Of Bonobos and Men. Deni Ellis Bechard

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944089

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      Contents

Prologue: February 2012

Part I: From Iowa to the Bonobos of Équateur

Naked Apes, Furry Apes, Godlike Apes

Kinshasa

Équateur

Mbandaka to Djolu

A Sense of Place

The Bonobos of Kokolopori

Yetee

       Part II: Grass Roots

       Albert Lotana Lokasola

       From Slave State to Failed State

       Sally Jewell Coxe

       Africa’s Great War

       Michael Hurley

       Economics around the Campfire

       Human Cultures and Cultured Animals

       Territory and Power

       Part III: Sankuru

       André Tusumba

       Defending the Vocation

       Viral Conservation

       The River

       Epilogue: The Red Queen

       Acronyms

       Notes

       Author’s Note

       Acknowledgments

       I will take with me the emptiness of my hands

       What you do not have you find everywhere

      —W. S. Merwin

Prologue: February 2012

      On a sweltering afternoon, I reached the border that separates Gisenyi, Rwanda, from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The sky was cloudless, the sun glaring on the dusty, broken roadway and the windless lake that stretched alongside it. After receiving the Rwandan exit stamp in my passport, I walked around a metal gate raised by a single soldier for passing cars, though there were none.

      I approached the yellow building on the other side, where an agent sat at a counter, behind an open window. He suddenly appeared engrossed in organizing his desk. He thrust his jaw and furrowed his brow, gathered papers into a pile, then spread them like a stack of cards. He scanned the pages, moving his head back and forth, as if hunting the source of a grave injustice. I’d often seen officials do this, demonstrating self-importance, making travelers wait, creating an atmosphere of disapproval and difficulty, so that when they finally took the passport, it would seem natural for them to find fault and demand an additional payment.

      Across the street from the yellow building, in what appeared to be a small guardhouse, a door opened, and another agent stepped out, perspiration beading on his round face. He hurried over, smiled at me, and reached for my passport. The first one grunted and shook his head, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, staring off in anger.

      The new agent stepped into the yellow building, behind the counter, and flipped open a book of smudged graph paper. He wrote my passport information, asking my profession and, when I said écrivain, “writer,” what I would be writing.

      “A book on conservation,” I replied in French, “on tropical forests and natural resources, and endangered great apes.” He listened, his eyebrows raised, nodding as if I were corroborating a view he had long held. Seeing his look of genuine interest, I offered more details: my planned visit to a community-based reserve in the Congo’s Équateur Province, the importance of conservation not only for the wildlife, but also for the local people.

      I showed him my letter of invitation, and he studied it, the page explaining that I would help “protect biodiversity by writing a book about the Bonobo Peace Forest . . . and raise up the image of the DRC in its conservation efforts.” When I’d received it a month before, the ambitious statements surprised me. The letter was necessary for my visa, and I was beginning to understand that the Congolese who composed it must have thought it important to impress officials. Now, as this one read it, he nodded repeatedly. When he finished, he flashed me a broad smile and thanked me, with what sounded like earnestness, for having come to the Congo. He stamped my passport and said, “Bon voyage.”