The mighty Congo River is opened for tourism.

“The best vacation I ever had was a boat trip on the Congo River”, an American once told me. That was three years ago in Mozambique in a five star beach resort (I was on the UN payroll). I had escaped the peacekeeping mission on R’n’R while he was on a reconnaissance trip for his multi millionaire clients.

More than hundred years since Stanley navigated Africa’s great water way, the Congo River is simply a no go for tourists. Or so I thought until last week. I got to meet Michel Van Roten who, with his wife, runs the only tourist company in the country.

“Our six planned boat trips on the Congo River are fully booked for 2007”, the entrepreneur tells me with a big smile. The mythical boat trip might just make his company, “Go Congo”, profitable for the first time since 2002.

The biggest fight, he admits, was the bad press Congo suffered from. Four million dead from war, Ebola, malaria, you name it, it is here. Last August, a bunch of Poles had to cancel their visit with Go Congo due to gunfights in Kinshasa. In such circumstances, many would be fast to rename their venture “Don’t Go Congo”.

The risks are there, but Michel won’t budge. He repeats to me what his website states on the homepage: “If you really need 5 star lodges, whisky on the rocks and your 20-channels television, please go somewhere else.” That is definitely more marketing than warning.

Only a few years ago, Congo had flocks of visitors looking for the “real Africa”. “People want to see it, to live it” says the Belgium of his wealthy eco tourists. Congo’s paths have definitely become unbeaten.

The once profitable tourism industry will eventually wake up after more than a decade of hibernation. Michel and his wife are eager to seal their head start. Critical contacts are already made and they have the full support of the Tourism Ministry. To my question about his problems with governmental institutions Michel simply replies: “none”.

Early next year, Go Congo is going to prospect in Eastern Congo for a future package tour. Volcanoes, gorillas, pygmies, it sounds like a promising adventure. Maybe the Congo Rangers (my previous post) could team up with Michel’s clients?

My heart trembles at all the potential. Doesn’t it sound like Congo has a future? We’ll wait and see if Michel and his wife get more than sixty clients a year.



Here's a link to Go Congo's website. Otherwise, you can find one updated guide to DR Congo, but it's only in French: Le Petit Futé, which came out this year. For photos, try Hundred Years of Darkness.


My own top five Congo attractions (never did the river trip)...

1. Ruwenzori, the Mountains of the Moon, snow in Congo, third highest on the continent, the weirdest plants ever. Photos.
2. Nyiragongo volcano, the third largest lava lake in the world, stare in a hole twice the height of Eiffel Tower and look at fountains of lava. Post.
3. Mountain gorillas, take on the huge Silverback male with his harem full of fluffy babies. Damn, you only wished you could touch them. Photos.
4. Pygmies of the Ituri forest will take you on a rush in the forest. Survival never looked easier. Photos.
5. Itombwe Plateau, off limits area, unfortunately, simply picturesque landscape, highly interesting ethnic mix (or un mix), you could be the first white a whole generation will see. That is, on the condition you’re white. Photos.

Robert Muir's "Congo Rangers" blog.

Virunga National Park is home to some of the last mountain gorillas. But it also has an amazing assortment of other animals and plants. Conservationists use words like “rich biodiversity” when they talk about the place.

Only, Virunga is also home to a common Congo specie: the guerilla. This politically classified ape has mastered the basic tool for hunting: the a-kay. Roaming the park in rather large groups, it is out playing the other animals, even the national army at times.

Because of them, in Africa’s oldest national park, the shit is currently hitting the fan. The recent scale of slaughter has rarely been seen. For example, the hippo is nearly extinct in the park. There used to be some 30 000 back in days. Makes a young guy like me nostalgic of times I didn’t know.

All hell broke loose in the last month. Alarm bells are ringing all over the conservation community right now. Even the peacekeeping mission has been asked to save the animals. Unfortunately, it’s already having a hard time saving the Congolese from themselves.

I’ve been able to follow the situation in Virunga thanks to Robert Muir’s blog, a conservationist in Goma. He’s in an odd position himself: he holds the key to halt some of the slaughter, but one problem stops him from doing it. I’ll get to that later.

Robert has brought together and trained an elite force of guard parks. Forty men ready to tackle poachers and other no gooders. I’m talking “I’ll gun your sorry ass down if you touch Fifi my pet gorilla” gun ho blokes. Take a look at this photo, you’ll understand.

When I met Robert late last year, all he talked about was this project. Like a boy talking about WWII heroes, Robert charmed me with the personal stories of what was becoming an elite corps of “Rangers”.

Compass to his belt, the young Englishman has the looks of boy scout who failed to mature entirely. Half geek, half adventurous, 110% passionate, he even flies a zebra striped Cessna (photo on his blog). When he has fuel. On top of it, he works for ze Germans. Well, the Frankfurt Zoo. His girlfriend even helped me release a monkey once and made me feel like a good person.

Anyway, the Americans and Europeans donors bought into the guy and funded his initiative. With the cash, he hired mercenaries, got a vehicle or two and took hold of a deserted tourist resort on the shores of Lake Edward. Most importantly, they released the best potential within the ICCN's (park management) park guards.

A few months later, the squad was ready for action and ultra motivated. They only needed a mission to match their vision, and unfortunately, it has come. Trouble is, they lack funds.

Nothing new in Congo. But this time, the extent is such that Robert sounds like he’s begging in his last post. Unusual of him to write:

Please help the Congo-Rangers to protect Virunga’s exceptional wildlife from […] poachers. The rangers desperately need basic supplies such as rations, medical and field equipment, and transportation.

Reading between the lines, other than the white space, it means that the situation has gotten ugly. Coming from conservation myself, I know it’s urgent.

Ironically, in this case, the Congolese have the capacity and competency to deal with the problem themselves. But again and again, money goes to the wrong elite. Will this be another training that served no purpose?

You like watching gorillas or other likes on Animal Planet? And your stash of cash has seven digits figures? Then I recommend funding Robert’s honest project. If you’re poor, too bad for you.

Just kidding, of course, all you gotta do in that case is link to his blog. Generate interest to an endangered World Heritage Site. Because after all, it belongs to all of us. And it's priceless.

Good photos, goos stories, good cause. Here's the link again.

Wind sweeps Kinshasa’s dry season dust as the first shower comes in late for this year’s rainy season.

People started to wonder about the delay. But the rainy season arrived last week. Kinshasa is sweltering again, the “frigoristes”, the air conditioner guys, are getting their jobs back. They sweat so we stay cool.

The big tree in the photo premeditated the arrival of the wet season. Three days before I took this photo of the first rain, leaves grew at an astonishing rate. It greened back to life, while only a few weeks ago it looked dead.

Rains will occasionally disrupt street life in the next six months. Flowers will make the trees pretty again and food falls from the sky, in the form of grasshoppers. My favorite fruit, the mangousta, will be available for sale on people’s heads again.

The Congo River River will rise gently and pour some 80 000 cubic meters of water in the Atlantic Ocean. That is second only to the Amazon.

Which makes me think, did you see the movie Congo River? I didn't get a chance myself, so if anyone has the DVD, let me know.

The metamorphosis has begun in this part of the southern Equator.

Featured on BBC News' Africa page, is a dozen photos from an expedition I participated in April.

I posted an article already on this site. My colleague, John, made his own article on the WCS website, with more images of birds there.

Last week, my unexpected bed partner

My friend ML is in hospital right now suffering from a bout of malaria in intensive care. She’ll be out for probably a week. The biggest killer in Africa, malaria is not life threatening as long as you’re diagnosed early (and properly).

So common, malaria is often blamed for any other illness. You have a headache, it’s probably malaria. You’re shitting soft, it might just be malaria. You’ve got fever? It’s definitely malaria. People rarely seek diagnoses, so malaria it is.

When bummed and tired of your job, you can call on a self diagnosed malaria as an excuse to get off the hook. Nobody questions malaria, not even bad bosses.

Since there’s no vaccine, you can only treat yourself after contracting it. There’s a multitude of poisonous solutions to get yourself back on track. My favorite is derived from a plant. Whoever finds a permanent solution to malaria is going to make a killing.

My most important line of defense in Congo is my mosquito net (with of course, this spray). In the northern countries, the blokes talk about their walk-in closests. In Africa, we dream of walk-in mosquito nets. I have one of those.

I’ve slept with more mosquitoes than people in my life. The trick to avoid sleeping with one is to sprint to your net upon entering. In the discomforting event that this should happen, either you wake up because the little sucker (literally) bites you awake or either you wake up with a flying blueberry in your net. If the latter, you look at it, and you wonder: “What if she has malaria?”, is the question of, well, any unprotected intercourse.

Flying blueberries are like a flying B29 Superfortress. It’s slow and vulnerable. Whatever blood is left in you has revenge. You smack the hell out of the little insect. Your own blood is all over your hands.

Usually, those are the most satisfying kills. The worst is when you decide to go for a free kill. A regular mosquito on his job time, you going about your business. He goes by you, you figure an easy prey. Smack! You open your hands to confirm the aim was on target. It was, but whose blood is on my hands? Shit, that’s the worst.

The chimp in question, the forest by the side of the road, and a village scene near Lubero.

Coming into Lubero, Eastern Congo, it used to be that a young male chimp would greet you into town. The animal caused a stir among the passersby, both because of fear and curiosity. A feeling the chimp probably also felt, for his social behavior could be shifty.

Smaller than humans, our genetic cousins can be four times stronger. And strength it needs, for their social structure is based on submission. Submission as in “I’ll beat the crap out of you, so you’ll know who your daddy is”.

The day I saw him in December we witnessed him take a bite out of an old man’s ass, literally. The frightened victim ran away unhurt holding onto his pants with a huge hole in his pants. But I knew the Ape on the Road to Lubero story would have a tragic end.

Watch out kids, the ape wants more than just bananas. In Tanzania, a famous chimp by the name of Frodo even sequestered a baby only to disembowel it and start eating its guts up in the trees. Lucky Frodo, he was in a national park, and so he was sparred an early death.

This wasn’t the case of the Lubero chimp. Although the wildlife management made an attempt to catch him, the people had enough. I found out through this blog he was recently killed.

Us and the chimps, we split 5 million years ago. And when we meet, it is not always a fun family get together.


The first time I saw this chimp I thought he was a gorilla. When I showed this photo to my colleagues, they had a good laugh at me: “It’s a chimp you idiot.” Whenever I’m in the field, they like to joke on my sound scientific observations.

Speaking of apes, of the five hominids (humans, gorillas, chimps, bonobos and orangutans) interestingly, Congo has four of them. The bonobo, our closest relative, is only found in DR Congo.

Above, a motored pirogue in the middle of the Congo River floats beams to Kinshasa. The logs were probably cut in Bandundu, maybe 300 km up river. Such activities are increasingly eating up the world’s second largest lung.

At up to 300$ a cubic meter, some of the woods are tempting for any Congolese to pick up this lucrative trade. It’s tough to convince the Congolese the benefits of keeping their forests.

From our house in Bukavu, a view of Lake Kivu, one of Africa’s Great Lakes.

Am off to the Itombwe Massif, where my colleagues and I will follow in Georges Schaller’s footsteps, the original Wildlife Conservation Society researcher.

Delays, delays, delays... back on the 25th, apparently.

A tiny village in Congo's Equatorial forest. Below, freshly sawed Wengé will darken in time to become luxurious floors in northern countries.

Within its borders, the DR Congo has both extreme natural wealth and some of the poorest citizens of the world. Much ink is spent on the minerals that triggered a decade of strife. Not surprising, considering that the war left 4 million dead in its wake.

One unnoticed natural resource is the forest. An area the size of France is harvestable, and within it, some of the most luxurious woods in the trade are found. It is both a great economical opportunity but also a potential environmental disaster. Keep in mind, the DR Congo has the biggest chunk of the world’s second largest lung, after the Amazon.

As forestry could give jobs to the people of the forest, it could also destroy their habitats. Try paying someone salt and cloth take down his house with a chainsaw. Saddly, he would bring it all down with its a rare collection of animals and plants.

Do not fear, cataclysmic scenarios are only found in Greenpeace’s brochure. Smaller countries in the region are out producing Congo’s timber industry by six folds. But, preventing, or at least controlling, is the key word of the day.

Environmentalists are correct to be the least worried: Africa’s heart might loose its green shine if money has its way. The future will tell, but saving the forest hardly goes by any Congolese politician, at least not right now.

But what can you do? Consumers can help by simply buying Forest Stewardship Council labeled wood, a similar certification as Fairtrade. DR Congo’s logs have never been certified, and FSC is lacking funds to send a first mission to the country. Don’t be saddened, currently, no logging company qualifies.

If you’re tempted to buy Congo’s woods nonetheless, look for these “espèces nobles”: Wengé, Afrormosia and African Mohagony. Available in Europe and North America, they are often featured as floors in interior design magazines. Beautiful dark woods are always a good match to pearl or white walls.

Then again, you might prefer to see the same trees in a National Geographic.

If you want to dig your curiosity, I wrote some pieces on the politics of sustainable practices in Congo's forestry for the WCS website. Thanks to many, I was able to gather some nice photos as well.

I also wrote "Artisanal Loggers Take the Bigger Chunk of the Forest in Eastern Congo" on this blog.

Counting animals: data translated to a visual form. My colleagues laptop screen is showing Salonga National Park, a World Heritage site.

I often get asked what the Bronx Zoo, my employer, does in the DR Congo. Whereas my project is information related, my colleagues work in the parks which many are World Heritage sites. Our specialty is counting animals, or what they call “inventories”.

“So how do you count animals?” For big mammals we count their shit. And a lot of shit there is over a wide area. Gorilla, elephant, okapi dung, you name it, we look it or it.

Our teams that cumulate 30 people split themselves in small groups and walk “transects” (straight line) kilometers on end. GPS, digital camera, and notebooks are used to witness all the details and location of interesting findings: turds, bonobo nests, traps, hunting camp, rivers, openings in the forest (bais), and villages.

Not a simple walk in the park. The exercise can last up to three months, if security permits. The forest is often shared with renegade soldiers, like Maï Maï. Think of Apocalypse Now and you have a fairly good image of the blokes in the woods.

All the data is then brought together in Excel. Boring data entry it is, but a critical step nonetheless. Then our GIS expert, Falk Grossman*, takes all this and creates charts and maps. Thousands of entries are transformed into shapes, making the big picture. The trouble is, with so many parameters, the analyzed data can be interpreted in many ways. Creativity is required to produce a final report.

“Is there anything left in Congo?” is always the next question. There is, but that's a little more complicated to answer.

*Can you believe it? He walked across Salonga National Park from North to South. That’s the size of Belgium. If you can make him talk, he has the craziest stories from his "transects".

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.

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.

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.

Rest in peace BBC (Big Black Cat).

Update: my friend Cédric has a post in French on eating dogs here, with a sad photo indeed.

A year ago, I was climbing the Mountains of the Moon, as they are known. I've put the images online again, for those who haven't seen them. There a still a bug (the images are on two lines instead of two).

In 2006, with colleagues, we are going to plan something to celebrate 100 years of the first ascent. So we should be back there sometime next year.

Click to view.