angola). We sell razor blades (although we'll run out soon if no more come in with your planes). Deodorant is up to you - it's not available here, and we don't bother with it much (don't worry, we don't smell). If you want long-term supplies of your own toiletries, bring them.

We have toilet paper. We do not have women's products and cannot get them - please plan accordingly.

If you wear contacts, bring enough kit for your whole time. If you wear glasses, a backup pair wouldn't be a bad idea (I didn't bring a spare pair, and haven't lost mine yet).

We have two shower stalls here, and we keep one bar of soap in each for the use of the research team. The other option for bathing is an ankle-deep stream about 400m from camp, where I prefer to go. I bring my own soap there, and use the camp soap when I shower here. If you don't care what soap you use, just rely on camp soap. Otherwise plan on bringing a big supply. Bring shampoo if you want to keep your hair.

I've gone the hairy route, with a big beard and a pony tail, while Andrew (a tough-looking Londoner) shaves his entire head every so often. Bring shaving cream if you want to follow his style, or shampoo if you like mine. Expect to need periodic trims during your stay, and accept that we're not professionals cutting each others' hair. I think I've been a pretty decent coiffeur when needed. Bring decent hair-cutting scissors if you're particular about that. Or use the Swiss-Army knife.

GEAR
Bring a little knife of some sort. They're always useful. Bring a good day pack for carrying water, some food, binoculars, etc. Don't bother with big long-distance frame packs, because you won't be hiking long distances with much gear. A smallish hip sack can be useful for days when you don't need to carry much gear, and for giving your back a rest sometimes.

If you want to spend nights in the forest away from camp, we have a few (crappy) spare tents that can do the trick. Bring your own tent if you want, but it won't get much use. Actually, it'll probably just get worn out.

We do have one satellite camp set up (called Badzungu), with a tent, a couple of mattresses, and a few basic provisions. Andrew brought a basic alcohol-burning camping stove that's big enough to boil water for tea, or for one bowl of rice. We cull the alcohol from tubes that held shit samples, after removing the shit. If you think you might want to use the satellite camp much, a better camping stove would be the most useful piece of gear for that. It's really hard to light a fire around here - the stove is so much easier. You'll have to find fuel in Kinshasa though - we have a limited gasoline supply at camp, if the stove can burn it.

Bring a good headlamp, or maybe a couple. It will be a permanent fixture on your head. We have a supply of AAA batteries that keep our headlamps lit. If you bring anything else requiring batteries, bring the right batteries. Our camp recharger handles AAs and AAAs only.

Bring a watch. Waterproof, with the date, an alarm, and preferably even the day of the week. If you won't wake up to the watch alarm in the middle of the night, bring a separate alarm clock that will wake you up. Good bonobo days often start before 4am.

Camp has four pairs of good binoculars (10x42). These are shared among whoever needs them in the forest on a given day. It's generally enough. Camp has two good GPS units (Garmin GPS60Csx). Bring your own if you want, but once you use one of the good ones you probably won't bother with your own any more unless it's of similar quality.

Camp has plenty of compasses. There are a number of cicateurs (garden snips) that are our essential tools for cutting through the bush, though they eventually get worn out or lost. Don't bother bringing a machete.

Camp has some basic tools for fixing stuff. There are only a couple of sewing needles. Unless you have specific goals, you probably won't need specific tools. Ask me for specifics if you need.

If you want to conduct a study that involves specialised equipment or materials, you'd better be sure that everything is available for you. That means bring it yourself, or confirm with someone on the ground here that your supplies will be here. If you get here and some essential tool is missing, you can't do your work.

We've got a small supply of field notebooks for the work we do. If you want a particular type, bring your own. Our paper supply at camp has been an issue in the past, but we've currently got a reasonable amount. We have pens and markers.

THE COMPUTER(S)
There's currently one laptop, though hopefully Gottfried will bring a second one. If you want to bring your own, go for it, but be forewarned that it might die out here, and that our power capabilities are limited. We have four solar panels that charge three big batteries, off of which we charge our flashlight batteries and computer batteries. Basically, we can plug the computer in during the daylight, and use it until its batteries die when the sun's not beating down. The big batteries don't have enough juice to really charge much at night, but they power a few light bulbs. We have a gasoline-powered generator for really rainy days when we need power. Plugs are European and American.

The computer we currently have has almost no hard drive space left, so please don't rely on it to store your photos or music. There's not much fancy software on it either, nor much room to install new stuff. Feel free to bring new software if you want, but be forewarned that it just might not fit. I have no idea if, assuming Gottfried is bringing a new laptop, the other computer will be any better or what, so I'll just explain this one's capabilities.

It has a DVD reader, but not a DVD writer (as far as I can tell). It does burn CDs, but since the hard drive is full it's tough to get enough buffering space (or whatever the reason). I've succeeded in burning a few data CDs though, so if necessary it can probably be done again. Bring an adequate quantity of blank CDs. Bring a USB stick to hold personal documents that you want to access and manipulate regularly.

There is a basic deskjet printer for occasional use. It's running low on ink though, so unless Gottfried brings more it'll be rendered useless pretty soon. Don't rely on our printer for big documents - bring them with you already printed. But it's a useful tool sometimes.

Since the computer can read DVDs, bring some along! Gottfried discourages it, for reasons of cultural sensitivity, but we're starved for that sort of thing here. Don't tell him you're bringing them and he won't object. We just may need to be discreet about the viewings, depending on the content - our local staff will undoubtedly want to watch. (I once went to Lompole and it seemed like literally the entire village turned out for the event: a TV and VCR showed Jean-Claude van Damme's "Bloodsport", half of an old soccer game, and some booty-shakin' Congolese music videos - "Werrason". Ridiculous!)

I highly recommend also bringing a CD or two of personal photos. You can look at them whenever you want, and you can show stuff off to others here when you want.

EMAIL
This is currently our email address. We're not getting spam these days, but the last address had to be abandoned because of the spam. We get our email by logging on to the eva.mpg.de server in Leipzig via a satellite receiver. In general, this is done twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays), though it can be more or less frequent depending on the need. The connection process isn't that difficult, and is almost always successful - it usually takes between 20 and 30 minutes from start to finish for the whole protocol.

We can only deal in straight text emails - no attachments. In theory, 20kb is the limit for any given email, though sometimes they're bigger (like this one!) Attachments just crash the connection though, so please forewarn any of your friends and family that may write you here.

There's only one email address for the camp, so emails aren't entirely private. We add initials of the individual sending the message to make it clear who each email can be attributed to. "(MPI)" refers to all project emails. You two will be (CG) and (JG), as far as I can tell. It would be useful to tell your friends and family to put your name or initials in the subject as well - this avoids the need for me to skim through the message to attribute it to someone.

As of right now, I am under the impression that we don't pay for our personal emails. Nonetheless, I've been keeping very detailed records of who's using how many kilobytes, so if Gottfried really wants to know such details he can make a well-informed decision.

With the satellite connection, it's also possible to make voice calls. These are around €1/minute, depending on the destination country, and we don't make them much. These are much easier to attribute to individuals, so I'm not sure if we do or do not pay for them ourselves. I just know that Gottfried has given us the total costs for various personal calls made, and I told him who made each one. I get the impression that if we keep it reasonable, and don't abuse this capability, the costs will be covered by the project, but if it gets out of hand then everyone will have to start paying. I don't really care either way - phone calls are to be limited to exceptional circumstances out here. There is no mobile phone service here, though I was able to use my Canadian phone in Kinshasa.

It is not possible to connect to the internet in any way. You will not be able to access your yahoo accounts, or anything else that requires internet access. Don't forward those accounts to this address, because the volume will crash our connections. I know that for my hotmail account, I paid $20 or so to have it remain in existence for a year despite a lack of activity - I hope it works! If you don't have a personal secretary able to log on to your personal email accounts periodically, you may want to look into this sort of thing too. Or just get someone to sift through your emails and forward you any that seem important - just be sure to keep the kilobytes down!

Before leaving, log onto your email and print out your entire address book. Bring it. Bring important phone numbers too.

CAMERAS
It's nice to be able to take photos, but often less satisfying than foreseen. Most of the photos we take here are of each other. A simple snapshot camera does the trick for that. It's helpful to have something pocket-sized for easy access at a moment's notice, because most animals you see will only stay in sight for that moment. For that, I like my little digital one that I keep in a belt-mounted pouch.

For good wildlife photography, a fancier camera may be useful, but it still has limitations. The forest offers very difficult conditions for lighting and for visibility, while the wildlife itself usually disappears before you even take the lens cap off. Most of my successful wildlife shots are macros of insects and fungi, since they cooperate.

As for photographing the bonobos, even renowned wildlife photographer Frans de Waal laments that "in a tropical forest the light level is so low, with harsh highlights and deep shadows, that it's hard to take good pictures. Add to this the fact that the apes are black, and their eyes dark, and it becomes clear that the photographic challenge was formidable..." This is not to say that it's not possible to get good bonobo photos here, just that good bonobo photography days are few and far between. Cintia, your position will probably afford the best opportunities for bonobo photography, if that's what you're into. I hope you have at least a 300mm lens! Over time, you'll hopefully get some amazing shots. If you plan on carrying your camera gear through the forest a lot, bring the right cases and such - it rains a lot, and you'll constantly be bumping into branches, vines, and so on.

There's one tripod at camp that still has its foot thing that attaches to the camera. Two other tripods are missing that essential element. They're heavy, but durable. I like shooting with a tripod in the forest because of the low light levels, but it's not a vital piece of equipment.

MUSIC
There is one camp radio, which the workers generally have going from 6am onwards. We somehow get reception for Radio Okapi, Voix d'Amérique, BBC, and who knows what else. I guess it's shortwave, but I don't really pay attention. If you want to keep in touch with world events, it's your only hope, really.

A couple of our workers own cassette decks, which they bring to camp for some added drama upon arrival. They play the same cassette over and over and over and over and over for days on end, with the batteries dying and the sound getting so drawn out until the batteries finally die and they put them in the sun to recharge and then the tape gets played over and over and over and over again. It's sort of annoying, actually. If you have cassettes, bring them. They will be much appreciated by everyone concerned, and you'll get to hear your old music in a new way when the batteries keep dying.

We all have our own mp3 players and headphones, and when they're on our heads that means "don't bother me right now". Again, there's not much space on the computer for storing music, although it can facilitate the exchange of music between our various players. Try to bring a decent variety - it's all you'll have for a while (aside from that Werrason cassette the workers bring).

I have a small set of minispeakers, which makes a big difference here. I will be taking them with me in mid-December, so if you want any music louder than the laptop speakers, bring more minispeakers. Don't rely on the camp's collection of batteries for your personal electronics - bring your own. Bring all the cables you need.

There are no instruments here, but the workers often sing. I think it's one of the requirements for the cooks, actually. If you can handle it, bring your didgeridoo.

SUMMARY
OK now you've got pages and pages of advice on what to expect, and how to plan. In short though, here are the vital things you need to bring:

Passport with visa
Bedding, pillow
Mattress
Enough clothes for about five days
Towel
Sandals, forest shoes
Something to read
Grand Marnier
The latest Economist magazine
Painkillers
Shampoo or shaving cream
Daypack
Water bottle
Watch
Headlamp
USB stick
Blank CDs
A CD of personal photos
Mp3 player and headphones

Beyond those basics, you've got a good description of what to expect in order to plan accordingly. Just remember that it's impossible to get anything else here, so be prepared to just do without anything you forgot.

If you're wondering about anything else specific, write back and ask. Remember the inherent delays with our email access here though. Otherwise, I'm sure you'll handle the preparations well, and that your stay here will be as smooth as stays here can be.

Good luck with your final preparations, and have a good voyage. See you soon!

Ryan à LuiKotal

(RM) The Man burns at LuiKotal

2007-09-06T08:03:00.000+02:00

The Man burns at LuiKotal

Saturday, 1 September 2007

The past week has been a tough one for me. I've had the Burning Man blues. The Burning Man festival took place from Monday the 27th of August, ending on Monday, the 3rd of September. A community of over 30,000 like-minded souls created an ephemeral metropolis in the heart of the Nevadan desert - the playa - making Black Rock City their Home for the week. I, however, have spent the week in a little clearing in the middle of the jungle: I didn't get to go Home this year!!!

For the uninitiated, you probably have little notion as to what exactly the fuss is about. "So what, you can go next year, can't you?" Yeah, yeah - no problem. I will undoubtedly be there next year. But I missed it this year, dammit! And for that I'm disappointed.

On the other hand, it's partly because of my experience with Burning Man that I find myself currently living at LuiKotal Camp: both require enormous amounts of planning, organisation, patience, and just general wherewithal, and that's simply in order to survive. Anything beyond mere survival calls for even more creativity, both for increased comfort and to have more fun at it. Fortunately, I've still been able to (ok, forced to) rely on these attributes on a regular basis here. I think the BM buzzword of "extreme self-reliance" captures this philosophy well: be responsible for yourself, use the resources at hand to address challenges, get creative...

I wrote a good example of this a couple of months ago in an unposted entry, describing how I repaired our camp's mortar: it's made of a log standing on end, about two feet high, hollowed out at the top to give the basin of the mortar for preparing various local dishes. The wood's been through a lot, and about a month ago a chunk of the side of the mortar broke off. The basin has been very inconvenient to use since then, but I've asked our cooks to prepare meals that require its use nearly every day. Ordering a new one from the village has proved entirely ineffective, as have been the cooks' complaints, until today. I repaired it using an empty can of Nesquik, a pair of garden snips, some pliers, a file, and some metal wire. Of that, the Congolese guys actually seemed genuinely impressed. Bonne idee! [Note: we have since gotten a new mortar, imported from Kinshasa, that is much bigger and stronger than the original. My Nesquik-repaired one, however, is still used periodically for preparing smaller things like chili-pepper salt!]

This is the sort of improvisation that's necessary here. LuiKotal camp is, in the relative sense, well-endowed with Useful Stuff to accomplish things, as compared with the rest of the region the Congolese guys know. We have the logistical wherewithal to procure things we need from elsewhere in the world, and to store and maintain them for use when the need arises. But at any given moment, camp's supplies are definitely finite. So although I might know that a given task might be accomplished better or more easily using some familiar tool or ingredient, there's literally no option to do so. It's necessary to simply make do with what's here, and devise some other solution. The national slogan of the Congolese is basically "se debrouiller", which translates roughly to "make do" or "get by" with what you've got. My mantra has basically been "we do what we can here", and indeed we do.

One of the things I do have here is an mp3 player with a bunch of burncasts on it. These are individual broadcasts that I downloaded from the internet in Arizona, each touching on a different theme relating to BM culture. I've listened to many of them on a couple of occasions, hearing, among other things, an interactive fire pendulum in action, some "sweet jumps" over flames by bikes and go-peds, various artists describing their installations, the cheering crowd around the "Burninator", the "Cloud Nine" art car creator discussing his project, an analysis of burner fashion (tutus, prom dresses, electroluminscent-wire cowboy hats, etc), and even Arizona's own Ranger Blank explaining how he got his playa name. Yeah, although I'm not there, I can still sort of participate in the overall community.

Although the weeklong event in northwest Nevada comprises the main international gathering of the world's burners, there are actually smaller regional events put on by local communities throughout the rest of the year. (South Africa hosts the only regional burn on the continent.) Last year I participated in two regional burns, in Arizona and in Utah. Arizona's was in the spring - the first of several long weekends on which I used my precious vacation days from work for festival fun. My proudest moments there were sometime in the middle of the first night, as I mixed music on my CD turntables for chilled out burners in the hangar, and again approaching dawn when I spun another set before finally stopping for my first sleep time of the weekend. I enjoyed helping Blaze set up the fire cannons, I let loose dancing to Nuttea on the rooftop platform of Mr God's Caddywhack, and I zoned out at sunrise at the base of the Toaster entranced in the tones of J's crystal bowls - the Toaster being a 12-foot steel fire sculpture built with love by countless Arizona burners.

For last year's burn in Nevada, I wrangled up four close friends to create a camp with. We assembled in Arizona, where the others all met for the first time, and we spent an amazing week together living in our humble "Campus Minimus" in the 9:15 and Destiny neighbourhood of Black Rock City. Jeff was the first to arrive in AZ, spending over a month of his year-long road trip at my house so we could work on preparations together. In the week before we hit the road, Lisa flew in from Montreal, and Steve flew in from Brooklyn (his girlfriend Ellie met up with us mid-week). Although Marco was ostensibly living in Arizona at the time, he was the last to join our posse, flying in from Bangkok the night before we left. To add to the madness, my little sister, my mother, and my grandmother also all came for an Arizona visit that same pre-playa week, bearing witness to the hilarity of all the costumes, food, bicycles, flashy-blinkies, and so on that littered the entire house. Marco and I had built a huge Adirondack chair as our camp's main art piece, while Jeff and I built a big dome tent (actually, it was a hexayurt) that served as our group's chill-out space for the week. At around midnight the night before our departure, we bought an RV that took us and all of our gear to BM and back (my grandmother was too freaked out that we'd be cruising a few thousand miles in it to even see us off the next day).

Needless to say, the week we actually spent at the festival was quite an experience, in addition to all of the effort involved both before and after the event itself. So, needless to say, I've really been missing all of that this year!

The culmination of the weeklong Burning Man festival is on Saturday evening, when The Man burns. The Man is the centrepiece of Black Rock City, serving as an icon of the community as well as a landmark for getting one's bearings. It's over 60-feet high, built of wood and standing on a massive base, all decked out in art and flashy lights and what-not. By Saturday evening, the City's population swells to over 40,000 people, nearly all of whom surround The Man to watch the mothafucka burn. BURN! It's filled with fireworks and other flashy sparkly effects, but mostly just huge-ass flames. Damn. We watch, we yell, we cheer, and once The Man topples, we rush the pyre and revel in the climax of another year's successful burn. And no, The Man doesn't have some assigned significance - take it to symbolise whatever you want it to.

Anyway (in case I didn't mention it already) I missed that again this year, since I currently live in one of the most-remote places on the planet. For me, Saturday saw the climax of my Burning Man blues, as I shuffled around camp trying to explain the significance of the day to my campmates... when I decided to try hosting a burn here!

I spent about four hours on my creation, with my only tool being a pair of old metal scissors. I didn't have to cut down any trees, because some furniture had been repaired recently and the old sticks had been discarded at the edge of camp. Several of the longer sticks had been part of a bench, while some of the shorter ones were part of a collapsed chair. The chair had been lashed together with plenty of good lianas, which I used to lash the various sticks together in their new-and-improved configuration. The Man eventually stood strong at about eight feet high. For flammable material, I used some extra roofing materials that were never needed - a pile of frond-like leaves called ndua that are generally placed along the apex of a roof for rainproofing. I wove them into the body, head, and legs of the Man, and held them in place with more lianas, while I wrapped some bundles onto the arms.

I did all this in a small clearing (the forest office) just adjacent to the main camp, with just enough space to spread The Man on the ground. I carried it carefully into camp shortly after dark, to the surprise of our four local workers and our Kinshasan campmate (the two other Western researchers had been visiting me in the forest office to monitor my progress). I set it up in a good spot, away from the palm-frond-roofs and the solar panels. With a bit of help, we I stabilised the legs, added some final ndua (tinder), and deemed it complete. To get in the spirit, I had been wearing devil ears for most of the day, so at that point I got out a couple of other costumes: glittery goggles and a furry dog hat (see professionalnomad.com for my self-portrait in that hat). Then I doused The Man with a bit of gasoline and set it aflame!

My Burning Man blues were cured that night. I got to watch and yell and cheer, and I got to wear a silly hat. Sure, the actual flames didn't last long, and none of The Man's structure even burned through, but the spirit was here in force. The workers may have been puzzled, but they also appreciated "la ceremonie", while my colleagues got a better understanding of what I'd been going on about over the previous days. And we even get to keep The (charred) Man as an enduring art piece to decorate our camp.

The first LuiKotal regional burn was a success!

)(

(RM) The New Yorker

2007-07-19T15:27:00.000+02:00

The New Yorker Magazine

Thursday, 19 July 2007

This is just a quick note to get people to buy the upcoming issue of the New Yorker. As I mentioned in my last entry, a writer for the magazine came to LuiKotal the same time as I did. Ian Parker stayed here for about three weeks to get a feel for the bonobo work we do, and to better understand bonobos in general. In addition to what he learned from us, I'm sure he also did additional legwork to have a broad picture of the species.

The article is now complete. About a week ago, the fact-checker for the magazine emailed us to verify a few things, and said it would be going to press today, the 19th of July. I assume, therefore, that the issue in question will be on newsstands very soon: probably Monday the 23rd. If not then, it should be in the following issue.

Soooo... I encourage anyone who's interested to go and get that issue of the New Yorker. Ian's story will surely give a decent portrait of the species, and probably also of the rigours of life here in the forest. Hopefully, any mention of me will be positive!

Again, any feedback on Ian's writing or on mine would be appreciated here:)

-------
Update:

The article came out on June 30th. It's really long.

There's also a response by Frans de Waal, debunking some of Ian's facts.

Basically, the article is nice prose, but not to be taken as a reference into the science of bonobos.

(RM) Everyday stories

2007-07-14T17:36:00.000+02:00

Everyday stories

Saturday, 14 July 2007 (Bastille Day and my mom's birthday - Happy Birthday Mom!)

I haven't been posting to this blog much lately. Sorry. Times are different these days at LuiKotal, and I really haven't had the opportunity to write the same sorts of entries as I did for my first couple of months here. I thought I ought to at least post some stories eventually, so now I'll just recount a number of little anecdotes that compose my daily life here. This entry, therefore, will follow more a stream of consciouness rather than describing a particular subject. Hopefully I'll be able to convey a sense of life here, in general, with a sampling of random imagery of LuiKotal.

CAMP NATIONALITIES
Camp now has six researchers from six countries: an American/Canadian (me - ok, so there are seven countries represented), a Brit, a German, a Swiss, an Austrian, and a Congolese. Two more Congolese will join us in a few days, staying for the next month. The German leaves regularly for multi-day trips in the region, and one of the incoming Congolese researchers will actually be spending the majority of her time in the village. Nonetheless, the research team at camp will fluctuate between six and eight people for the next month.

CAMP LANGUAGES
Langagues float around camp even more. When the whole research team is together, we use English. But smaller groups variously break into French and German, or generally a combination of two or three (my rusty German has improved a lot since I've been in Congo). We also use a smattering of Lingala terms for local things (mostly foods, animals, and trees), and have a few choice Lingala expressions we throw around regularly (malamu mingi mingi! = that's great!). Lingala has been the main national unifying language of the Congo for the last several decades, so the current generation of Congolese has mostly learned it as they progressed through school. The Congolese researchers here communicate with the local staff in Lingala, and foreigners that want to also learn Lingala to communicate better with the staff. I haven't learned much Lingala yet, so I mainly use French. French is the colonial language of the country, so most people here have at least a basic vocabulary in it. A few actually speak it quite well, and I often recruit those individuals to help interpret more-complicated subjects with the others. The local language of the region is Kikundu. When the workers speak among themselves, they mostly use Kikundu, although I often hear words of Lingala or French mixed in. Kikundu sounds like quite a different language than Lingala, though they're both among the bantu family. The other main languages of the Congo are Chiluba, Kikongo, and Swahili, all bantu tongues. The Congolese researcher also speaks Chiluba (of his native region) and Swahili. Swahili is becoming more of a widespread language of the country, as the leadership for the past decade or so has been from the east, where Swahili is dominant. (Many western Congolese view Kabila with contempt because of his eastern roots: he spent much of his life in Rwanda and Tanzania, and has yet to really master Lingala.) At least one of the workers speaks Portuguese, as he lived in Angola for some time, and a few can say a few English words proudly. Among the research team, we also have speakers of Spanish, Italian, and Hausa (Andrew, the Brit, lived for about 7 years in Nigeria). One of the incoming Congolese also speaks German. And in September we get a Hungarian volunteer... I'm quite impressed to be living in such a polyglot camp, especially since our total population seldom exceeds about a dozen people!

THE NEW LONG TENT HOUSE
Last month we got a new building built. The old building in that spot was still standing, but the roof leaked a lot and many of the structural members were on the verge of failure. We got the best construction guy of the village (Biebis) to spend nearly a month out here with one helper (Mopila), and they did a fine job. The building in question is actually a long roof over four tents. The vertical structural members are big tree stems, as are the main lengthwise horizontal roof supports. The latticework supporting the roof tiles is composed of smaller tree trunks, and the roof tiles themselves are made of palm leaf strips strung over bamboo strips and pinned in place with liana vines. The apex of the roof, where the two slopes meet, is covered with fronds of another palm species, weighted down with heavyish tree stems broken in the middle. There are no walls. The components of the structure are all lashed together with liana vines: there's not one piece of metal or pre-fabricated wood at all, just local materials hewn from the surrounding environment. The construction team also repaired a number of other leaky roofs (more palm tiles), a lot of other vertical supports (more tree stems), and a couple of bowing horizontal supports.

BARN-RAISING THE LAB HOUSE
During the time Biebis and Mopila were here, I also got another member of our staff, Mangos, to try repairing a different building. One of the roof's horizontal support beams had fallen off of one of its three vertical support posts, so the roof was no longer quite stable. All I wanted was for him to replace the vertical support so it could hold the horizontal beam. The building in question serves as Gaby's laboratory (he is the Congolese researcher) for chemical analyses of leaves, fruits and flowers, and is down a short path from camp. Later that morning, we heard Mangos yelling, so I called for everyone else in camp to run and help him. Sure enough, the entire building had collapsed, pivoting at the base of the remaining vertical posts so the roof came precariously to rest about a man's height away. He was fine, as was my tent, which I had put there while recovering from malaria to have a place away from the main camp to retreat to. Mangos's job for the rest of that day was to cut eight more vertical posts from the forest, so that we could put the roof back up the following day. The next day, we had what I called 'a good old-fashioned barn-raising', with everyone at camp recruited to either lift the roof sections (it was split down the apex to facilitate the task) or guide them into the newly placed vertical posts. New palm fronds were added to the roof's apex later in the week, and the building is again as good as new!

GRIT'S TRIPS
Grit (the German) is one of the two researchers who came in on the last plane, in late May. Her project sure seems cool to me, as it involves making exploratory trips to nearby forests in search of neighbouring bonobo communities. Bonobos, in contrast to chimpanzees, form groups where the males are all generally related and the females migrate to other communities once they reach adulthood. Grit aims to collect fecal samples from numerous communities of the region, in order to do DNA analyses and determine genetic relationships of the bonobos. I've been involved, with the other researchers here, in collecting samples from our habituated bonobos. She left for her fourth voyage this morning, to Ntoka. The first two trips were to places that are relatively known by our team already, as we pass through them for our own work: Bompusa and Bompindji. The third trip was past our regular range, to Bolungwa Alunga. She collected samples so far from the Bompusa and Bolungwa Alunga trips, as well as from our habituated community and another to its west. I find it to be quite an ambitious study for anyone to undertake, and hope she manages to collect samples from several other sites. It's a good challenge to help facilitate such voyages.

CHIKWANGA SHORTAGE!
The local staff complained to me today, as I gave priority to the departing team for taking our current local food supply. Chikwanga is the local staple, and Team Grit took 20 logs! Only 10 remained, to last 5 workers and 5 researchers two full days until the next food transport arrives. We've got plenty of fresh potatoes, plenty of ripe plantains, and a decent quantity of dried beans in the depot, not to mention several kilos of fresh fish and generous reserves of recently-smoked fish. So we won't starve. For the workers, though, a meal without kwanga just isn't a meal. Tough. We'll have a new supply in two days.

IMPORTED FOOD SHORTAGE
Our other reserves have been dwindling steadily for quite some time already. One of my duties here as camp manager is to monitor and maintain our imported provisions, and to estimate and order the right quantities when we have a plane come in. This is a very difficult job, especially considering the unpredictability of everything here. With the last plane's arrival, I had estimated our needs for about one month, since another plane was foreseen in June. That plane was cancelled, though, so we're really getting low on many things. The incoming plane is also the smallest model, with a very limited capacity, so I've had to get a list together to provision us for one more month without exceeding perhaps 100kg. We've already run out of Nesquik, Lipton Tea, and Nescafe, and we've got only about one or two mornings-worth of rice left. You may laugh that we lament the lack of these 'luxury' drinks, but other than that it's water - these comforts are greatly appreciated.

LOMPOLE
I'm going to Lompole again in a couple of days. The last time I went, I fell ill and ended up spending the following week at camp in bed with malaria. The trip was also pretty damn stressful, as I was obliged to hold a lot of discussions with different people in the village. Since I'm the administrateur of the LuiKotal camp, which constitutes the sole source of paid employment available to the residents of Lompole and the surrounding villages, everyone's got something to say. This trip will therefore be limited to 36 hours, including two nights. The day of the plane will obviously be very filled with work obligations, but the brevity of my stay will at least circumscribe those annoying discussions to a clearly finite period. The trip will also understate my role as an active administrator of the LuiKotal project, while allowing me a little break (however stressful) from the everyday of LuiKotal Camp itself.

THE COMPUTER(S)
One of the provisions I look forward to from the plane is a new laptop. For my first couple of months here, we had two functioning laptops for the use of the research team. The bonobos' location was also known on nearly a daily basis, so the majority of the research team was out in the forest on most days working on habituation. The bonobos were much more elusive thoughout late May and all of June, so more of the team was at camp more of the time. The result, with respect to the computer, has been almost-constant use of the remaining laptop during the daylight hours (since we rely on solar panels for power, computer time is over once the battery is dead in the evening). Depending on my work demands in the coming month, I'll hopefully be able to devote more of my computer time to personal ends. On the other hand, I spend so much time in front of the computer for work, that I often need a good break from it afterwards. I make no promises for upcoming entries!

SISTEBOL THE FISHERMAN
Sistebol is our current fisherman at camp. We always have one fisherman who stays with us, who doesn't receive a daily salary but who gets food and a cigarette with us every day, and is provided with a decent supply of camp-owned fish hooks and nets. We buy all the fish he catches, and everyone eats a decent quantity of fresh fish. The dry season started about three or four weeks ago, with only a milimeter or two of rain registered since around mid-June. This is the best fishing season, so Sistebol has been bringing back loads of fresh fish. We eat well, and smoke the surplus, so we now also have a respectable reserve for unlucky days. A good meal will include fresh fish prepared in two or three ways, smoked fish, and some freshly smoked fish that's only been over the fire for a couple of days. My favourite is the freshly smoked variety, which is tough and meaty - it's not to the point of becoming fish jerky, like the smoked fish, while most of the bones have softened enough to chew and swallow, unlike the fresh ones. I find that eating many of the fresh fish is comparable to eating a pile of needles.

BYCATCH
Twice since he's been with us, Sistebol has brought back other creatures that have become stuck in his nets. The first was a monitor lizard, perhaps almost a metre long from nose to tail. It's scales were primarily deep black, with a beautiful neon yellow pattern of stripes and dots for the whole length. It's been smoking over the fire ever since: I find it amusing to pick it up by its tail as it holds its long form lengthwise. The other bycatch was another crocodile. It's at least the fourth one since I've been here, so I didn't even go examine it this time. I saw the kitchen staff playing with it as it hung from their roof - holding its head and tail up to demonstrate its length. Pretty long. They split it open along its stomach, pinning the skin open to roast over the fire. Since I don't buy bycatch, the workers ate it amongst themselves and we got all the fresh fish that day.

GRIT'S SNAKE
We don't see snakes in camp much, but when we do we kill them. There are so many species around here, and who really knows which are poisonous or not, so to protect LuiKotal's inhabitants we have a policy of killing any snake that visits camp. Last week Grit was laying down on the bench at our table, as a beautiful snake slithered over her knees. She yelped to me but kept still, and the snake just continued up the bench and into the palm-frond roof. The cooks rushed over with machetes and quickly beheaded it, and Grit's heartbeat eventually returned to normal. The closest guess we have, as to its species, is a vine snake. While not deadly, the bit is nonetheless poisonous. Drama!

THE BONOBOS
For the past couple of weeks, our team has been with the bonobos pretty much every single day. The behaviour of our habituated community has been to travel a big loop throughout the day, stopping at a variety of specific fruit trees along the way. After being followed for most of the day, they have generally nested within a kilometre or so of where they started. When they're lost, waiting at a few known trees are good bets to find them again. I spent a day out with them a week or so ago, and got to observe a few bonobos at very close range sharing a boimbe fruit on the ground under one such tree. Unfortunately, the understorey was so dense I didn't get a very clear sightline, but Caro (the Austrian) spent some observation time with them under the same tree the following day. Of bonobos in the wild, she shot what are probably many of the best photos in existence. I'm jealous.

JUNE'S RANGE
June was a bad month for bonobo observations, as they managed to elude our team for numerous days at a time. The only way to find them again is to spend a lot of time out in the forest, covering a lot of ground to listen for their calls and look for their traces (feeding remains, recent nests, footprints in muddy areas, etc). The group was finally located on a regular basis further than they had ever been tracked before. They may well have been spending time there since research here began, but that area of our study site had been pretty much beyond the reasonable limits of where we can walk to and from in a day. The closest that a researcher could reach by trail was about 9 or 10 kilometres from camp, which was still several kilometres through dense bush from the bonobos. Getting to and from camp and the bonobos each day therefore involved three to four hours of hiking each way, much of which involved cutting through uncharted forest. An equivalent commute, in my comparison, would be to go from NY to DC each morning and evening, or from Amsterdam to Lyon. Ridiculous. To consecrate seven to eight hours of the day just getting to and from work, and then be expected to follow bonobos for 12 hours from dawn to dusk, was a ridiculous prospect. Thank goodness they've migrated northwards lately!

BADZUNGU CAMP
In order to chop around an hour and a half from the one-way commute, a tent has now been placed in the forest near the Badzungu stream. It's an easy shot from camp, down a dry, level trail. We established a system so that one person who did those long days would stay a night or two there, while others in camp would have rendez-vous and food drops to facilitate the stay. It hasn't been used too much, but the Badzungu camp is a now welcome tool in our bonobo-following arsenal.

MY VACATION
I used the Badzungu camp once to just take a little vacation from camp - it was nice to be so alone. Since I spend most of my time within the confines of LuiKotal Camp, and there are almost always at least a few people here with me: I'm almost never alone. Ah, solitude! It was great to be about 7km from the nearest human, in the middle of dense forest at night and in the morning. The darkness was so dark at night. I made espresso in the morning and sat on a log over the stream to drink it. Sweet! It was pretty frustrating (I hardly managed to get a fire going in the evening before the downpour began), and not necessarily comfortable (the ground wasn't exactly flat under the tent), but the break was nonetheless quite welcome. I've been making regular trips into the forest lately, without necessarily intending to do any research, simply to get out of camp and assuage my psyche.

THE VINE SWING
About a month ago, I noticed a long vine hanging over a big treefall near our main trail. It was probably about 20m in length, and swung over a dense tangle of fallen trunks and branches. Along its main swinging axis, though, was a fallen tree trunk, which even had a protruding branch going upwards at the point where the vine would swing in its arc. So a swing could be initiated by walking the length of the fallen trunk, and even by climbing up the protruding branch. I visited the vine swing several times, swinging from the higher branch like Tarzan. Oh what fun can be had in the forest! One afternoon I invited one of our cooks, Djoli, who had a couple of hours without cooking to do, to join me for some vine swinging. We hiked the 3km there and I did some huge swings that he filmed on my digicam. He took a turn and did a less-daring swing, but then liked it and asked me to film a second swing. As he jumped to swing though, the vine snapped and he fell off the log and into the tangled branches. His leg bled a lot, and he was pretty flustered, but it wasn't serious. When he regained his composure the first thing he asked for was to see the video. My camera's delay is so long though, that the only footage I got was of my knee as I ran over to help him. He came back to camp yesterday and showed me how his wound healed - he'll have a scar.

NEW TRAILS
One big job I did lately was to mark a new trail. Given that the bonobos have demonstrated their range to be well beyond our existing trail network, we have been extending the network over the past few weeks. By trail, it is now possible to hike about 14km from camp: the Meike-5 trail has been extended from 3km to 5km, the Venty trail was lengthened from 1km to around 4.5km, and the Tim trail now connects Meike-5 and Venty, having been extended from 700m to 2.5km. Not only has the trail cutting been tough work, but the commute to and from the existing trail ends was several hours alone. I commend all of the men who contributed to the job.

TRAIL FLAGGING
I decided to contribute by marking one of the new trails: Tim. In order to assist the users of these trails to maintain their bearings, trail markers are placed at every 50m with the trail name and the distance. Tim's trailhead is about 8km from camp, and the trail's latter 1.8km is very roughly-hewn. It was a long, hard day! I measured the distance with a waist-mounted counter that works by unwinding a long, thin thread. I had to change the spool twice over 2.5km, and it was quite a pain just to pick up the used thread on the way back (mostly in the dark). The flags will tie easily to thin trees, but of course any trees thinner than the handle of a baseball bat had been chopped to create the trail, and the tags wouldn't really reach around the remaining trees. Attaching a loop of string first was a pain, and I certainly didn't do it on as many trees as could have used it. The highlight of the day was the Bompusa River crossing, because it was a big fallen log where I was able to sit and eat a banana and some biscuits. I saw some shits on the log (yes, that's the official scientific term we use in camp) of some predator, that had obviously been eating a lot of fish. Perhaps it was an otter, but I'd rather think it was a leopard. I tied around 60 tags that day, and was out for about 12 hours - it was hard work.

THE NEW YORKER
My first three weeks or so at LuiKotal saw the camp populated by nine foreigners. One of them was Ian Parker, who is a writer for the New Yorker magazine doing some field work for a story on bonobos. He was a nice guy and a good campmate, and dealt with the rigours of the work here with grace. He wrote us recently to let us know that the draft is nearly complete, so the story should be appearing in one of the upcoming issues. Since it's a story on bonobos in general, and not necessarily just our field site, I'm sure there will be a lot of related information that he includes. Since he visited us for the story though, we surely get some decent exposure in his text - I therefore highly recommend everyone who reads this blog to go buy that issue for Ian's aritcle. The New Yorker is a weekly publication, and Ian will hopefully let us know around when the issue comes out, so I'll be sure to post that info here as soon as I know it. In the meantime though, I recommend keeping an eye out for places to pick up the New Yorker, in case you live in areas that don't necessarily have the magazine at the supermarket checkout line.

BRILLIANT
A last note I'll include here is Ian's compliment of my writings: "The blog is brilliant, by the way - and you're absolutely right about people wanting to read about oatmeal." This is quite an honour coming from such a seasoned writer, and a bit of a vindication for what I've chosen as content. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting entries more regularly, but in the meantime I'd love more feedback from people who I haven't heard from lately! In other words, write me emails! Thanks:)

With that, I hope you've got a feeling for what my life has been composed of lately, as well as a better picture of LuiKotal camp life in general. Again, it would be great to hear from more people out there, as I'm really quite curious as to who else I'm writing this for. I hope it's appreciated!

(RM) The LuiKotal health-care system

2007-06-04T11:36:00.000+02:00

The LuiKotal health system

My last entry, I explained how I had fallen ill, and how I had decided to, at short notice, ignore the majority of my work duties here at Camp. I had begun taking anti-malarials, and I had successfully convinced several of my colleagues to take over some of the work I am usually relied upon to do.

In this entry, I've decided to address our health-care situation here at LuiKotal Camp. Somehow, this may calm people down, while on the other hand, some people might just freak out. I recommend just accepting the situation, because freaking out is futile. No matter whether you think that freaking out may be warranted or not.

Basically, we're totally isolated here. There are no doctors anywhere, nor any medical facilities of any sort. We live in the middle of the jungle, with essentially no modern infrastructure that most people from our respective countries would consider commonplace.

My doctor here is Martin. He's actually working on his PhD in the behavioural ecology of bonobos, and he has his formal education in field biology. He's definitely not a medical doctor, but I've chosen him as my doctor here because I'd rather just one opinion than five. Anyway, I feel more comfortable talking to him about how my body is functioning than I do with the others. And he has a bit of credibility, because his brother back in Switzerland actually is a medical doctor.

The other potential doctors are:
1. Caro, another field biologist, from Austria, with experience observing bonobos in Frankfurt zoo.
2. Grit, another field biologist, from Germany, with experience tracking chimpanzees in Cote d'Ivoire.
3. Gaby, a plant specialist from Kinshasa, who has done numerous stints of field research at LuiKotal.
4. Andrew, a British chimpanzee expert who's lived most of the past six years in the field in Nigeria (he actually is a doctor - he has a PhD on chimpanzees!)
5. Me.

Our diagnostic equipment consists of two books and a thermometer. Both books are called "Where there is no doctor", although the newer edition is in German: "Wo es kein Aerzt gibt".

Actually, there's a so-called "clinic" in Ipope, about 27km from here, near the airstrip, manned by a guy I met while waiting for the plane last week that speaks French and is called Infirmier Esperant. (Though I don't doubt that this is actually his name, the direct translation is somewhat depressing, given his post: "Nurse Hopeful".) Given Ipope's similar lack of any modern infrastructure such as electricity or refrigeration (diagnostic tests for specific illnesses generall need to be refrigerated, have short shelf lives, and require precise laboratory instruments to get reliable results), I think the clinic's diagnostic equipment is basically the same as ours. Infirmier Esperant may just not need to consult the books quite as much. But given that the clinic is where sick people from the region flock to, I'm definitely much safer from sickness here at Camp.

Based on the diagnoses we get from our diagnostic equipment here (the books and the thermometer), we have a variety of remedies. The most important one is patience, which is often combined with others in turn.

We have an assortment of medecines, from fever reducers to painkillers to antibiotics to malaria treatments. Basically, between the lot of us foreigners, we've got a decent assortment of pills that each individual deemed important enough to bring to such a place. To combat a given ailment, a medicine is chosen and taken, combined with a strong dose of patience and some vigilant observations of the results. In general, a given illness improves over time, thanks to the medecine and the rest that whoever's been needing it has been taking. If one treatment doesn't do the trick, another is eventually attempted, along with another healthy dose of patience.

Given this reality, anyone reading this can assume at any time that those of us at LuiKotal camp are either 1. perfectly healthy, or 2. somewhat ill and trying to get better. In either case, worrying will get you nowhere. Yeah, I might write at some point that I'm sick, but you worrying will do absolutely nothing. We're on our own here, and we eventually get better. There is no need to give any more details on our health here; you can be spared the bitter details. (I recall reacting with hilarity my first week here, when one of the veterans, Tim, was explaining life at Camp and told me, nonchalantly, that "you'll just have to accept that, at some point while you're here, you'll get worms". Among other things.)

The next step of the health-care system, however, does exist: evacuation.

I explain this in an attempt to calm anyone who has read about our paltry camp infrastructure thus far and worries that we have no other options. In fact, each of us foreigners has travel insurance. Mine is through an American company, so I get to call some consulting doctor in the 804-area code if I ever determine that I'm too ill to get better through patience and experimentation. If the consulting doctor determines that evacuation to a reputable hospital would be the best option, that's what then gets organised. Yeah, I'd have to get to the Ipope airstrip 27km from here, and hope that the chartered plane actually arrived and took me to wherever the American insurance company determined was a better place, but eventually that would happen. Similar contingencies, I assume, are in place for each of my expatriate colleagues here. (Our phone access is via the same satellite connection we use twice per week to upload and download the email messages - we can't receive calls, we can just make them when we connect to the satellite.)

The other layer of comfort is via my embassy. I registered with them when I arrived in Kinshasa, so they know my whereabouts and have contact information for my mother and sister in the US. As a foreigner, if ever I show up in a hospital, morgue, or jail in this country, the authorities will notify my diplomatic representatives, who will in turn notify my mom and sister. That service hopefully won't be needed, but it's there nevertheless. (I remember being glad to be in regular contact with the Canadian diplomatic representatives when I lived in Palestine in 2000, ultimately getting evacuated in the bulletproof Mercedes with the little flags on the front and back.)

In the meantime, however, we do our best here at Camp. I organised a week off from working last week while I recovered from malaria, in a manner similar to what I'd consider to be sick leave. I think I'm pretty much over the malaria, and will hopefully be back to full form soon enough. So as long as I'm still here at Camp, please don't worry about my health - I'm either fine or getting better.

Got it mom?

;)

(RM) Work days, sick daze

2007-05-28T18:57:00.000+02:00

(RM) Disclaimers (and some anecdotes)

2007-05-11T07:57:00.000+02:00

Disclaimers (and some anecdotes)

Well I've been writing a lot from my bonobocamp in the middle of the jungle, and I guess it's time that I lay out a couple of disclaimers:

1. You don't have to read anything I write.
2. I'll write what I want, when I want.
3. I'm not a bonobologist.
4. I don't represent anybody but myself.

That's it, really.

Now I get to explain in excruciating detail:

1. I like to write. I often write long entries. The same stuff can often be summed up in a couple of lines, but then it's not as eloquent, is it? Like the disclaimer points above, for example, vs. the explanations that follow.

I chose the format of a blog to allow me the luxury of writing as much as I want, whenever I want, without ever feeling that I was imposing on anyone. I don't send mass emails, as some people might do. Instead, whoever feels like, can just check in on the blog site at their leisure and read as little or as much as they please.

Nobody is obliged to read anything. If you find my writing style dull, then skip it. Or skim to the punch line at the end. Or struggle through it and then write to me with (constructive) criticism. My favourite comment so far:

"sounds neat albeit, i don't really care what you or the others choose to mush up in there oatmeal. that had to be the least exciting bit of information ever coming out of the congo. now, do you take notes throughout the day on such matters or is all held in your -ahem- now clear mind."

My response to that is that I just have topics I wanna write about, and that I get into details when I write them. Like what's mashed into the oatmeal. Basically, I just try to get the feel of my experience across to whoever's reading. And part of that is the little details which may or may not seem interesting. But it's at least descriptive, no?

2. I make no promises as to what I'll write about, nor on when I'll write. I enjoy the storytelling, so maybe I'll write about something just because I feel like telling that story. Although other stuff might be going on here that's interesting, but that I don't really feel like writing about at the moment.

I'm open for suggestions as far as topics to write about. I'll probably oblige, but only when and how I want to. In the meantime, I might just write about something else that tickles my fancy at the particular time that I sit down at the computer.

Emails are uploaded from camp on Mondays and Thursdays. Those are normally the only times, therefore, that I'll probably post anything, but I might skip uploads sometimes if there's other stuff going on at camp, or if I just didn't write about anything since the last one. Check back in a week or two, and maybe I will have posted another story or two.

3. Please don't take what I'm saying as scientific fact. Yeah, I'm living here at the bonobo research camp, and I go observe bonobos in their natural habitat, but I am not a bonobo expert. I honestly knew almost nothing about bonobos until I got here, though I've certainly learned a lot since.

The people I work with are generally seasoned primatologists. Their educational and professional backgrounds are in biology with a focus on primates, particularly on the great apes. Some of them get articles published in journals or books, or give presentations at specialised conferences or symposia. If you're looking for specific information on bonobos, you'd be best off referring to those sources rather than to my blog.

If you want anecdotes, however, that are somehow linked to bonobos, then you've come to the right place. I'm all about anecdotes! But please take it as just that - I don't pretend to preach fact, just stories.

4. This blog is my own invention, and is completely attributable to me and only me. In a large part, it serves as a personal creative outlet, while it also allows me to share whatever I'm experiencing with the people I love scattered about the globe (at their leisure, of course). In no way should what I write be associated with the rest of the camp where I live, nor with the organisation that established the camp and keeps it running.

OK, I guess now that covers things. I've got all my excuses covered! Read my writing if you want, or don't. Don't take anything I write too seriously - just enjoy it or not. And give me all the credit!

OK, and now for a couple of little anecdotes from the past few days:

- I killed a mouse the other night. It was sitting on our kwanga (logs of starchy food), eating it, and I was holding an empty tin of Quaker Oats and I smashed the tin on the mouse and it fell to the floor and I stomped it a few times. Damn kwanga-eating mouse!

- Molos brought home a caiman. He's our fisherman and he checks his nets every morning and brings us back fish for lunch, but yesterday he found a 4kg (about 9 pounds) caiman! That's a little alligator-looking creature that's really endangered, in case you didn't know. He had cracked its head open with his machete already, and I didn't buy it from him like I do his fish. The workers ate it for lunch while I ate beans.

- Brigham and Lovis saw elephants. They were following the bonobos and the bonobos started freaking out (or so claims Lovis), and then Lovis started freaking out, yelling at the top of his lungs and shaking the nearest tree!!!! So I guess the elephants were sort of startled, and gave the two of them time to get the hell out of there. Caro saw elephants the next day,and got out of there too. I wish I'd seen elephants, I wanna go to the forest and find them.

- I succeeded in doing the Grande Tour last week. That's the 20km loop that I got lost on the week before that prompted the 'Lost' entry. I found the trail and snipped a lot of branches and vines to make it more apparent, and marked the whole thing into the GPS so it'll be easy to not be lost in the future.

- The driver ants came back to camp this morning, but stayed on the edge because the sun was out. They reached the edge of the shadowed area, killed everything in their path, and soon left again. Thank goodness.

- The other day was Brigham's birthday, so Caro and I spent all morning, while Brigham was out with the bonobos, decorating our table area with arts and crafts stuff. We cut out funny pictures from magazines and taped them all over, we made a 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' banner with cut-out letters, and we hung hard little green fruits above the table as decorations. Since we have no cake, I drew a huge one in the sand between the table and his tent. Not bad, considering the circumstances, eh?

- I've seen a palm civet near camp twice in the last week. I spot it's yellow eyes at night, amongst the trees, reflecting against my flashlight, and I've gotten a few good looks at it. It looks like a cross between a dog, a cat, and a skunk.

- We harvested about four of our pineapples from camp over the past week. They're so tasty!

- I found a piece of amber in the stream the other day. It may not seem like much of a big deal, but there are absolutely no rocks of any sort here, so finding something so solid like that is really out of the ordinary.

OK that's a taste of a basic week at camp. I guess it's enough for now!

(RM) Driver ants

2007-05-07T11:14:00.000+02:00

Sunday, 6 May 2007

Driver ants

In the midst of the drama, Brigham shared with us some sage advice given him at some point by Gottfried, the founder of LuiKotal Camp: "Brigham, one day, you will wake up and driver ants will be all over your tent. When this happens, do not go out of your tent. Not even if you really need to use the bathroom. They will be gone in 30 minutes."

We were in the midst of a driver ant invasion. Our camp is about 40 metres across, and the wave of driver ants spent the better part of about six hours weaving their way methodically through a good portion of its surfaces.

The ants were first acknowledged at around 1:30pm, when Andrew came back from his tent to wish us farewell as he departed for the afternoon shift in the forest. His tent is down a short path just northeast of our camp clearing, and the area was apparently crawling with the ants.

I first noticed the wave entering the camp at its northeast corner, probably around 2:30. Brigham and I sat watching them from the momentary safety of my 'salon' (the roof that shelters my tent has room for a second tent, where I keep an inflatable sofa on a tarp). The
space between my shelter (a sloped roof held up by columns; there are no walls at LuiKotal) and the row of pineapple plants at the forest edge is perhaps two metres wide. When we first sat down to watch, there were various thick lines of them marching together, intertwined with smaller lines of them marching about, interspersed with individuals covering the rest of the space. Within five or ten minutes, the space was absolutely teeming with driver ants! There was literally not a square inch of sand that did not have at least one driver ant crossing it.

The biggest creature we saw being overcome by them from our comfortable spot looked like a large cicada, although it wasn't very identifiable through the mass of ants enveloping it. We watched as unfortunate little crickets hopped into the throng, only to realise their folly and try in vain to hop away before being devoured. The larger crickets actually fared worse, writhing wildly as they were overcome. I was glad to see the little cockroaches get pounced upon - I hate those fuckers anyway. I wish I'd seen more of the bigger roaches to flick into the mess.

Basically, the small clearing was just covered with a massive coordinated hunting party. Any creature in its path is attacked by whichever ants first encounter it, and is quickly immobilised by the throngs of ants that follow. Thus, in addition to the thick lines of ants, the thin lines of ants, and the individual ants, there were increasing numbers of thick clusters of ants indicating where various prey was being eaten alive. We recalled Gottfried's story of putting an open can of corned beef in the middle of one such hunting party. "It took them two days to finish," he had told us, "I have pictures!"

The driver ants probably qualify as the scariest creatures of the forest. Sure, there are a few leopards around that could conceivably attack a human, and there are forest elephants that ostensibly charge at people on sight, but the likelihood of actually seeing either of those is so slim that we would actually love to run into them and take our chances (leopards generally flee before you see them, and elephants can easily be outmaneuvered in the dense forest). Driver ants, on the other hand, will always attack maliciously, and the only way to escape is to flee and pick then them all off yourself. The biggest forest fashion trend among westerners at LuiKotal Camp is inspired by the driver ants: long pants tucked into the socks. Like this, when you walk (run!) through a hunting expedition of driver ants along the trail, the individual ants can be then picked off (the outside of) your clothing as they crawl all over you.

Driver ants are apparently blind, as they evolved from a type of termite that didn't really venture out into daylight anyway. Their ant society is composed of various specialists, each performing specific roles for the good of the group. I was able to discern three different types of individuals among the mass that came through camp. There are probably several more tiers to the hierarchy; I was too enthralled by the actions of the group as a whole unit to really focus on each of the individuals. (I was also quite cautious to not get too close to them, lest too many crawl up my legs at once - they're painful!)

The smallest ones, perhaps about half a centimeter in length, were the most abundant. They were clearly the biggest killers, overcoming prey in seconds by their sheer numbers.

The largest ones, maybe about 1.3cm long, with sharp mandibles about 2mm in length protroding from their heads, appeared to be sentinels. They were stationed periodically along lines of the smaller ants, constantly waving their pincers in the air in varying orientations, in order to keep watch for anything out of the ordinary. They were also to be found near the crest of a given wave of ants, exploring new territory, essentially serving the same role. I found that attempting to hack any of these big guys in half with the end of a shovel would temporarily halt the smaller ants around my victim.

The medium-sized ants seemed to be the scouts, scoping out fresh stretches of camp that weren't yet covered in driver ants. Working in tandem with the big ones, these ants formed the crests of the waves that slowly crossed LuiKotal Camp.

Brigham knew of one insect species that can actually put up a good fight against the driver ants: a type of smaller black ant. One tactical advantage is that they are similar in size to the smaller warrior caste of driver ants (so individuals don't get overtaken by sheer numbers), while their other advantage is that they have sight. We have a nest of these little black ants on a tree at the edge of camp - it's a football-sized ball of honeycombed soil attached to the trunk about two metres from the ground. So of course we hacked a chunk of the nest with a machete, and, using a shovel, brought it to be dumped into the centre of the driver ants.

Sitting back in the sofa, we watched in awe at how quickly the mass of red ants was dispersed. Where there had been not a single square inch of sand without a driver ant in it, there was soon a round clearing that grew to nearly a metre across - those little black ants did wonders!

But of course the driver ants had to go somewhere, and our space was next. They started up the columns supporting the roof, and started scouting out the dry soil under it. That was our cue to retreat. The wave had also moved past the side of my shelter, southwards to the long shelter covering the other three tents (Caro's, Martin's, and Brigham's, with some similar tent-free space in between). Some ant-free sand still stood between the two tent shelter structures and our central sitting/eating structure, so we went there to sit and read and chat.

Without a good view of the ant mayhem, our attention moved on to other matters. One of my roles at camp is to manage the food supplies so that we have the most variety for the longest amount of time, so this is when I had my second argument of the day with one of our local workers: I told the cook that the workers would get canned sardines for dinner instead of smoked fish, since we're running low on smoked fish and I've been getting it out for several dinners in a row now.

The first argument had been when I tried, unsuccessfully, to get our bonobo worker to go for his rendez-vous in the forest despite the rain. He refused, which is why Andrew left at 1:30 - to meet Martin in the forest instead of Papa Endu.

We chilled out in our sitting/eating area for a little while, reading and discussing the workers' intransigeance, as the workers brewed in their area discussing how inconsiderate we were being. But soon the ants found us there too! They had gotten into the blue barrel that we keep next to the table to hold condiments like instant coffee, sugar, salt, and such. They were climbing up the columns and into the palm-frond roof overhead, and they had begun to envelope one of the bench seats. We had to retreat, and we had to postpone our dinner.

This was around 5:30, and it was getting dark, so we all needed our headlamps in order discern whether or not a patch of ground in front of us was covered in driver ants or not. This drew our workers' attention, and they came over to survey the scene as well. The wave had mostly moved on from my shelter, it stretched fully across the longer shelter with the other three tents, and the mass was slowly filling in the space between there and our central sitting/eating shelter. We couldn't sit, and the other tents were inaccessible for the moment.

From the workers' shelter, I heard the cook doing a chant, and wondered whether he was praying for us or for them. Evidently, the ants were attacking us because we had been so inconsiderate to them, so this was our just punishment. But evidently, the ants may well move on towards the workers' sleeping quarters, which is not as impervious to ants as our tents. I think his chant was intended to divert the oncoming wave away from their direction.

Sure enough, the ants soon dispersed from our table, remaining in the immediate vicinity only in clearly-demarcated paths that could be safely monitored from the benches. This was probably by around 6:30 or 7, so we got to sit down for dinner shortly after Andrew and Martin returned from nesting the bonobos (in the rain). That also gave the ants time to move on from the long tent shelter before anyone had to actually access their tents. We ate to the sound of a squirrel chirping desperately from a nearby tree in the forest - evidently being surrounded and attacked by the marching army.

By 8:30, our end of camp was relatively safe from marauding driver ants - we could each approach our tents cautiously. I think a branch of the moving wave of ants had begun to come out of the forest at the workers' end, because they were busy building barricades of hot ashes and coals between the forest edge and their shelter - while our tactic had been to simply wait them out, hot coals can speed up their departure.

Now it's 10:30, and I've been sitting in my 'salon' for the past two hours, typing away unaccosted. The driver ants have already come and gone from LuiKotal Camp for the day, and they actually provided the useful service of eradicating lots of the other non-flying insects in their path - it was eerie to see the shocked cockroaches cowering in plain sight this evening, having somehow survived the passing army.

This was the most intense exposure to the driver ants that I've had since being here. We encounter them very regularly though, and we will see them again soon. It's entirely likely that I'll wake up at some point to the sound of driver ants flowing over the outside of my tent in a continuous wave, at which point I'll hope there are no tiny holes in the fabric that I hadn't noticed and patched before. It'll be frustrating if I have to pee, but otherwise, if I'm supposed to wake up, I think I may actually appreciate being forced to remain in my tent for a while longer and wait them out. Because although the driver ants may be the most vicious creatures in the forest that I know of, their hunting party will soon have moved on to somewhere else.

(RM) Lost in the jungle, part 2: Lost

2007-05-03T17:04:00.000+02:00

Lost in the Jungle

or

How to use a compass to find the way

Part two: Lost

Sunday, 22 April, 2007

...

LOST

At about 4pm, I consciously left the known trail behind me, armed with a pair of garden snips and a compass bearing of due West. Down the slope I went.

(This is a continuation of the last entry, entitled "Lost in the jungle, Part one: Trails". That entry gives the context of the trail system, the forest environment, and the day's events that led me to the point where this entry begins: leaving the trail. So although this entry may be an interesting read on its own, I recommend first reading Part one, in order to better understand the situation.)

It's amazing, really, how easily it is to stray from a given direction. In the rainforest, there are trees everywhere, as well as fallen logs, hanging vines, dense thickets of harmania, holes, mud, and a bit of slope. This initial foray into the unmarked jungle, which was fortunately still during daylight hours, was on one of the steepest stretches I know of in our study site. It seemed like I was headed straight downhill for a while (okay, I wasn't always going straight, but that's what the compass was for). Of course I also got something in my eye right away, I tripped over plenty of vines, and I walked through most of the spider webs of the forest.

At the bottom of the slope was swamp. Yup, that means more knee-deep muck to schlep through, but without the added benefit of a marked trail to facilitate unobstructed forward movement. I fell forward plenty of times, catching myself on my hands and knees in the mud, and using the garden snips to cut random vines that engtangled me. Some stretches had standing water in them, some had running water, and some were just mud. Elephant footprints appeared prominently in numerous spots. There were also stretches of solid ground between the potto-potto (the local name for this muck), but it wasn't as plentiful as I'd have preferred.

In the meantime, of course, the sun was setting. Even when the sun is shining at its brightest, very little sunlight actually reaches the forest floor through the dense canopy, and of course the potto-potto valleys are even darker. So when the sun approaches the horizon, there's practically no ambient light in the forest at all. I haven't seen the horizon in a month and a half.

I had my headlamp on by 5pm, and my GPS batteries were nearly dead. The compass was fine though! After about an hour following a straight West bearing, I reached the Bompusa River. It was deep up to my belly and actually had some flow to it, so I had to hold my backpack over my head and watch my step, but I honestly found it very refreshing to be standing in the cool water for a few moments. I tried looking upstream and downstream from my crossing point to see if that's where the actual Nkuma trail crossed, but the river was too overgrown with vines to make any travel up or down it really feasible. I almost fell in trying to go upstream, so I abandoned that plan and just continued west. The western bank didn't really have any place to clamber up to, but I forced my way up, and started up the slope. At least it wasn't potto-potto (yet) on that side!

Checking my GPS again, it told me that Nkuma-1500 was now at a NW bearing, another kilometre from where I was currently. Then I watched the screen fade out as the batteries finally died. I changed my bearing and headed up the slope. The relative clearing on the Bompusa gave me the last glimpses of sunlight for the day; I continued my bushwhack as night fell hard.

Going northwest was similar to going west, but this time it was in the dark. I did encounter more potto-potto, which was even suckier in the dark than it had been in the twighlight on the other side of the Bompusa. But in general, bushwhacking through muck or dry ground in dense rainforest is just sucky all around, because you can really only see a couple of metres ahead at any given moment. The headlamp illuminates the branches and trees and vines that it points at, and the pupils adjust to that bright light at close range so that everything else is pure darkness. No matter though, because I just needed to follow my NW bearing, so it didn't really matter what was beyond a few steps - that's all I really needed to focus on anyway.

A few times I did need to make some detours, when I hit really dense harmania patches or really big fallen trees, but even those I often just ploughed through or over. Garden snips and determination are great tools in such circumstances.

Around 6 I knew my colleagues would be at about Nkuma-1100, so I did our standard whistle to see if they could hear: a really loud catcall. I was far though, so I didn't really expect a response. I continued my trek northwest.

After an hour or so of following my bearing due northwest, I decided to turn on the GPS again to see where Nkuma-1500 was relative to me: only 600m to go, due west! The batteries died again, and I switched my bearing. It's too bad the GPS only gives bearings in 45-degree increments; it would have been feasible for me to have just followed something between west and northwest, and made the bushwhack that much more direct.

This method worked out though, and I crossed a well-worn trail at about 7pm. I saw the trail marker that said "Nk1400" just a few metres from where I emerged - I was less than 100m from the point I had been targeting for the past three hours! Not bad, eh?

NOT LOST ANY MORE

So I walked a few hundred metres to the Meike-5 intersection, and took my second break of the day. I sat on the big log just west of Meike-5, took off my wet boots, ate the last of my biscuits, and drank some more water. I had packed a dry pair of socks, which I put on once my feet were as dry as they were going to get. Then I put my feet back in my wet boots, put my backpack back on, and started the easy 7km back to camp. If I walked fast, I could be there by about 8:30pm - about the latest I could expect my colleagues to stick around waiting before they mounted a search party. I was tired, but I maintained a quick pace. The trail was so easy after all that off-trail mess I'd had to hack through!

As I walked the familiar trail, the sky flickered brightly and thunder clapped. I was actually relieved to get rained on at that point, since my body was so hot. My boots had been wet since 8:30 or so in the morning, and the rest of my body was pretty wet with sweat already anyway. So the last 45 minutes or so of my walkabout were in a downpour, with my headlamp illuminating the falling droplets. I saw two small antelopes along the way (blue duikers).

I got to camp at about 8:35, and one of the cooks immediately started calling the other cook's name: "Djoli!". Djoli had left with Brigham a few minutes before to start the trek down Bompusa trail to see if I was coming back that way. They hadn't even hit the muddy bit yet by the time I got back.

Martin and Andrew had a bag packed with some of the same essentials that had been packed a few days earlier when Andrew was late getting home. They were planning on waiting until Brigham and Djoli had checked for me through the Bompusa swamp, and then walking the Grande Tour in the other direction until they found me.

Once it was determined that I was fine, Andrew gave me his news: he had been successful in following the Grande Tour back to Meike-5, and he had seen a leopard where Nkuma crossed the Bompusa! Apparently he was only a few metres away from it when the leopard saw him, and it just bolted in shock from where it was drinking. He had also seen fresh elephant footprints, but no elephants. They hadn't succeeded in finding the bonobos though, which meant that everyone could sleep in to 6am if they wanted to:)

LESSONS LEARNED

I think the initial reaction of my colleagues, when I didn't return from my solo trek on the Grande Tour for a few hours past dark, was that we probably shouldn't be heading out alone to destinations outside of our normal stomping grounds. This sentiment was particularly strong given the stress we had all put ourselves through a few days before in worrying about Andrew in a similar situation. It's true, that going out into the forest in pairs obviously adds a safety factor in case anything happens, and it provides the opportunity for two pairs of trailfinders in situations where seldom-used trails just seem to disappear. Andrew hadn't lost Nkuma after 4150, so if we had been together I wouldn't have had to bushwhack.

On the other hand, the experience demonstrates how we are able to wayfind around here, and how even the furthest reaches of the forest are still just a few hours of hiking back to camp. We all use our compasses to follow bearings back to known trails - I just did so for over two kilometres straight through the forest.

The next day Andrew and Brigham used the same method for about a kilometre to reach a savannah, Momentaoule, that we see on our satellite photo but that nobody from camp had ever been to. They determined that by following a bearing from one of the known trails, they would eventually hit it. Getting to that savannah was the first time either of them had seen the horizon for a long time. They marked the waypoint for the centre of the savannah on my GPS, so now it will be even easier for any of us to bushwhack our way there.

The GPS has also gained in stature among my colleagues. I had been marking waypoints for weeks, as I walked the trails, surveyed the BFTs, and nested the bonobos. Having Nkuma 1500 waypointed allowed me to choose to bushwhack 2.1km west to a known trail for my walk home that night, rather than oblige me to hike the 10km back through the wet trail I had just come on - that would not have been a very viable option without it. My GPS unit has been out with everyone since then, and we have marked a lot of bonobo nesting sites and feeding trees on it. Hopefully we can get a similar GPS for the project in on the next plane.

Walkie-talkies have also been discussed. The dense forest precludes their use for much distance, such as from camp to Meike-5, but they may be useful for closer distances. I think I would have been able to communicate with Andrew at 6pm when he was around the Meike-5 x Nkuma intersection and I was a kilometre away in the bush, to let him know what was up. I also could have contacted camp as I approached, allowing them to stop worrying, and to cancel their search party before Brigham and Djoli left. This is a harder sell to our boss in Germany, since he somehow already has it in his head that the range of any walkie-talkie makes them useless in such dense forest, but we'll be requesting a set on the next plane anyway.

Overall though, I think my 3-hour adventure through the jungle was't a bad experience. I did leave the trail, but I was never really that far from points that I knew. The terrain around here is not that abrupt, so it's not like I was going to come to an impassable cliff or anything (there are actually no rocks here at all), and my boots were already wet and muddy since morning. The worst that could have happened would have been a sprained ankle, which would indeed have been an issue, but I still would have been able to hobble to a trail and be met by the search party when they finally came around. And I definitely got good practice following a bearing!

So don't worry about me getting 'lost in the jungle' around our bonobo study site. It's a good forest to be in, and fun to get to know. Instead, picture me primarily on the trail network, with periodic forays into the bush to follow bonobos, to find a lost trail, or perhaps, eventually, to visit Momentaoule.

(RM) Lost in the jungle, part 1: Trails

2007-04-30T09:28:00.000+02:00

Lost in the Jungle

or

How to use a compass to find the way

Part 1: Trails

Sunday, 22 April, 2007

DON'T FREAK OUT!

First of all, before anyone freaks out, I was only really 'lost' in the jungle for about three hours, and I was never really worried about not finding my way because I had everything that I needed - compass, GPS, headlamp, garden snips, and an understanding of the local trail system. So while (Part two of) this entry is indeed about my first experience being really 'lost' in the jungle, I don't want anyone to think I was particularly foolish for having set out in such circumstances in the first place. Hence the alternative title to this entry: "How to use a compass to find the way," because that, along with an understanding of one's surroundings, is how it's ok to not be worried about really getting lost around here.

Before going into this, I've got to give a bit of the context of the forest and trail system that we deal with here, as well as a basic primer on how we use it. So the majority of this entry would have been simply entitled "Trails", but that just isn't as dramatic, is it? The whole thing is also really long, so I've split it into two Parts. You get the background in this first Part, and my 'Lost' story in Part two.

THE TRAIL SYSTEM

We use the forest primarily for the study of bonobos. The bonobos use the forest to live in and feed in and travel in. So in addition to strictly observing the actual bonobos, we also conduct studies on the components of the forest that the bonobos use - namely their feeding trees and their nest sites. Our standard routine here sees researchers visiting a long roster of feeding trees and nest sites on a regular basis, all throughout the study site. Researchers also try to visit the bonobo group on a daily basis. Over a given period, the bonobo group has a relatively localised range compared to the rest of the forest that we study. Since they travel though, we're always following them off the trail network, whereas for the trees we stick to known routes.

Our camp is situated near the northern limit of the study site, and the bonobos' current range basically defines our southern boundary. The Bompusa river flows northward a bit east of our camp, and a bit east of the current bonobo range. It's really swampy on either side of the Bompusa for quite a ways, there are large swampy areas in the south, and there's plenty of swamp elsewhere, too. There are no bridges or boardwalks; to cross rivers or swamps, we just schlep through and get really wet and muddy.

To get to the bonobos every day, we take a main trail called simply 'B-Trail', which goes approximately SSW from camp. After 6km (3.75mi), it meets the 'Nkuma' trail, which goes ESE. That trail eventually crosses the Bompusa, and meets up with the 'Bompusa' trail after almost 7km (4.3mi). Alternatively, from camp, we can head straight east along the first kilometre or so of the Bompusa trail before it takes a turn to the SSE for 7km or so to finally meet up with the end of the Nkuma trail. So basically, the backbone of the trail network is a big triangle: B going SSW from camp, Bompusa going SSE, and Nkuma going west to east between the southern ends of B and Bompusa. We call the entire 20km triangular hike the 'Grande Tour'.

Lately, the bonobos have been keeping south of the Nkuma trail, so we generally use the 'Meike-5' trail that heads due south starting at the 1100m mark of the Nkuma trail. And at the 1200m point of Meike-5, we've recently cut a new E-W trail that we've named 'Tim' after the so-named researcher who left around the time it was created.

From the main triangular train network then, there are a few spur trails such as Meike-5, although they're not used as much these days because the bonobos aren't in those areas. They are, however, used for the nest control and the bonobo feeding tree (BFT) studies, which are conducted regularly by specific people who do those studies. In general though, since the bonobos have been in the vicinity of Meike-5, the most well-traveled trails right now are 'B', Nkuma for its first few thousand metres, Meike-5, and now Tim. The rest are in various states of overgrown-ness, which is usually fine for the people using them to do their regular studies, but not always sufficient for people (like me!) relying on recognising them for their entire lengths.

In addition to being clearly demarcated by being heavily worn, the trails we use a lot are also marked with flags at 50m intervals. This allows us to describe locations relatively precisely, along the lines of "the bonobos nested in two groups tonight: a big group about 200m west of Meike-5 950, and a smaller group about 50m west of Meike-5 600." The flags are also useful for describing where we observed other things, or even just for keeping track of how much farther we have to walk to get to where we're going.

HOW TO DESCRIBE A LOCATION

With the bonobo tracking, the standard practise is to follow the group during the day, and to keep track, generally, of where you are with respect to the various known trails. In the evening, the bonobos build their nests and go to sleep for the night, and whoever is with them then picks a compass bearing that will lead to the nearest trail and leaves bent branches along that bearing in order to be able to find the nest again in the morning.

So if you know you've been following the bonobos somewhere west of the N-S-bearing Meike-5 trail, and they nest for the night, you pick a bearing due east until you hit the Meike-5 trail, then mark the trail with a branch and a scuff mark across the path, and go north to the first trail tag. You know approximately how far west from the trail the nest is, you know which trail it is, and you know at which distance along that trail to head into the forest. You go back to camp, and your colleagues will understand where to go, for example, when you tell them the bonobos are nested 200m west of Meike-5 950, as well as about how long it will take to get there in the morning (that particular spot would take about two hours, depending how well the 200m nest trail is marked).

STANDARD TIMING

Ok, so now that you understand the context of the trail system and how we use it, I need to mention a bit about the timing we need to work with for our bonobo work.

The bonobos go to bed by building their nests somewhere around 5:30pm, give or take about 15 or 20 minutes. They get up in the morning at around 5:30am, again give or take about 15 minutes. This corresponds, roughly, with dusk and dawn. We try to have someone with the bonobos all day long (although following them during the day is often difficult to impossible), but at the very least we try to nest them and then we greet them again in the morning.

Since the bonobos are nesting in the vicinity of Meike-5 these days, which is already about 1100m down Nkuma, which in turn starts 6km down 'B', this makes for a commute of around 8km each way, not including the off-trail distances. We basically budget about 1.5 hours to make the trek between camp and the start of Meike-5, and add additional time accordingly, depending on how much farther the bonobos are. So on an easy morning, when the bonobos aren't too far down Meike-5, and they've nested within 50m of the trail, departure from camp is 4am. That's about the latest to expect; lately it's often been more like 3:30, and the last few days saw the bonobos nest about 700m off-trail starting at Meike-5 700, so it's been an even longer commute.

Likewise, in the evening, if the bonobos start making their nests around 5:30 or 5:45, it takes a while to get back to camp. The off-trail portion takes much longer in the evening than in the morning because it needs to be marked. This is done by bending branches along its length in order to make it evident in the morning, and by using garden snips to cut vines or other branches that otherwise block the way. The off-trail path is therefore much easier in the morning, as dawn breaks.

A 700m off-trail distance can easily take an hour, followed by the regular commute of 1.5+ hours back to camp, though 700m to a known trail is pretty extreme. Usually it's more like 50 to 200m; it's these longer distances which incite us to create new trails like 'Tim'. A normal time to return to camp, therefore, is usually about 7:30pm. For evenings when the bonobos nest farthest, it's possible that whoever nests them gets back after 8; it can be as late as about 8:30. Beyond 8:30pm, something is probably up.

HOW LATE IS TOO LATE?

The first time this happened since I've been here was a little over a week ago, when Andrew left camp around 6am to go look for bonobos. They hadn't been nested the night before, and actually hadn't even been seen for a couple of days.

When we don't know where the bonobos are, the only way to find them is to just go out there and listen for them. If they vocalize, you take a compass bearing in the direction of the calls, and start heading in that direction. Bonobo vocalizations can be heard from a few hundred metres through the forest; any further than that and, unfortunately, you're not listening from a close enough spot.

So last week Andrew had left early in the morning to pick potential listening spots in the hopes of hearing the bonobos and finding them. Others left later in the day to do the same thing. They were back at around 7:30pm, and had seen neither the bonobos nor Andrew, although they had found a sign Andrew had left on the trail - two large leaves pointing to the direction in which he'd left the trail - on which he had written, "bonobos, 8:30am".

But if it was after 8:30pm, why wasn't Andrew back yet? Surely, even if he had nested them, he would have had time to hack through the jungle for an hour, even to get to Meike-5 2000 or so, and still had time to hike back to camp. So the assumption was made that his flashlight batteries had died, and that he was therefore sitting on the trail awaiting assistance. It's really dark in the forest, and once the sun starts to set it's pretty impossible to see. Plus, it had been pouring rain for most of the afternoon and evening (which is very normal here), so he'd be not only stuck but also cold.

It was decided that two people would go out with some basic provisions and walk the trail to find Andrew. If anything had happened, the least he would have had to do would be to get back to a trail - preferably one of our regular ones. A bag was packed with a thermos of hot chocolate, some biscuits, some water, an ace bandage, some dry socks, a raincoat, two spare flashlights, and a large antelope horn that we blow through like a trumpet that can be heard from about a kilometre away.

Of course Andrew got back just as the rescue mission was about to depart, shortly before 9pm. He scoffed at the preposterousness of it all: "it's not even nine o'clock!", he said. But the experience, or perhaps mostly just the discussions the rest of us were having during the hour or so leading up to his return, somehow got the possibilty into each of our heads that if someone's out in the jungle on their own, it could be that they actually need assistance, and of course it follows that whoever's left in camp will come to their aid. We didn't really discuss it further, and instead just got to the planning of who would be leaving at 3am to go wake up with the bonobos in their distant nest spot. (I also resolved to never head out in the afternoon without a spare flashlight, realising that being stuck in the dark would really immobilise me out there.)

LA GRANDE TOUR

As I mentioned earlier, one of the ongoing studies we conduct here is the bonobo feeding tree (BFT) survey. Throughout our trail system, we've got hundreds of individual trees that are tagged, each with their own record of measurements that have been taken for over five years now. The majority of these trees were the object of a phenological study that lasted five full years, with twice-monthly observations to see which were fruiting, flowering, growing new leaves, losing leaves, being fed on, and so on. That study concluded about a month ago, and now we focus solely on the BFTs, amounting to around 100 individuals of a dozen or so species. Each BFT now gets visited on a monthly basis to have each of the measurements noted.

Last Sunday, I went out on one such BFT excursion. We started out as a group of four: Brigham, who has been at LuiKotal for a while and had done various transects of the study a few times; Andrew, who hadn't done the study here before but had done a similar one for years in Nigeria; Papa Endu, who has lived his whole life in this forest and can spot a particular species from a distance; and me - I had gone out on one BFT excursion already, though not on this particular route. The BFTs on this transect were all located along the Bompusa trail to the east of the Bompusa River, from about 1000m to 4300m along the trail. We left shortly after 8am, schlepped through knee-deep mud and waist-deep water for the first half-hour or so, and spent the next five hours or so doing the BFT survey. Andrew left early to continue down the Bompusa trail to the Nkuma trail and on to Meike-5 in order to do the afternoon habituation shift with the bonobos, and the rest of us finished at Bompusa 4300 sometime around 1:30pm.

At that point, Brigham and Papa Endu sat down to rest and eat biscuits before turning back to hike back to camp on Bompusa, whereas I just continued on. I hadn't walked the Grande Tour for about a month, and wanted to mark the trail on the GPS. I had marked the BFTs' coordinates all morning, and had done several of the other trails already. I told Brigham that I'd aim to be back at camp by around 6pm, which was somewhat realistic for the 16km or so I had ahead of me, especially since I knew the latter 8km very well and knew it would take about 1.5 hours for that stretch.

Since the first 4300m of the Bompusa trail has been walked fairly regularly for the BFT and phenology studies, it was in much better condition than the continuation of the trail that only gets walked when people, for some reason or other, do the Grande Tour. A monkey census had been conducted on a monthly basis for a while, over the entire length of the Grande Tour, and that was the last time (when I went) that the trail had been walked. But as I set out on my own, it was clear that I would need to be fairly careful to not lose the trail.

I decided it would be a good idea to better demarcate the trail wherever it was becoming too overgrown, or where branches had fallen across it. This is a standard habit on all of our trails, but is particularly important on the less-used ones. I used my snips a lot, and I frequently hauled large branches out of the path. For a while, I took the GPS coordinates of every 50m trail marker I came across, which was most of them (some were missing).

I reached the end of the Bompusa trail without incident, confident that I had improved it to a state that could allow anyone to follow it in either direction without risk of getting lost. When I started down the Nkuma trail at its 7000m end, I was confident that the trail was pretty well-defined, and not too worried about losing it. The time was getting late, but I also knew that Andrew and at least one other bonobo researcher would be passing by the Nkuma 1100 and Meike-5 intersection sometime after about 5:45pm, so I figured I just ought to make it there to meet them in order to avoid anyone worrying about my late return to camp. I continued down the Nkuma trail.

I took my first break of the day sometime after 3pm, when I crossed the Wongwei river. It's a very pretty spot, where I sat and ate biscuits looking at the stream and keeping very quiet lest I alert the elephants to my presence. Elephant footprints are all over the place through the mud on either side of the Wongwei: it's a known thoroughfare of theirs. Very little is known about the forest elephants, except that they are very agitated when they see humans, and are known to charge anyone they see. I would love to get to see an elephant, but it would still freak me out knowing that I'd either have to be so silent that it didn't see me, or I'd have to run like hell or climb up a big tree or something to escape it's rampage!

Anyway, I didn't hang out for too long at the Wongwei. I continued trekking through the muck, following what appeared to be the continuation of the Nkuma trail. There were indeed trail markers along this length of swamp, and I saw Andrew's footprints in the knee-deep mud that formed the trail (we call this type of trail 'potto-potto').

By around 3:45, I was out of swamp and back into dense rainforest, and the last trail marker I could find was Nkuma 4150. This meant that I had done the 6km of the Bompusa trail, followed by almost 3km of the Nkuma trail, and that I had another 3km of the Nkuma trail to go before I hit the intersection with Meike-5. From that point, I know the trail very well, as I have done it many times both day and night.

But from Nkuma-4150 the trail just went 50m or so and then disappeared! It was clear for a bit, twisting through an archway cut into a thick tangle of 'harmania' vines, and then just sort of ceased to exist. I tried just going straight from the harmania, but that just led down a steep slope across fallen logs and dense undergrowth - no trail. I tried bearing somewhat southwest, which was the general direction that the trail had been following for a while. This seemed more promising, because it followed the contour of the slope, but it, too, just sort of petered out among fallen trees and undergrowth. A more-southerly bearing had the same result; a more northerly one went down the slope again.

I had lost the trail.

So here I was, less than two hours before sunset, about 10km from camp down a trail that had numerous stretches of swamp to muck through, and about 3km from a point on the trail system that I knew well and that would lead me briskly back to camp (an easy 1.5 hours from Nkuma-1100 x Meike5-0). If I were to head due west, I didn't know if I would be traveling north or south of the remainder of the Nkuma trail, but I did know that I would eventually hit a point that I knew. And I had Nkuma-1500 waypointed in my GPS, and it said that point was only 2.1km to the west.

So I had (1) the option of returning via the trail I had just come on, or (2) bushwhacknig west to the trail I knew. It was conceivable that I would hit Meike-5 in two hours, and be able to meet Andrew there before he trekked back to camp. And if I were to be really late back to camp (which, at this point, was inevitable), I figured the search party would first be sent in the direction that I would likely be - to that side of the Grande Tour.

LOST

So at about 4pm, I consciously left the known trail behind me, armed with a pair of garden snips and a compass bearing of due West. Down the slope I went.

To be continued...

(RM) Snail mail/ parcels

2007-04-26T12:33:00.000+02:00

Snail mail/ parcels

Thursday, 26 April, 2007

I've been asked if it is possible to receive mail here (thanks Nils!), so this posting basically explains the situation.

It's clear I'm pretty isolated here, but at least there's twice-weekly email uploads and downloads! So although I may be in the middle of the jungle in the middle of Africa, I still feel fairly connected, albeit virtually, to the rest of the world.

Physically, however, it would be difficult to get much more distant. Getting here, to LuiKotal camp, is a multi-day ordeal, involving an international flight to Kinshasa (which can involve several connections from most places), a harrowing ordeal to leave the Kinshasa International Airport (airport code: FIH), a minimum of one overnight in the city, a regional flight from the Kinshasa city airport to the Ipope airstrip (there are no roads to Ipope), possibly with a refueling stop en route, then a 5km walk to Lompole, another overnight there, and finally another 20km walk to camp, which includes several river crossings, lots of mud, one dugout canoe ride, and sometimes another overnight.

The international flights generally limit baggage to one carry-on and two checked pieces of up to 23kg (50 pounds), with the maximum limit being 32kg (70 pounds) per checked bag. I personally brought two 32kg bags, plus my carry-on which was over 20kg (fortunately they didn't weigh it!).

The regional planes are chartered, and have stricter weight limits. Passengers count as weight. When I came in we had the larger plane, with a total possible payload of 900kg (we used it all). The smaller plane that's often chartered for this project can carry about 450kg, including the passenger(s). We rely on the planes to reprovision the camp with staples like rice, beans, and coffee, in addition to carrying the passengers and their luggage, so food can sometimes take priority over excess luggage.

From the Ipope airstrip, everything is carried on people's backs. The first stretch (about 5km) is from the airstrip to the project's depot in Lompole, while the second (about 20km) is from Lompole to LuiKotal camp. Porters generally carry loads from around 15 to 20 kilos - anything above that earns them a double portering rate, but obviously there's an upper limit that anyone can be physically expected to carry so far.

So mail, as we know it, does not exist in this part of the world. Even in Kinshasa, the mail system is fairly dismal, and not to be relied upon for anything beyond inconsequential postcards or other anecdotes. And outside of the main few cities of the country, I don't think people even know the concept of 'mail'.

At our camp, however, we're connected to the outside world by periodic new arrivals or departures. I came in with three others, and four people left a few weeks later. This is how we can send and receive 'mail'. I, for instance, bought a few postcards while in Kinshasa, and 'sent' them a few weeks later when people left camp. They were probably posted from Germany. I also 'sent' some digital photos to my cousin in New York, via the New Yorker that left.

So using this same system, it is actually possible for me to receive 'mail'. Timing is obviously irregular, and weight and size are big factors on whether the person arriving will really agree to bring something in for me. But letters, postcards, photos, CDs, and so on, should have relatively inconsequential effects on their luggage's weight, so should not be a problem.

It is now late April, and the next flight coming to Ipope will be in mid- to late-May. It will be carrying Grit, and possibly Jonas. Grit is coming from Leipzig, and I think that's where Jonas is based right now too. Leipzig is where the Institute is that established this camp. So any mail that is sent to me should be sent care of the Institute in Leipzig.

For anything that arrives at the Institute by around mid-May, it can be addressed to Grit Schubert. After that, her mail will probably just sit there until she gets back from here several months later. So address any later correspondence to Gottfried Hohmann and he'll make sure it gets to me with the next Institute visitor. It is recommended that anything be double-enveloped, so that if Grit or Gottfried opens 'their' mail, they just find another label inside with my name on it. Use the following format:

Ryan Matthews at LuiKotal Camp, DRC
c/o GRIT SCHUBERT (or c/o GOTTFRIED HOHMANN, if it will arrive after mid-May)
Max-Planck Institut fur evolutionare Anthropologie
Primatologie
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Germany

So following this method, I guess my wish list is data CDs with photos of what's been going on in people's lives in recent months, or even just with photos of what's been going on in the world (we get very little news of the outside world here). I suppose some interesting magazine articles or newspaper clippings would be appreciated, or some hardcopy pictures to look at and show off. Developed photos are ok, but the humidity here kills them, and the portering trip to camp often leaves everything soaking wet. Anything sensitive to being dropped in a river ought to be waterproofed! CDs with recommended listening of mp3-format music would be a good call - I've got about 100GB of space left on my player's hard drive. Or maybe spices that you think would complement the food here, or little sweets or whatever. I dunno - get creative!

Or just letters and postcards, of course:)

If you do send something via this method, I'll be sure to acknowledge it (by email) when it finally arrives. If it's been more than a month or so, or you read in another entry that someone new came but you haven't gotten a response from me yet, then it's possible the mail was left in Leipzig - write me to see what's up. I brought a list of email addresses, but I don't have everyone's, so be sure to include that too.

Whatever I get, it'll be cool. The fact that getting something to me here is such an involved process, just makes it that much more special when it finally arrives. Thanks in advance!

-Ryan.

(RM) Monkey lunch

2007-04-16T15:33:00.000+02:00

Monkey lunch

Monday, 16 April, 2007

Let me begin by saying that I've been a vegetarian for the past ten years. I turned veggie around January or February 1997, sometime into my second semester of my degree program in Geography and Environmental Science. I think most of the students in the program became vegetarian by around then, as well. The rationale was basically that the meat industry, in its current form in the developed world, has such a detrimental effect on the environment, that, if we were purporting to be somewhat environmentally conscious, the least we could do as individuals would be to stop supporting that force of environmental degradation.

To be fair, I was never very much of a meat eater up to that point, so the switch from omnivore to herbivore was not very difficult for me. I never gave up eggs or milk products, so the proper title of my vegetarianism has been ovo-lacto-vegetarian. I never liked fish in the first place, so I didn't eat them either. When possible, I usually bought free-range eggs, too.

In the intervening decade, my sister will claim that I was not really vegetarian, because I did occasionally make exceptions and eat meat. This is true, although I still pretty much stood by my original rationale for not eating meat: I would generally be ok with eating it if it were not produced in an environmentally detrimental way. If someone caught a fish on the lake at the cottage, for example, I'd be happy to have some.

The other exception I would make was for culturally-mandated meat. Yeah, you could argue that eating tons of beef in the United States is culturally-mandated, but that's taking a rather narrow view of American culture, don't you think? What I'm referring to is basically turkey on Thanksgiving, sushi at Japanese restaurants, and goat in Africa. The goat in Africa is ok because that's how the people I had been among there produced their own food. The turkey on Thanksgiving I only had a couple of times, because yes, it is indeed a very cultural thing to have a turkey on Thanksgiving. And the sushi... well, I admit that's a bit of a stretch, but what else would I eat at those restaurants!?

Ok enough about all that, now back to the Congo. When I left the States a couple of months ago, I determined that I would indeed be giving up my vegetarianism because once I got here, I would have so little choice in what I'd be eating that I couldn't really afford to forgo certain things based on my stance while in North America. And anyway, we would only really be eating meat that was harvested sustainably, as opposed to being raised in massive meat factories like in North America. I had my first couple of non-vegetarian meals while in France, and I've had a lot of fish since arriving in Congo.

The fish is an everyday staple here at camp. We have a resident fisherman (on rotations) that is housed, fed, and doled out a daily cigarette, and we pay him by the kilogram of fish he brings in every day. This usually amounts to a chunk or two per person, per meal, including our workers. We also have a supply of locally-produced smoked fish that supplements days where the fisherman only brings in a kilo or two.

The fish is caught in the Lokoro River, which is very close to our camp, and which has innumerable tributary branches that flood into the forest closer to camp. The fishermen put nets across various fingers of the tributaries, and they go out every morning for a couple of hours to check on all the nets. I'm sure we have a bit of an environmental impact by doing this, but I don't think it's at all unsustainable. In addition, the river forms the northern boundary of our study area forest and the village's exploited forest to the north, so there are always plenty of other fishermen doing the same thing as well.

Bushmeat, on the other hand, is strictly forbidden on our side of the Lokoro. Everyone knows that the people around here are hunters, and that they regularly consume the spoils of the forest hunts. But everyone also knows that the stretch of forest that we are using as a study site is completely off limits to hunting. "The garden of the animals," as Papa Endu endearingly refers to it. And of the food we have portered in to camp from the village, all is vegetable; none is animal. Really, it would be nice to have some goat or chicken every once in a while, but the villagers don't raise livestock because of their proximity to the forest and its predators - a single leopard can decimate the village's animal population literally overnight.

So we are pesci-vegetarian at LuiKotal camp, and so are our local workers while they're here. With a few rare exceptions...

Today our top bonobo worker went out on the early morning shift with two of the researchers. He located the bonobo nest with them at 5:30am, and then continued on to some old nests to take measurements of their decay rates - a job he regularly does. When he was finished, he headed back to camp. He got home around 11am carrying a Wolf's guenon with its entrails hanging out. Apparently, the unfortunate little monkey was killed by an eagle, who was subsequently frightened away when Lambert came upon it. So Lambert got a fresh monkey without breaking the taboo on hunting in our forest.

I was pissed. I gave him shit, and told him he shouldn't be stealing the eagle's lunch. He said that it's not just the eagle's food, it's the human's food too, and anyway, this has happened three times before and it's been ok. Indeed, this is the fourth time within the past year or so that bonobo workers have come across fresh prey, dropped by the predator that caught it. And this is the fourth time over the past year or so that we've had fresh non-fish meat at camp.

I let Lambert know I wasn't pleased, and that the eagle should be able to eat what it catches. I can't encourage this sort of thing! Then I took some photos of the cook's assistant standing over the thing with his machete, and I asked the cook what sort of ingredients he would need for its preparation. He used a bit of tomato paste, salt, and hot pepper.

I didn't find it very satisfying. Granted, one monkey doesn't go very far in feeding ten people, so we each just got a little chunk. I think my chunk was a shoulder blade. I must have spent ten minutes trying to pry the meagre amount of meat and cartilage off of the bone, and only slightly less trying to chew it up. I think the best aspect was the little chunks of chili pepper stuck to the flesh. I passed when offered the last bit of 'sauce' from the bottom of the serving bowl. The worst was that the monkey-meat odour stayed on my hands for the next hour, well after washing them vigourously with soap.

So I've been at the camp for just about a month now, and I've had a whole four bites or so of monkey meat, in addition to all the varieties of fresh and smoked fish we get each day. I know I'm gonna get flak for this, but really, what should I have done? For the most part, the animals in our stretch of forest are free to just do their thing without fear of much more than eager stares through binoculars, in contrast to the bullets, arrows, and snares they'd face in most parts of the country. Over the coming months though, we're bound to have another such situation in which a freshly-killed animal is basically handed to us by some frightened predator, and I'll probably get to eat that one too. And inevitably, if I spend much time in the village, I'll be eating what they eat, which is what they hunt - the group that left a couple of weeks ago apparently had tortoise before catching their flight.

In the meantime though, we'll continue to eat our kwanga and greens. Last night we had fresh raw spinach ("what, you mean you don't even want it prepared!?") with a dressing of mustard and lime juice, and today we're having pondu. We got some nkoti in today, for the first time since I've been here, so I'll look forward to trying that in the next day or two. And of course the bananas, papayas, grapefruits, plantains, and fresh fish.

Unlike the rest of the Congolese population, it'll be a while until the next time we have any more bushmeat!

(RM) Papa Endu

2007-04-16T15:32:00.000+02:00

Papa Endu

Friday, 13 April, 2007

"You don't mind being in the middle of the forest when it gets dark,
with just a compass to find the way, right?"

Brigham and I had left the trail a couple of hours before, as soon as we
heard the bonobos. Our 'Tim' trail was heading east, and we heard their
calls to the southwest. With our compasses, we followed that bearing
for a while, adjusting it accordingly when we heard subsequent calls.
We first found the bonobo group around the spot where we crossed the
north-south 'Meike-5' trail, and continued to follow them beyond that
trail. Once we were with the bonobos, I stopped watching my compass,
but knew simply that we were west of Meike-5.

The bonobos had decided it was time to stop feeding for the afternoon,
and had made the move from their feeding trees to their chosen nest site
for the night. I didn't see any of them descend to the ground; they
traversed the canopy with ease and eventually settled on a group of
trees in which to build their nests. Bizarrely, for this is the first
time this group has done it under our watch, they nested in the same
spot as two nights before. Brigham pointed out the exact spot where he
had observed them 48 hours ago; we stood there again and waited for the
rest of the bonobos in the vicinity to arrive.

It was then that we ran into Lambert and Papa Endu again - the two
Congolese bonobo workers who were also out following the bonobos for the
afternoon. When we don't know where the bonobos are, multiple people
often head out in the afternoon to different regions of the forest in
the hope that at least one of us hears and locates the group. Both
pairs of us found the same group that night. The four of us shared some
biscuits, drank some water, and noted the whereabouts of the nest site.
We wouldn't really be needing the compass after all, since my three
companions had been at this exact nest site over the previous days and
knew the way back to Meike-5 - it was only about 50m to the east. We
put our headlamps on and hiked the 8.5km or so back to camp.

That night, Brigham and I gossipped about Papa Endu. The man's somewhat
middle-aged, though I have no idea what his age actually is. His son is
also working at our camp, and is probably around 20. Papa Endu's been
around a while.

Compared with the other men who work for us, we both agree that Papa
Endu is a real charmer. It seems that he's always got a smile when he
makes a statement, and his statement is usually along the lines of
"such-and-such is very beautiful." He could be speaking of an inedible
fruit, a tree, an animal, a food, or whatever. Just always with a smile
and a charming voice: "ezali malamu mingi mingi!"

Papa Endu's first career, before he got a job at our camp following
bonobos around, was as a hunter. He's good with a shotgun, and equally
so with the bow and arrow. He knows our forest well because he spent
many years of his life hunting in it. Now, because of his job with us,
he's forbidden from even picking up a tortoise that crosses the path -
no matter how hard he pleads. (He got in big trouble one time, when he
saw a great bow-and-arrow-making tree just under a tree where bonobos
were, and instinctively walked up and started chopping it down.)

In my discussion with Brigham, we came to the conclusion that Papa Endu
is probably the person working for us who is best suited to the job, and
who likes working it the most. His job consists of walking the forest
trails that he's known for years, but without hunting anything. He's
obliged to locate and mark the nests where the bonobos were seen the
previous night, and he's obliged to track down the whereabouts of
bonobos whenever they've evaded us. He chuckles when he watches the
bonobo juveniles playing on the branches, swinging around or teasing one
another or whatever. And when we're elsewhere on the trail, he always
catches the slightest sound of other animals in the distance and points
them out.

Yesterday he took me down the trail that leads from our camp to our
drinking water stream, and pointed out where a small nocturnal antelope
was sleeping. He had shown me that spot several weeks before, but the
antelope wasn't in it that day. This time the little guy was there, all
curled up under some branches a few metres off of the trail, looking
back at us watching it. Apparently it's been nesting there for at least
a month now, despite the regular camp traffic going back and forth to
the stream. We obviously pose no threat, I guess. At night it goes and
does whatever it does, probably visiting LuiKotal. I have seen little
duikers around camp a couple of times - it may well be the same one.

I think Papa Endu honestly enjoys his job. I think he perceives it to
be somewhat of a vacation from the hunting vocation he's been accustomed
to thus far in his life: he gets to do much of the same stuff, but
without any of the hassle of actually succeeding in the hunt. He covers
a minimum of 15km a day in the forest, and always has several good meals
to eat.

Papa Endu still gets to track the animals, but rather than shoot them,
he points them out to us white folks who pull out our binoculars in vain
attempts to see the little bird or monkey or whatever that he hears
through the forest. He just chuckles as we traipse off the trail to get
a better look at a congo peacock, or as we spend 10 minutes staring at a
noisy mangabey. He'll just grab a big leaf, put it at the base of a
tree, and sit there chilling out with a smile as we observe the animals
he used to shoot.

Apparently, last night he almost caught a duiker (a small antelope) with
his bare hands. Even a charmer among the animals, the duiker was
somehow mesmerised by the light of his headlamp through the heavy rain
- Papa Endu approached gently and finally lunged for the animal's legs
at the last second. It jumped up, ran straight into the tree it was
standing against, and then towards Brigham. Papa Endu just yelled
"Brigham!," perhaps expecting Brigham to just wrap his arms around the
poor thing and pick it up. It got away, but the incident nonetheless
gave us yet another impression of Papa Endu's prowess in the forest. I
wonder what he would have done had he actually caught it?

Our workers generally stay at camp in two-week rotations, and Papa
Endu's is up in a few days. He's planning on returning to his family in
the village and spending the next couple of weeks hunting on their side
of the Lokoro. He's a good hunter and he knows it; he doesn't even want
to bring his sons along to get in his way - they don't need to know how
to hunt since he's capable enough to feed the whole family on his own.

I wonder if he goes out on his hunting outings with the same air about
him as on his bonobo outings with us. I have no doubt that his face
lights up with a big smile when he comes across a forest tortoise,
because that's so easy to catch, and is apparently very tasty. But does
he chuckle when he sees red colobus jump from tree to tree, before
shooting a couple down for dinner? Somehow I doubt it.

Our study site is an anomoly in the region because there is no regular
hunting of animals that goes on in it. Other stands of forest have a
similar range of animal species represented, but they essentially serve
as food pantries for various adjacent villages. In our forest, however,
the animals are allowed to just do their thing. There's not even any
wood cutting beyond a certain distance from camp, aside from some
limited trail clearing.

Nonetheless, our activity here effectively contributes to the adjacent
villages in different ways. We buy local produce from the local
agriculteurs, and we directly employ a lot of people both at camp and to
transport stuff to and from camp. They don't get as much fresh meat
from the forest we work in, but many people in the nearby villages are
still indirectly fed by this stretch of forest.

Although not everyone who lives in the area sees it as clearly as I make
it out to be, I think Papa Endu is one of the people who respects this
formula the most. He still gets to hunt sometimes, he still gets to
spend his days walking the forest, and he always has enough food to
eat. But with us he gets to enjoy the forest as it used to be, or
perhaps even as it is supposed to be. Instead of seeing the abundant
wildlife and thinking it would be great to hunt here, he sees the cause
and effect: not hunting is just what created that abundance. His
smiling statement to me as he pointed out the sleeping duiker sums it
up: "c'est le jardin des animaux ici!"

Yeah, I like that about our forest too: "it's the garden of the animals
here."

(RM) Food list

2007-04-12T14:30:00.000+02:00

Food list

This entry is actually so long that I had to send it in two batches; the intro is in the entry called 'Food and recipe challenge'.

Discalimer:
Let me warn you that you’re not obliged to read any of this. I go into a lot of detail on the random foods. Don’t complain that it’s boring - only read it if you’re really interested! There’s a table of contents to sum up the main things, followed by really detailed descriptions.

STARCHES
We have kwanga with every meal except breakfast, when we eat rice. In addition, for variety, I try to ensure that we’ve got at least one other starch with each meal.

- Kwanga
This is the main starch around here. I believe it’s made of manioc tubers, though a lot of transformation has happened to get it to kwanga form. We get it in logs, about a kg each, which are wrapped up in big leaves. The logs are put on a shelf over the fire to get hot, and then they’re chopped up into chunks and served up in a big pot. We grab a chunk, squeeze off a hunk of it, and dip it in the other food. I find it’s got a consistency similar to a glue stick, although its actual stickiness varies depending on how many days it’s been sitting in the pantry. The colour is white, with a bit of clearness to it, sort of like congealed rice noodles. It’s not that flavourful, nor is it all that absorbent, so it doesn’t soak up sauces that well, but it’s sticky so it’ll accept a good mixture of spices. Kwanga is the staple food here, so it’s served with pretty much every meal. It’s also fairly portable, so it’s useful for hiking.

- Patates douces
These are basically potatoes. They’re a bit sweeter than the spuds I’m used to. They’re also fairly small, so they must be a pain in the ass to peel. I’m glad I don’t peel them! We get them peeled and boiled, and they’re served in a pot. I suppose they could be mashed too, but that’s not done for us. Sometimes I mash them in my bowl and mix other stuff in with them.

- Lombardo
These are similar to potatoes, but with a different taste. They look the same as the patates douces, but have a slightly redder flesh. The texture is almost the same, but the taste isn’t as agreeable. They’re served the same way as the patates douces, sometimes together in one pile.

- Benkufu
These tubers look similar to the potatoes and lombardo from the outside, but their texture is very different. The flesh is very white, and it’s filamented linearly. They are also prepared by peeling and boiling. If they’re boiled too much, they turn to mush, but the filaments sort of hold them to their shape. They can also be fried in local oil, or placed in the hot coals and cooked like that.

- Fufu
This is local flour made by grinding down the benkufus. It can then be mixed with water to make little patties or whatever. We haven’t had any of it since I’ve been here.

- Maize
We get little corns on the cob. The kernels are so hard! They’re boiled up, but it’s quite a pain to actually eat the kernels since they’re so hard. They’re really eaten by the mice in the pantry, too, so I don’t think it’s very practical to get maize.

- Plantains
OK, these may be fruits, but I’m sticking them in this group because of their role in a meal. They’re peeled, sliced into manageable sections, and prepared a few ways. Usually they’re just boiled. Sometimes they’re buried in the hot embers of the fire to cook, and they get a nice crust. The other way is to fry them in local palm oil, although that takes tons of oil. We had them fried once. We get plantains by the large bunch, and they last a while, so we generally have plenty on hand. They’re not really considered veggies, but are rather like another starchy accompaniment.

- Rice
We get huge sacks imported by plane from Kinshasa. We eat rice for breakfast every day, and it’s often the starch (in addition to kwanga) we have with our lunches and dinners.

- Spaghetti
This is an imported luxury that’s enough for a couple of meals between planeloads.

- Couscous
Another imported luxury that only lasts a few meals.

- Flour, yeast
This is imported and used to make some bread, although it’s hard to make bread in pots over a fire.

GREENS
I try to ensure that we’ve got a serving of greens with most meals, although they’re only good for a couple of days on the shelf. When there’s no greens left in the pantry, we usually revert to beans.

All of the greens are prepared the same way: they are mashed up, cooked with some water and oil in a big pot, and with some garlic, onion, salt, and tomato paste. The end result generally looks like soupy green mush, and I find that they all taste pretty similar.

- Epinards
This is spinach. It’s the same spinach as we have in The West. We get it in little bunches of fresh leaves that pretty much have to be used the day we get them or they go bad.

- Matembele
This stuff is similar to spinach, but somehow different. I can’t really describe how it’s different though. I guess the bunches are bigger, but the resultant pot is generally pretty comparable.

- Pondu
This stuff comes in big bunches. The stalks are green, with smaller red branches and green leaves on the ends of those. About half of the leaves are removed, and the other half are discarded with the stalks. I don’t understand which ones are to be kept and which are discarded, but the cooks do. It’s mashed up and cooked with tons of (local) palm oil instead of the moderate amount of vegetable oil used with the other greens.

- Nkoti
I’ve never had this, but it’s one of the available local greens. It’s not very popular at camp though, so I get the impression that we won’t be using it much.

- Bitekuteku
I've never had this either, but I guess it's like the others.

- Spaghetti local
This is not spaghetti, and not really a green either, but I don’t know where else to categorise it. It’s basically the pith of long stems from some big leaves. The leaves are discarded, as is the ‘skin’ of the stems, leaving long pithy bits that taste good. They range in length from about 10 to 25 cm (5 to 10 inches), and about half a cm in diameter. They are prepared identically to the greens, though their taste is different.

VEGETABLES
- Aubergines
These are small green eggplants. They’re prepared by peeling them, boiling them, and mashing them up with some salt and probably some tomato paste, garlic, and onion. They’re tasty.

- Courgettes
I guess this is squash, although we haven’t had it since I’ve been here. Apparently it’s prepared by cubing and boiling.

- Haricots
These are our beans, imported from Kinshasa. They start as dry greenish-pink beans and end up as soupy red beans. They’re prepared with salt, onion, garlic, and tomato paste. This is the backup vegetable for when none of the others are around.

- Peanuts
OK, I don’t know where to categorise these, so they’ll get tossed in with the veggies. These are produced locally. We generally have them roasted. They’re good mixed into other dishes, particularly the greens. They add crunch, which is missing in everything else we eat. They’re also a good snack between meals. Once we had peanut sauce, which was basically peanut butter. The peanuts were mashed up, and some salt and pili-pili (chili pepper) was added for flavour. That was our vegetable for the meal.

- Mbika
These look like pumpkin seeds, but I think they’re actually calabash (another type of gourd) seeds. They’re prepared by mashing them up into a paste, adding local palm oil and tomato paste, and some salt. The mbika sauce has a good texture, and a taste somewhat like peanut butter. We eat it as the vegetable of a given meal.

FRUITS
- Papayas
We eat these for breakfast, mashed up in rice. We grow papayas at camp, although they don’t ripen very often. Unripe papaya has been used once in a creative curry meal with coconut.

- Bananas
We get these by the whole bunch. They’re little and sweet. The mice like them too.

- Oranges
The ones we get are green and somewhat sour. They’re a lot tougher than the Sunkist variety.

- Limes
Little, shiny, and slightly yellow. Good as a seasoning on papaya or avocado.

- Lemons
These are thick, green, gnarly, and sweet.

- Pamplemousses
These are primitive grapefruits. Essentially half of the fruit is pith. We generally have these for dessert after dinner, chopped up into usable bits so we chow into the fruity sections and leave the dividing elements. They’re pretty sweet; probably sweeter than the oranges.

- Avocados
We get the larger variety here than the little Mexican ones generally seen in North America, although they’re not always that large. We eat them for breakfast, mashed up and mixed with rice. We’ve got several young avocado trees at camp, but they don’t produce fruit yet.

- Coconuts
We get these husked, similarly to the ones in the stores of North America. We generally eat chunks as snacks. Once we had a curry of unripe papaya cubes with coconut chunks, stewed in a spiced sauce (imported curry powder) and served over rice. That was great.

- Pineapples
We actually grow these at our camp, but they take forever to produce a single pineapple. We also get them every once in a while from the village.

- Saffoo
This is a little nut-looking fruit with a thin brownish skin. It looks a bit like an oversized date. It’s boiled, and the thin skin is sucked off with the flesh, which is in a thinnish layer between the skin and the pit. I find the taste to be a cross between avocado and lime. These are more of a tasty treat than a useful fruit that we can get regularly, and they’re impractical for anything more than an infrequent indulgence.

- Tondolo
Little red fruits that I've never had. Apparently you eat the whitish inside, including the seeds, and it smells (but doesn't taste) like breakfast sausage.

- Cola nuts
Apparently there’s a cola nut tree along one of the trails in our forest, but I haven’t been down that trail yet. I wonder how easy it will be to get one of the fruits down.

- Glucose biscuits
Yeah, I know, these aren't fruits, but they're good snacks and they don't fit into any other group. We buy them in bulk in Kinshasa and consume a lot. They're portable, so mostly they're used as snacks while in the field on long days. The biscuits themselves are basically sweet little cookies that are probably intended for babies who are teething, in packs of 13.

SPICES/SEASONINGS
We have a few local seasonings, several regular imported staples that we use for seasoning, and a few imported spices that will serve to prepare just a couple of dishes each.

- Pili-pili
We’ve got two varieties of hot peppers. We grow tiny red ones at camp, and we get larger, juicier, green ones from the village. The green ones are similar to habaneros in appearance and hotness. Our tiny red ones are dryer and not quite as hot, but still pretty powerful if you get a whole one in a bite. Both varieties are prepared by mashing them up and mixing them with rock salt. We sprinkle the mixture over most things, we mix it into the greens, or we just dip the kwanga into the mixture for flavour.

- Lompidj
This is a green leafy herb. We ground it up with rock salt and pili-pili, and add it to most dishes for flavour. I guess the closest comparable flavour I know of would be fresh dill.

- Rock salt
We import this from Kinshasa. It’s worth a lot around here.

- Cane sugar
We import this from Kinshasa. It’s also worth a lot around here.

- Honey
We import this from Kinshasa, but apparently we can get local stuff too.

- Onions and garlic
We import this from Kinshasa. It’s my job to put them into the sun every day to keep them from getting too moist and going bad.

- Tomato paste
We import this from Kinshasa by the case of tiny little cans. It’s used in pretty much every dish we eat.

- Palm oil
We get this from the village. It’s thick, orange, and grainy, and probably not that healthy, but it tastes good. It congeals at about 20C, so it won’t even flow in the morning if the night was at all cool. It’s used in a number of dishes, and can be used to fry stuff.

- Vegetable oil
This is imported from Kinshasa and used for flavouring in a number of dishes.

- Imported seasonings
Black pepper
Mexican fruit seasoning
Curry powder
Garam masala
Cinnamon
Coriander
Turmeric
Herbes de Provence
Basil
Etc. (whatever people brought)

MEAT
The local population around here is a hunter society. In general, each village has a large stand of forest that is attributed to them, where they do their hunting and other resource gathering. There are also plenty of rivers where people do their fishing. In our case, the village of Lompole has basically ceded much of their forest to us, so the Lompole forest has become a study site rather than a hunting resource. There’s still a lot of Lompole forest (to the north of the Lokoro River) that isn’t part of the study site, so the villagers still eat plenty of local bushmeat. But we don’t purchase any of it. We need to remain clearly opposed to hunting, in order to maintain credibility when we request that the villagers not hunt in our study area.

We do, however, accept the fishing that goes on in the Lokoro. Our camp is just south of the Lokoro, and there are a few fishing villages along its length nearby. We have one resident fisherman at camp who is not paid a daily wage, but is paid by the kilogram of fish that he brings in for our immediate consumption. He also gets to benefit from the luxuries of living in our camp, vs. in a fishing village (free food, a complimentary daily cigarette, coffee with sugar, salt, plenty of hangout time with the other workers, etc.).

So our fresh meat supply consists solely of fish. In addition, we have smoked fish that’s produced locally, and we have canned stuff.

- Fresh fish
We’ve got quite a variety of species that appear every morning. Sometimes there are some big ones that can weigh four or five kilos (up to 10 pounds or so), while the majority are smaller. I guess the average daily haul is about 1.5kg, though it ranges from none on bad days to about 10kg on the best days. The workers’ staple is fish. The fish is pretty much always prepared by chopping it up and boiling it with tomato paste, salt, onion, and garlic. I find that it’s a pain in the ass to eat, because of all the tiny little bones to pick out. I sometimes forgo the fish entirely just so I don’t have to deal with picking out all the bones.

- Smoked fish
I think this stuff looks nasty, but it’s got similar nutritional qualities to the fresh stuff but it keeps longer. The meat is pretty shrivelled up inside though. At least the bones are decomposed sufficiently to chew through. It’s prepared identically to the fresh fish, but needs to boil longer to make it chewable. Smoked fish is probably the only thing we have, aside from peanuts, that requires actual chewing – everything else we eat is pretty much mush.

- Sardines
We import these by the case from Kinshasa. We bring a tin into the field on days we’ll be out for most of the day. We also use sardines to supplement the fish supply on days that the fisherman doesn’t bring much in.

- Corned beef
We import this from Kinshasa. This is also portable food for taking into the field on long days. Once we had it mixed up with beans and spices for dinner, sort of like chili. Corned beef isn’t something that’s particularly liked, but it’s practical.

BEVERAGES
We get our water from a local stream about four minutes down a trail, and filter it before drinking. We also use that water, put into buckets, for bathing in shower stalls at camp. There’s also another stream about five minutes further down the trail that we can go to, to actually bathe in. Both streams are about ankle-deep. The bathing one is also where our laundry is done.

- Water
Our drink selection consists of filtered water at the ambient temperature, or boiled water steeped with a few imported things:

- Coffee grounds
We get two brands imported from Kinshasa. The Bora Sana isn’t very good, while the Carioca Super Qualité Kinshasa is passable. We mix it with hot water and let the grounds settle at the bottom. We mix in sugar and milk powder, and it’s actually not that bad.

- Nescafé
This imported luxury doesn’t last the whole period between planeloads; it’s much tastier than the Carioca Super Qualité Kinshasa.

- Nesquik
The chocolate variety is clearly the most popular here, mixed with the boiled water and milk powder, but we also have the strawberry variety. I haven’t tried that. I think the pink colour just turns me off.

- Tea
We have Lipton bags with the yellow label. There are also a few other varieties around, that individuals brought. There’s a bit of green tea, for example.

- Milk powder
Just used as a base for Nesquik, or as an additive to coffee or tea.

COOKING INFRASTRUCTURE
All of our food is cooked over fire. The fire is built by placing the ends of long thick logs together, in a starburst pattern. As they get burned, the logs are pushed closer to the centre. The pot is balanced on the middle of the log starburst. If needed, a satellite fire is created in the same way with some of the smaller logs, but usually there is just one pot on at any given moment. There are rarely flames; the heat is mainly transmitted from red-hot embers on the ends of the logs. The ash is sometimes used to cook stuff in too.

There is a shelf above the fire, where smoked fish is stored and where kwanga is heated up. Shoes can also go there to dry, and the workers put their tobacco and cigarettes there to keep it dry. Fresh fish can be placed there to get smoked for longer-term storage.

There is a collection of pots for cooking in. No pans.

There’s a bucket for sorting through the fish guts.

There’s one ladle. I ordered another on the plane from Kinshasa.

There are a few knives. These are used for everything from peeling potatoes to chopping greens to opening cans of tomato paste. They get so much use that most have lost their handles, but they are still useful.

There’s a big mortar and pestle for mashing the greens or the peanuts or the mbika seeds. The pestle is made of a dugout log on a pedestal, and the mortar is like the butt end of a baseball bat.

All of our dishes are stainless steel. We always eat from bowls (no plates), with a small side plate for piling kwanga, pili-pili, or fish bones. We always have a spoon and a fork, but never a knife. Things just aren’t tough enough to need a knife. We each have a mug. That’s it.

RECIPE CHALLENGE
OK, now you know all of our food supplies here, and what we’ve got at our disposition to prepare it. We have two cooks working full-time to do the work, although my role is to come up with meals. So far, I just program what’s known. I’m open to suggestions though!

So, if anyone reading this finds that these ingredients and cooking implements would enable something more interesting than what we’ve got, please send us recipes. Check the ‘Communication’ blog entries for details on how to go about sending emails here, and include a bit of news from the outside world while you’re at it!

Thanks!

(RM) Food (and recipe challenge!)

2007-04-12T14:29:00.000+02:00

Food (and recipe challenge!)

OK, so before I left for the jungle, I was asked a number of times what sort of food we would be eating. I didn’t really have a good answer, but I knew it would be a combination of local foods with a few imported items. And that’s just what it is. But really, I don’t feel that there’s a whole lot of variety, especially compared with the culinary choice I’ve been accustomed to for most of my life. So, while this missive is primarily just to describe the sorts of food we’ve got here, it’s also a challenge to anyone who reads it and considers themselves somewhat creative with food.

Part of my job here is to orchestrate all of the food for our camp. This means that I place twice-weekly orders to the local village for the local stuff, and I also ration the imported stuff that has to last until at least the next plane. Planes come every month or two, and have a limited capacity, so I’ve also got to determine what needs to be shipped in on the upcoming flights – essential staples, mostly, like rice, sugar, salt, and coffee.

I’ve also got to maintain the food stocks, to ensure that they don’t go bad. With the heat, humidity, and vermin, this is a formidable task. I’ve got a storeroom of blue plastic barrels that can be shut airtight, where much of the dry stuff is stored. I take many of the things out regularly to dry in the sun so that it doesn’t get mouldy. The local food is kept in an open-air ‘pantry’ consisting of log shelves and liana loops hanging from the ceiling. The bananas and plantains hang in whole bunches from the ceiling, while the other things are lined on the shelves. Mice and insects are my enemies; they pose a challenge to storing anything for long.

We eat three meals a day at camp, and often take portable food for long days in the field. Breakfast is at 6am, lunch is at noon, and dinner is at 6pm. Our workers have a different regime that suits them better. We (the research team) always eat together. If people are still out in the field in the evening (which is frequent), we generally wait for them to return and shower before eating dinner together. It’s the first time in years that I’ve been in a living situation where we have formal meals as a group!

In the 'Food list' entry is a list of ingredients, with basic descriptions of their qualities and sometimes with comparisons to foods we know in The West. At the end are descriptions of our kitchen facilities. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with interesting recipes with these components, and send them to us here at LuiKotal camp. Cuz really, we only eat a few variations of the following things, and some interesting suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Ryan.

In summary, the 'Food list' has the following foods (but in excruciating detail):

CONTENTS (foods imported from Kinshasa are marked with a *. The rest is local.)
-STARCHES
- Kwanga (the staple starch)
- Patates douces (potatoes)
- Lombardo (like potatoes)
- Benkufu (stringy potatoey things)
- Fufu (manioc flour)
- Maize
- Plantains
- Rice*
- Spaghetti*
- Couscous*
- Flour, yeast*
-GREENS
- Epinards (spinach)
- Matembele (like spinach)
- Pondu (other leafy thing)
- Nkoti (other leafy thing)
- Bitekuteku (other leafy thing)
- Spaghetti local (pith)
-VEGETABLES
- Aubergines (eggplants)
- Courgettes (squash)
- Haricots (beans)
- Peanuts
- Mbika (like pumpkin seeds)
-FRUITS
- Papayas
- Bananas
- Oranges
- Limes
- Lemons
- Pamplemousses (like grapefruits)
- Avocados
- Coconuts
- Pineapples
- Saffoo
- Cola nuts
- Glucose biscuits*
-SPICES/SEASONINGS
- Pili-pili (chili pepper)
- Lompidj
- Rock salt*
- Cane sugar*
- Honey(*)
- Onions and garlic*
- Tomato paste*
- Palm oil
- Vegetable oil*
- Imported seasonings*
-MEAT
- Fresh fish
- Smoked fish
- Sardines*
- Corned beef*
-BEVERAGES
- Water
- Coffee grounds*
- Nescafé*
- Nesquik*
- Tea*
- Milk powder*
-COOKING INFRASTRUCTURE

If you've read what we've got from the 'Food list', you're ready for the Recipe Challenge!

RECIPE CHALLENGE
Now you know all of our food supplies here, and what we’ve got at our disposition to prepare it. We have two cooks working full-time to do the work, although my role is to come up with meals. So far, I just program what’s known. I’m open to suggestions though!

So, if anyone reading this finds that these ingredients and cooking implements would enable something more interesting than what we’ve got, please send us recipes. Check the ‘Communication’ blog entries for details on how to go about sending emails here, and include a bit of news from the outside world while you’re at it!

Thanks!

(RM) Second bonobos

2007-04-09T22:13:00.000+02:00

My second bonobo encounter

7 March

Bonobo encounters have been fairly hit-or-miss over the past couple of weeks. When I first arrived here, it seemed that our bonobo group was nested almost every day; that frequency has been waning.

Ideally, the bonobos are followed to their nesting site in the evening, and they are greeted there again in the morning. They are then followed for as long as possible during the day, although they often evade the researchers in the field. If the group has evaded the researchers, or if their whereabouts was entirely unknown for the day, researchers spend the afternoon looking (listening) for them. In this way, the group is often found again in time to nest them in the evening.

On Friday evening, the researchers who had gone into the field succeeded in locating the bonobos settling into nest trees for the night. In fact, they located two separate nest groups - about 500m apart. This had been the first successful nesting in almost a week. So, that night, when we planned the next morning, it was determined that two groups of researchers would head out to the field in order to have observers at each of the two nest sites. I joined one of the two groups.

Bonobos nest at around dusk, and they begin to stir at first light. For whoever nests the bonobos, this means that they start hiking back to camp as of around 6pm, while whoever greets the bonobos in the morning needs to be within close earshot of the nest by around 5:30am. The cue is when it is possible to navigate the forest without the headlamp – that’s when it’s time to move close enough to the nest tree to begin visual observations.

Lately, the bonobos have been nesting between 7 and 9 kilometres from camp. This makes a long commute in the dark to get to the nest sites by first light. For nest sites that are far from established trails, the last few hundred metres can add a considerable amount of time to the commute. (At least the trails leading to the recent nest sites are on dry ground; many of the trails here are submerged in water or mud. The following days’ nests were in such swampy areas.)

Saturday morning, the closest of the two nest groups was about 50m off of the trail, after about 7.5km of trail hiking from camp. The next one was about 250m off of the trail, after another 250m or so of trail. So we needed to leave camp by 3:45am in order for everyone to make it to the nest groups by 5:30.

The day began at around 3, in the misty dark of the night. Each of us appeared gradually from our tents, dressed for the field. The moon shone eerily through the haze. We turned the light bulb on at our table. We used thermoses of hot water that had been prepared the night before to make oatmeal and coffee. Everyone seemed to have a different recipe for oatmeal – I mashed a banana into mine.

We all had similar supplies for such an excursion: The headlamp for the hike out – and possibly for the hike back, in cases where someone stays out all day and comes back after dark. A couple of litres of water each. Some food, including a couple of packs of biscuits and a can of sardines per person, and perhaps a banana or two. Each group generally takes some kwanga (the local starch, with the consistency of a glue-stick). Everyone needs a compass, a pair of binoculars, and a field notebook. There’s generally a GPS unit per group. A raincoat is always a good idea. I also brought my camera and tripod, although the extra weight means that these aren’t brought out daily.

We began the hike promptly at 3:45. We didn’t stop for over 90 minutes, and we barely spoke. Stopping to pee means falling significantly behind – there’s no time for breaks. In a single-file line, with headlamps illuminating the windey trails through the forest, this really constitutes a commute.

The first 5.5km are a straight shot down a single trail, then a 1km shortcut trail to the second trail, then another half km or so to the start of the trail where the bonobos nested. The first pause in our hike was at the start of that trail, where we divided into our two groups. We also agreed to keep our headlamps pointed downwards, in order to avoid shining into the forest where the bonobos were still sleeping.

I was in the first group, so we arrived at the turnoff from the trail with about 10 minutes to spare; the others still had half a kilometre to hike, much of which was off the trail already. We got to sit and rest for a few minutes, eat a few biscuits, and repack our bags from hiking mode to observation mode.

We headed into the forest, on the lookout for bonobos. Through my binoculars, I spotted one high up in a tree, swinging downwards. We continued in that direction. Another bonobo (or possibly the same one) climbed a spindly tree high enough to stare at us. We stopped and stared back for a few moments. It went back to the ground and took off. So did the others, I guess. We tried following the group, but they sure move more stealthily than we do. And when they’re out of sight and not calling, they’re pretty damn hard to locate. Our bonobos got away. I’d gotten good looks at two (maybe the same one), while my colleagues said they’d seen three.

So then we did what a lot of bonobo field work involves. We sat and listened. We first returned to the trail near to where we had first left it, and continued down it to the first good log. We discussed tactics, repacked our bags, ate biscuits, and so on. I’m making it sound like we were so busy - really, we just sat and listened. I photographed a mushroom.

After a while (was it 30 minutes or an hour?), we heard a bonobo call off in the distance! A single call. So we continued down the trail in that general direction, and stopped again once we were in line with the approximate spot where we thought the call may have come from. We found another log, sat down, and proceeded to listen again.

After another while (someone else was taking notes on such details as timing), we heard bonobo calls. This time they were closer, and it was a series of calls rather than just one. We were off! We headed straight into the forest, following the compass bearing in the direction of the bonobo calls, and soon found them. There were several scattered around, up different trees in the vicinity. I chose to observe the juvenile and the infant playing high up in a tree, next to a day nest of, presumably, a mother. They were so cute!

As we approached the bonobo group, it became clear that there were loads of bonobos all over the place: above us, up in neighbouring trees, on the ground nearby, and so on. I continued to observe the two little guys playing, because they were the cutest. But I couldn’t help notice some movement in the underbrush ahead of us. And some bright red!

It was Martin, with his red bandana. We had located the other nest group, that he and Brigham had been observing since dawn. It’s likely that the bonobos we had first encountered at our nest site were also among the greater group surrounding us, but we were clearly infringing on Martin and Brigham’s observations.

The bonobos in our forest have been getting gradually habituated to the presence of human researchers since sometime in 2002, when the LuiKotal field research station was first established. Habituation has progressed slowly but surely, to the point where behavioural observations are finally possible: the bonobos are sufficiently relaxed to human presence to allow us to actually make observations. But the policy has always been to have a maximum of three humans observing a given group at a time, generally all within close proximity to each other. Suddenly, as Andrew and Caro and I showed up to the group being observed by Martin and Brigham, we had five humans scattered among the bonobos. At least two of us needed to leave.

So I left with Andrew. He planned to return in the afternoon, to take over the observations for whoever was ready for a break. We made our way through the bush back to the trail, and started back to camp. It was about 8:30am, and we had already been out for almost 5 hours. Camp was about 8km away.

So my second encounter with the bonobos was fairly typical, though my cutting it short early is generally not so intentional. The early morning departure from camp, with the long hike to the nesting site, is standard practice. The quick loss of the bonobo group, unfortunately, is also fairly normal. Sitting on a log, listening intently, is therefore very common too. And although heading back to camp at around 8:30 was my choice, it is often also fairly commonplace, if the morning group gets away and doesn’t make another sound.

Since I was out so early, so far from camp and carrying photo gear, I took advantage of the rest of the day and returned very slowly to camp. Since I couldn’t photograph bonobos, I decided to photograph more mushrooms. They’re so much more cooperative! I shot dozens of them. I also got several cool butterflies, a blue dragonfly, a colourful flycatcher (bird), and several other smaller primate species. I got home around 4:45pm – about 13 hours after leaving camp.

Since Saturday, they bonobos have been successfully followed pretty much all day. They were nested again on Saturday night, and they were followed for the full day on Sunday. Granted, it was raining most of the day on Sunday, so they didn’t move around a whole lot. But when they did travel, they travelled far, and mostly through swampland! So now the bonobo work has the added dimension of schlepping knee-deep through mud, in addition to the other challenges.

I think I’ll probably hold off for a little while before going out on another bonobo observation day – at least until they’re not in swampland all day. It’s definitely tough work for everyone involved, and the researchers here who do it on a daily basis are clearly pushing their bodies hard. But spirits are high, because of the bonobos. Sure, 20km+ days are the norm, deep mud is always a possibility, and lunch often consists of sardines and biscuits. These all seem somewhat trivial, though, when you get to hang out with a bonobo group as they go about their daily business. I guess the bonobos are habituating the researchers, too.

(RM) Communication, part two

2007-03-31T15:02:00.000+02:00

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

(RM) First bonobos

2007-03-31T14:02:00.001+02:00

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.

(RM) To LuiKotal

2007-03-31T14:02:00.000+02:00

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.

(RM) Kinshasa

2007-03-26T13:14:00.000+02:00

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.

Last week in France

2007-03-15T19:19:00.000+02:00

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!

Upload test from Kinshasa

2007-03-15T19:18:00.001+02:00

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.

Communication

2007-03-05T18:30:00.000+02:00

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

En route (France)

2007-03-05T09:51:00.001+02:00

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 Méla nie. I'm planning on spending most of this week in Paris with Ch ris and Lucie, with a Tuesday evening with my cousin Mél an ie in the suburbs, and Wednesday trip to Lille (in the north of France) to visit an old high school friend, Mik ki.

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!

Packing up

2007-02-03T18:00:00.000+02:00

It’s Saturday, February 3^rd, 2007, and two weeks from now I’ll be on the road with Marco in his rental truck. He’s moving all of his belongings, and towing his car, to his parents’ beach house on a spit of beach in North Carolina. I’m going to be dropped off four days into the journey, at Asheville, North Carolina. My mom’s meeting me there with a rental car, after having flown from Philadelphia airport. She and I will spend a couple of days driving the Blue Ridge Parkway, which will hopefully be tranquil and beautiful in mid-February. We’ll be back to Princeton, NJ in time for my flight from JFK on February 24^th. I arrive in Paris on the 25^th and meet up with an old friend with whom I’ll spend the next week. She’s moving from Paris to Lyon that week, and starting her new job there. I hope to spend the following week visiting relatives in northwest France, and seeing a couple of other friends in Paris before taking off for Kinshasa.

I depart Paris for Kinshasa on March 10^th. I have three days to spend there on my own, then I meet my new colleagues on the 13^th. They arrive from Germany and perhaps someplace else too. I imagine we’ll be spending a few days in the city dealing with bureaucracy. Getting the right residency permits, paying the right bribes, getting the right stamps in the passport. Then we’re off to the jungle.

The final destination is LuiKotal research camp near the banks of the Lokoro River. The nearest village is Ipope, where there’s a basic airstrip hewn out of the jungle. The local tribe is called Kundu, and there are numerous small villages in the region. From Ipope it is about a 20km (12.5 mile) hike on forest paths through the jungle to reach LuiKotal camp. The trek takes a little over half a day. Once I am at the camp, it is very infrequently that I will even visit Ipope, let alone Kinshasa (probably never before 9 months). As far as I know, there’s not even a road that reaches Ipope, so really the only way to get to this camp is by chartered Cessna followed by a 20km hike. At least porters can carry some of the luggage.

The camp has negotiated with villagers from Ipope to hire porters and other workers on a regular basis. When we arrive at the airstrip, porters carry our bags into the forest for us. They tie our things onto poles for the walk. Teams come out in shifts of a week or two each, bringing surplus produce from the village and carrying out certain of our toxic wastes like batteries. The workers do our cooking and clean up, they do our laundry, and there’s someone who fishes in the river basically full-time.

That’s all five weeks away though, because I’m currently still living in my suburban home in Mesa, and working my cubicle job. My house is presently filled with boxes, packing materials, piles of important stuff, and the basic necessities of (suburban) life, like speakers and an mp3 player. This weekend, I hope to finish boxing up the majority of my possessions, and sort out a big pile of crap that just plain needs to be given away or otherwise disposed of.

I hired a Mexican for the first time the other day, who cleaned up the whole side and rear yards, and then painted the garage door and trim. He was a mormon by the name of Alberro, with whom I got to practice my rudimentary español as we ate veggie burgers in the back yard and as I tried to explain what needed to be done. He did good work. (In Mesa, illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, stand on certain street corners on weekday mornings in hope of work for the day. They are a fundamental part of Arizona’s economy for construction and landscaping, and are utilized frequently by a high proportion of other Arizonans for occasional labour. The workers benefit with cash at the end of each workday, while the Arizonans benefit with low-cost occasional labour that does good work but requires no superfluous paperwork.)

My house is scheduled to be sold next Sunday, February 11^th. I’m advertising a ‘for-sale by owner’ open house for next Saturday and Sunday, hoping to settle with the highest bidder by Sunday night. I’ll also need to sell my car, a 2005 Chevy Cobalt with 20,000 miles on it. The rest of my crap will either be stored, given away, or tossed into a dumpster.

This weekend, though, I’m packing up my house. Within the next couple of days, I need to get a storage locker where I’ll leave the majority of my personal possessions. I’m bringing a few key articles to my mom, while my sister will have the locker’s key for the rest of the stuff. I won’t really be able to communicate well from Congo, so they’ll have to determine what of my things may be needed, and find where it is.