Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
After nightfall, Sally and I sat outside in reclining chairs cut from sections of bamboo and lashed
together with vines. The evening mist had almost lifted, the stars coming slowly into focus. Nearly
two decades had passed since Sally's first visit to Équateur, and though she had done so much
work with the Congolese that it was hard to keep track of, she emphasized BCI's network as its
greatest achievement. The organization had built relationships across the country with Congolese of
all walks of life. It was precisely this social web that had allowed BCI to do so much on a relatively
small budget, and Sally illustrated this point by describing a boat wreck in August of 2010.
“That was already a difficult trip. We'd brought a film crew from Australian Broadcasting Cor-
poration TV as well as Michael Werner, an American filmmaker. We had the usual logistical chal-
lenges. On a visit to Lingomo, we discovered that the sixty-foot bridge before the conservation site
had seriously deteriorated. The logs were so shaky that we couldn't take the truck across. Our team
set out looking for motorcycles in the nearby communities and returned after nightfall.”
By the time they crossed the bridge, cobbled together from stacked and crossed logs covered
with roughhewn planks, they were exhausted, stepping carefully and avoiding the gaps with the
lights of the headlamps. A thunderstorm began as they tied their equipment to the motorcycles with
strips of rubber cut from inner tubes. Each motorcycle held a driver and passenger, both wearing
backpacks, and in the pouring rain, they slipped repeatedly on the slick red earth.
After the film crew left on a bush plane, BCI departed on the pirogues for Mbandaka, accom-
panied by Michael Werner. Both he and Sally had a tight schedule. He was getting married as
soon as he returned to the United States, and Sally had a conference in Aspen, Colorado. During
their time in the field, Sally had told him how relaxing the river trip would be, just as she said to
me—how it was the vacation after the hard work in the reserve.
Pirogues are dugout canoes, in this case forty-five feet long and nearly four feet wide. Though
each had its own outboard motor, they were attached side to side so that they traveled as a single
unit. Every year, Sally told me, the boatmen had improved the way they rigged up the bamboo beds
and the roof over them, and that year was no exception.
They set off on the Luo River, the water high, the current fast, and the boatmen watching for
trees that had been swept into it. Malu Ebonga Charles—Le Blanc—commanded the boatmen. He'd
grown up on the Congo and had been running pirogues along its vast network of tributaries for three
decades. Normally, the group didn't travel at night. They would tie up at fishing camps to sleep,
though this doubled the duration of the journey. This time, with the water so high and little risk
of hitting sandbars, Le Blanc kept the boats traveling all night, he and the young men taking turns
resting.
“Before I went to sleep,” Sally told me, “I was lying in my bed, under my mosquito net, and I
remember writing, 'Le Blanc has the eyes of a cat.' They were green, and he claimed he had good
