Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
little or no pay. This was a comment I heard echoed when I asked others to give their criticisms
of BCI's approach. There was always a long hesitation and then some references to it being disor-
ganized or often in crisis-management mode. But each person I asked also pointed out that if BCI
weren't struggling for funding, it wouldn't have these problems.
That said, in the course of my research, I also heard frequent criticism of big NGOs and their
use of funding. Many cited their corporate structure as the problem, the costs of sustaining a large
organization and promoting it, the expenditures on conferences and hotels, on flying Western sci-
entists into the field. Is it possible, I found myself asking, that conservation has been shaped less
by sustainable work models than by the desire to stay ahead of competitors among the conservation
NGOs? And if BINGO employees are moving up through the ranks to better positions, should the
same support and financial security not be offered to those who run the small NGOs?
For people familiar with development and conservation work, stories of NGO infighting have
become a cliché. But in a country like the DRC, it's disheartening that NGO squabbles remain such
an obstacle when the needs are so great and the stakes so high. Trust in places like Kokolopori is
fragile, and the lack of coordination and support between NGOs erodes the people's faith in foreign-
ers, further entrenching the culture of wariness. Though the people of Kokolopori and many other
regions of Équateur have embraced change, they stand at crucial junctures, at once enthusiastic for
the work to be done and dissatisfied with the slow development, fearing that they will be let down
once again.
In light of how common such conflicts are in even the most idealistic of fields, it's hard not to
wonder if we can make significant and lasting change without changing ourselves, and particularly
our cultural values and our sensitivities to power. Without awareness of how it works, or of the
expectations that other cultures have of those in power, conservationists will almost surely run up
against conflicts.
In Kokolopori, as elsewhere in Central Africa, the people's expectations of those who hold
power affect the way projects must be carried out. In
Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father,
Family, Food
, Michael G. Schatzberg warns that “middle Africans inhabit a political realm whose
boundaries can differ substantially from those prevalent in parts of the West.” The “big man”
(
mokonzi
in Lingala) establishes a community of relatives, allies, and dependents whom he sees as
a family of which he is the head. Mobutu ruled Zaire in exactly this way, as a personal fiefdom, por-
traying himself as the father of his citizens. But the true impact of this worldview is seen in how the
father negotiates with others, and in the “unity and indivisibility” of his power. Schatzberg writes:
Contrary to the historically recent Western experience, power in middle Africa cannot easily
be divided or shared, a usually implicit understanding and assumption that is nicely cap-
tured in the Zaïrian/Congolese cultural axiom, “Le
pouvoir se mange entier
[Power is eaten
whole],” which is dispersed throughout a wide range of current Zaïrian/Congolese dis-
course.
Though the notion of this indivisibility was established culturally in the pre-European Bantu civil-
izations, colonialism reinforced it, whether in the form of the Léopoldian colonial administrators
known in Kikongo as
bula matari
, the crusher of rocks (a name first given to Henry Morton Stan-
ley), or the Belgian Congo's paternalism, in which, as Thomas Turner and Sandra W. Meditz write,
“coercion or the threat of coercion never was far from the surface.” Unfortunately, in their dealings
with local big men, Westerners often unwittingly slip into that role themselves. And our greatest
