The Hike

I woke to the pinch of an ant biting my lovehandle. Not an uncommon occurrence in a tent that is slowly decomposing like everything else here in the tropics. Sometimes I think of myself as the god of the tent and the ants the living beings of my universe. Usually, I gently pinch them between my thumb and forefinger, unzip the tent and flick them into the forest. I imagine them scurrying back to their colony having freshly experienced a major religious awakening, spreading the gospel of the tent god. The ones that pinch me I kill. The hand of god is just and cruel.

I illuminated my Casio. Just after 4AM. Breakfast wouldn't be ready for another hour but Mira was already banging on pots and pans. It takes a little longer to cook over an open fire. I had finished my book and my Ipod was dead so I just laid there and thought.

At 5, I crawled out of the tent and began to pack up my stuff being careful to keep everything as dry as possible, no easy task given the amount it had rained recently. It was my last day at Iyema and Siri, Malou and I planned to look for bonobos for a few hours, return for lunch and then hike to Bosolomwa where Mawa and his pirogue were expected to meet us and take us back upriver to Ndeli. Amy, Mangue, Dipont and Mira would remain at Iyema for a few more days. After not finding bonobos and eating a plate full of noodles with tomato paste, we began the nine mile tredge to Bosolomwa.

The problem with life under the canopy is that you can't see what is coming at you from the horizon. After about 30 minutes of quiet hiking, the sound of thunder began to echo through the forest from not too far away. And then it began to rain. Now I don't mind being wet. My feet, nor my tent, nor nary any other item of mine have been dry but for 5 minutes over the last five days. But close lightning can be startling.

With each successive rumble, Malou began to whine like a trapped puppy. She is the AWF camp director and quite a woman. She grew up in war torn eastern Congo and fled to Kinshasa ahead of major fighting. She hasn't been home in over 12 years. She can be stubborn and bossy and is driven bu rules. She has been upset with me in the past because I gave a guide a tin of sardines solely because the AWF bought them for me-not the guides. It didn't matter to her that I don't even eat sardines unless in a pinch. Still she is a good woman with a smile that lights up her face. It's good to know that, in a country where rape is regularly used as a weapon of war, there is a stong and independent woman like her here.

Despite all of this and at first, her whimpering was a bit annoying. But as the lightning got closer, enveloping us, ripping through the trees like an overanxious child with an enormous present on Christmas morning, my irritation disappeared, my own fear set in, and I was retroactively sympathetic. We began to move faster, paying little attention to the thorny vines slashing at our arms and legs.

At one point a vine collared me about the neck and as I went to remove it, my fingers came into contact with an arrow head necklace given to me by my friend Jennifer the night before I left Bend. Immediately my thoughts went to home and Gwen and Silas and the vow I made to myself to return from this trip in one piece. It's not the rain or the lightning that scares me. Its the trees.

It may not seem intuitive, but the soil in the rainforest is poor in quality. Where we are at, 2.5 million years ago was a lake and the formation of the volcanoes in eastern Africa changed the climate patterns and allowed for the growth of the rainforest. The floor of the forest is essentially layer upon layer of leaf litter and dead plant materials giving the ground a soft bounce to it when you walk. There is not a rock for miles. This is why farming here and in other rainforests (think Brazil) is so destructive. If a family or company or whatever could farm a place forever, as we in North America tend to do, there would be fewer problems environmentally. But rainforest soil can only be used temporarily. After a certain period the soil goes fallow and the farm must move. It is also tough on the trees. Even when the weather is calm, I hear trees, seemingly healthy simply lose there perch with the soil and fall. Even more common are large branches, rotted and heavy, breaking from the canopy at heights of over 60 feet and crashing to the ground. The wind and rain increase the chances of falling foilage.

I began to imagine myself as an ant in an arboreal universe. A tree or large branch the vegetative hand of god. It was with no small amount of joy that we came to a clearing where the guides' families stayed back in the 90s, before the war, when Iyema was a fully functional research site. We ducked into an old thatched hut, leaking and barely standing but better than without.

Siri immediately ditched his handmade wicker backpack in the corner and ventured back into the rain. One of the older guides, he is as tough as they come. In 2007 when I was here last and before the AWF began providing footwear, he would walk barefoot through the forest, the soles of his feet thich like leather. All of these men speak in whispers but have to be in the conversation of world's toughest hombres. Where he was going in that storm, I couldn't begin to guess.



Malou wanted to start a fire. I said no and that we would be leaving as soon as the rain let up a bit. The prospect of staying in the hut made me impatient with the storm. After about 15 minutes Siri returned with about 3 dozen plantains and a pocket full of wild peppers, all of which must have been planted nearby when the camp was running. He had been out foraging. A few more minutes later, the rain let up and we headed out once again into the forest. Not but 5 minutes had passed before the deluge returned. Siri had to stop once or twice to fasten the plantains to his pack, a process that involved making "straps" from vegetation. With his adjustments, he no longer had room for his machete so I offered to carry it for him.



The use of a machete is an art form. One doesn't just start hacking though the forest unless one doesn't mind cutting oneself. On occassion, even the guides will come back to camp with a deep cut on some part of their person. The proper use of a machete involves the strategic placement of a small notch on a sapling, at which point the small tree is easily bent to one side. With smaller vines, the thumb powers the blade through it, as if peeling an apple. Only rarely is a full swing necessary to sever a branch or large vine.

I, of course, couldn't help myself but to take a few solid swipes. The tool felt empowering in my hand as I don't usually carry one. I thought that if the hand of god should take me, at least I would be armed. I imagined myself at St. Pete's gate, puffing mad, the vision of my wife and child husbandless and fatherless, respectively, the first of several bones I would use the machete to pick with any creator of this universe.

The rain and lightning spurred our pace. At one point we came to a newly fallen tree, the bright yellow wood at the point of the break, smiling like a preacher with golden teeth, signaling that it was a recent tumble. Siri continued to gather food. Seems he has an appetite for a particular caterpillar that tastes a bit like over cooked prawns. I wondered if he thought about the hand of god and if he got to the pearly gates he would cook St. Pete a dinner of plantains and spicy caterpillars. Then it occurred to me that he is probably so used to these conditions that he just isn't scared.



The rain let up but not before we were forced to cross a creek that, typically small and gentile, was fat and swollen and had found new energy from the rain. It rose to my thighs and Siri and I had to hold Malou's hands. We managed to ford the creek without incident finishing the hike somewhat peacefully as the storm abated. At Bosolomwa, we found the AWF pirogue, but Mawa, our usual conductor wasn't there. Instead Kobra was driving. We would come to learn that Mawa's eldest daughter had died in childbirth. She was 25. I don't think I will kill any more ants. Even the ones that pinch me.

Backpack Trip

I think it's fairly normal for people to think of an African trip as "exciting." Images of lions, elephants, zebras, and giraffes. Masai warriors standing tall and proud. These are the romantic visions usually conjured. In the 14 months I have spent in Africa, I have seen none of these things.

Oh there are exciting moments. Bonobos of course. Snakes. The freakishly intense thunderstorms. But these occurrences, for me, are scattered amongst a fairly repetitive daily routine. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, it can be pretty boring here. I wake up before dawn. I drink coffee and eat papaya. I hike the same 7 km stretch of trail every morning just to sit at the same boate tree. Sometimes I see bonobos, sometimes I don't. In the afternoon, I walk the same 7 km trail back to camp. I eat fish (sometimes with rice, sometimes with pasta-variance!). I'm in bed by 8 pm. Conversation around the dinner table almost invariably revolves around three things: food, bugs, and bonobos.

Food-What we are eating, what we want to eat, the first thing we will eat when we get back to the states. Like I've said, I really enjoy the food here. The fruit and fish are fresh and organic-there are no hormones or fertilizers or anything like that. Sometimes, although not as often as we would like, a pineapple or a few avocados (coveted like gold) will wander into camp changing our moods for the day. Peanuts are almost always available. Along with my daily exercise routine (push-ups and sit-ups), the multi-vitamins, and the long distance walking (I estimate I will cover approximately 450 miles this summer)-the food has helped me get into a pretty healthy state of being. That being said, I would give a kidney for a chocolate milkshake.



Bugs-It seems every time I come to Africa I start a journal entry with a sentence that goes something like this- "My sister Jen could not handle Africa. She hates bugs and they pretty much run the joint." So I was mindful not to start this entry with that sentence. But it is true-she couldn't deal. I've been bitten by mosquitoes, no-see-ums, chiggers, tsetse flies, ants and probably a dozen other 6 legged critters. My arms and legs look like a chicken pox convention. Even the caterpillars, with their barb-like hairs, leave burning, blistering welts on skin unfortunate enough to brush up against one lounging camouflaged on a leaf. Of course its the spiders the size of LeBron James' hand that would send Jen packing for the nearest 4 star accomodations. The crickets would probably freak her out too-they're everywhere.

And then of course there are the bonobos-By any account, the summer has been pretty frustrating as far as observing bonobos here at Ndeli. We've seen them a handful of times and had a couple of really good observations, but after spending nearly 2 months and over $25k on this research trip-well, we are a bit disappointed. Last week, however, a small contingency from the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) arrived in camp (thankfully breaking up our routine AND bringing Nutella!) and invited me to check out Iyema, a site that had not had researchers present since 1998, when the civil war here erupted and the scientists were escorted from the forest at gun point. After an hour pirogue (hollowed out tree canoe) ride downriver and a 15 km backpack trip through the forest reserve, we managed to find the overgrown remains of the camp. The old thatched huts were barely standing and the open areas around them had been reclaimed by saplings and ground cover, but the bonobo nests found on an evening walk were promising. The forest itself is quite beautiful and in the light of the overcast day it maintained a silver palor that cast a haunting effect.

Only 15 km from my site at Ndeli as the crow flies, I was hopeful that I might actually get a couple of fecal samples to see if there are any related individuals between the two sites. (Female bonobos disperse once they are sexually receptive as an inbreeding avoidance adaptation, while the males stay in the natal group.) At the moment, no one knows how far or in what type of pattern the females are dispersing. The collection of any genetic material could conceivably help refine models of our own evolution as bonobos and chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and their behavior can, with a number of assumptions, be applied to our earliest ancestors.






The trip paid off. Within an hour of slow and quiet walking (maybe 700 meters) from the base camp, Mangue and I found a group of approximately 20 bonobos-more than I had seen all summer at Ndeli and one-tenth of the distance away. The group consisted of an enormous male, several mothers with infants, and a couple of curious adolescents that actually moved closer to us. Bonobo jackpot! With only enough food for one night, and with the AWF folks needing to keep moving, we were forced to return to Ndeli to resupply. Tomorrow, however, we will return to Iyema for five days. Tent time. No internet. Long walk in but short walks once we get there. Its back to old school primatology. We'll soon see if the comforts of Ndeli have made me soft. At least the trip will break the routine. It certainly shouldn't be boring.

Nightcrawlers and Galagos and a Great Bonobo Observation

Journal Entry, August 2nd- Day 31 in the DRC

I've only just recently realized that I have 3.5 weeks left of research for this dissertation. The only thing left to do after that is to write the damn thing. Consequently I have decided to spend as much time as possible in the forest collecting data. I'll be leaving camp at 4:30 AM and returning at 7:00 PM. This means at least a couple of hours per day in the dark with headlamp and weary steps.

I do enjoy the night walking. Mangue can make the call of the Demidoff's Galago, the smallest primate in Africa, when we're in the swamps. They have what's called a tapetum lucidum, a filament that covers their eyes and reflects light (think cats) that allows us to spot them in the forest with my headlamp. As Mangue mimics them, I can trace the bouncing pair of eyes as they move toward us, territorially regarding the intrusion. They are tiny, but they come down right next to us and look as if their going to jump on our heads. It is, along with other morphological characteristics, the presence of the tapetum that seperates the prosimians (galagos, lemurs, pottos, and lorises-all considered models for the earliest primates) from the anthropoids (monkeys, apes and humans).



Lately, walking at night has conjured up some of my earliest memories. On evenings after thunderstorms, my dad and I would scour the parking lot of the dentist office behind our house in search of nightcrawlers. I can't recall all of the details, but I can remember my excitement when we left the house and spent time in the dark. I quickly learned that things were different at night and that those differences were more than just the absence of the sun.

It probably wasn't too long before I began to take the night and the changes that come alaong with it for granted. It's the funny thing about discovery. The more you know about some things, the less amazing they become. Or maybe as we age we become harder to impress.

I was definitely impressed with my bonobo observation the other day. The bonobos here are what we in the business call "unhabituated." That is, they are not yet accustomed to our presence and tend to flee when they detect us. This of course makes studying their behavior very difficult as I have pointed out before. But Friday was different.

The research team found their nesting site at 5:30 AM and waited until they awoke. They each in turn left their nest, congregated for a few brief moments in a fruit tree on the edge of our visual horizon, and then departed for parts of the forest where we would presumably leave them in peace. A fairly routine sighting.

We hung out for a couple of hours collecting feces, urine (off of leaves), and nest data. Based on the number of nests in the vicinity, we estimated the total party size at 14 individuals not including infants (who share nests with their mothers.) I decided to have a go at finding them again which, compared with the noisy chimpanzees, is difficult because bonobos are usually fairly quiet. Nevertheless, Dipon, are chef from 2007 and newly appointed guide, and I heard them "food chirping." We bushwhacked through some thick vegetation for about 45 minutes and came across a female sharing fruit with her 10 month-old son while a sub-adult male was sharing fruit with an adolescent female (presumably all are related at some level-hopefully the feces I collected will give me the DNA analysis I need to determine their relations). After eating, they all proceeded to lounge in some vines as if they were hammocks while the infant practiced swinging and climbing about-hard not to think of Silas! Several moments later, the mother, with the infant securely clinging to her back, built a day nest and hunkered down for a rest. For a solid hour, we watched the four apes from a mere 20 meters until a troop of mangabey monkeys came through and chased them off.



Fruit sharing and nest building. For a a primate nerd such as myself, these behaviors are amazing to watch. It was far and away my best bonobo sighting and second only to the time I watched a pair of chimpanzees use tools to termite fish in Senegal.



All in all, it was an inspiring day with about two hours of direct observation, 16 fecal samples and 8 urine samples collected, and data on 24 fresh and old nests. A few more days like that and I might actually be able to say something. Regardless, I am beginning to feel a bit torn. I want to get as much data and info as I possibly can but I also can't wait to get home to see Gwen and Silas. It's been a long month and I have another to go. I need to be as efficient as possible with my work, remember how lucky I am to have an opportunity to experience this, and continue to be thankful I have the support of my family. I love you guys.