Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
night vision. The night was so dark. You couldn't see the moon or stars, and the jungle came right
down to the river. There was no shore to speak of, just dense undergrowth and vines.
“I woke up after midnight to a loud thud and the boatmen yelling, 'Mama Sally, Mama Sally!
Mai ezali kozinda bwato!
' I put my hand down and felt the rushing water.”
The boat's outboard had caught on the branch of a sunken tree, its stern pulled under. As the men
tried to break it free, the pirogue filled. The eleven passengers moved quickly, throwing everything
of value into the good pirogue, and all that was heavy and unnecessary into the water: cassava
and an extra outboard. The boatmen cut away the cords attaching the tarpaulin roof to the good
pirogue, and threw it into the one that was sinking. Sally focused on the sat phone, her computer,
and the Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN), a portable satellite Internet terminal the size of
a briefcase. Michael Werner took his film equipment and the footage he'd collected. Among the
passengers were two students on their way to Mbandaka for school. One, a young man, clutched
an empty jerry can, and a boatman was trying to take it so he could tie it to the baggage, but the
boatmen had forgotten to pack life preservers, and the student shouted that he couldn't swim and
refused to give it up.
As soon as Sally climbed into the safe boat, she realized that the bag with the money was in the
other one, and she went back. For a flotation device, she took her Therm-a-rest air mattress. The
pirogue was almost underwater, pulling the good one with it. They were caught in the middle of the
river, where the water was deepest, far from the shore. As the current dragged the pirogue under,
the boatmen told everyone to grab on to something, that they were going to cut the ropes.
It's difficult to fathom the mass of a pirogue, each one carved from a towering tree and weighing
well over a thousand pounds: solid, thick wood that won't splinter if it hits sunken logs or sandbars.
The boatmen were afraid that once they cut the pirogue free, the good one, already tilted sharply
toward the water, would flip. They brought their machetes down, the ropes popped, and the pirogue
lurched up, flinging Sally, the student with the jerry can, and a boatman overboard. Michael Werner
caught Sally's ankle, and the boatman swam back and got in, but the student was swept into the
current and lost in the darkness.
The edge of the overloaded pirogue was barely above the surface. Slowly, Le Blanc turned it as
they called out to the student. They steered in the direction of his voice, and Dieudonné, a boatman
whose name means “God-given,” jumped in and brought him back. Sally studied the shores, mov-
ing her headlamp's beam over the jungle, knowing that if they sank, they would have to swim to
that virtual barricade that likely harbored snakes and crocodiles.
After another hour inching along the river, they found a fishing camp and pulled ashore. They
built a fire to dry themselves, but all of the fuel barrels and jerry cans had fallen into the water, and
Le Blanc, who'd never in all his years on the river had a boat sink, worried that if they didn't set
out now, they wouldn't find any of the fuel. He told Sally and the other passengers to stay, then left
on the pirogue with the boatmen. Sally had run out of sat phone credit, so she hooked the computer
to the BGAN and sent a message to Michael and the BCI team in Washington, describing what had
happened and asking them to contact the sat phone company and buy credit. One of the CREF sci-
entists, Yangozeni Kumugo, was with her, and he gave her their GPS coordinates. In her email, she
told Michael when she would turn on the sat phone, not wanting to use up its battery. Later, as she
dried herself at the fire, she learned that just before the accident, Le Blanc had taken an hour to rest,
his cat's eyes closed, and that one of the boatmen had dropped the spotlight into the river, so they
were navigating with the weaker beams of flashlights.
