monkeybusiness

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Waiting for Godot

First of all I don't want to take credit for the title, it was Daniel who suggested in one of the long hours spent at the mirador, to name any new gorilla we see Godot, thus we could make a reference of what we are doing now. But let's start at the begining.

Every morning we wake up around 6 in the morning, we have our little toasts (Gode, one of the camp helpers is a baker in Mbomo, so he is doing bread on site in a little earth oven he did under one of the hangars) and hot chocolate, some bananas and we leave punctually at 6:40 to arrive to the platform around 7:10. The piste leads through the forest, and is a nice half an hour walk that wakes you up in the morning. Especially when you get to the part with mud and water, because here again we get to practice our balance, since I guess about one third of our road leads through trunks. If it rained then it is even more interesting, because the trunks became wet and slippery and it's like ice-skateing through a very very narrow piste. And let's not forget that you're supposed to do all that super quiet not to disturb the animals...

Speaking of which I must express my disappointment. I thought the clearing will be full of animals, and I will have hard time to note and identify all of them. But instead of it there are a few resident individuals that you note in the morning and otherwise you sit the whole day waiting for something big to happen. Well I won't complain neither, the very first day we saw two elephants, five buffalos and... well that's all. I still can occupy myself with birdwatching (saw 3 different kinds of kingfishers, ibis are residents, 2 kinds of aigrettes, palmiste africains and pygargue vociferes, cigognes episcopals, souimangas and hirondelles) and from time to time you have other visitors too, like guereza monkeys, c. nictitans, albigena and finally if you wait long enough gorillas. But more on this in an other blog entry.

Celine tought us to recognize quite a lot of animal sounds, but observing and listening carefully for the 10h that you spend in the mirador when most of the time nothing is happening is quite... well, how to put it... boring? At 10:30 you start to be hungry, but we take only one meal and a banana with us, and the day is long, so you want to wait at least till midday with the food, and anyways eating at noon is like celebrating that you have already half of the time behind you.

Celine is usually reading, Daniel has his painting to do, and me I decided to make use of the really good photo equipment we have while I'm at Romani (in Loukoue the camera is a less powerfull) and practice photography. And patience:

Like one morning we arrived to the mirador, and there was a beautiful subadult pygargue vocifere sitting gracefully in a branch right in front of the mirador. It was the same individual coming to the clearing already three days in a row, always coming for a few minutes, and leaving. But today he has been there since the morning, in a clearly visible spot, observing the clrearing and cleaning his feathers. I tought to myslef what a great opportunity, set the camera, took some pictures, and was already happy whith myslef thinking of the great photo I will have when I catch him flying away. And I stood there for two hours and the pygargue was still sitting there doing nothing than cleaning his feathers. In the meantime obviously you have to be alert not to miss the gorillas in case they decide to finally come, so you have the camera pointing to the pygargue and have one eye on him and with the other one you are scanning the clearing. And it has been already two and a half hours that I've been standing there waiting for the perfect photo, and still nothing, the pygargue shows no interest in flying. And then you have some wind and some branches moving and you look away and that is the moment when the pygargue is gone. But gone definately, you don't even see him circleing in the air.

So that was it for the perfect photo, but at least we saw gorillas later on that day...

Saturday, March 15, 2014

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.

First gorilla spotted

We woke up early this morning, prepared 2 vache qui rit sandwiches and a plate of spagetti with tomato sauce per capita and left our house. We went to the gathering point where at 6 o'clock we were supposed to meet our driver Frank who was supposed to take us to Dzebe. Dzebe is a clrearing which is relatively close to us, and Celine heard that gorillas are quite frequent there, so she decided that we sould check it out, to increase the chance to see gorillas together. Last year she had real bad luck, all the first month of her observation she didn't see any gorillas, and since we are going to stay together only 11 days, she wanted to make sure she has a chance to see me in action:).

So we left early, and waited an hour for Frank, and than we took the same road by which we came to Mbomo and this time it seemed quite big. After an hour we arrived to a village, where we took an ecomoniteur, Tibault with us, and when we left the village Frank turned left from the road and suddendly we found ourselves in a piste that was once a road but now it was overgrown by the dense forest vegetation. Dzebe actually was last visited 8 month ago, so what used to be the ecomoniteurs trail was overtaken by the nature. Well this didn't really move Frank who was forcing the car through the thick bushes. We stoped only once when the road was blocked by a huge trunk, and Frank and Tibault had to cut our way through with machetes. After more or less an hour we arrived to a savanna where we left our car and continued by foot. We started another hour long jurney through mud, river and dense forest. As it was raining yesterday evening the road was quite wet and slippery and sometimes disappeared under the water that sometimes reached almost our knees. Then sometimes our robber boots stuck in the mud under the water, and then not only we stepped out of them into the mud but they also got filled with water. And then we arrived to a river that was about 8 m wide with water reaching our waist. And no bridge. There was one under water trunk to the 2/3 of the river and then one like 20 cm above. The stream was almost non existent but having the camera in my backpack falling into the water was out of question. At this point I also had two tripods in my hand but arriving to the trunk above the water level I handed it to Daniel who was in front of me and told him to send it forward to the other side. Before he could do that he was already half in the water. Trying to save his painting devices I jumped after him and helped to pull him out of the water, so finally we both ended up soaking wet, but luckily no harm was done to our equipment. We were still only halfway to the platform, and cutting through the forest you should keep calm and try not to disturb the animals. Well u can imagine that it's not so easy to walk quietly when your robber boots are full of soaking socks and you have millions of dead branches underneath your feet. I am sure that with all the crunching, falling and the "plough" with evry step scared away all the animals within a range of 2kms. Never the less we arrived happily to the clearing. There was a tiny platform at the entrance to the clearing (so tiny that I missed it at first, and thought that we stopped only to get some rest). It was built from bamboo, looked quite unstable and some of the ledder steps were missing, but we climbed up there hoping it won't fall down. Since it was too small to fit all the tripods, we mounted only the camera with the 600 objective, and sat down to wait. You couldn't really move, because a) there was no really space b) when you moved the whole platformed moved with you. As I said, the clearing hasn't been obsereved for the last 8 months, and that is why the platform was in really poor state, but Celine assured us that the other platforms are well maintained.

I cannot really imagine a nicer job than to sit in the nature and just observe it. Obviously you have some insects flying around you, cause you smell like hell after the trecking and from the river, but you get used to it very quickly. And if you stay quiet and patient you might see quite a loot of things. And being there with Celine makes the game even more interesting because she spots animals fast and recognizes quite a lot of sounds. I'm happy I can learn from her. So at the begining we saw only an ombrette africain (sorry guys birds names will be in french since my guide books are french) and some giant touracos (check the pic, caught one in flight) and Celine made me identify everything in the naturalist guide books. Then we've heard a nictitans, and a few minutes later we spotted it behind the platform. Then nothing. To have the time go faster we started to eat and that's when we've heard chestbeat in the forest. We sat quietly witholding our breath and ten minutes later he was there. A blackback arrived quite tourmented at the far right and of the clearing and he passed it quiclky looking back behind his shoulders as if checking if nobody is following him. He sat down not far from as in the forest edge, hiding behind the trees. A few minutes later a young silverback and a female arrived at the same spot as the blackback before, and they sat down to try out the tasetfull roots of the clearing grasses. We started to make photos and I was concentrating onbeing able to follow and identify them, so the hour and a half they spent on the clearing felt like 15 minutes. Only at the end we noticed they had a juvenile with tnem. They werent actually so visible, because they stayed at the far edge of the clearing covered by really high grass, and came forward only to pull out some grasses from the water. And that was it, at one point they didn't came out again and sadly we had to note they time of exit.

Celine hypothesised that the young silverback and the blackback might have been in one bachelor group before, that's why the blackback was still foraging close to his old pal, but he couldn't really be with him, since the silverback got a female already. The juvenile on the other hand was quite unlikely to be the silverback's offspring, it was too biv and the silverback was too young.

We waited half an hour to give them time to move further away and make sure we won't bump into them on the way. The sun was high up the whole day and it dried off most of the water so we managed to get back with dry feet. The two hours bumping at the back of the car this time felt like an eternity, but getting back to our house we celebrated the day with the local N'gok beer and some chocholate Grzegorz got me back in France.

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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Pics of Daniel

Out of courtesy of A.Dan, the guy who came here to make a comic strip reportage of Celine's work.

Shopping for 3 pers for 4 months:

The directorqte of the park from our cabin:

Lunch at Gode's cabin:

The map of the park:

The barque - connection to the civilised world:

Check out Daniel's blog:
http://desgorillesetdeshommes.net/

Jungle village

There is a perfectly new road that runs 800 kms north starting from Brazza, but we still took 13h to get to the directorate of the Odzala-Koukua National Park. All this 13h we spent either speeding through the national highways in the park's brand new Toyota 4WD or waiting in different spots for the park's accountant to either get money from an atm or to get the park's new mobile phones connect to the internet. Otherwise the road was quite ok, I've tried to sleep, but I was also tempted to stay awake and see the paysage on the way. Celine said that before it took her 2 days to get to the park, but the last 5 years a new road was built and there are fragments added every year. I would say that there's what to learn from them, i.e. how to build 800 kms of fine road in just 5 years if it wasn't for the fact that they were built either by chineese logging companies or brazilian palm oil plantation developers. We could see big trails cutting deep into the forest on both sides of the road by which the Chineese are emptying off the world's last big timber reserves. Actually there was not so much of the forest to see one the way, but the road was rather surrounded by vast bushy savanna. We were all wondering whether this is the way it was originally, and although we did not find an answer to this question, we were told that you can easily find antelopes, wildboars and hienas there, suggesting a natural ecosystem. I hope there are still some lions living there too.

After 11h of civilisation we arrived to Etoumbi where we took a hand operated barque (filmed it so hopefully will be able to show you) which was like 9 metal containers connected to each other with metal bars and two ropes that you had to pull alternativly to get further from one side and closer to the other.

And here we arrived to the jungle. The other side of the river had no road but the huge forest on both side of a vaguely visible and most of the time underwater path which was leading to the National Park. During our shopping in Brazza Celine told us that we can find quite a lot of stuff in the market of Mbomo, but I was nowhere to imagine that somwhere at the end of this road there is anyrhing to sell exept maybe bushmeat. Speaking of which, once we got to the other side of the river we bumped into a poacher right away. I was very impressed (and the list only begins) by our driver, who stopped the car and called the local chief commandor and hurried him to come and search the guy. I am not sure I could expect to see the same in Cameroon. But yes I have to get used to a different reality, where blacks are treated as normal workforce (although sometimes subhuman but more on that later), and they have responsible jobs and they are their own master in their own country. However the park is still run by white people but there are few positions like accountant and assistants filled by locals.

So the last few kms took us about 2 hours and that's where I got completely under the spell of our driver 'cause even though somtimes I couldn't see the road he maintained a solid at least 50 km/h speed slowing down only when the piste completely disappeard under the water. This was the same forest I know from Cameroon, and it felt home. However and surely because of my expiance I was still unable to imagine that there is a whole city waiting for us ahead of the road.

But here it is, after two hours cutting through one of the last remaining rain forests of Africa we got to Mbomo, the gate of the national park. It was already dark when we got here but still got an impression that it is like the Cameroonian village Bikol spread through several hills and little "cartiers" stick together, not much of a city, rather a few villages grown into each other. Next day I have learned that there is 4000 ppl leaving here in the middle of literally nowhere. You've got one road leading here and nowhere out, because it ends at the gate of the park. You are sourrunded by a jungle where you have forest elephants, buffalos, gorillas and pantheras and the only way to get out of here is a road that you won't necessary find...

We are staying in one of the many brick houses that were built for those park employees that are moving here with their families. There are 2 rooms 3 beds and a kitchen outside the house. We have a common bathroom with our neighbors and there is electricity every day in the morning and in the evening. There is a big water container a few meters from the house taht we have to go to collect water. The main building of the park is about 20 m away, here we even have wifi! (Anyways that's how I can post this, there will be a new post when Daniel, the cartoonist comes back from the bush in the begining of March - get ready!). The working hours are from 6:45 to 14:45 and the day starts with a drill where they pull up the congolese flag! It was quite funny this mornng being surrounded by all those so called ecoguards dressed up in camouflage with their guns next to their shoulders and getting all serious and official, and us in the middle of this seemingly pacifists and not finding our place in all this. But well, I have to admit, that I wouldn't be very pacifist when facing a poacher with gorilla carcasses.

We spent the whole Staurday and part of the Sunday meeting ppl in the village Celine worked with eralier. It was a really great experiance and partly unknown, because I never made such close friends in Cameroon neither have I spent much time in their homes. In Cameroon we rather kept a distance between local workers and the volunteers, and since the villages were further away, we rarely had time to go there. Here we went to Gode's house, who was the camp helper in Celine's last mission, and although we went there just to say hi, we ended up having lunch together and going to his nephew's wake in an other cartier. It is amazing how thoughtfull and sharing are these ppl, even if obviously we went shopping for the food, they prepared everything for us and wouldn't let us go...

Saturday we also went out for a drink with one of the most disgusting persons I have ever met, it is a retired American ranger pilot, who came here to do the same job for the park. He is apparently waiting for his plane to arrive and meanwhile he is reconstructing the park's airport to fit the needs of the tourists who pay 11000 dollars for a week to come here and see gorillas. At the same time he is getting also pretty drunk and touching shamelessly the local women and explaining his view on the black population as subhumans just becasue they have less education. I asked him what education did he have and told him that I probably have more than him but don't treat him subhuman (although now I think I should) and he agreed that I have a point, but it still didn't convince him. At this point I was already crying in the inside so gave up the discussion with him.

Yesterday we spent preparing the material for the forest: we take solar panels, tents, fuel, kerosine lamps, kitchen stuff, truck batteries, radio phones and all the research equipment with us, along with our stuff and food. Thursday is the big day, when we get all our stuff in the pinasse and leave the civilization for 3 and a half months... Actually can't wait for it to happen. It's a 3 h boat trip from here to get to the camp, and then another hour to get to the second one.

In the evening yesterday we got ourselves invited to the new director's place. He is actually quite new here, got here 2 months ago with his wife, but they had a quite impressive experiance in wildelife management and have worked around soutestern Asia and Africa in different national parks. It was interesting to see them and see their vision on wildlife conservation, locals, chinese and palmoil ("funny thing", not far away there will be a new palm oil plantation, almost as big as the park set up by malasians - they've destroyed everything in Malaysia and now they're coming to do the same great job here in Africa). They told us stories how the extermination of forests in Sierra Leone led to general famine in the country and how you go to the forests in Vietnam and see no birds and hear no sounds in the nature because they literarly eliminated everything that moves there. Humans make me scared sometimes.

So they've came to fight poaching here and continue the apparently good job the previous director did. In a way I envy them for their great life and meaningfull work, but cannot really imagine another job where your hands are more tight than fighting corruption in Africa.

I am attaching a pic of an ecoguard, basically forest ranger, that I took while training myself to make photos of gorillas (humans served as models here).

Shopping in Brazza

Arrived safely in Brazza, another westafrican capital that looks exactely like the others, I don't really get the French why did they have go and make separte countries if anyways they didn't respect tribal boundaries. Anyways Brazza seems like developping quite fast, and what surprised me (and I took it as sign of the wealth of the country) was the number of nicely maintaind parks and fountains that are spread around the city. There is also a so called "corniche" where you can take a walk along the river that separates Brazza and Kinshassa. It has nothing to do with the primitive/agressive imige of Congo in the films and media.

The most important thing we had to do in Brazza is to do our shopping for all the 4 month. Now u can imagine it's quite difficult to calculate how much rice u can eat in 4 months, bearing in mind, that you can't buy too much, because it has to be carried out there with the pirogue. But you should really think it through because u have to assume this is the only and last shopping u will do. So here is my shopping list for the 4 months (mostly copied from Celine and multiplied 1.5x because she practically eats nothing):
-5l of oil
-100 65g tomato cans
-6 kg of rice
-27 pacs of 250 g spagetti
-7 cans of sardines
-2,5kg of powder milk
-1 pack of hot chocolate powder (matinal)
-a bag of congolese coffee (I am afraid it will be disgusting)
-2 cans of green beens
-2 cans of other beens
-a bag of soymeat brought from Poland
-1 kg of salt
-10 kg of onion
- a bag of garlic
-sugar
-3 packs of vache kiri melted cheese

Hope we will be able to order some fruits and vagatables in the village when the local helpers will go for their 11-day rotation, but it seems like not much agriculture is going on in Mbomo, the village that is at the entrance of the park, but more on this later. As Mumus would put it: what a great diet!