now, and have been enjoying life here very much. This weekend was
especially good, as my roommate Thomas and I took a hike far into the
forest.
We departed Saturday after the rains ended, and with our team of 3
headed out to Lenda - a plot set up for long-term ecological research
in the forest. Our "equipe" consisted of Stanley, an educated man
from Epulu as our main guide and organizer; a man named Mapole man who
knew all the scientific names of the primates and has worked with the
local conservation organizations. Last but not least, we had an Mbuti
man who lead us through the forest. He knew every leaf, tree, and
fruit and which animals eat them, and he'd communicate in Swahili to
our guide. We hiked somewhere around 20 miles in two days, and were
so deep in the forest that returning to Epulu felt like returning to
big civilization. Our Mbuti guide was especially impressive during a
3-hour morning outing spent visiting different edos close to the
forest plot. We bushwhacked through machete-hacked trails and
animal-maintained trails, frequently seeing the dung of the
elephantine trail engineers. Apparently, they constantly eat and
constantly "go". The Mbuti would follow a trail, and every few
minutes cut a very sharp turn onto another trail. A few minutes into
our journey, I had no idea from which direction we started, and each
turn enhanced the feat of finding our way back to camp. We never once
turned around, and the Mbuti showed confident navigation skills like I
have when I'm following directions and signs to a familiar place. I
guess the signs were in the forest, just couldn't be seen by my eyes.
The edos were quite amazing - a sudden clearing in the dense forest
from which many trails lead. Despite being dry and "non-actif" -
harboring no large animals, we saw where the elephants, buffalo, and
antelopes had left their footprints or muzzled into the salt-rich
soil, and hense maintained the clearing.
I'm doing fine - things are busy! I'm trying to get a grip on the new
job, the French, and getting acclimated to Epulu. We have a big GIS
training workshop in 2 weeks, which I'm preparing for. It should be a
lot of fun and put my French and teaching skills to a good test. The
best will be meeting WCS employees from different sites around DRC -
Virunga, Kahuzi-Biega, and of course here, employees from the Okapi
Reserve.
I should prolly visit and post some photos of the okapi soon right?
Let me get on that:)
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