All listened quietly: five ambassadors, an army general, the Congolese Minister of the Environment, a top visiting official from Washington DC…. The testimonies were read. Seven gave their lives in the service of Congo’s parks. Five were wounded, but still work for nature conservation in Congo. And four, over the past year, have grasped the conservation challenge and pushed their parks to greater safety. We all listened.

It was an attentive audience.

It is the sixth Abraham Conservation Ceremony in Congo. Now, seven years after the end of war, there is still no calm for the parks where outlaw bands seek gold, ivory, bushmeat or just hide from justice. The widows of guards killed by an outlaw band in the okapi reserve told their horrific stories. Their husbands burned, dismembered…

The Epulu River with inset of two widows receiving awards from the ambassadors of France and Belgium.

Two guards shot in the forest while attacking that same band are healed and now back in uniform to secure the Okapi Reserve.

Ramazani Swing (Okapi Reserve) receives a medal from the Minister of the Environment.

The late chief warden of the Upemba National Park, Atamato Madrandele, was gunned-down by Maimai rebels. His wife accepted his medal.

A colonel of the army and a warden of the Parks Institute both received medals for their initiative, steadfastness and defiance of danger in service of Virungas National Park.

Chief Elenge from Kahuzi Biega solemnly declared that after years of opposition to Kahuzi Biega National Park, he and his people are ready to collaborate for a peaceful building of the park. Chief accepts his reward from the German Ambassador.

A last commemoration was made of the horrific abduction and rape of 24 women and girls by the criminal band that attacked the Okapi Reserve in June 2012. Some have escaped, others are still in captivity. At the time of abduction two were only 12 years old, one was 13 years old and four were fourteen years old. One of the women and the husband of a mother still in captivity stood to represent all the women and thank Nancy and other donors who have come together with a fund to ease the girls back into school and the women into their homes.

In the final photo Mignonne Nasato and Tapi Mustafa each hold a bronze plate with the inscribed names of all the abducted women.

More about Congo’s conservation hero’s 2013 can be read in the brochure:
Brochure Abraham 2013

Related posts:

1. Martyrs for the Wilds of Congo
2. Celebration and Mourning in Kinshasa
3. Woman Stops Elephant Extermination

A Lomami style of criminal (center) with elephant tusk and grigri. Major Ranger served time in jail, but is now back hunting for ivory.

April 15th – John and I sat in a sushi bar at the Newark airport. We were early: another two hours before our plane back to Congo. Occasionally we glanced at the television. There had been a bomb – two bombs – at the Boston marathon, just an hour earlier. Alarm, curiosity, but the world was not yet riveted to the search in Boston.

April 17th – John and I are back in Kinshasa. The news from Boston: three dead and more than two hundred injured. Runners lost their legs.

April 18th – Photos of the suspects are released. An amazing sleuth job! How many security cameras and cell-phone shots were analyzed and then compared between bomb locations? A high-tech police operation. That same night a chase ends in a short gunfight. The eldest suspect is dead and the next day the younger is found bloody, unarmed, hiding in a backyard.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarneav were soon the primary suspects in the Boston marathon bombings.

Were the bombers connected to an international terrorist group? No. Two brothers: the oldest 26 and the younger 19. The older, an outstanding boxer had hoped to compete in the National Tournament of Champions. Then the rules changed: American citizens only. He did not yet have citizenship. Was that the reason he set homemade bombs to kill innocent people?

What about his little brother: American citizen and prize-winning student in his senior high school class?

At age 19, my younger daughter idolized her older sister, seven years her senior. That blind devotion was gone two years later.

From a hospital bed, during his first interrogation, the younger gave as justification the American role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At age 19, I opposed the American role in Vietnam. My vehement conviction was secondhand, someone else’s knowledge and passion.

In Boston, the crime was brutal. The criminals: alienated, angry young men. Unfortunately, ridding the world of them will have little impact on the thousands of other alienated young men; a few will commit suicide, very few mass violence; most will readjust.

April 19th – In Congo: John flew to Kisangani, three days later he flew south to Kindu and now is heading to Katopa camp. He will take our dugout down the Lomami River to Obenge.

John will go north to Obenge. Maurice has already started south from Kisangani with supplies in the big dugout.

Obenge is the TL2 crime scene. It is no Boston. Utterly isolated, a full day by motorized dugout to reach the nearest tiny village and 130 km across forest to the nearest town with cell phone coverage. There is no road connecting Obenge to anywhere.

The crime:
1/ elephant poaching. Illegal but happens with impunity.
2/ attempt to kill our project workers – February 2013.
3/Looting of the TL2 base camp – February 2013.

The criminals: Colonel Thoms, Major Ranger, 50cents and Little John (truly short – not to be confused with Robin Hood’s Little John). None are originally from Obenge.

But for Colonel Thoms Obenge is more than a strategic base. One hundred years ago his ethnic group, and specifically his clan, claimed the Obenge forest. During colonial times the forest was given to another ethnic group and specifically the Yawende clan where Col. Thoms is responsible for mass rape of over 100 women and girls. He escaped from prison two years ago. He is an angry man.

The criminals are armed with AK47s and poisoned arrows and are supported through a black market in munitions. The ivory goes out the same way munitions come in.

Law-enforcement: Twice we (TL2 project ) supported military campaigns to pursue Colonel Thoms. Both times the military returned empty handed.
In February, 200 military (without our support) came to Obenge, presumably to capture Colonel Thoms and his cohorts. Now, two months later, military are still there, they have arrested minor associates, but all four principal criminals are still on the loose.

So what is the comparison?

Our world is small ,but — Congo is still a long way from that Boston finish line.

Our next steps ? Maurice and John will meet in Obenge.  I, too, am waiting to hear.  More later.

Related posts:

1. Update: Criminal Escaped
2. Anarchy and Complicity Deep in Lomami’s Forest
3. These are criminals up the Lomami

Who slaughters elephants in Congo? What Kingpin can pluck ivory from the most remote forests and also have access to international smuggling chains? This requires a substantial network.

In the Lomami River forests we see only the bones and the anarchy this breeds…
Who is responsible at this bottom end of the network: Criminals with forest savvy …

Col. Thoms (actually Basele Lotula) escaped from a top security prison two years ago where he was doing life for the rape of over 100 MBOLE girls. Now elephant poacher.

This year, 2013, criminals infiltrated the remote forest that is to become the Lomami National Park, forest we monitor from our camp at the small village of Obenge along the Lomami. We have had this camp since 2008 and developed excellent relations with some of the villagers –plausible relations with others. They are bushmeat hunters – only a few have hunted elephants and then always for someone else. They know a national park is being created, they were ready to move – until things began to change.

In central Congo, the north of the future Lomami National Park is still an outlaw’s wilderness.

Last year – in October – Col Thoms showed up at Obenge with two new players: someone who goes by the name of “John” and someone who goes by the name of “50centimes” or “50cents”. Thoms called Maurice, our team leader, and told him “you do your work and let me do mine – I hunt elephants, that is all I can do.” Then Thoms left for nearby camps. His gang has gotten bigger and it is better-armed – military guns. Only the bravest in Obenge have stayed aligned with us.

A truce of sorts was maintained by the fact that 6 armed park guards, on loan from the Maiko National Park patrolled the primary elephant zone around Obenge. The elephants are spread over thousands of square kilometers; the killing was reduced, but not stopped.

Park guards on patrol with the TL2 team stop at a bivouac camp for the night.

The guards came for six months; they were due to leave in February. Maurice’s replacement, Bofenda, arrived in early February. There were no replacement guards, though–not yet. In the meantime Maurice took Bofenda to see key sites, camera traps, the study area, as well as paths used by poachers….

A small group of researchers from the University of Kisangani made collections for a week. On February 9th they left, seemingly peacefully, in the motorized dugout they had rented in Opala. Actually it was not a peaceful return…they were shot at 40 km down stream, across from Katondo’s fishing camp, at the big bend in the river.

On February 10th, John and 50Cents came from Katondo to Obenge. They brought the information, “Two hundred military are marching to Obenge…” the news came from one of Thoms’s wives in Bimbi. The tension in Obenge explodes. John and 50Cents summon Maurice.

“You called the military to come get us. If the military come here, you will regret it.“

Katondo made the grigri magic that made the men immune to all harm. It was also from his fishing camp that John and 50Cent staged their ambushes.

Old Katondo started making grigri…magic to make men invincible. Women and children were sent out to garden camps. Men ate grigri and stripped half naked for greater strength. Now – presumably they were immune to bullets, immune to stabs, slices, or thrusts of any kind. They sang.

John and 50Cents left Obenge. They said they would go west to Lokobekobe to meet the military, but secretly they took a dugout downriver back to the big bend.

Bofenda and three guards set off on another routine patrol of several days. Maurice stayed in camp near Obenge to wait through the tension. He had no idea who these supposed military were – if they existed?

The 15th of February Thoms, himself arrived in camp with six armed men. Maurice in his own words “was arrested” by the outlaw. For an hour and half Thoms harangued Maurice. “If the military arrive here, in Obenge, you die.” Finally through the intervention of the three guards, Thoms backed down. But he stayed in the village, more grigri, more dancing. He called all the fishing dugouts from the east bank, back to the west bank of the Lomami.

Picture of Bebe Bofenda taken several years ago when he and others on a TL2 patrol raided a parrot capture camp.

Bofenda arrived on the 16th. Maurice and he did their final planning for Maurice’s departure. Our motorized dugout, the only one in Obenge, left the morning of the 18th February with Maurice and the 6 park guards.

What happened on the 18th February :

1. Along the Lomami, at the Katondo bend: Maurice and the guards are shot at from both banks of the River – AK47s.
2. Across the river from Obenge village: 200 military arrive on the east bank but they have no way to cross.
3. In Obenge, Bofenda and the TL2 team are taken hostage by Thoms. The village chief, himself, holds them at gun-point.

If your dugout is fired upon hit the bottom but remember wood does not block bullets the way metal can.

1…. Along the Lomami – the guards in Maurice’s dugout shot back. Bullets whizzed. Later I was shown a bullet hole in the dugout and another bullet gouge right against the side where Maga, the helmsman was sitting to guide the boat, first towards one bank, then the other, then downstream through the middle of the Lomami. Full throttle. No one was hurt. Pulled over finally at Masasi, the villagers, who knew the ambush was afoot were amazed to see Maurice and crew all alive. But no one (at least not us, not the military) knows where John and 50Cents are now.

2 and 3…. In Obenge – after nightfall, perhaps too nervous to stay quiet, Col Thoms started firing in the air, firing across the river towards the military. His hunters/rebels are lined up with him, with their shotguns, half naked in leaves, invincible, …
Bofenda and his team grabbed the moment of chaos to escape. Kapere, a stalwart local supporter, took the TL2 escapees in his dugout, out of sight, downriver, across the Lomami. They slept under the stars and then, at dawn on the 19th they crossed forest to find the military. Sixty military with PKM hike back through the forest to the dugout.

The dugout is no longer there. Reclaimed by Thoms.

Searching the banks they find two tiny fisherman’s dugouts…each large enough for one standing helmsman with paddle and one passenger

Undercover of deep darkness starting at two AM, the morning of the 20th, two of the TL2 team, Janiver (loyal and from Obenge) and Vincent took troops across; one by one with a PK Machine gun. At first light, firing began. Obviously outgunned Thoms and crew dove into the forest.

Now more than three weeks later, the military are still based at Obenge. They have taken close to a dozen prisoners: Thoms’s collaborators, some from the “elite” of Obenge. But Thoms, like John and 50Cents, has disappeared. Perhaps he has returned to Maniema. But he will be back. And he will come expecting to kill elephants.

The events above collected from thuraya messages and interviews with people who came out of Obenge…
And THANK YOU Edith and Nancy for making it possible for us to get more park guards back into the elephant forest!

Related posts:

1. Anarchy and the Absurd in Central Congo – 4
2. Anarchy and the Absurd in Central Congo – 1
3. Anarchy and the Absurd in Central Congo – 2

At the south end of Obenge village I (Roger Peet) noticed a length of narrow-gauge train track strung between two posts by the side of the trail. Maurice noticed me looking. “That’s the bell for the Catholic church, over there, behind the soccer pitch.”
“Where did it come from? Were there trains around here, back in the day?”
Maurice shook his head. “No, that came from Opala (a town down river, more than120 km as the crow flies). There was never any infrastructure like that here. Everything like that came from somewhere else.” He paused. ” Washi told me he found a plane in the forest once.”
“Really? What kind? Was it old?”
“It was old. He didn’t know what kind.”
A few days later, I asked Washi about the plane he’d found. (Washington is one of the park team workers.) Maurice translated for me.
“How big is it”
“He says there are pieces scattered over a large area.”
“Are there cylindrical parts? How big is the largest piece?”
“He says about from him to you.” So, about ten feet.
“What part of the plane was it from?”
Washi shrugged bashfully. Maurice laughed. “He says it’s difficult for him to know, since he’s never seen a plane close up, only far overhead.”

A week later we set out to look for it. Pablo, Maga, Obadi, Washi, the park-guard lieutenant and I walked fast on small trails through the forest for about 6 kilometers to reach the hunting camp where Washi had been staying at the time. From there Washi led us out along a ridge and down a slope to a small stream about a kilometer from his camp. He pointed into the mud. Small plastic bottles lay strewn in the leaf-mire.
“That was the first thing I saw,” he said. Just upstream there was a neat bonobo handprint in the fine clay of the riverbank.

We crossed the stream and went up the slope on the far side. A small rosette of shredded metal lay on the track we were following. I snapped a picture of it. As the rise flattened out Washi pointed. “There.”
It was a slab of aluminum, about as big as a dining room table, covered in a drift of leaves and small twigs. We brushed it off, stood it upright and pondered it. Definitely part of a wing, or a tail. There were characters stenciled on it, hidden under a green algal film. I spat on them and rubbed with my thumb. Cyrillic.

A first bit of wreckage

“Why is it in Russian?” I said.
“It must be an Antonov.” said Pablo. “Most of the cargo planes here are old Antonovs”
An Antonov is a big plane.
“Where’s the rest of it? Washi, did you look for more of it?” He shook his head.

We decided to fan out and see if we could find other pieces. Almost immediately, looking up, Pablo noticed a small wedge embedded deeply in a branch about twenty feet above us. We moved back down the slope, angling away from where we’d crossed the stream. Other pieces were spotted. They were larger, still slabs of what looked like wings. We crossed the stream again and ascended the slope, into thicker, thornier forest. Maga whistled, and we came running. A big slab of wing, about twenty feet long and ten deep. Washi dug around the torn surfaces, pulling out clumps of wire. He smiled. “Useful!” I pulled a slab of green glass from a shattered lamp-housing and put it in my pocket.

Looking for something still of use in a bit of old wing

We moved on, finding more pieces as we went. The stump of a wheel-leg, ailerons, something like a radiator, big slabs of bulkheaded aluminum paneling with thick sheets of rubber attached.

We crossed back through the river, sloshing through the mud, Washi now dragging coils of wire and a length of yellow-painted pipe. We found a propeller, with five-foot blue blades, bent and chipped and sunk in the stream mud.

Pablo (in blue) with hand on propeller and elephant tracks behind him

Then we found fragments with paint on them. Blue and white. The fragments were torn and shredded with unbelievable violence. We realized that slabs of metal were bound up with smashed portions of the trees they’d taken down as they careened to earth. Returning to the stream-bed, which seemed to follow loosely the trajectory of the crash, we realized that it was easier to walk if we just stepped on the half-submerged fragments of the aircraft. The forest was closing in, and it was becoming more difficult to move through it. Thorns caught in our clothes and ripped our hands. Rounding a sort of corner, we found another pile of metal, and a motor. We paused to drink.

We followed the debris along the stream.

“There’s still a lot missing.” I said. “Where’s the fuselage?”
I hopped across the stream, waded out into a grove of waxy Marantaceae leaves and looked down the course.
“There it is.”
About fifty meters away a huge pile of metal could be seen, vaguely, through a green cloak of vines and leaf. As we approached, it loomed over us, an incomprehensible mangle of big aluminum slabs, flipped and twisted and bent around each other. To one side was a strange bubble-shape, which looked like a gun-turret and had incongruously unbroken slabs of glass framing it.

It was clearly from an Antonov.

Maga and I went around to the right, carefully ascending the torn planes of metal. Every edge was ragged and sharp. The mass had come to rest against a small slope, where the river turned. At the top of the slope we entered the curve of the fuselage.
Inside the small space it was dark. There was a wheelset in there, jammed up against another propeller. Webbing spilled from bent surfaces. Coils of wire stretched taut through the airspace. We all piled in and stood in silence for a moment or two, flipping random switches labeled in Russian on boxes of machinery that hung loosely in midair.

Photo-op in a bit of fuselage

As we circled the mass we were constantly stymied by webs of wire and torn metal bound together by vines, grown through by woody stalks, and balanced crazily against big smashed timbers and slabs of savaged metal. It was impossible to approach, impossible to comprehend. There was no coherence to the shape, no cockpit visible. And it was abundantly clear that noone had been here since this plane fetched up against this gentle slope. There were no machete marks anywhere. We were the first to see this.

We withdrew, stunned, to eat our lunch. Sweat bees tormented us, settling in clouds on any exposed surface of skin and tickling gently with tiny legs. Their flight was slow, and gentle. We all pulled our heads inside our shirts to eat our rice and sardines.
As we were leaving, I noticed a yellow sphere sitting by itself away from the fuselage. It was made of two halves, held together by rusted bolts with thumb-nuts on them. Maga beat the bolts loose with the back of a machete. Inside was an odd little box, with a magnetic tape head and two spools wound with ultrafine metal wire.
“Maybe it’s the black box,” said the Lieutenant.
We loaded it into the pack with Washi’s trove of webbing, wire, pipes, and rubber and clicked on the GPS. We started picking our way back through the forest towards Obenge.

The most common debris found in the forest of Obenge is from elephant poaching. Here the killing is recent enough that all the vegetation is still “burned out” from around the rotting flesh.

Tusks of course are gone.

Account by Roger Peet, volunteer with the TL2 project.

Related posts:

1. Orienteering through Congo’s TL2 Forest
2. Python in the Dugout and Guns in the Forest
3. Tragedy Strikes up the Lomami

Late December 2012. A woman working in her garden by Yosenge exchanges greetings with a small group returning from the forest. They have an AK 47. She knows that means that they were hunting elephants. Her own husband is an expert marksman. If the affair is leaked, her husband will certainly be accused. That evening she reports the gun to the village chief.

There is a small remnant-group of elephants – perhaps five, perhaps ten – between the villages of Katopa, Bamanga and the Yosenge path. This group is often in the forests around Katopa where we have a base camp and work closely with the village. The elephants are safe near Katopa, even if they destroy some banana plants. The chief takes pride in having rebuffed elephant poachers who wanted to base out of his village. But elephants need more than the forest near Katopa; they follow the ripening of fruit into the forests of Bamanga, Yosenge…and elsewhere.

The hunter is from Yosenge, the owner of the rifle from Kindu. They met up in Alumba and then based out of Bamanga.

In November, Nyarcos Nyanga, the owner of the gun came to the village of Bamanga with his hunter from Yosenge . Bamanga was their new base. They killed their first elephant in November. They killed a second in early December. They were trying for a third elephant when the Yosenge villager saw them in her garden and sounded the alarm.

The chief summoned the hunter. Nyarcos, also in Yosenge, fled immediately to Alumba. Although Yosenge sent a fast runner to Alumba with information to arrest Nyarcos, the chief of Alumba (bribed?) let him sneak out of the village, back to the province of Maniema.

Our contacts in Kindu did a little research and discovered that in December Nyarcos had sold elephant meat to a few market women. He had also taken the meat from government office to government office where he sold it on the black market. It is there that the buyers can afford to pay…

Back in Kasai, the province where the killings occurred, six military came from the district capital to find out what happened. They arrested the chief of Alumba and the chief of Bamanga. Each paid one goat.

Two goats for two elephants…… that may be the only price to pay.

Elephant poachers chased from Katopa several years ago. Was one of these Nyarcos?

Related posts:

1. The Forest Elephant is Disappearing from Congo
2. Elephant slaughter along the Lomami
3. From Elephant Poacher to Conservation Hero

At the close of 2012 we had 8 camera traps in the forest. The photos from the last few months of the year are reassuring. There were some surprises — and inspiration for the New Year.

Rarely seen animals:

Despite its size, nearly as large as a bushpig, aarvarks are among the least frequently seen of TL2 large mammals. This one shows the shorter ears that are a characteristic of the form in the central basin.

Aardvarks and giant pangolin are nocturnal and rarely encountered.

The giant pangolin lumbers through the forest at night.

The giant pangolin and the aardvark feed on termites and ants. Usually their presence is only known by their diggings into ground-dwelling termite colonies.

Unexpected find

The black guinea fowl was not expected in the central basin. In the far south of TL2 we first discovered this fowl killed by hunters.

These three birds captured by camera trap extend the black guinea fowl’s range 100 km into the forests of Congo’s central basin.

We have used cameras to do two different kinds of surveys: first we surveyed “edos”. These discrete sites are small clearings in the forest that are used by different animals often apparently seeking nutrients that seep from the ground. In our last series of photos we had elephants, forest buffalo, and bongo at edos.

More recently a photo caught 12 bonobo ambling through an “edo” clearing.

We also use the camera traps to survey our Losekola study area where we have laid out a path grid.

The Losekola study area is to the west south west of small village, Obenge, by about 6km. The white points show where camera traps were deployed.

These paths allow regular observations and facilitate studies.

This is a male yellow back duiker, largest of the forest duiker-antelopes.

This leopard was photographed at three different sites.

There is something uncanny in the seeming intelligent light of this bushpig’s eye.

A small pagoda termite mound seems to attract both bonobos and TL2’s new species of monkey – the lesula.

Bonobo walks up to the termitarium. A baby sits astride its mother behind some leaves.

A young lesula perches on the termite mound.

An adult lesula takes over the termite lookout.

What the camera traps tell us of the abundance of bonobos and Lesulas is particularly encouraging. We have recorded lesulas at every one of the camera settings on the Losekola study area with up to 5 individuals photographed in a single event. At least one adult male can be recognized individually by its  strong facial markings.

Adult male lesula.

Next steps.
We will continue to expand the camera trap studies in 2013. Our next steps include initiating surveys of other “edo” clearings in the Tutu basin. The camera traps will be a major focus for us in 2013 with the arrival of two collaborative projects now in development, one to survey forest cats, including we hope the elusive and apparently uncommon golden cat, and a second to develop estimates of distribution and abundance of lesula in the Losekola area.

The camera trap study is led by John Hart who works with Pablo Ayali and Maurice Emetshu.

Related posts:

1. Camera Traps Keep Unblinking Vigil on the Lomami Forest
2. A New Species of Monkey from the Center of Congo
3. Bringing in 2013 with the Good and the Bad in DR Congo

But here I will strike a brief note with the bad and broken promises of 2012 that are still there to ring in the New Year. This a short post – no pictures – just to admit that the road to forest protection is not smooth, is not simple, in DR Congo.

Many are the conflicting interests in this country. They erupt in blood for no reason but greed. I am going to be honest: it has been a frustrating year. High-level corruption gives a Cheshire grin when we seek government assistance. We see the years of work by our colleagues wiped out in a strike of pecuniary aggression followed by almost no retribution. Fifteen okapi lovingly cared for these past decades all shot dead by a bandit in one morning, a park guard burned alive and the village forced to watch, the head warden of a park shot off his motorcycle as he returned to his post….(all of these events in the last six months), and just this last weekend a park guard eviscerated in the Ituri.

How and when can we be confident that we are making progress? This year we will concentrate on building collaboration at the most local levels. This year we will monitor closely the forest we know and care about. This year we will turn to other NGOs and organizations with similar goals – alliances are essential. I hope that next January our words will be more optimistic.

No related posts.

The only thing I (Roger) knew I would do in Obenge village was to build a monument on the site of the Tambiko. or meeting with the ancestors. At that meeting (August 2011) it was agreed by authorities large and small, from near and far, to plan for the relocation of Obenge to a site outside the borders of the soon-to-be Lomami National Park. Upon my arrival, however, Obenge’s chief, Marie Longembengembe summarily refused the monument. In an angry address to assembled TL2 workers and villagers, she ridiculed the idea. “We need new houses, tools, and better water. What use do we have for a monument here?”

(Marie Longembengembe was worried that she would lose her population and her power if the village moved. But neither the TL2 project nor any donor would provide funds for improvements at the present site. Terese’s comment in parentheses.)

Roger examining one of the fascinating minions of the forest.

We returned to the encampment, nonplussed. We had brought with us to Obenge, at no small expense, three sacks of cement and a pile of good Belgian-era bricks. What to do with them? We threw ideas around: could we improve the spring? No, we didn’t have enough material, and besides, none of us knew how to do that correctly. If we were to damage the villagers’ only source of clean water we’d bring down more fire from villagers already uncertain what help we would provide if they moved.

(We also are uncertain. The World Bank said it could help but then backed down; GIZ, the German Aid organization, said they might help, but have not provided details.)

A tortoise on the forest floor.

So what should we do with the bricks and cement? Maurice had an idea: to build a tomb to Mama Chief’s father, Longembengembe himself. Maurice opened his laptop to show us videos taken at a ceremony performed at the previous chief’s gravesite the year before. “People visit his grave to ask him for favors. Pregnant women rub soil from his grave on their bellies to make their children strong. The village won’t refuse a cement memorial tomb.”

They did, however. Mama Chief loved the idea, but her family forbade it, fearing that it would incur a debt to our TL2 project. She had to refuse. We returned to the drawing board.

The lieutenant (front) with Roger and the TL2 camp leaders.

“I know what to do.” said the Lieutenant, the ranking officer among the team of six ICCN park-guards, tasked with both protecting the encampment and enforcing laws related to conservation. “The guard that died this spring, Yumulani-Tebe. His grave is there in the village cemetery. We’ll use the cement and the bricks to build a grave marker for him. Such a thing is outside Mama Chief’s power to refuse. If we do that, we’ll have our monument.” He presented the idea to Mama Chief the next day, and she approved it.

Singing and dancing at the grave site.

We laid the foundation for the tomb during a riotous celebration in the small graveyard at Obenge’s south edge. Fully half of the men in the village came out to help us mix and pour the rectangular base, under the careful supervision of Papa Stany, one of the pastors at Obenge’s Protestant church who happens to be an accomplished mason. A goat was killed and roasted, jugs of manioc liquor were procured and passed around, songs were sung and the wet ground stamped dry by the pounding of dancing feet. The ICCN guards troweled ceremonial passes into the wet cement, fired joyful rounds from their Kalashnikovs into the palm crowns, and danced for their dead colleague.

Maurice explains to Mama Longembengembe how the tombstone will look.

Mama Chief came with her family and her coterie of notables to observe the work in progress; they were fêted in their turn by the enthusiastic crowd. Maurice described the work to her, modeling with his hands the shape that the monument would take. Mama Chief watched his hands move with a small twist of bitterness growing on her lips until she was picked up and hoisted in her chair by a gang of young men, who bobbed her up and down in rhythm with their song. A smile crept back onto her face and she whisked the length of printed yellow cloth she was carrying back and forth in time.

The park guards all contributed a trowel of cement.

The young men put her down and turned to the lieutenant, who shook his head with an emphatic “No!” then, laughing, waved the barrel of his rifle as he was lifted over the heads of the crowd. Behind the dancing scrum of men and youths the wind tossed the purple fronds of the plants marking the site of Obenge’s mass grave. Here the bones of the victims of the RCD officer, Dracula lie together, their cruel deaths without retribution.

The mass grave marked by the deep burgundy tomb shrubs

Stany works on the final stages of the tombstone.

We returned to the tomb several days later to build up the headstone. Papa Stany scraped the bricks clean with a trowel and placed them in stepped courses, forming a small ziggurat which he sheathed in mortar.

Roger works on the tombstone.

I took the trowel and shaped a wreath of leaves on the back of the stone, and a compass-star above them. I inlaid Yumulani-Tebe’s name into thick, wet mortar with nails brought from Kisangani, and added the date of his death and the legend “In Service to Nature”.

A tribute to the park guard’s service to nature.

Papa Stany poured, coated and smoothed the broad surface of the tomb-bed. I used the point of the trowel to incise a simple branch and the letters “ ICCN/PNM” (the guard was “on loan” from Park National Maiko-PNM- when he died). We posed for a picture with Mama Chief, who had come to observe the completion of the project, and made our way back through town to the camp.

The finished tombstone with mama chief’s approval.

Related posts:

1. Mass Grave Between the Three Rivers

The rains have started. The scents are wonderful. Hanging lianas brush fragrant flowers against our faces as the motorbikes speed along brief stretches of dry path. Mostly, though, we are walking ahead or behind the “motos” on our way to Mangazumbu. Half the time we are wading – often knee deep. The better to enjoy the smells, we tell ourselves. The first rains have opened red, yellow and white flowers in green canopies; each spreads a brief pocket of smell.

Ghislain, my chauffeur, speeds me along a brief dry stretch.

We are a rare event: Four motorbikes. Even bicycles are uncommon on this path from Mboka-ya-Lomango, south to Mangazumbu. The bridges are so precarious that three of our motorbikes tumbled into a stream, each from a different bridge, as the drivers tried to balance them, one at a time, along a log, one foot in front of the other.

Was this ever really a road? Is it even a path?

The Belgians cut the road north in 1948. They used no machines: All hand labor and “fimbo” (rawhide whip) to make sure the work got done.

The northern arrow is the crossroads savanna, Mboka-ya-Lomango; the second arrow is Ngondo and the southern arrow is Mangazumbu.

Chief Sylvestra Loyowa of Mangazumbu was born in 1948 when Mangazumbu was first settled along the road. The Belgians had brought the original Mangazumbu village out from the headwaters of the NyamaTende, 20 km to the west. From 1948 until independence trucks came north along the colonial road to buy peanuts and rice. Even cotton, chief Loyowa tells me. Pamba, it was called. The last truck was in 1961.

Chief Loyowa with his youngest wife and one of his sons. He has 38 children.

We spent our first night along the Mangazumbu road at our new base camp in the village of Ngondo.

The house and barraza at our new base in October.

On this trip I was travelling with a Parks agent, Salumu of our TL2 project and Sat Ibata who works with the film-producing NGO, INCEF. This was Sat’s first trip and we hope the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration with INCEF. The idea is to interview and film villagers as they tell their own stories about overhunting and the future of the forest.

Sat asking questions in the village of Ngondo.

Locally made films can be taken from village to village. They give an effective voice to the most isolated people and bring villages with shared problems and no means of communication closer together. On this trip Sat had first interviews and showed films from previous projects, both about health and conservation.

Showing films in Mangazumbu

Mangazumbu was the last village we visited. Chief Loyowa has a special reason for talking to me. It was about his gun – his 12-caliber that fired at Boni when our workers were attacked. He sent Nene into the forest to hunt so he could send some of his 38 children to school. He was too old to do the hunting himself (not too old to have very young children), but, he assures me, he told Nene NOT to go into the park.

The wall of chief Loyowa’s house has a poster of a very anglo-saxon Jesus next to a poster of very Congolese musicians and posters of international soccer players–a bit of the cosmopolitan along with dangling party ornaments.

Lack of respect of the young for the old: Nene, with bold defiance, went into the park. At least that is how the Chief explained it to me. Now, his gun has been confiscated by the army. Nene – whose only punishment was from our own field staff – is nursing his wounds. And Chief Loyowa’s children are hanging around Kindu unable to go to school.

There is no way we can help the chief right now. Hopefully – eventually – we will help Mangazumbu develop alternative ways to raise money. Move back to colonial sources of income – rice and peanuts! Maybe chickens and goats as well? But right now that road is a bit of a problem.

Ghislain and Salumu guide a moto over a submerged “bridge”.

No related posts.

It was Cleve’s first day back in the Gangu Forest after a five-year absence. He and the teams were headed for Camp Gangu. Around noon, under a light drizzle, they made their way down a
fishermen’s trail to the rain-swollen Bo River.

We crossed the Bo and adjacent swamp forests as we headed out to our main base, Gangu camp, from which we would then split up.

As they picked their way across the swampy creek bed of the Dziliwo, Cleve heard raised voices from field assistants up ahead. Something unexpected had been found. When he arrived he saw that a big event had indeed happened in the swamp, a violent skirmish — not too long ago. Pre-dawn? The evening before? Herbs had been trampled and uprooted; there were slash marks at the base of a tree.

We put down our loads as we tried to figure out what drama had played out.

Cleve: Ephrem pointed out the welter of tracks in the soft mud left by the hooves of red river hogs. These brick-red forest pigs have wizard-like faces accentuated by long, white dangling ear-tufts.

Red river hog (left) and leopard prints (right) next to each other.

Bebe Bofenda showed Cleve the large rounded prints of a leopard pressed into the mud and over-lapping the hog prints.

Dung of both leopard (left) and hog (right) were in the matted clearing.

It was Bebe too, who first grabbed Cleve’s arm: “Monsieur Cleve, regardes -là!.” His eyes followed the line of Bebe’s pointing hand into the canopy. And there was an unexpected sight!

Twenty to twenty-five feet above us were the remains of a young red-river hog, suspended over a forked branch.

The carcass was headless, the stiffened legs splayed out in seeming supplication.

Only a leopard could have pulled something that large into the tree. Would the leopard return later to claim the rest?

As they inspected the site, they found vivid red gashes in the stilt roots of an Uapaca tree. Several trackers thought these were from the tusks of hogs. “The pigs were trying to attack the leopard”, they suggested. Further up the tree were the longer parallel, claw marks of the leopard. Had these been made as the leopard climbed with its prey ? Others found partially eaten meat and fragments of the pig’s upper jaw in the mud. It had the soft bones and dentition of a young animal.

At about ½ meter height the stilt root had many slash marks.

What about the gashed tree? It is unlikely that a leopard would have fought a battle with a whole group of pigs and still been able to pull an entire carcass up a tree. Did the other hogs all run off and only come back later – perhaps responding to bleating of the attacked pig? Perhaps the leopard was already up the tree and they “attacked” the stilt roots, in futile fury.

Or perhaps the stilt roots were slashed for different reasons…to sharpen or clean tusks? Perhaps it had nothing to do with the leopard attack.? The pigs may have scattered when the leopard pounced, leaving it to feast peacefully on the ground where it made the kill. The intact leopard scat, after all, had been deposited on the ground. It may have only pulled the battered carcass up the tree when it was done…like putting leftovers in the larder.

The upper jaw on the ground was clearly of a young pig, only its first molar had emerged.

Could it perhaps have been a “satisfied” cat,itself, that shredded the stilt roots, before pulling the remains of its meal up for storage?

As they stood in that clearing the presence of the leopard and hogs seemed very close. In his imagination Cleve could see the leopard snarling down as enraged pigs charged the tree roots. The leopard, imperious, continued to haul its still-quivering quarry up the tree, where it found an ideal place to feast. It then ignored the cacophony of snorts and squeals below. Eventually, the defeated pigs withdrew.

Written by Terese from Cleve’s field notes.
Photos are from Cleve and the rest of the Gangu team.

Related posts:

1. Sketches from Northern Congo – the Gangu Forest
2. Camera Traps Keep Unblinking Vigil on the Lomami Forest