This one year old chimp and this young female gorilla were both apparently for sale. Their parents were probably food. Now they are in the hands of humans and their chance of reintegrating nature is close to none.

Only last week, in Goma, a baby gorilla was caught when an interested party failed to pick up their primate. Rumors say they were South Africans. Unfortunately, little is known about the trade and nothing is done to find out. The Congo is coming out of a war and has other priorities. In any case, soldiers are responsible for most of the poaching being done in Virunga National Park, near Goma.

The park, which has volcanoes, snow capped mountains, incredible diversity of animals has also numerous problems: refugees, logging, poaching, rebels of all kinds, and a poor park infrastructure. Despite all this, you’ll also find another breed: tourists. I was there last year in this role with Arnaud who was there for a BBC piece.

Congo has three of the world’s four primates. They are the bonobo, the gorilla and the chimpanzee. The orangutan is only found in Malaysia and Indonesia. It’s interesting to note that the less known bonobo is the closest thing to what we are, humans. These are only found in DR Congo, notably in Salonga National Park (see photos here ).

As the Congolese state begins to take a credible form, hopefully they will follow in Uganda’s and Rwanda’s steps in terms of conservation. Much money can be made from keeping our cousins alive.

At 3 o’clock in the morning, we headed for Nyiragongo’s crater a hundred meters above our campsite. We trudged quite slowly facing fierce winds in our drenched clothes from the previous day’s rain. Our group of 10 was not composed of the most skilled hikers, but we were motivated to see the world’s largest lava lake.

Guided by a park guard, we reached the crest, turned off our flashlights, turned on our cameras, laid our bellies against the slope and stretched our heads over the edge. Through the smoke we stared 700 meters below, twice the Eiffel Tower, where the earth was boiling. Our faces were illuminated by a 250 meters wide fluid lava lake in full activity. There are only three of those in world today.

Suddenly, a feeling of miniature overcame my thoughts, similar to the empty feeling I get when I stare at the stars for too long. A Nigerian friend who had climbed Nyiragongo the year before told me “he had starred into God’s eye”.

Nyiragongo has a very special relationship with the residents of Goma as well. In its two most recent eruptions, lava spilled straight into city center to end its course in Lake Kivu. In the last eruption, in January 2002, a fifth of the half million inhabitants lost their homes. Yet, despite all the warnings of another disaster, they have rebuilt their homes over where they once stood: over the lava.

Goma is the second city most at risk from a volcano after the city of Catania beside Etna in Italy. According to Jacques Durieux, a volcanologist who leads the Observatoire volcanologique de Goma, history has never witnessed the relocation of inhabitants in face of a potential disaster, San Francisco being a good example.

Nyiragongo doesn’t pose an immediate threat to Goma today, but volcanoes change behaviors unpredictably. Sooner or later, history will repeat itself according to Mr. Durieux.

Before that happens, and the probable disappearance of the lava lake, it might just be the right time to visit Nyiragongo, that is, if you’re in the neighborhood.

Audio: Listen to Arnaud's piece for BBC Radio exactly last year when he met villagers who had lost everything. At the end of the piece, the kids sing:"Nyira sleep, God above us, bring us to Rwanda when the lava comes again."

Update: Check out some photos I was able to collect.

When I arrived in Goma last week, a government’s pick up was parked in the driveway of our office. On the second day I noticed there was a monkey in it. It had an earring in its ear. He seemed eager to meet me.

So I figured I would approach the cutie. In the process of opening the door of the pick up, our guard told me he had been inside for four days. The monkey climbed out. He started drinking rusted rain water hastily from a can. I suggested that the little monkey deserved better than rusted water.

We gave him a liter of water which he drank in a record time, like a whale. So we gave the little monkey some bananas. It’s sounds logical doesn’t it? He ate the bananas like if he was a gorilla.

Then the monkey saw the dog, and climbed on top of my head. He was nervous. The dog was curious. So we put the little monkey back in the pick up.

I then informed myself of the following: the monkey belonged to the chief of Virunga National Park.

A week later, a dozen bananas less in the cupboard, someone suggested to the chief that we remove this little monkey. He agreed.

The monkey was freed today, somewhere in Virunga. His chances of surviving are dire. They took him, they put him back, and the little monkey will never come back.

It’s a jungle out there.

When you travel to Kinshasa from the Eastern Congo, you see people at the airport filling up their bags with local edible goods. It used to be that Kinshasa was fed by the Eastern provinces of the Congo. The capital is now fed by two closer provinces, notably Bandundu via the Congo river.

With the end of the war, there's one product you find in Kinshasa again. That is the famous cheese. A delicious remnant of Belgian Congo.

Did you know even eggs and chicken are imported to Kinshasa from various countries?

The Indian battalion in Beni is trying hard. In their latest effort, assorted mobile displays drove through the town’s main street. Each decorated vehicle had a complete theatrical setting with immobile characters with makeup, costumes, decoration and billboards.

Amongst these, Beni’s residents were able to appreciate a presentation Good and Evil which had a man with an angry face painted in red beside a bunch of innocent souls. In another more local variety, an African village complete with drums had kids with straw around their waist pretending to be figurative images of their ancestors.

The following truck had a man with a hammer and a pick (nail) over another man’s head that had clay from head to toe. They were enacting a sculptor depicting Ghandi’s profile. “The Epitome of Peace” declared the billboard behind the two smiling men.

Above, the peacekeepers are attending a polling station. This premonitory vision of Congo’s first election since independence drove past us at great speed leaving the Congolese and me in a cloud of dust.

Bollywood spice flavors the Indians’ effort to please and protect the Congolese. The battalion has brought security in a region in imminent war. Beni, a small town near Uganda and the Ruwenzoris, has magically remained unscathed by Congo’s decade of strife.

Recently a small group of armed men have refused to join the political transition. As a result, the national army with the backing of the Indians are preparing for a massive operation in the name of peace.

For the time being, Beni’s residents seem to appreciate as much as myself Hindu propaganda parades. I’ve never been to India, but India has come to me in the form of mobile displays.

In Beni, a small town in Eastern Congo, my host and I found this can while shopping for bread. As we downed the fish, I was wondering whose meal we were enjoying.

With NGOs, UN agencies, and other do-gooders, black market arises. In Kisangani, a town in the middle of the Congo’s forest, the city hall has the same white and blue as the UN compound. In a restaurant not far, they offered the same canned fruits as in the Moroccan peacekeepers’ rations.

I returned to get bread two days later. The shy teenager behind the counter offered the explanation that refugees can buy more food when they sell their allocated herring.

Thrilled to enjoy the fjords of Norway in Beni, I was satisfied with his answer and investigated no further.

Just South of Beni, miners turned a small river on its back. The water had a hard time winding between mounts of dirt that lay 200 meters across. Ten of these men were working in groups of two, feet in the water, looking for the evening’s meal. Their catch is not fish, but gold and diamonds.

The churned earth around them produced less than a gram of the yellow stone. We didn’t see diamonds. All of it didn’t belong to the miners, but to a business man who rents the land from the state. The gold then leaves the Congo towards Uganda, according to the workers.

This seems to be the faith of most riches of this large country.

Kasindi is the busy border town with Uganda, the former ally and now foe. Since, both countries depend on each other, the border remains open for business. It is notoriously corrupt, and transitional government is trying to clean up Congo’s third most important customs’ office.

Kasindi has been struggling with a variety of governmental authorities fighting for the money it generates. Even the military got involved in the customs’ process with new forms of taxation. But this has only led to the reduction of more than 50% of revenues according to Radio Okapi.

As goats, humans, trucks full goods cross the border everyday, one can notice that plastic jugs and fuel are traded for the natural resources, like truck loads of wood. Ultimately, the money is flowing unilaterally out of the country, through the sieve in which Kasindi is only a single hole. The Congo is sadly one the richest and one of the poorest state all at once on the continent. Places like Kasindi can be part of the solution if the situation is reversed.

As me and my colleague departed, we only got asked for “sucrés”, or cokes, which is the cheapest and most honest form of corruption. “On our way back!”, returned my travel partner.

When Kenge passed away in September last year, my colleague John Hart told me "an era has just ended". The pygmy, or mbuti, had already become a sort of a legend before his death. I had met the old Kenge (find him the red shirt) last year, but I was unaware of the myth, a hero of a famous book.

When a young American anthropologist called Colin Turnbull wrote The People of the Forest in the sixties, the young Kenge guided the foreigner into the land of the small people, the Bambutis. The book was an instant success.

Some of the older gang I met while in Epulu remember Turnbull. I heard that the anthropologist ironically failed to witness a sacred event called "molimo". He wasn't able to convince the small people to make one for him, or to find a good occasion to celebrate it. Kenge, finally had one organised for the American in honour of his death in the late nineties.

So Kenge's turn came last week, and we held his "molimo". My colleagues which worked with the famous mbuti for over 15 years were patiently awaited for the procession. I participated in one of the hunts to gather enough food for the funeral slash party. In fact, a "molimo" looks more like a 18 hours trance party than the Pope's funeral.

Take a look at our hunting day in 27 photos.

Read Terese Hart's article on the funeral with some of my photos.

If you had a bird's eye view of Africa's third largest country, it would resemble an ants quarry. With the last decade of war, the ensued economic decline, the forest has claimed back the old colonial plantations and the industrial landscape. Even roads have disappeared.

Everything has thus become manual. People dig, hoe, bike for the country’s economic incentives: agriculture, diamonds, gold, wood amongst others. In cities, people trade. While in the villages, the shacks and the firewood bring images of the Middle Ages to our 21st century minds.

On our way out of the forest last week, our path was filled with many of these icons. Pictured here are “toleka”, or “we go by” in Lingala. These bike merchants carry goods from towns to villages. The profits are interesting enough for every path in the Congo to be filled with them.

Like every bus, truck, plane, or automobile in Congo, the bicycles are overloaded. Unless they’re going down hill, the merchants walk behind their two-wheel cart holding the cargo instead of the handles.

The fellows above are doing Butembo-Isiro in 12 days. Think Washington-NY, or Paris-Toulouse. Maybe it’s time the Congolese had an Olympic team, or even participate in the Tour de France.

And if you wondered, the road pictured here is the transafrican.

We had a flat tire, so we stopped by a logging camp. We chit chat with the men there while our driver fixes our ride. They’re making good money taking out the planks from the forest. This big business is unrestricted looting.

The whole of Congo is pillage in progress. What's interesting about the forest industry in Eastern Congo is that the artisanal loggers have surpassed the industrial enterprises. Since they aren’t businesses, they have no concessions.

It's easier to be informal here. Fewer rules apply, and taxes are lower. They go and find trees by the side of the road, give a little present to the local chief, or "mwami", and it’s a free for all.

We shake hands, and head back to Beni. A cozy wooden guest house awaits us.

VIP Palace Hotel in Goma, Eastern Congo

In Goma, Eastern Congo, construction seems to be underway everywhere. Not only residences, but hotels are shaping the new looks of this town, scarred by a volcano.

No tourist here, but Congo’s most populous province, North Kivu, attracts many foreign aid workers, like myself, shady businessmen and politicians. Most of the province’s inhabitants are very poor. Rest assured a lot of money in the form minerals such as coltan (used in your cellphone) guarantees a healthy life for the privileged few.

Amidst the plethora of kitsch hotels, the VIP Palace Hotel is probably the most astounding. Its façade integrates so many styles at once, one wonders what the parliamentary who built it had in mind. If his creation is somewhat original, the business concept isn’t: many other politicians already built their own hotel.

Maybe Congo’s politicians ought to see their country as a hotel to be built, no matter how ugly it is.

Soldiers killed five elephants last May near Rutshuru. No one was incriminated.

In the province of North Kivu, Eastern Congo, fighting has erupted between dissident forces and the National Army two weeks ago. Nearly 40 000 people were displaced.

I reside near a local administration center where many of these IDPs (Internally Displaced People) are awaiting aid from the government. They’ve been there for almost a week now, rain or sunshine.

In Congo, one of Africa’s richest countries, war is lame. A few bullets are shots, one of the armed group flees and that’s the end of the fighting. But the battle doesn’t end. Both the “winning” troops and the losers will in turn pillage and rape in the aftermath. A colleague of mine once said, “the Congolese national sport is looting”. The people that camp in front of our house pay the high price of this sport.

One “collateral” victim of the war in Congo is the environment. Almost all the fighting that occurred in the last two weeks was in Virungas National Park, close to where this photo was taken. But this reality has remained in the shadow of the humanitarian emergency.

Like Romeo Dallaire wrote in his book, if the last remaining mountain gorillas of the Virungas were massacred, the international community would have reacted. The problem here is that none have been killed and the rich countries are trying their best to cope with this fucked up country.

A Russian passenger jet of Lignes aériennes congolaises sits in Goma, Eastern Congo. In the volcanic eruption of January 2002, bottom, the lava nearly missed the aircraft.

This plane hasn’t flown since 1998. It is part of Lignes Aérienne Congolaises, ex-Air Zaïre, the national carrier. Recently, it was announced that Spanish investment into the defunct airline will have planes again. The Congolese will even be able to vacate through Madrid.

The airline never really disappeared in the last decade of political upheavals. Two thousands employees are still awaiting salaries for almost a decade, which saw none of its airplanes take off. The last two presidents of Congo, father and son Kabila, had no apparent intentions to take Congo’s late dictator Mobutu’s personal airline off the ground again.

Quite the opposite. The last two Congolese leaders each launched their own carrier, Hewa Bora and Wimbi Dira. Today, these airlines compete with each other, even in their names: “Nice Air” versus “Good Waves”. Perhaps, they unite as they perpetuate dictators’ ambitions of a continental tradition: run their own airline. Other businesses such as hotels are only good for ministers.

Our airplane above will never experience its own “nice air” again. The glorious days of Mobutu ordering pink Champagne delivered by Concorde are over. This aircraft missed its chance to have been buried and made an icon of the past. Just like the country’s Big Man Mobutu.

Bottom photo by Jacques Durieux, Goma's fulltime volcanologist.