Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
We drove in front of the
stade
, the stadium, a raised stone foundation the size of a hut, with eight
brick pillars, a metal roof, and some benches and concrete steps, all crowded with boys and girls.
On the athletic field on the other side of the road, a ragtag bunch of boys were kicking a soccer
ball. The children forgot about the game and pointed at us instead, screaming, “
Mundele, mundele,
mundele!
”
This word, meaning “white person” or “foreigner,” would be the mantra in Équateur. The chil-
dren stared, wide-eyed, shouting it as if calling our names, and it took me a moment to realize that
they were screaming it to draw other Congolese. They were announcing a rarity, many of them see-
ing their first white person in months, and farther out, in the villages, possibly their first ever.
Just past the stadium, we came to a six-room mud-brick house, the Djolu headquarters of Vie
Sauvage, literally “Wildlife,” the local NGO that BCI had spent years developing as their primary
partner in the region. A fifteen-foot-high termite hill hid the building from the road, and children
scaled its sides, gathering at the top to get a view of our activities, or reaching down to catch the
hands of their friends and help them up. In the yard of beaten dirt was a
paillote
, a word that literally
means “straw hut,” though in the Congo it indicates a communal open-sided building with a thatch
roof.
After some discussion with the Congolese staff, Sally and Michael decided to sleep in Djolu, at
the Vie Sauvage headquarters. The forty-five-mile drive to Kokolopori took four hours if all went
well, since the road was rutted, often with trees fallen across it and drop-offs on the sides. If we got
a flat tire or broke down, we'd have to finish in the dark, holding flashlights out the window since
the Land Cruiser's headlamps didn't work. Sally also didn't know the condition of the camp; she
hadn't been there in over six months, and termites and insects were quick to devour rafters and the
roofs of buildings.
We ate a dinner of cassava, rice, avocado, fried banana, and spicy stewed chicken in a red broth
that was delicious poured over everything else. I dabbed a little of the
pili-pili
sauce on my food,
the crushed hot pepper making me break into a sweat. We finished the meal with rainforest honey
brought down from the trees, dark and liquid, poured into glasses to sip, or to be mixed with
lotoko
,
a type of moonshine made from corn, cassava, or plantain.
Everyone appeared to know Sally and Michael, and stopped to speak. They discussed projects,
people's families, and the reserve, then, inevitably, the diminished funding and financial difficulties.
All seemed to be involved with BCI in some way, doing odd jobs for Vie Sauvage or working at the
Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural (ISDR), the technical college that Vie Sauvage and BCI
had founded.
Josephine Mpanga, a petite woman in her late thirties, stopped by, and I learned that she ran the
biggest NGO in the territory after Vie Sauvage. Several years back BCI had jump-started her work
with a microcredit loan and a few sewing machines, and she had since expanded a sewing cooper-
ative into a program to employ women on a number of development and conservation projects.
With a straight spine, her posture authoritative if somewhat fatigued, she sat across from Sally
and described how she hoped to spread her work to nearby villages. Sally listened, nodding or ask-
ing questions. Later, she told me that she wished BCI could support Josephine more, that Josephine
was among the most determined leaders in Djolu.
Marcel came inside to tell us that we had to visit Djolu's newly appointed government adminis-
trator, and we followed him out. The sun had already gone down, the sky a deep blue that suggested
the density of the darkness to come even as it silhouetted the palms along the road. Djolu is built on
