Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Ten minutes before landing, we crossed over the wide river again. Dozens of long forested islands
split it into as many as five channels, yellow and brown sandbars visible beneath the water, carved
by the current into shapes reminiscent of dunes. The jet coasted low, dropped its landing gear as
my ears popped, and a minute later it banged down on the runway, all of us clutching armrests and
gritting teeth.
We were let out into a sunny afternoon and crossed the tarmac to the yellow terminal, the main
chamber of which contained two rows of wooden benches that looked like church pews. When I
heard people say Mbandaka, I listened closely. The stress was on the first syllable, the
m
largely
silent to my ear, at most a slight holding of the lips together before the plosive
b
sound.
Aimée Nsongo, a short, sturdy woman who was BCI's Mbandaka office manager, stood waiting
for us. She commanded a group of young men who gathered the dozen large duffel bags, each
weighing sixty or seventy pounds. We followed them outside the airport to where six Chinese mo-
torcycles were parked. A single white pickup, rented by BCI, was in the gravel lot. The young
men loaded the bags into the back while Aimée went inside to speak with agents of the Direction
Générale de Migration (DGM) regarding the legal formalities of our travel in Équateur Province.
At least a dozen people sat in blue plastic chairs, drinking large bottles of Primus beer. We
joined them as shoeshine boys gathered, along with vendors selling pineapples and bowls of large
squirming
mpose
grubs, the larvae that rhinoceros beetles lay in rotting wood.
“Mmm—
mpose!
” Michael said as a young man held out a metal tub of what looked like thumb-
size writhing maggots with pincers on their heads. He explained that both Congolese and bonobos
eat them, and I would later read that they contain more protein than chicken and beef. He paid a
cook to fry them in garlic, and they were delicious, with a texture and flavor like buttered lobster,
the heads crunching lightly. We would spend the following weeks asking if anyone had
mpose
. They
were our first meal in Mbandaka and would be our last one, a month later, again at the airport, be-
fore we returned to Kinshasa.
When Aimée finished with the DGM, we drove into the city along a paved road that, aside
from a few humps, potholes, and fissures, was sound. Dozens of men passed the other way on bi-
cycles, working the pedals with the laborious swaying of their bodies. Asphalt gave way to the wide
red avenues of the city, multicolored umbrellas stuck in the roadside, vendors squatting beneath.
Everything seemed tinged with the russet dust, concrete walls and buildings, people's clothes and
skin.
Founded in 1883, Mbandaka was formerly called Équateur. It appeared on Henry Morton Stan-
ley's maps at both the equator and the Congo River, like the joint in a cross. But he was mis-
taken; the city was in fact a few miles north of that imaginary line. Under Belgian colonial rule, the
province became Équateur and the city Coquilhatville, a convoluted formulation commemorating
Camille-Aimé Coquilhat, the Belgian governor-general of the Congo Free State. But within a year
