monkeybusiness: Alpha tango to Romani

In case you don't understand the title this is how you call our camp on the radio from the Mbomo base.

We left Mbomo about 10 am, with a huge truck carrining our stuff and the other dozen of ecoguards and ecomoniteurs with their tents and equipment. They have an 11 day rotation schedule and all the patrols and monitors leave to their sites by water from Mboko, a small port located an hour drive from the park gate. We got there first of the two rounds but left as lasts and while we were waiting for our pinassier we cleaned the pirogue which was otherwise half under water. It is a huge trunk about one meter wide that is cut in half and culved out and it is apparently more powerfull and carries more stuff than the metal boats the patrols were using. These pirogues are made in the Central African Republic, because in Congo they don't have such big trees next to the water. Once we dried our pirouge we started to load our equipment for the remaining three and a half month:
3 tents and their holders, five plastic barrels, our bags, food and photo equipment, 4 solar panels, 2 radios, 2 huge metal cases, 7 matreces and plenty of small bags and basins filled with watever you might need in a camp in the middle of an equatorial jungle. When this all was in place they prepared 3 chairs for us 3 white guys, the rest of the 6 congolese jumped on top of the luggages, and we took off. Another 4 hour jurney began through a river into the wild. It was sunny and calm and I soon fall asleep. The tsetse flies didn't eat me entirely on the way, got a little sunburnt but otherwise it was a really pleasent time. Since the boat was heavily loaded we were moving forward very slowly, so when the sun started to set down the pinassier, Marcelin decided to stop somewhere on the way and spend the night in the forest...

We left all the luggage in the boat, removed only our mosquito nets and the guys went out to find some wood to make a tent and fire. It is actually amazing how these people can live off the forest, they can make a piece of rope out of the the end part of the maranthacae leaves that is stronger than the ropes we have. Anyways we quickly installed a quasi tent and made fire and eat what we had left from the day. Next morning the congolese were up already by 4 (I actually don't know when do these guys sleep, they stay up at the fire quite long and they're up every day around 4), we woke up with the sunrise, we packed our stuff and came to Romani, one of the two camps that we will be staying at. We sat up the camp in 2 hours, there was actually not much things to do: install the solar panels and the batteries, set up the tents and arrange your stuff in the kitchen. The camp actually consists of 4 hangars: two to put tents under and two can be used as kitchen, there is a shower (from buckets and riverwater) and two toilets.

Once we were done we went to the platform, and carried all the equipment there. Celine was right, it was in much better shape than the Dzebe one, it fits easily 5 people, and you have a table and chairs there, so you can spend your days quite confortably... waiting.