Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the past, outsiders who wanted to help the Congolese in fact hurt them and their traditions, making
it harder to win their trust in the future.
“For instance,” he said, “in 2006, BCI received a grant from UN GRASP's [Great Apes Survival
Partnership] Conservation Center, Micro-Credit & Enterprise Project. Jean-Marie Benishay, who
was then BCI's national director for the DRC, met with the women of Yalokole. While the grant
was focused on training, women's sewing, soap making, et cetera, BCI was interested in integrating
a village well into the program. Jean-Marie discussed this with the women doing the project, but
they weren't very receptive. They didn't want to appear ungrateful or negative, so they didn't speak
up immediately. It was only after going through the Information Exchange process with its struc-
tured feedback and sharing—after the women really understood that this would be their project and
their decision—that they voiced their concerns. We had thought that the women stood to benefit the
most, since they wouldn't have to carry water for miles every day, but they explained that going to
the river was their only time away from the men. They go with their children and sometimes see
their sisters and aunts from other villages. They talk and tell stories, and the children play together.
If there was a well in each village, they wouldn't see each other so often, and they'd be under the
heel of the men all day. They actually said, 'We wouldn't be able to be with each other away from
the men and talk about them.'
“The point,” Michael concluded, “is that in many cases, projects are decided upon and designed
externally, and that's why they fail.”
Briefly, across the
paillote
, in a far corner of the village's main clearing, the men struck up their
own song. They were tapping sticks together, singing rhythmically, sweating and laughing. But not
long afterward the girls took over again, hooting and crying out, and when I walked back to their
side, they shouted and waved their arms, singing and dancing more furiously, swishing their raffia,
putting on a show.
“Do you know what they're singing?” asked Claude Baombo Bakengola, Vie Sauvage's fin-
ancial officer, who recently moved from Kisangani to the reserve. “They are singing that they are
young, that they must push the old people away, because young people are made to be in love. They
are made to do anything for love and can't worry about what the old people think.”
But it wasn't until the next day, after we saw the salongo monkeys, that we arrived at a smaller
village near the river and saw the truly furious dancing that the young Congolese are capable of.
The girls and young women wore threadbare tank tops, some red and white, others brightly pat-
terned, and had bundles of orange and yellow raffia tied at the small of their backs. The boys who
drummed were no more than twelve or thirteen years old, and stood with postures of power, chests
lifted, shoulders rolled back, caps pulled low over their eyes, one with his visor off to the side. It
looked as if they were posing for the beginning of a rap video.
The girls began the dance on their knees, as if bowing to the boys, who then started to drum.
Soon the girls were up, dancing in a tight circle around the drummers, but one caught everyone's
attention. Her back curved from side to side as she lashed her hips with her yellow raffia. She was
maybe fifteen or sixteen, beautiful, smiling, her teeth perfectly straight and white. Her face, like
those of all the girls, had been rubbed with ochre, white lines painted irregularly on her cheeks and
forehead, her throat and shoulders, and just above her breasts. The lines were short, in groups of
four, like pale claw marks, and looked as if they'd been made with a fork.
Though the drumming boys appeared blasé, their eyes half-lidded, they pounded harder as she
danced. Sweat soaked her red tank top, and the raffia accentuated the movement of her hips. She
