Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and strip his clothes, tie them in a bundle, and carry his motorcycle across rushing water. He rode
130 miles to Lomela, 75 to Djonga. In each village, he would talk to the people. He rarely pro-
gressed more than seven or eight miles an hour, coming upon a watercourse every three or four
miles, again undressing and hefting the motorcycle across.
He saw that the communities' only source of sustenance was the forest; they relied on it for
wood, water, game, mushrooms, black pepper, roots, edible leaves. The Sankuru region was the wa-
tershed for five of the Congo River's major tributaries, and he gradually explored its landscape. The
population seemed to be growing, slash-and-burn agriculture expanding.
“I knew that deforestation would harm the watershed,” he told me, “but how could I ask people
to live differently? I often traveled a hundred kilometers without seeing a clinic, school, or phar-
macy. The population lives in a state of deprivation that you can't imagine.”
Like Albert, he had the skill of speaking to the people, of making them see his vision while ask-
ing them to do only what could be managed in the present. He focused on bonobos, describing the
diseases that humans could contract from eating non-human primates. He explained the possibilities
of conservation and tourism, of getting funds from the international community. In many villages,
people had never seen a motorcycle. They had never heard talk like this.
Over the years, villagers began calling him the
osediketu
, “bonobo man,” in the Tetela language.
When children heard the engine of his motorcycle, they ran from the villages shouting
Motot-
uwaiketu
, “The motorcycle of the bonobos!” But only in 2004 and 2005, as the country's infrastruc-
ture recovered and military tensions eased, did it become possible for him to communicate with
Kinshasa and travel there to look for support. He knew he couldn't start a conservation movement
without linking to a larger network, but he recalled how people involved with WWF and AWF only
wanted to talk and offered no concrete guidance.
During those years, André had been in touch with the gorilla conservationist Pierre Kakule in
North Kivu. From a distance, Kakule mentored him, buying him a computer and a printer as well
as fuel for the motorcycle when André began to go broke. Working with the Dian Fossey Gorilla
Fund International, Kakule ran a school for conservation and landscape managers at Tayna, and BCI
had sent several promising students there for training. This time, when André called him to discuss
the difficulties of getting support given that Sankuru was a mining zone and outsiders didn't know
about the presence of bonobos and okapis, Kakule suggested that he contact BCI, saying that their
approach might be effective there.
“Up to this point,” André explained, “most NGOs didn't go into Kasai. It was the diamond re-
gion, and under Mobutu, access had been strictly controlled. No one believed me when I told them
about the bonobos and okapis. But Pierre told me what BCI had done, and that they were interested
in working with Congolese conservationists.”
In September 2005, at the GRASP (Great Apes Survival Partnership, of the United Nations En-
vironment Programme) meeting in Kinshasa, André met with Sally. He recalled her warmth, feeling
as if he'd known her for years. Sally and BCI's team sat down with him and placed a map on the
table, asking him to explain where he'd traveled and what he'd seen. They asked for an activity
report, and he wrote one up and gave it to them. Nothing was promised at that first meeting, but he
was sure they would work together.
The GRASP conference was the first time he found himself in a room full of people who cared
about what he did. When Sally introduced him and said he had come to tell them that there were
bonobos in Sankuru as well as in Kokolopori, both the foreign and Congolese scientists in attend-
