Searching for Bonobo in Congo

Our youngest daughter, Jojo, and her beloved, Mike, came to TL2. 

Dream trip, but not a trip they will recommend to any of their friends, even the most adventurous….

Here we are- well underway- in the ghost town of Obenge, only village that existed in the forest that became national park.

Jojo grew up expecting to be part of our work;

Our family has always done it that way:

In grad school: John knocked on the seminar door – Sarah needed nursing;

Jojo with MamaSofi.

In the Ituri, during PhD research : Sofi, our Mbuti nanny, sat outside the botanical plots -Bekah cooing in her lap; 

During okapi captures : Jojo watched the forest from a sling over my shoulder, or John’s shoulder.

Sarah, Jojo, and Bekah at our research camp in the Ituri Forest…circa 1990.

This year Jojo came back.  Mike had to see what a couple weeks with Mom and Dad was really like.  The trip could “Make it” or “Break it”.

There were plenty of chances to “Break It” before even getting near Mom and Dad.

First problem:  The visa.  They submitted all the documents plus a money order for $325 per visa in the middle of May – two months before trip-start date.  The documents included two heavily signed and stamped letters from DR Congo (another $300),  a formal invitation, vaccination records, and a long questionnaire.

After one month with no message from the embassy, Jojo telephoned.  Four days she called repeatedly – no answer.  On the fifth day an answer: “Our means of payment have changed: Full cash payment.”  

Rather than put $650 cash in an envelope, they contacted a travel agency to drop off cash on delivery of visa (a fee, of course).  The embassy then decided the whole application process should restart through the travel agency – minimally a 10day process and, by this time, there were 5 days left before departure.

We mobilized in Congo.  Matthieu went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We discovered some of Jojo’s and Mike’s papers had been lost (thus the suggestion to restart the process).  Finally the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kinshasa instructed the embassy in Washington DC to issue the visas.  YEAH!  But this was the day before travel.  

The embassy gave the passports to FedEX.  Unfortunately two months earlier, when they paid return mail, “overnight delivery” was not even considered.  A weeping Jojo pleaded over the phone with FedEX, but too late.  

The passports arrived after their plane had taken off,  they got new tickets for $3,969.00 (!) and were reimbursed a mere $1,134.00.  

Passports finally did arrive WiTH visas in Colorado.

Taking into account the changed airfares and all other costs, the price-tag for those visas was $1500 each. Being a tourist on the cheap in Congo is not easy.

Finally: John with Jojo and Mike on the way through Goma.

This only added to the delight of seeing them.  John met them in Kigali.  Once he was with them I felt it was real – they would make it –they did.

We were sure the travel tribulations were over.  They flew together to Kindu

We took two full days downtime in Kindu.

At Vero Beach, the bar near our Kindu office, on the Lualaba (Congo) River.

John and Mike went biking and birding.

Then off on the  “work vacation” with Mom and Dad – not luxurious, but with neither the uncertainty nor cost of getting to Congo in the first place.  

We started with a motorbike ride for 7 hours.

With a three day pause along the whole trip took 10 days.

 

The caravan gets ready- with a town garbage pile and ancient colonial era train beyond the yard’s bamboo fence.

Motorbikes first move north through a prairie / forest mix.

Then west through forest;

And at least twenty local bridges where passengers walked.

Second day was the trek… from the Chombe Kilima patrol post to Katopa patrol post on the Lomami :  we walked 37km across…..

Through Prairie;

Forest;

Swamp And Mire.

When we reached Katopa base camp we took three days down time before the “luxury” part of the trip….

A bit of camp “foot” with the local ball Jojo and Mike brought …until it punctured;

Each afternoon we took a short, near-by cruise for bird watching, fishing, change of scene;

The big deal was John’s haul of the tigerfish;

The whole camp was thrilled.

Then the trip down the river – we started packing the dugout a day ahead of time for the “luxury” cruise.

Actually it was a “work” cruise, patrols would be dropped off along the way.

Once underway, there was hardly lots of room, but there is always extra space for a few chickens…(see the rooster?).

And room for some games of cards.

The luxury passengers were under the tarp during the rain…not so the helmsman.

We dropped off the patrol team lead by BienFait in the late afternoon.  They were all set for twelve days in the forest with what they could carry on their backs.

And the first day was a bit long.  Still on the river after sunset.
We finally reached our patrol post at Kakongo well after dark.

The second day was shorter.  We camped that night at the mouth of Lomami’s tributary, Lifongo.

Here we met our northern dugout that had come upstream to meet us.  It had picked up a couple smaller poachers’ dugouts along the way (attached to side).

We said good bye to the southern dugout, helmsman and crew.

The third night of our trip downstream we camped at Obenge.

Nothing is now left of either our original camp nor the small village that we originally found here.  

The next day we used smaller dugouts to paddle partly up the Tutu tributary.

Maybe the diet was not luxury: lots of salt fish, fresh fish and bugali…no vegetables and the only fruit was lemons off of feral trees

Jojo “helping” make bugali.

BUT it was, afterall,  a work cruise…as every trip down the Lomami must be.

With its meetings,

Destroyed poacher camps,

And confiscated bushmeat.

The final patrol post was Bangaliwa which is also now the new village of Obenge2.

After that was the small  town of Opala on the Lomami; then, a very long motorbike ride to Kisangani….we had to do it in one day, because the next day Jojo and Mike were to fly to Goma so that they could get their flight home out of Kigali the following day.

All this was well documented on Jojo’s Instagram at “HartEleanor”.

Alas, we reached Kisangani to be informed their flight to Goma was cancelled.

The travel tribulations in DR Congo were NOT over.  The critical Congo Airways  flight was cancelled; no refund, no apologoy…..just cancelled.

Mike learned in a day struggling to change tickets from Kigali, Rwanda,  to Boulder, Colorado, that it was just as cheap to buy new tickets and that internet negotiations are not always simple from the middle of Congo.  In fact it was not until they were at the airport in Kigali that they could buy new tickets.  

Mike and Jojo ended up paying three times the cost of their original round trip tickets…and that is after all the reimbursements came in.

Mike’s recommendations to intrepid travellers to DR Congo:

1/ Work through a travel agency from the beginning when dealing with the DRC embassy;

2/  Buy the top reimbursement travel insurance on your flights because most likely you will be forced to alter flights;

3/  Schedule a couple days in Kigali (or Kinshasa) on each end of the trip as Congo Airways will likely have issues and mess up planning anyway.

And also: Enjoy it supremely when in DR Congo. Jojo and Mike did.