Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
an immense lit-up hospital off to the left. Eric told me that it was the largest hospital in Central
Africa, that all of this, the perfect boulevard and the hospital, was the work of the Chinese, who
were opening mines and building highways into the continent's interior. The vehicles, though, re-
mained dented, and the red or yellow vans,
les esprits des morts
, raced ahead, the eyes of their pas-
sengers shining through the open sides.
We finally stopped at a drab concrete building that looked uninhabited. It stood at a curve in the
busy two-lane street where vendors sold grilled meat on sticks and men and women lined up to hail
any car with an empty seat. But just past the metal gate, a flight of stairs climbed to BCI's offices.
When I followed Eric inside, I expected to see the small operation they were when I began research-
ing their work several years ago. At that time, BCI consisted of two or three people in the US and
a few in the Congo. Now, I saw five Congolese, two women and three men, sitting at desks, work-
ing at computers. They introduced themselves: Evelyn Samu, BCI's national director; Dieudonné
Mushagalusa, deputy national director; Richard Demondana, finance manager; Dominique Sakoy,
accounting assistant; and Corinne Okitakula, legal officer. Two others, Bienvenu Mupenda, chief of
operations, and Papy “Pitchen” Kapuya, program assistant and logistician, had flown to Équateur's
capital, Mbandaka, a city 365 miles up the Congo River, to join BCI staff stationed there, and would
soon be on boats, taking supplies upriver to the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve.
Michael Hurley, BCI's executive director, left his computer and shook my hand. He pushed his
glasses down to speak, pale indentations on the bridge of his nose where the skin had been dam-
aged after many years in the sun. He was maybe six feet tall, with wavy gray-blond hair, and though
fifty-nine, he had a boyish smile, his front teeth slightly overlapped.
“This week has been overwhelming,” he told me. “Sally rushed here from DC for a meeting
with the national government. Now we have deadlines with the African Development Bank, and we
are working to meet their criteria.”
Standing at a map, Michael pointed out fifteen conservation areas under development within
the bonobo habitat, 193,000 square miles of dense forest to the south of the Congo River. BCI's
goal, he explained, was to create a chain of protected areas that, linked by wildlife corridors, would
become the Bonobo Peace Forest. Over a period of ten years, during which their annual budget
had grown from about $100,000 to a million dollars, BCI had helped establish three times as much
government-recognized protected area as all of the big NGOs in the DRC combined: the Kokolo-
pori Bonobo Reserve (larger than Rhode Island at 1,847 square miles) and the immense Sankuru
Nature Reserve (11,803 square miles, bigger than Massachusetts). A number of other reserves were
under development and would eventually link up to Kokolopori and Sankuru, protecting a huge
swath of the bonobo habitat.
Michael put his index finger on the area we would be visiting: the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve
at the upper reaches of the Maringa River, a tributary that flows northwest before curving south
within the Congo's great riverine arc. The dark green of the Congo basin covers much of Central
Africa, its many tributaries trending west as the Congo River flows north and then turns toward
the Atlantic Ocean before veering south, picking up the tributaries and growing in size. I gradually
charted our path within this labyrinth that, more than anything else, mapped out the uniform ex-
panse of the rainforest.
From the office down the hall, Sally Jewell Coxe, whose voice I recognized from our numerous
telephone conversations, called out a question I missed because part of it sounded like Lingala, or
maybe someone's name. Michael crossed the room, shouting out information for a report she was
