Suffering Loss

Epulu is suffering right now...lots of mourning for the deaths of two
of its ~2000 residents. Those killed were garde de parc: Atikpo
Mutombi; 39 yrs old, father of 5; and his porter: Bakobana Makupuno
"Dieudonne" or "Jean", 24 yrs old - a young man, without a wife or
kids. This is the 4th park guard to be lost this year, while 6 have
been lost in the last 2 years - including a brother of a WCS employee.
All of this risk taken as they take upon their duties to protect
wildlife and provide for their families with their meager salary of
$50 a month. That's $1.50 a day or half what I pay my
cuisinier/domestique. Also, ICCN aren't like most government
officials here who are caught up in illicit activities to supplement
their wallet...

The story I've been told is the guards had a firefight with poachers
very deep in the forest - some 26 km north of the main road, and west
of Epulu by 30-40km. These men were killed on Tuesday evening, and one
other was injured....three hunters were killed, and were buried out
there. They were apparently part of a team run by one famous poacher,
whose teams are responsible for several killings of park guards and
elephants for their tusks. This man was apparently in the forest this
time, but not killed....he usually moves freely around some big towns
, but governance structures here are too weak to do anything to him.
His picture is on "wanted" posters, but what is the reward for messing
with this dangerous man and his team? Nothing? Having to move?
Threats from his team or associates? I wish the ignorant wretch who
buys their beautiful ivory - and drives the market!!! - could have
been at the funeral today to see what their actions cause...

Literally all of the ~80 ICCN park guards left Wednesday morning to
retrieve the bodies. Still after dark on Thursday, they had not
returned, and they sent a third team to reinforce them to help them
haul the bodies the last few hours. So Friday morning, we knew they'd
return, and they had set up a funeral for the return. The chorus of
mourning when the guards arrived was really moving. It'll continue
for a while...people here can't forget, but they can only go on.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jmasselink/ICCNFuneral#

Thoughts for Thursday

What's going on in Congo?

Last weekend I passed the infamous "bridge" which has been laying
awkwardly in the River Ituri for the last two years - brought down by
a massively overloaded truck - which appear to be common here.
Meanwhile, a mega-entrepreneurial exhibit of Congolese
opportunism/desperation manifests itself in markets on either side of
the river with young girls selling doughnuts, kids selling peanuts,
and a bunch of kiosks and little restaurants. People are surprisingly
indifferent to mzungus (white folks) who arrive and take tons of
pictures of what looks like absolute chaos! They've just become used
to it, or are more interested in their business. Well-muscled young
men haul yellow crates of Primus beer from truck to boat, and at $10 a
day, make fat cash compared to the average Congolese. I didn't see
the stout log-chockers this time. They foist huge timber cuts upon
their heads and look like their back or neck could give out at any
time...and you'd better get out of their way when they're porting
downhill towards the ferry.

The deckhands include the piroguers, who push their hollowed-out log
pirogues as far upstream as they can before chuting across the river
with the current. Then there are the teams of 5+ who pull the fully
loaded ferries across the river the old-fashioned way - hand over hand
man power. These ferries feature the empty Primus trucks, Nile Coach
passenger buses(!!), and any smaller or larger vehicle - really any
vehicle at all! Somehow there is only one main rope - and it looks
like a big boat jam, but teams with smaller ropes hop from boat to
boat and "portage" some boats around the bottlenecks.

I was a bit bemused to realize for the first time that Primus (which
seems to make up about 1/4 of all cargo - Congolese like their Primus
could go without saying) was going both ways across the river. Why
the Primus-huckers from opposite coasts don't organize a clean swap I
just can't understand? Presumably it has to do with glass bottle
ownership?! Literally, they must spend hours or most of a day -
moving Primus off a truck, onto the the ferry, and then across, and
then on to a waiting truck on the other side.

It won't be long now until this scene changes, as the Nepalese UN
Battalion has put the new bridge in place. It looks great to me as we
won't have to wait an hour or two, and pay $50 just to cross. It
probably looks not-so-great to the several hundred people who made
their money from the bridge being in the river. It certainly cannot
be forgotten as a metaphor for much of Congo. If things actually
worked, then who gets to benefit?

Now I am the man of the house, as my roommate left. Some of his
British sayings may stay with me and even pop up from time to
time....dodgy; thick idiot; and brilliant; are all sayings I enjoy!
So my Mama has a bit less to do now, which is good because she works
hard. Yes, I have cooked absolutely nothing in the nearly 3 months
since arriving; Mama cooks and cleans everything. I would have little
idea how to manage the charcoal, search our market-less village for
ingredients, or have the patience to prepare. Needless to say, my
cooking career appears yet very hopeless. She has worked here for a
long time, has three young kids with adorable names: Lydie, Astrid,
and Don de Dieu (Gift of God). Truly she is a lovely lady, who
patiently puts up with my incomprehensible and infantile French, and
makes the best darned natural peanut butter because she knows I like
it.

Other ramblin thoughts: In Congo, people have a little more flair to
their fashion than the neighboring countries. Here, people might have
one pair of jeans, but it will either have Chuck Taylor sneakers,
clocks, or "Obama" embroidered on them. For another example, some
women have braids that literally stick out in every single direction -
which leads me to wonder if they are exempt from hauling water - which
is typically carried by women on their heads.

If I grew up here, I'd probably walk everywhere, be given daily tasks
of fetching water, soap, vegetables from the town center. Kids are
given pretty free reign, but I think they're pretty obedient and
better at sharing than most kids in the US. Also, if we were lucky
enough to own a motorcycle, my entire family of four might ride it
together when we needed to make a road-trip.

Also, while I sit here writing a bunch of goofy thoughts back to some
readers I wish to reach, talking about all these wild experiences I've
had thus far this year; villagers of Epulu mourn a park guard and a
porter who were killed in a fire-fight with elephant poachers
(apparently 3 of who were killed). Things might be all and well for
me, but for mostly everyone else here, life is a pretty big
struggle...too many people are lost here to different maladies due to
lack of available routine medical treatment, accidents and violence.
Somehow globalization through different time scales (recent debt, poor
multilateral policies, or ancient colonial hauntings) could be
considered the primary fault here, while in my US home, our problems
are comparably small and mostly home grown. Then again, the poachers
who pulled the trigger were undoubtedly Congolese - so it is not
outsiders who will fix things here, that is clear; but finally we're
starting to realize we have an effect.

Jo-elle

So now its official...my name is pronounced "Jo-elle", as a concession
that one syllable Joel is just too easily confused with Jo or John for
francophones. Even Americans who I meet, will be introduced to me as
that, though I don't envision keeping it once back in the states. It
only sounds ok when its accompanied with other French, thats for sure!
In other contexts, I think it is just a woman's name :)

De Brazza's Monkeys

I can't complain about being in an office because I saw a de Brazza's
monkey family walking across our power lines! These monkeys are
absolutely magnificent looking with their stern russet orange brow and
hind quarter markings. It was the first time I've seen them, as
they're pretty rare and never stray away from water courses, so the
office just luckily happens to be in the right place. Wonderful!

In the village by the river that runs through the forest

Hello hello from DR Congo! I am very glad to be back in the little
village of Epulu, after a very very long trip in the exterior. Had a
fantastic albeit somewhat tiring trip!! This included two real
workshops and one pseudo-workshop and altogether lots of moving around
and not a lot of real work. The first week I attended a workshop in
Butare, Rwanda at the National University. They have an extremely
impressive Center for GIS (housed in the former French Cultural Center
building) and their staff have high competence and capacity to provide
training and services to the region. My host Bob, is an American man
who is setting up an MSc program in GIS, which should be off the
ground soon and hopefully attracting Congolese and other students from
the region. It was really fun to be in the workshop with 15
intelligent, motivated conservationists from Rwanda, Congo and Uganda.
Also its a little easier for me in Rwanda because it recently adopted
English as an official language. Very nice to meet people my age
working for the government or in the national parks system studying
species like the golden monkey of Volcanoes, conservation of forest
fragments which hold small populations of chimpanzee, and setting up a
community reserve in Congo to protect eastern lowland gorillas - the
most threatened of all great apes.

After the workshop, I met up with the Myhres - World Harvest
missionary doctors who have raised their family in Bundibugyo, Uganda,
and Ashley, one of the mission's teachers. This was their first ever
visit to their neighbor Rwanda and were shocked at the border by
having to switch which side of the road they were driving on, and not
being hassled for a visa fee. Rwanda has no visa requirement for
Americans and several other countries - making it a really easy place
for tourists to come. The people are absolutely wonderful too and the
country has caught on to making tourists and guests comfortable. Its
a good place to be!

After Butare, Ashley and I split off from the Myhres who headed via
Serengeti and Tanzania to take their two oldest to boarding school
outside Nairobi. In Kigali, my friend Peter from Clark Univ., drove
us all around the city and showed us how clean and developed it is. I
was really shocked in Kigali to be handed a helmet when hailing a
motorbike taxi! We had a great visit. Then we got on a big slow bus
back to Kampala, Uganda where I had another workshop - this one was
setting priorities for the conservation of eastern chimpanzees - which
are found in DR Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and a few in
CAR and Sudan. Congo probably has 95% of the population, but
estimates have very little confidence. There are unexplored intact
forest blocks the size of some of the other countries within eastern
chimp range which had zero information - biologists had seemingly
never gotten there. Hopefully WCS will be able to get into some of
these places and also get to know some known populations better so as
to preserve them, because they're undoubtedly most threatened in Congo
too because of imminent forest degradation and continued preferences
for bushmeat - which are minimal concerns in other range countries.

I also loved returning to Uganda - Kampala and a few days in Entebbe -
the people are lovely, and I have many friends there. As fortune had
it, the Massos were in Kampala on a break from their home in Sudan,
and my friend Godfrey, who I taught with in Bundibugyo lives there now
too. He's an earnest man of faith and a dear friend, who I've been
able to keep in touch with over the last few years. Very fun to see
them and other familiar faces at some of the hotels.

After a long week - we took several days in getting back to Epulu -
slow going but good. We stayed in Kampala again, Kasese in western
Uganda at a great cheap ($21) hotel with a health club, sauna, and
steam room(!) before hopping back across the border to Beni. We were
greeted at the border with some low grade hassling - a sign that some
"civil servants" still have a ways to go. Nevertheless - the trip
through Virunga National Park afforded some glorious views of savannah
grass lands, forests, and the Rwenzori - mountains of the moon.

In Beni, it was nice to meet Meredith and Grant, two Americans who are
teaching and working at the Bilingual Christian University of Congo,
probably the only bilingual university in the country - and also a
higher ed institution with a new vision rather than most which are
either crumbling or rebuilding. It aims to change Congo with the
renewal that Christ affords us all. Certainly Congo has so many
needs, and renewal with start with this hope! Its off the ground
thanks to good leadership; the founder is a local Congolese man,
PhD-educated in the US, who has developed decent fund-raising through
the American NGO "The Congo Initiative".

Check it out: http://www.congoinitiative.org/

Anyways it will be fun to hang out with a bunch of Christian American
"wazungus" (Swahili regional word for little kids - acceptable and
adults - rude - to call me and other white folks) when I go to Beni
from time to time.

Now I'm glad to be back in Epulu - the place where the monkeys
frolick, the rain pounds, the river rushes, and the moon and stars
glow of the dirt tracks and tin roofs. I think my gladness for the
return is a good sign that Epulu is becoming home!