Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
not only as essential for the 2002 National Geographic trip but as the future backbone of operations
in the Congo. They had the personnel to do what was most needed: survey the forests and determine
where the bonobos were.
Those who met Sally on her first trip back to Kinshasa were struck by her tenacity, the way she
spoke with everyone, explaining the importance of bonobos and the rainforests, a topic that seemed
surreal with the country on the verge of collapse. Sally and the BCI team worked to get the govern-
ment's approval for the National Geographic expedition and met with WorldSpace Satellite Radio
to discuss the potential of Radio Bonobo, a multidisciplinary program she hoped to launch.
BCI had determined that the best approach in the DRC would be to use established networks to
educate people. The two strongest influences there are music and the Catholic Church. Sally man-
aged to set up a bonobo commission within the church and educated priests about conservation,
resulting in the DRC's Congress of Catholic Bishops's decision to formally back BCI. Popular mu-
sicians exerted a comparable influence on the culture. The Congolese respected them, and Sally
worked toward producing a radio program in which musicians would sing of the natural heritage of
Équateur, using folklore to remind people of their ancestral commitment to protecting bonobos. The
broadcasts also discussed health issues, from the dangers of eating apes and disease transmission,
to sanitation, malaria, and HIV prevention.
The cost of working within the DRC, of making connections and hiring people to go into the
field, and getting materials into Équateur, was exorbitant. The Japanese research camp in Wamba
was occupied by DRC government soldiers who hunted in the nearby forests and harassed the villa-
gers, and Sally had to find a way to remove them. And yet she was going broke. She knew that she
had to engage fully with the challenge that she was taking on with BCI, and she sold off the last of
her stock portfolio even as she applied for grants.
“I don't think I've ever doubted the project,” she told me. “It kept me going. It didn't feel as
if it was just me. There were so many connections. One of my favorite lines is from W. S. Mer-
win's 'Provision': 'I will take with me the emptiness of my hands / What you do not have you find
everywhere.' That has been my experience. Things and people just kept showing up. Every time I
thought that there was no way to go on, something happened.”
This was during the first phase of the Central African Regional Program for the Environment
(CARPE) under USAID, and the focal point for CARPE in Kinshasa was Evelyn Samu, the Con-
golese woman whose home I stayed at during my time in Kinshasa. She had organized a conference
on protecting biodiversity in times of war, and as a result, Sally heard about her.
“It's important to point out,” Evelyn told me when we spoke in her Kinshasa home, “that
at that time people didn't know much about bonobos. We talked about chimpanzees. We talked
about mountain gorillas. But the person who came, aside from Claudine André, who was taking
in orphaned baby bonobos—yes, she talked about them—but the person who really talked about
bonobos in their natural habitat was Sally.”
Sally and Evelyn became friends, and Evelyn gave Sally a space in her office. Later, when Sally
ran out of money, Evelyn let her stay in her house.
“But the man I was seeing at the time,” she recalled, “he was convinced that Sally worked for
the CIA. 'See,' he would tell me, 'look at her. She's carrying all of that camera gear. Do you really
think she's here for apes? Who's she working for? What's this organization—BCI? It doesn't even
exist. There's nobody involved with it. She has to be CIA. You need to be careful with her. Get her
out of your house. Get rid of her.'”
