After spending our night in Epulu, Jean-Remy and I went to visit the Okapis in the "zoo". For conservation purposes, 14 okapis are kept in large open-air pens, complete with trees and close lines holding the branches they eat. Using their long tongues, okapis prefer to eat upwards like their taller cousins. They are strikingly innocent and beautiful. They freeze still and stare when they hear people. One eventually was brave enough to approach the fence to say hello...tres jolie she was! Their body is similar to a horse, head to a giraffe, and rear-end has the black-white pattern of a zebra.
Later, around the park ranger facilities I heard a loud cry, and saw a baby chimpanzee tethered to a table leg. The story was that its mother was killed and the baby was abandoned and ill, and turned into park authorities. It had to have been the saddest looking little animal I've ever seen. Hopefully they had some way to get it to an orphanage.
After a long journey, we returned to Beni. The town has 4 Monuc bases, but fortunately there is little for these blue helmets(from South Africa, India, and somewhere else) to do! It was fascinating to visit Beni after spending time with missionaries just across the border in Uganda. They've lived in the Bundibugyo district for 15 years or more, only 5 miles from the border, but due to chronic insecurity and uncertainty, have ventured little into the DRC. They receive patients at the health center who speak French or are Congolese residents, or sport the local "French cut" flattop hairstyle, but see very little commerce go thru to Congo - save for a few massive road graters recently. The border has basically been a barrier for the missionaries travels and work. It has has left Bundibugyo underdeveloped - seemingly the end of the road, cut off from the rest of Uganda by the towering Rwenzori mountains, and little thru traffic to DRC. During the upheavals of civil war, many rebels made chaos of this border region. They had myriad questions when we met, about what it looks like, how its different, is it just forest?, etc. It felt no different from Bundibugyo. Mud and wattle houses lined the roads which were crowded with tons of people/livestock/transport, while little children relentlessly called out to me "Mzungu! Mzungu!". Save for the French signs, its the same on the surface. People probably have low standards for local government and services.
The road between Bundibugyo and Beni was improved by the EU in 2005. The guys watching the gate on the road told me it was easy to pass thru to Uganda - 72 kilometers to the border, through the primeval forest of Virungas National Park. Unfortunately I was unable to take this fascinating route this time, but hopefully others will now! Some of the missionaries have longed to pass into Congo to try to spot an okapi, so with the relative stability of this micro-region, they will be enabled to fulfill those desires.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Voila! Bienvenu!!!
Bonjour du monde! I am back in the USA already- enjoying summertime! This is after a wild week of travel to 3 countries and transportation methods of varying comfort levels. AirServ flew via a few other outposts which gave me some great aerial views of the primeval forest landscape of central DRC. Finally we arrived in Goma, the city bounded by all of the following: volcano, beautiful lake, Rwanda; and refugees and rebels lingering not far away. Its a beautiful setting...with any sense of stability would no doubt attract lots of tourists.
After asking around about tourism in the area, I was steered to head to Rwanda. As an American, no visa is required, and the place is anglophone friendly. Gustave, the chauffeur, drove with me to Volcans National Park thru the terraced Milles Collines (thousands hills) and tea fields of the countryside. Beautiful! That park is the one to visit for tracking mountain gorillas high up on the slopes of green volcanoes. However, I neither had $500 or the time, but got to imagine how cool it would be to sit close to these humble beasts for an hour.
In Beni, a smallish city north of Goma in north Kivu, I met with Wildlife Conservation Society who drove with me the 300 km to Epulu in the middle of the Okapi Faunal Reserve - a world heritage site and famous protected area in the Ituri Rainforest. The drive was beautiful...the roads surprisingly good and crowded with smart looking people and livestock. We killed or straddled no less than 5 chickens and goats as we barrelled along. The ride also included a ferry ride across the Ituri River, whose bridge had collapsed a year ago under the weight of an overloaded truck. This has really disrupted business for those who transit thru, but has spawned some local economic activity - vegetable/fruit markets, boat builders, supervisors and ferry pullers(?!) - definition: those on the boat who hold and pull the rope that spans both shores hand over hand.
Jean-Remy, the WCS officer, and I hiked to a forest plot of 10 hectares on which every tree has been mapped and catalogued - the process takes a year, and has been done 3 times in to monitor 5 year intervals of forest dynamics. A few BaMbuti pygmies are caretakers for the plot's camp, and help a Congolese PhD student researching Lianas...its fun to look at these vines and to try to figure out where they start and end. They know the forest well...every fruit, tree species, footprint, and disturbance. One of the pygmy guides said something about rain...as I strained my ear, within 10 seconds began to hear the distant sound of rain. Luckily the canopy protected us from feeling anything more than a light mist. We returned to the agriculture by settlements along the road, and after 6 hours in the forest finally saw some monkeys...3 or 4 different kinds. We stayed right next to the Epulu River at the home of American primatologists - After climbing around a tree by the river, Jean-Remy told me about the home-school teacher who was attacked by a nile crocodile there! We closed the night with a Primus and some plastic chairs under the moonlit sky in the tiny village's Okapi-emblazoned bar. What a place! More to come about the journey later....
Well..that is just the first few days...but
After asking around about tourism in the area, I was steered to head to Rwanda. As an American, no visa is required, and the place is anglophone friendly. Gustave, the chauffeur, drove with me to Volcans National Park thru the terraced Milles Collines (thousands hills) and tea fields of the countryside. Beautiful! That park is the one to visit for tracking mountain gorillas high up on the slopes of green volcanoes. However, I neither had $500 or the time, but got to imagine how cool it would be to sit close to these humble beasts for an hour.
In Beni, a smallish city north of Goma in north Kivu, I met with Wildlife Conservation Society who drove with me the 300 km to Epulu in the middle of the Okapi Faunal Reserve - a world heritage site and famous protected area in the Ituri Rainforest. The drive was beautiful...the roads surprisingly good and crowded with smart looking people and livestock. We killed or straddled no less than 5 chickens and goats as we barrelled along. The ride also included a ferry ride across the Ituri River, whose bridge had collapsed a year ago under the weight of an overloaded truck. This has really disrupted business for those who transit thru, but has spawned some local economic activity - vegetable/fruit markets, boat builders, supervisors and ferry pullers(?!) - definition: those on the boat who hold and pull the rope that spans both shores hand over hand.
Jean-Remy, the WCS officer, and I hiked to a forest plot of 10 hectares on which every tree has been mapped and catalogued - the process takes a year, and has been done 3 times in to monitor 5 year intervals of forest dynamics. A few BaMbuti pygmies are caretakers for the plot's camp, and help a Congolese PhD student researching Lianas...its fun to look at these vines and to try to figure out where they start and end. They know the forest well...every fruit, tree species, footprint, and disturbance. One of the pygmy guides said something about rain...as I strained my ear, within 10 seconds began to hear the distant sound of rain. Luckily the canopy protected us from feeling anything more than a light mist. We returned to the agriculture by settlements along the road, and after 6 hours in the forest finally saw some monkeys...3 or 4 different kinds. We stayed right next to the Epulu River at the home of American primatologists - After climbing around a tree by the river, Jean-Remy told me about the home-school teacher who was attacked by a nile crocodile there! We closed the night with a Primus and some plastic chairs under the moonlit sky in the tiny village's Okapi-emblazoned bar. What a place! More to come about the journey later....
Well..that is just the first few days...but
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Into the Bush
I am 10 days from departing Africa, and finally have an exit strategy. It is pretty much the coolest I could have ever hoped for. After 2.5 months of developing a macroview of USG-funded conservation efforts in the Congo Basin, and being lost in the loveable chaos that is Kinshasa….I’ll leave the megacity for the forest to visit on-the ground conservation in Okapi Faunal Reserve, a World Heritage Site in Ituri District, DRC. Okapis, or “forest giraffes” – are odd looking, and have much shorter necks than their savannah relatives an adaptation to foraging in forests. This region has multiple conservation issues – rare endemic species, pressure from hunting, degraded local livelihoods due to human immigration for economic opportunities like gold mining,.
Monday, Aug 11 I depart to Goma, the eastern city on Lake Kivu, which gets partially destroyed every few decades by nearby volcanic eruptions. It is also the de-facto IDP camp of the hot-zone of the various convoluted conflicts. For two nights, I hang out there in transit to Beni, a city one hour north by plane. From Beni, I’ll travel about 300km on improved roads (gravel tracks) with conservationists from WCS through primordial forest to the ranger station in Okapi reserve. A high population of pygmies live and hunt in the park and use inobtrusive methods (hunting duikers with dogs and nets I think), while the “national highway” that bisects the reserve for commerce between Bunia and Kisangani, opens the park to human traffic and increased human migration. The settlers clear thickly forested land for agriculture and hunt with snares and rifles. The soil is quite poor in nutrients and requires frequent rotation and long fallow periods. The human presence in and around the park is factored into management procedures as CARPE and conservationists try to preserve livelihoods of natives and key species.
Nearby is the only legit logging concession in all of eastern DRC, for a company who leases the land and pays taxes. They have problems with immigrants on the fringes of the property cutting timber for themselves. The company has a saw mill which produces value-added timber products for export.
After returning to Beni, I’ll take a taxi thru the safe savannah part of Virungas park north of Lake George to the Uganda border. There I’ll meet great friends for a few days in Queen Elizabeth NP and some wildlife. What an opportunity ya? It has been a heck of an time, learning about this complex place, and learning about USG activities to promote conservation and management of natural resources of the Congo Basin.
Monday, Aug 11 I depart to Goma, the eastern city on Lake Kivu, which gets partially destroyed every few decades by nearby volcanic eruptions. It is also the de-facto IDP camp of the hot-zone of the various convoluted conflicts. For two nights, I hang out there in transit to Beni, a city one hour north by plane. From Beni, I’ll travel about 300km on improved roads (gravel tracks) with conservationists from WCS through primordial forest to the ranger station in Okapi reserve. A high population of pygmies live and hunt in the park and use inobtrusive methods (hunting duikers with dogs and nets I think), while the “national highway” that bisects the reserve for commerce between Bunia and Kisangani, opens the park to human traffic and increased human migration. The settlers clear thickly forested land for agriculture and hunt with snares and rifles. The soil is quite poor in nutrients and requires frequent rotation and long fallow periods. The human presence in and around the park is factored into management procedures as CARPE and conservationists try to preserve livelihoods of natives and key species.
Nearby is the only legit logging concession in all of eastern DRC, for a company who leases the land and pays taxes. They have problems with immigrants on the fringes of the property cutting timber for themselves. The company has a saw mill which produces value-added timber products for export.
After returning to Beni, I’ll take a taxi thru the safe savannah part of Virungas park north of Lake George to the Uganda border. There I’ll meet great friends for a few days in Queen Elizabeth NP and some wildlife. What an opportunity ya? It has been a heck of an time, learning about this complex place, and learning about USG activities to promote conservation and management of natural resources of the Congo Basin.
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