Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Massive trees. Forest and storm linked. Hulking clouds, orange in the evening.
In the days to come, the downpours would be more frequent, the sound of thunder often reach-
ing us from a distance.
We returned the next morning without photos of the strange bonobo, Roger downcast, asking if
I would come back, telling me that he was working hard at habituating the group but that it took
time.
We returned to his village to find a council of furious elders, and I discovered that Roger had
bypassed getting their permission, wanting to spare me the trouble. In our absence, BCI had met
with them and made peace, apologizing for the mistake and explaining my purpose there.
“Did you see the bonobos?” the elders asked.
“No.”
They smirked. “You did not see the bonobos because we did not give our approval.”
I glanced at Roger, and he hung his head.
“It's true,” he said. “If the elders are angry, the bonobos will not come close to us. This was a
mistake.”
Later, in Djolu, Sally told me that BCI always got the elders' approval before going into the
forest. A few elders, on trips to Djolu's market, to see friends, or to watch soccer games, stopped by
and patted me on the shoulder, laughing. They sat with me and discussed the forest and the bene-
fits of community-based reserves, and explained that Roger was young and impulsive, and needed
to learn patience. I confessed with some reluctance that I probably shouldn't have hurried him so
much. I hadn't had the sense that he was listening, but he'd rushed me to the camp as I'd requested.
If anything, I was the one who hadn't respected the local leaders.
Months later, when I was in Washington, DC, I met with Alden Almquist. Having moved with
his parents to Équateur Province a year and a half after his birth, and fluent in Lingala, French, and
English, he was skilled at explaining Équateur's culture in terms that Westerners could understand.
His father was a doctor, missionary, and preacher, whom the people protected during the upris-
ings after independence. Alden began his university studies in Kisangani early in the Congo Crisis
and recalls being able to walk through the shot-out windows of the buildings as easily as through
the doors. He continued the degree in the United States, finished a PhD in anthropology, returned
to Zaire on a Fulbright to study rites of passage in a traditional hunting village, and later wrote a
great deal on Congolese culture, including the section on “Society and Its Environment” in
Zaire:
A Country Study
and “Horticulture and Hunting in the Congo Basin” in
African Rain Forest Eco-
logy and Conservation
. When I told him about my trip with Roger, he explained to me that the
Congolese have traditional notions of conservation, some of them based in “firstness,” the idea that
those who have been first on the land have power over it and deserve respect.
“Firstness,” he told me, “is one of those cultural categories of explanation that doesn't have a
good analogue for us because it involves nonmaterial entities and agents, which we don't honor.
There are ties that the first settlers form with the land, and if new people come in, they are under
obligation to ask for permission for hunting, farming, and fishing from the lords of the land—and
they are called that, the lords of the land. One of the things BCI did when Sally and I went in 2003
and 2004 was to go around and form these little bonobo committees, and meet with the lords of the
land. They are the people you go to if you're an immigrant, or if you are a relative who wants some
land to farm. And in each place the extent of the rights varies. In some places, the chief pretty much
