Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
large chunk of electric catfish, a creature that gave powerful shocks when alive but was delicious,
its bright white meat handed over wrapped in a palm leaf. Landrine, BCI's field cook, had set up
a kitchen in the front of the right pirogue, dirt spread over the wood, charcoal braziers made of
battered cans. The left pirogue was loaded with bananas and plantains. A pole rose from the bow of
the center pirogue so that the boatmen who steered the outboard motors from the back could sight
their destination.
The inside was cozy, roof slats made from the center stems of palm leaves, a mosquito net above
each bed, tucked into the slats during the day. So that we didn't have to crawl over Sally and Mi-
chael at the foremost beds, there was a space between the oil drums on the side, where we could
squeeze out and sit, pee into the river, walk the pirogue's four-inch edge of hewn wood to the front,
or relax on an empty fuel barrel in the sun.
Day two on the river, a Wednesday, Sally got word on the sat phone that Michael needed to be
in Kinshasa by Monday for a meeting with the African Development Bank, and thus that he should
ideally fly that Saturday from Mbandaka to Kinshasa. We had been on schedule to arrive late that
Sunday, just in time for a conference BCI would be holding in Mbandaka.
Richard Eonga Esafuka, BCI's Mbandaka director and the boat's captain, a tall, light-brown
man whose concerted gaze gave the impression that he was softly, almost sadly smiling, went to sit
with Sally and Michael. Together, they estimated our distance from Mbandaka with the GPS and
calculated that if we traveled constantly for the next two days and nights we might arrive by late
Saturday morning, enabling Michael to catch a flight from Mbandaka to Kinshasa on Saturday af-
ternoon. Though the river level had risen slightly with the storms, sandbanks remained a problem.
There was also a flight Sunday. Though it wouldn't give Michael as much time to prepare for his
meeting, it would be a last resort. We cruised through the first day, under thick groves of palms
overhanging the water, or past high trees whose pale trunks stood ranked along the shore like bodies
in the dusk.
The sun fell quickly at the equator, its light reflected on the river before us. As we rounded a
bend, it vanished beyond the forest, a faint golden emanation from the treetops. Then at the next
bend, it reappeared, a large yellow disk sinking through the mist, falling again behind the trees as
we turned, and again reappearing, lower each time. Over the years, I'd read travelers' descriptions
of this. Camille Habert in 1898: “There is no twilight in the tropical countries, and the night suc-
ceeds the day almost without transition.” Or Beryl Markham, in 1942: “Night tramps on the heels
of Day with little gallantry and takes the place she lately held, in severe and humorless silence.”
Coleridge referenced the equatorial sunset in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”: “The Sun's rim
dips; the stars rush out: / At one stride comes the dark.” The phenomenon is due to the sun descend-
ing perpendicularly to the horizon at the equator, rather than diagonally closer to the poles, where
the sunsets, far enough up, can seem to last forever.
The night sky was moonless, the wind cool as we gathered in the front of the pirogues, the deep-
est dark along the shores, where the shadows of trees appeared to fall far past the surface, sinking
black ravines that carved the Maringa into a faint, starlit path.
Standing in a windbreaker, Richard pressed a button on his GPS and the screen lit up, showing
the river snaking before us, looping side to side, its circuitous route doubling the distance we
traveled. He aimed his spotlight ahead of us, the beam flickering through banks of mist. He moved
it rapidly up and down, directing the boat, and the four men at the back adjusted the outboards. As
we neared a bend, he raised and lowered the beam to his left so that we steered to the outside of
