Congo Rangers

Category: Active Service, Mountain Gorillas, Rangers, Your Donations | Date: May 17 2007 | By: admin

Christof Schenck, Frankfurt Zoological Society’s Executive Director, arrived in DRC a week ago to see how we were getting along. Christof has been wanting to come and visit the Congo for three years now, but every time he planned to come over, renewed fighting would break out between different rebels factions, or between rebels and the Congolese military, thousands of people would evacuate across the border to Rwanda or Uganda, and the park in which we work would become impossible to visit. Furthermore, all Embassies would advise against all travel to the region, and although that advice may well still stand today, Christof did at last manage to find his window of opportunity. He made it to the Congo! He also brought with him three journalists - Michael, Sebastian and Norbert, who will be covering the story when they get back to Germany. For us it was a very special occasion and a huge honor to have the ‘Grande Fromage’ come and visit our project and different activities. The ICCN even sent over the Head of International Cooperation from Kinshasa to welcome him to Congo!

First up, of course, were the gorillas, but not before a quick trip to the HQ of the gorilla sector to hand over two vehicles (one of which was purchased with funds raised through Paulin’s blog - thanks again Chris!!), 5 desk tops, 5 lap-tops, three printers, a projector and screen, 11 office tables, 36 chairs, a conference table, 2 solar systems, and a large stock of drugs for the medical dispensary (which was also purchased through the blog). See photo below.

We spent two days in the company of gorillas… the first day with the Kabarizi family who has just had another newborn - just two days old - and we had the great luck to be joined by Anne Hammil from the IISD and Ellen Brown from WCS (who has a blog on her work up in Epulu).

This is Anne with the photographers behind her!

The following day we went to see Rugendo - very different family of 12 individuals - and a very different family dynamic. Rugendo means wanderer, and he wanders much further than any other family. In fact he wanders right out of the forest and into the community land where food is plentiful. This however causes problems with local communities, and so it is important to involve them in conservation activities.

Before leaving, we met with some Pygmies who live around the edge of the park. They have been marginalized from society, having left their traditional way of life in the forest but without having found acceptance by the Bantu, they have no access to education or health care, and although getting more ’street-wise’ they originally had no real concept of ownership over land or plants - it just didn’t figure in pygmy logic - so if they saw a banana plant growing somewhere they would simply help themselves. This got them a really bad reputation for thieves… despite the fact that this land that the bananas are now growing on, did once in fact ‘belong’ to them… Christof gave all the women skirts and tops, and for the men, two pairs of jeans… it is important for us conservationists to work with the pygmies as well as other local communities living around the park if we are to have a chance of saving the gorillas in the long term, and getting to know them over a song and a dance is a first step…

Next up was a flight to Ishango and then a hike up the active volcano to spend the night on the crater rim… to be continued…

Technorati : congo, drc, fzs, gorilla, virunga, wildlifedirect

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