Category Archives: community conservation

Coming down the Lomami in April 2019

We took three different paths and all emerged on the Lomami River in different places.  Eventually two different dugouts brought us together at the mouth of the Lifongo River. Sheltering from the rain at our meeting at the confluence of the Lifongo River We visited base camps and checked field operations along the way.  We […]

Death of a Great Conservationist

Lomami National Park would not exist without local champions. The most pivotal – one who both led and reprimanded – even foreign conservationists (us),– was the chief, Mama Jeanne Ulimwengu. For nine years she was the supreme leader of the Bangengele. She was buried last Sunday. There is contention over who shall replace her. She […]

History and Maimai west of the Lomami

Children 16 and under are half the population of Balanga West; but elders, though rare, define the community. (Here Leon with Balanga West telephone-admirers) A Balanga genealogy sounds like a litany from Old Testament Genesis or First Chronicles: The first ancestor of the village of Kandolo was Likulufe. Likulufe begat a first son Kandolo who […]

Lomami’s Wild West

From the earliest colonial era through the present, Balanga West has always been too far away to matter. A classroom as it now is in Balanga West. Balanga West is the one hole in the map of our own inventories of 2007-2009. Not because we thought the Balanga West forest was unimportant, it was just […]