So how is life in Budongo? Well, it can be compared to paradise in some aspects. But as this might be difficult to picture, let’s say it is like a holiday camp: very comfortable rooms in small houses in the middle of the forest, with enough water and solar electricity, access to nice and fresh food, hot showers and nice people… what else do you need? Oh, yes, of course, wildlife! Well, with the bushbucks, black and white colobus, blue monkeys, baboons, red-tailed monkeys wandering between the camp houses, it is easy to believe we are in some Walt Disney world where everybody is good and everybody is nice… this is without counting the chimps of course, our reason to be in this “wonderful world”.

They are also mostly around, sleeping in the nearby trees and waking us up on our days off with their pant hoots… but their world sometimes remind us this is not a fairy tale…

As for example when they killed the newborn of a primiparous female (the unfortunate Oakland) just before we arrived, or when they hunted a mother black and white colobus after grabbing her infant. The unlucky mother fiercely fought about ten chimps, but got slowly exhausted by the chimps dragging her back on the ground by the tail (why do these poor things have such long and fluffy tails?) each time she was climbing back on a tree… Later, totally worn out, with the belly opened and the intestines out, dragged on the ground by Nick, the alpha male, she was still trying to fight back anyone on sight… This was immensely hard to watch, especially because I knew all the killers so well…

Fortunately, there are other moments with the chimps! The Sonso community is so well habituated that it is really easier to work with them than to work with the bonobos! Their home range is about 6 km2 compared to about 50 km2 for the Wamba bonobos and the daily number of kilometers walked can be divided by up to ten. So finally, we are not complaining about the change of program, all for the best!

On the illoco side, things could not have worked out better either. Fabien is running everywhere within Nyabyeya parish to set up development projects. For the following four months, we thus propose a menu of different wonderful projects:

– Starting and developing the local production of briquets, a substitute for charcoal and firewood, which is made of waste and is thus a great way to recycle and protect the forest!

– Equipping the villages with solar lights through a network of local entrepreneurs, together with a local NGO and the support of the French Embassy.

– Getting rice hullers to promote the culture of rice which is not so much raided by the usual “vermin” (baboons, bushpig, chimps), and thus creating added value through processing agricultural products.

– Spreading metal silos granaries to respond to farmer’s needs who lose up to 20% of their production due to bad storage conditions and thus have to all sell their production at the same time and at low prices (by storing 2 months their production, they can double their turnover).

– Reinforcing and promoting the BUBWA Women’s group (BUdongo Basket Weavers Association I helped to create during my PhD in 2007) by helping them to increase their sales.

– Coaching the ex-hunters group (encouraged by BCFS to stop putting snares in the forest by giving them goats) to increase their business results.

– Improving governance in the BCFS loan scheme launched by the staff which lacks transparency in its accounting.

– Strengthening the health monitoring program ran by BCFS by making posters and implementing reporting tools.

Everything is starting now, but we have great hope all these projects will be successful!

 Six hours of driving down south-western are necessary to reach Kalinzu, in the Bushenyi region, which even involves crossing the equator where you can check that the water really flows one way or the other depending on which side of the equator you stand (although we haven’t tried ourselves). We spent the first night at the research camp and started moving into the small house in the village the next morning. That first day already, Kiggundu a local police officer warned us that we were not safe in the house at night without an armed police officer at night and he decided by himself to spend the night in front of our house the same night, even with us protesting. The next day we verified with the villagers, the NFA and the trackers that we should indeed get a security at night and that Julius, an old man from the village, would not be enough to protect two “bazungus”.

We discussed this issue with NFA which provides two armed policemen day and night to the KFP research camp, but they told us they could not do anything for us as we were outside of their premises. KFP told us as well that they could not help us to get security but that we could always ask a private security company or a villager with a spear. Kiggundu then told us they had not enough manpower at the police station and we should go to the District officers to ask the permission to deploy a policeman for us, but that we should not trust a private company.

The next day we thus went to Bushenyi with Kiggundu to meet his superiors who were quite upset that they did not get aware of our presence and that we were staying in such unsecure conditions. Apart from the usual security issue of having two “bazungus” in an isolated house (which can attract burglars as the whiter you are, the richer as well), the French embassy also called us to warn us about the problems in DRCongo that were spreading over the borders of Uganda. We heard that both the army and hundreds of Congolese refugees already reached Kasese, about 80km from us. All these reasons made us carefully listen to these police officers. Unfortunately, instead of solving the problem, this meeting with the police officers made it bigger. As they did not understand why we could not stay in the research camp and forbid to us to stay without police security in our village (that they could not provide either due to lack of manpower), the district police officer called a meeting with the NFA and KFP to see where we could stay safely and do the research.

The meeting was held the next day, but no satisfying solutions were found as we could not stay in the Nyakatembe house, that the research camp was full and that the lodging proposed by the NFA was too complicated (a house at the camp, totally empty with no power, means of getting water, etc. or two office rooms empty as well and without power, that were so dirty that the manager forbid us to take pictures of it and this for 15$ per day, so 450$ per month. When you know that a decent house in Kampala is about 300$ per month with unlimited (or close to) access to water and electricity, it is a bit difficult to accept and we finally found the Cielo hotel about 30km from the forest that could let us stay in very comfortable conditions (with unlimited internet access, tap water and electricity) for only 18$ per night!

We agreed to stay there and try to come every morning by public transport to continue the research. As the links with the KFP were becoming looser (as we were not staying in their premises anymore) and we were waiting for them to tell us how I could continue to work with the tracker I used to work with, we organised with the NFA so I could go to the forest with Joseph their habituator, a man of 62 years old who can still run up and down the hills as little goat that jumps. This wobbly situation was the only one in which I could continue my research and I was ready to bear all the inconveniences, such as taking public transport to go to the forest, 20-30 minutes in an old car, sometimes packed with 9 other people, having a very small room for 6 months with all our belongings and working with someone who does not speak English so well and who might not be able to run like that in the forest for very long. This made me forget that I was also studying a chimpanzee group which the tourists come to see from 7:30 to 15:30 any day and which got deshabituated by the important number of them last year, and which, in two days that I could already spend in the forest, I could see the shape of only one hour… But, well, things can change and despite all these restrictions, I tried to tell myself that I had 5 months to arrange things and that it could only get better now, especially with the good relationship that we developed with the NFA team (guides and management). Unfortunately, a phone call from the University of Rennes at night strongly advised me to leave the research and the place as soon as possible after an email they received from Japan. When the bosses say, I guess you should do.

So packing once more seem to be our faith and Kampala here we come again…

I will not go into the details of the shock and the sadness we provoked in the population of Kalinzu, the NFA, the police officers, the trackers nor into the tears of Constance our lovely cook, but we were so shocked by what was happening that we did not realize anything well. We will really miss all the wonderful people we met there and the beauty of the place…

Now, now, now… well… we do not know and the future seems to be even more mysterious than is usually is…

On the bonobo side, we managed to change the trackers’ schedule so to work the whole day, so nest to nest instead of having changing teams at midday. This permitted to avoid losing bonobos when trackers fail to find each other (and it can take up to 2 weeks to find bonobos again!), but also, trackers found that working 15 hours a day and taking the next day off was finally less tiring that the usual 9 hours every day. We thus had a wonderful month of May for bonobo following and data acquisition, although for me it was really draining to walk/run 20km a day for several days in a row until complete exhaustion…

In June, we switched back to the usual schedule as the Japanese team got back. The house was again filled with Japanese words and movements. It was good to get people from “outside” with milk, chocolate (and carambars!) but it is true we got used with Fabien to our quiet little life, up at 3:30 am and back to bed around 7pm. We did not even mind anymore the lack of food, sometimes struggling to get tiny fishes to eat… then it was as if the village suddenly woke up again: there were more people to feed! And we were snowed under food again!

On his side Fabien had the schedule of a prime minister, always out for the last economic lessons and in the village to supervise the progresses of the five projects (and going to Iyondje by bike every other day): did the chicken get out of the enclosure during the night? Has the tree trunk been transformed into a canoe? Did the people bring something else than manioc to the pigs? Has the electric motor finally been shipped from Germany to South Africa and are they ready to send it to Kisangani? Is the team going to Kisangani ready, can we really trust them and send them with 4000$ to buy all the equipment (a mill, electric panels, huge batteries etc.)? Will they make it back before we leave (Kisangani is 600km away and they need about a week to come back fully loaded)? If all of this just does not make any sense to you, please go to our NGO’s website, where all the projects we realised with the local NGOs ADWA and AWF are fully explained (with some videos!).

The day the team from Kisangani came back was exactly like Christmas and we just had enough time to launch all the projects and ensure the follow up by AWF before we had to leave.

The goodbye to the bonobos were wonderful, although Kame Kake group decided to become swamp animals instead of forest animals just when my boots got broken… wet and muddy feet in June! P-group folks were the last ones I saw, during a great half day of grooming and playing!

We had a brilliant party on the Sunday before leaving, with a lot of food (we asked them to participate, as they are usually so used to receive from mondele), neither too much lotoko nor too much trouble and a big messy game of “balle au prisonnier” that they might continue to play as they loved the idea of getting to prison when getting touched by the ball and getting out by touching someone else (as they have ALL already been to prison…).

The party ended up late (at about 7:30pm) with a movie shown on one of the house about the problems of global warming in Mali. Not sure what they got from it as we had no sound, but they were clearly astonished by the camels, the way people dress (or not) and, of course, the cars (as there are none here)! Departure was sad because we do not know whether we will have a chance to come back again and happy for all the great moments we had there and the wonderful people we met!

After four hours of motorbike, we were in Djolu, enjoying the view over the forest, with (at last!) some bread!!! The next day our plane was on time, taking us out of (and above) the jungle for several hours to Bokongu where we took Lingomo and then Boende to finish in Mbandaka; a happy flying bus with nine strong minded people that would not let themselves ripped off by the Boende airport team… much screaming and intimidations until our pilots told us they would just shut the plane and leave us if we would not stop doing the revolution in their plane… and a storm was coming…

We finally arrived in Mbandaka in one piece and were obliged to rest more days than we were planning to in this nearly finished hotel with an amazing view over the Congo River. So close and so far from Kinshasa… We even thought we would get stuck there and miss our fight to Uganda as our flight was cancelled at the last minute and due to Independence day, no other flights were going to Kinshasa (or anywhere…) in the following days.

We took this opportunity to visit the almost abandoned botanic gardens (with a giant herbarium and a vast collection of seeds sadly rotting in old colonial houses lost in this huge garden left to the wild) and the totally abandoned Mobutu’s palace, thankfully also just abandoned a few days before by the army called to the East (see the “grass” rooms leftovers on the pic!). Flu and fever accompanied us to Kinshasa where we were hosted by Toni Lyn and Matt. We just had time to say hi to Perrine and Marie-Hélène while Italy was getting in football trouble before we were already back on the plane, over the cloudy rift valley, the impressive lake Victoria with all its apparently unpopulated islands, the green Masai Mara, wrinkled as an old lady, with, as a bonus, the Kilimanjaro peaking at the horizon and the giraffes running under us… The dream would have been complete if we would not have missed our connecting flight to Entebbe and if our bags would not have been pilfered… but well, that’s another story!

Quite amazingly considering the small amount of power we get for the computers and the low connexion speed, we managed to make some little videos of our daily life in  Wamba and the actions we realised through illoco:

The economy lessons

The think tank

The library

The observation of bonobos

… and how to make a badminton game in a tropical rainforest!

Hopefully more to come soon…

But for this, I did not feel prepared enough: the battle with the authorities (Letat). The rules are simple: They want your money and you do not want to give them (that actually, we do not have since none of us has a salary). They have guns, you don’t. Lying is mandatory, but it has to be subtle. Cordiality has to be maintained, never lose your temper. Appear detached from the situation but not too much, because you know, law is above all and everyone, and is not tender (as they love to repeat). Oh, and yes, never feed the authorities: people got in great trouble here when the last sector chief died soon after having visited hour house where he received foods and drinks. People like to poison each other here apparently. People like to send bad vibes which can kill as well. This is what I tried to remind myself arranging small tomato plants while I was hearing the sector chief and the police commandant arriving behind me. All people who could have been of some support were away: Fabien and Gilbert in Iyondje, Etenyi in the forest, Bafaluka in Djolu and Lingomo in Basankusu. The last flooding had just stopped a few minutes ago. We took place in our house and the police commandant did not take his sunglasses off. His fat body was tightened inside army trousers, high boots and a US army jacket. His black hat was finishing the picture. You don’t recognize him? Yes, you do, you have seen him many times in the news in Congo, but also in Ruanda, Uganda, nowadays in Mali and many other countries. He is one and many, he is the same everywhere. The pure brute: powerful, stupid and irascible. Me alone, no chance… my breath is short and I hate showing my tension to these people who are already smiling… what do I have? Only me, only words. After a few sentences, I decided to drown them, drown them under words until the return of Fabien and Gilbert. They were officially there for two reasons. First, one of our trackers was suspected to have smoked hemp (as they say) in the forest when he met two police officers. Nothing really clear there, but they kept him one night in prison, hitting him and kept his boots and his watch (belonging to the research organization), amongst many other types of loot they got along the way: ducks, bananas, money, people (those who did not have something to give so they got arrested). After all our letters and complaints, here they were: the boots and the watch. But this doesn’t go without a cost. Second, the sector chief wanted to complain that he did not get informed of Fabien’s activities in Wamba. For him, he was only staying at home. I told him, that this could be arranged as soon as tomorrow, but it would be a shame for his sector to miss all the wonderful projects and investments we were beginning to set up in Wamba. This is where the drowning occurred. During an hour and half, I exposed the why and the how of each of the five projects, with anecdotes both crispy (the loss of 300 dollars of the last boat trip), sad (the death of Teso’s daughter, 16 years old, leaving a 4 months old boy, because of… anaemia…: do you still want to see your children die for nothing?) or scary (at least for me: each year, there are more than 150 000 batteries polluting their soil with heavy metals: 1 battery pollutes 1m3 for 50years…). I see the police commandant sleeping behind his sunglasses. I lose myself in explanations and stories; I take them with me to this place where I am not afraid anymore. “I am sure you want to see the pigpen project just before it gets dark”. There they try to get to our trackers’ problem, telling some story involving more people than it should be, including Fabien and I, in folkloric situations. But, I told them, “You were not there in the forest, neither was I. Please wait for the people concerned. It is getting dark and the pigs are waiting”, and taking a sentence they love “let us not play the devil’s advocate”. The pigs have won (for now) and despite the commandant’s repeated complaints: “is this far?” “Are we there yet?” they follow me to the pigpen. A voice behind, the relief team has arrived: Fabien and Gilbert are back from Iyondje, all sweaty and exhausted on their bicycles, an hour late. Now I know the feeling of sister Ann when she finally saw her riders arriving amongst the sky glowing red and the grass glowing green. Do you think it could be the end now? Of course not. It is where it begins again. Five hours in total. Five hours of drowning… they are tough, they can spend their whole day sitting in a chair doing nothing and we can’t, but we are precise, and we ask them ten times to precise their thought, asking if we understand well and there they are not so tough. Fabien tells them again about all the projects, they complain again. They want a report on the projects? What kind of report? How many pages? Addressed to whom? They get really annoyed with us and especially with me I think. They do not want me to talk anymore. But this is science isn’t it? You have to be precise with what you ask and what you say. Everything is data. They get relieved when the tracker concerned comes out of the forest. There they will be able to show their power. They do not let him talk, neither do they let Gilbert talk: as soon as they open their mouth they say: “fais gafffffe” “tu te crois tout permis parce qu’il y a des blancs, mais tu vas voir!”pointing them with a finger. The discussion now turns around who they will arrest now. We negotiate (knowing that the manager here already negotiated with dollars that they do not come here and disturb the research in his absence) that we keep everyone for now and send people concerned to their office (some 30km away) on Monday, hoping for a new relief team to show up meanwhile. They want to go, we want them to go. But they have no fuel. Neither do we (as they already know from the letter we sent them a few days ago). They want 20$ per person for their trip fees (the salary is about 40$ per month here). But they are worn out. It is already 8:30pm. They will only get 5$ in total, a very small chicken and a litre of fuel from us (they asked for five). We are all exhausted, but happy when their motorbike disappears in the dark… they left with perhaps only one fifth of what their police officers took last time to the population. But I am also a bit scared. Can you really play this game when you do not know ALL the rules? Did we really WIN this time? What will happen to our tracker who has to go there without protection (several people have disappeared in Djolu’s prisons, the ONU’s information site Radio Okapi reports)? Are we safe? The police commandant was so eager to know Fabien’s idea about who would win if Fabien and he were fighting, but also if Fabien was hitting me properly to show me his love (and if I liked it)… and the worse: when was Fabien absent from home… I do not know what to think. Nayebi te. As they say, Mokili ezali mbanga ya n’taba: life is like a goat’s jaw (luck turns), hopefully still on our side for the next five weeks we are alone here.

End of March and beginning of April have been really, really hot days! Luckily, the absence of rains permitted to find our bonobos again, and not lose them because of floods!

I could thus spend 6 wonderful days in a row with them, following their little lives but as they are also really hot, they spent a lot of time on the ground, sleeping and resting while the little ones are playing around.

The two new babies Seko and Jolie are doing very well now and I even saw Jolie in her brother’s arms! Jo is only five years old so Jacky did not let him hold Jolie for too long… but this was the first time I so her out of her mother’s arms! Seko took a little bit more time to get stronger, but now Sala must think it is time for him to begin to play with others and while young bonobos play together she sits in the middle of the play and tries to grab them and drag them to Seko. It did not work so well yet and the others seem to prefer to play together or with Jolie at the moment. But I am sure they just need to get used to this new baby!

We also had much fun looking at Nao doing her yoga (lying on the back with the legs up and the head down, doing some small movements of the head) or poor Nachi falling from a branch during her sleep. Luckily for her it was only a meter above the ground! Hot means hot for all living things, and while bonobos seem to enjoy having flies around them especially when they groom (this must have a nice taste!), it is not my case! There are the big flies just a bit annoying because they buzz around and colonize every part of us especially they love my microphone, and there are the very annoying files, the “sweat bees” who seem to only want to die in your eyes, leaving a very disgusting odour and taste. I suspect these are the bonobos delicacies…

In the village, everything continues well and the pigpen project has officially started on the 1rst of April. Unfortunately, one of the females died after she arrived. She got numerous contusions during her transport and we had to eat her. Although I feel so sorry for her: she was a really cute little pig, she was absolutely delicious and I am sorry for vegetarians, but I missed meat so much and it is crazy the energy we get afterwards!
Fabien continues to give lectures in Economics, English, Computer and French. In French, Mbele and Batsindelia are reading “le petit prince” which they really enjoy and gives them more vocabulary.

The courgettes are still growing well and we now see some male flowers, hoping that we will see the female and their courgettes soon! My beautiful friend Marie-Pauline also had her 8th child and her 7th daughter on the first day of Spring. I do not know how she does to look so strong and glowing less than 24hours after childbirth (she is also the local midwife, but I am not sure that could have helped, because then, noone to help her!).

Sunny hugs to all!

Bonobos also experience a shortage of food and while they spent so much time in the sugar cane fields, they are now on the other side of their home range, some eight kilometers away, across the Kohola river. At least idf they could stay on one side of the river! But no, they keep crossing it back and forth and we generally loose them. The ‘river’ is indeed not a river as we usually conceive them, but mostly a swamp, more or less deep depending on the place, and this on several hundred meters! There is thus not one river to cross, but several between which the ground is in fact a mixture of roots, leaves and water and we never know if it can really support our weight or if we will fall a knee deep… while bonobos cross this in a few minutes, we might take as much as an hour to cross, getting wet till mid calves… No need to say that bonobos might thus be already far far far and that we just stay miserable and wet, some 7km from home… Walking some 4 hours just to get there and back from home every day is really not easy! At least, that let me discover the “camps” of the forest which are used by hunters and as holiday home by villagers… a tiny home that is exactly the same as those used by their ancestors… interesting, and wonderful when there is a storm!

In the end, I haven’t seen bonobos much this month!

At camp, we continue (on top on computer work) to plant some green beans and monitor the growth of other plants… but grasshoppers can just kill a plant in one cut and in the morning you find your beautifully grown green bean that was about to flower just severed at its basis. Dead.

But there are still many brilliant things happening here as well. When seen, bonobos are still amazing and our ‘think tank’ is still going on well and nobody would miss it each week. The pigpen has now started and they already bought two young females. And we have good news from two French foundations that gave us some money for illoco’s projects!

Finally, discover where we live and how to get there in videos!

  Bonobos have been lost for more than two weeks in total, except two days where we found them and lost them again… Very ennoying, but this is also what happens with wild animals… especially when our small community of about thirty individuals decides to split in subgroups and travel quickly in different directions, in about 40 square kilometers of rainforest… and after big rains, washing out the small tracks that they could have left behind them. It is also nice to go to the forest and enjoy it for itlself, but only for a few days (and I also have so much recordings to listen to at home!).

  On the 5th of March, we celebrated Fabien’s 30th birthday with a nice walk trough the forest (as soon as we are out of the “village ” we are already in the forest anyway!) to the Lokuli river, a small paradise lost in the forest that looks more like a tropical island than the border of a small river in the dark congolese forest… We also made about 70 crepes with local ingredients (that are much the same as the banankwanga we previousely made!) 30 candles on top, and here you go! Our workers also loved them and we might start a small buisness… The loss of our furry friends also permitted to help with the plantations in Jean-Marie’s garden… our tomatoes, green beans and courgettes are now safe in earth, protected from at least strong sunshine, heavy rains, pigs, goats and most chicken!

We also had the visit of Dr. Matsuura, an anthropologist from Kyoto Univerisity who spent two weeks between Wamba and Iyondji, collecting data on local NGOs. He seemed very interested in Fabien’s project of development with ADWA (Association pour le Développement de WAmba) and decided to finance a pigpen project. Along with the bonobo news that will hopefull be found again, we will give you some news about this project as well!

We are now all totally settled in our bighouse: five huge rooms simply equipped but comfortable. Two solar panels give us enough energy each day, Mbele, Teso and General go to the river every day to fetch water for cooking, drinking and showering, and we are now mastering the art of negociating the right prices for each item of food that enters the house.

Yes, of course, there is no supermarket and the little market held every Thursday is mainly for soap, clothes and pens. This is called subsistence economy and unfortunately we have neither fields to cultivate nor children to go fishing for us! So our cooks have the very difficult task to find food each day for the house for several reasons: First, people do not have so much else to sell than they already consume. Second, as they are not use to selling and we are white, the prices become quickly out of proportions… and later adopted for the whole population so we have to be very careful not to create any inflation. How many times did we have to eat only pondu (manioc leaves) and rice only because we had to refuse to buy this fish 3000 Francs congolais or this chicken 5000 Francs congolais!

Food diversity is also very restricted and always difficult to find, apart for manioc (chikwangue) and manioc leaves (pondu) which is about all what people eat here. For example for the rice, we have to send someone with the bicycle to Yapele, some 60km away for him to come back three days later (or more if it rains of course). We also hired a fisherman in order to get fish for us, because everyone wants fish here, and all what is fished in a day is often bought by children who are waiting hours and hours close to the river, long before arriving to our house. Sometimes also, children are sent by parents and walk several kilometers to sell us a few fishes and papayas.

Our daily diet is thus generally the same: Breakfast: Rice, omelet, papaya and avocado if possible. Lunch: Rice and fish or chicken if found, papaya if there are enough and dinner: Same as lunch plus Pondu (manioc leaves) and minus fruits, plus sometimes minor variations if mushrooms, greens, Beya or if anything else is found in the forest and brought here… we haven’t tried the larvae or caterpillars yet, but this might happen soon! And for whenever hungry, we try to always have some bananas… but they are so long to ripen, and then all ripen at the same time! As we still somehow follow which day we are, we even celebrated Valentine’s day with a bananakwanga: a banana cake with manioc powder replacing flour (there is no wheat at all here)… which was immersed in boiling water (bain-marie) placed on fire… well, it was a bit strange but we were still quite impressed by the result!

Some quick news about the bonobos: I am sure you will be very pleased to hear that our old Ten is back since the 24^th and that nobody tried to chase him away yet! We also discovered that Sala’s baby was a male. We thus conducted elections on Saturday. This might be the first time for them that their vote is respected, a small victory for democracy, at least in Wamba! We thus now have a little Seko (which means “eternal” in lingala). As he was so sick, we hope this will give him strength… and he seems to have: Sala already tried to put him on the back now he is better… but he is only two months and half and does not hold very well (as a comparison, baby chimpanzees are not usually seen on the back before five month, or for some of them later but I won’t give any names…). It has also been voted that Jacky’s baby will be called Jolie as she is Jacky’s first daughter and contrarily to her mum should thus be jolie!

Already three weeks we arrived in Wamba, time flies! It was amazing to finally arrive again and see all the trackers, sentinels, cooks … more than 30 people to greet, not even counting our neighbours, as we live in the centre of the village! We quickly got everything installed but as all our luggage did not fit on two motorbikes (each with a driver and us) we had to wait until the next day for the motorbikes to go back to Djolu  to get our clothes and some equipment.

So good to feel at home now that we are finally unpacked! I was also really excited to go back to the forest and see how bilia (bonobos in longando, the local dialect) were doing…  And they were all there to welcome me (and maybe primarily eat sugar cane all together…) plus, two new babies and a subadult female that just transferred. It was wonderful to see them and I was quite happy to still be able to recognize them (but I got great new binoculars, so that might help as well). As this is the first post on bonobos, please let me introduce them to you (as we stay in a Japanese research station, do not be surprised, bonobos often have Japanese names!).

Males

TEN: Old guy. I have not seen him yet as the group does not seem to want him around anymore. Last year, I saw several males chasing him away… poor him, he was apparently quite dominant before, but now must spend his old days alone (or I prefer to imagine he might have integrated another community but males generally do not transfer in bonobos).
TAWASHI: Old old old guy. He is always at the end of the group when they travel. The poor one is incontinent (bonobos are usually very clean and only pee and poo at least a bit above the ground) and spend a lot of time lying. As he gets weaker, he becomes more and more the target of aggression by other males and especially young ones.
DAI: Quite young compared to the previous two. He is number two, and one of those chasing other males (and especially Gauche at the moment) from the feeding trees.
JEUDI: Low ranked male. Although he gets frequently attacked by other males, and is very shy, he seem to try to regain a bit of esteem by joining Loboko in his attacks on Tawashi.
GAUCHE: Middle ranking male. He is often seen at the back of a travelling group with Tawashi or at the periphery. At the moment, Nobita and Dai do not want to see him in the feeding tree, so he has to stay away!
LOBOKO: High ranking male despite the lack of a right hand (loboko means hand in lingala). He also spends a lot of time alone, and likes to move on when other individuals want to rest, often choosing the group directions for travel.
NOBITA: Young male and son of Kiku. He is the big boss, a huge and shiny male, but he also have the look of a mad bonobo which is quite scary and not improved by his missing and crippled fingers. Despite appearances, he is also very gentle and often plays with young individuals and even with females!
JIRO: Youngest “adult male” and son of Jacky. He is not shy at all and trying to show off whenever he can especially with poor Tawashi but also sometimes Jeudi with whom he also likes to play during travelling.

Females

NAO: Oldest female of the group. She seems very wise and respected, and has two very bold daughters, Nachi who is now an adolescent of about 7 years and Natsuko of about 3. Both never hesitate to join a play party or to shake branches at us.

KIKU: Old female as well and mother of three males: Nobita, the alpha male (dominant), Kitaro, a subadult and Kyota, a infant of about two years old. She appears to be the dominant female, but Nao might be nearly as dominant. Kyota might be the easiest infant to recognize as he is not black but brown, and glows red in the light!

YUKI: A big female with a bubbly swelling, thus very easy to identify from the back! She has just lost her oldest daughter Yukiko who transferred to a neighbouring community when I was away. She now stays with Yume, her infant female.

HOSHI: A very protective mother since Hashiro was born. She constantly prevents him fom moving away from her and it seems to only increase tenfold his will to go away. This gave hilarious moments, with Hachiro running away as soon as Hoshi is not looking and poor Hoshi running after him to get him back.

JACKY: Ugly but really cool mother, Jacky might be the easiest to recognize with her big wart on the face. She has two sons: Jiro (eleven) and Jo (six), two very turbulent and playful males and…. A new baby daughter! We still have to name her as she is very young, suggestions are welcome!
Sala: A very unfortunate mum who lost already lost several of her babies before… She has a son of about 8 years old, Shiba, and a baby that we still have to sex, because she is holding him/her too tight. Recently the baby was really sick but now seems to be a bit better, hopefully, she will keep this one!

NOVA: A young female who seem to have no personality at all, never getting into trouble or putting herself in front. She has a young daughter, Nadir, who is soon getting four, which means that she will probably be the next new mother on the list, potentially the rising star of the community.

OTOMI: A young mum who transferred recently to this community and already mother of the small Otoko (one year old). She was recently in swelling (pink and swollen buttocks) so she was the little star of the moment, with males as much as with females.

FUKU: Arrived together with Otomi, she has a daughter of the same age as Otoko: Fua. She is very relaxed having people around and so is Fua who is very sexually attractive for other youngster at the moment.

SF: The new subadult female who does not have a name yet because she transferred to our community recently (and we are not sure she will stay!). She might be around nine or ten years old and seems to get more and more integrated especially with Kiku and Nobita, but not with Sala who does not want to see her around.

As I said, since I arrived, bonobos are all there (apart from Ten) and although they might separate a bit in small parties during the day, they travel and sleep together most of the time, thanks to sugar cane that they enjoy every day, annoying the owner of the field! In mornings, they behave a bit more like wild animals, travelling in the forest or in the swamp, crossing the river and challenging our ability to follow them and/or to track them. It gets really exhausting sometimes, but I will explain the conditions of bonobo observation in another post…

ACTIVITIES OF DEVELOPMENT

Since we arrived, we also started some activities of development which include a library, plantations, courses and a local “think tank”.

Thanks to the Recyclivres, we brought about 30kg of books to Wamba. We grouped them in a small library which is meant to be managed by inhabitants themselves. At the moment, we are still helping them in the organisation, but they are already several subscribers who are borrowing books. It is interesting to note that the books they prefer at the moment are of course dictionaries and books on animals, but also civic education explaining to schoolchildren the reason and importance of taxation as well as respectful behaviour one should have in society. Jean-Marie (logistician) prefers Molière and La Fontaine, but he is still an exception!

We also brought some seeds to try to grow them here, as there is a very low diversity in the cultures. People principally eat manioc: the root is processed during about a month before making flour to which water is added. Manioc leaves are then cooked and serve as a sauce. Maize is also grown, but is only used to make Lotoko (see previous post). A few bananas, avocadoes and papaya can be found and for us, it s a battle to find some rice! Our little seeds are now doign well and the courgettes anr already coming out of earth. Other seeds are more shy and we are still waiting for tomatoes, green beans, onions and butternuts.

Courses and local think tank have already started. Fabien is giving business and economic lessons to the people of the local NGO ADWA (Association de Development de WAmba): how to make a budget, how to plan and to calculate a margin, etc. You have to know this little story:  In the previous years, people have cultivated collectively manioc and rice and wanted to sell it in bigger cities (Mbandaka) but transport is a real problem here. They got the possibility to take one way for free and could sell their products in Mbandaka, but then took more than two months to come back… using all what they earned, and so much more, because they had a deficit of about 300 000 Francs congolais, about 300$ (6 months of salary)! So if the development activities are important and they have great ideas, they have to be careful to not get poorer! We also created a local “think tank” to collectively imagine new solutions to the problems faced every day. Ten people including the members of ADWA, the local schoolmaster, the pastor, a tracker, two women and ourselves will meet every week. All these actions are conducted through the French NGO we created last year: illoco.