Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Our first week in Kokolopori, Sally and Michael worked at renewing connections, paying the staff
and trackers, and evaluating the progress of a number of projects, from farming to the new build-
ings in the camp. The boats from Mbandaka had arrived at the port of Befori, a five-hour drive on a
road much worse than the one we took from Djolu. Supplies were arriving daily, first the medicine
for the clinic and the electrical equipment. Normally, the boats would follow a smaller river directly
into the reserve, but the water level was too low, requiring arduous shipments in the vehicles.
After our first foray to see the bonobos near Yetee, we set out with Alan Root for Yalokole, the
next major village in the reserve and Albert's hometown. We were in the Land Cruiser again, the
Land Rover's axle having broken a few days after it was repaired. We would visit a landing strip
under construction inside the reserve in order to provide Alan with a sense of ecotourism possib-
ilities, then see the salongo monkeys. Afterward, we'd spend a few hours on the river in a dugout
canoe.
The company that Alan Root was working for intended to sell tours of the three African great
apes, all of which are found in the DRC. Gorilla tourism had been growing in the eastern Congo,
a significantly more dangerous region because of rebel groups and ethnic conflicts, but there were
not yet any developed programs for ecotourism in the much safer but more remote region where
bonobos lived. In Rwanda and Uganda, ecotourism had become a multimillion-dollar business, fo-
cusing largely on mountain gorillas, whose global population numbers only 880 as of 2012. In
Rwanda, a day's visit could cost $750 for a permit, $400 for a tracker, as well as transportation and
housing. The booming ecotourism economy motivated both the people and the government to pro-
tect gorillas and their habitat, to make the gorillas part of their culture and a source of pride. They
even held naming ceremonies for newborns the way they did for their own children. BCI's goal was
to achieve something similar for bonobos, and they hoped to show Alan the potential for doing so
in Kokolopori.
I had taken to riding on the Land Cruiser's back bumper, alongside the young Congolese men
who tended to the engine, changed flats, and refueled. The bumper was preferable to being crammed
inside with passengers on the metal floor, diesel sloshing in plastic jerry cans. But it also required
alertness, as the ride was a two-hour rodeo of ruts and rain-eroded hills.
The young Congolese showed me how to hook my fingers against the metal ridges just inside
the window. We dug our toes against the bumper, which was broken at the center and so loose that
it wobbled and flexed with each pothole. Unlike the Congolese, I had shoes to protect my feet. The
back doors closed only with the help of a bungee cord, opening slightly with each bump, and the
greatest threats, aside from falling off, were getting a finger pinched or being hit in the face by a
low-hanging branch. Each time the Land Cruiser plunged through foliage that churned against the
roof and sides like the brushes of a carwash, the three Congolese called out, and we crouched low.
