Sun 13th November 2005
Major towns ceased after Basankuso, though an unfriendly white man in an expensive speedboat was an indication we were near the missionary town of Maringa , eponymous with the river we were on. That was until we came across the illegal logging town of Bualu. Michael had been here 6 months ago when it was one shack.
Now it was a Congo Future company town of 500 people adjoining a modern lumber yard bursting with logs, bulldozers, lorries, warehouses and fuel tanks.
We pulled in to the river bank, ostensibly to buy fish and register. The usual gaggle of children and villagers gathered to be entertained by the sight of Paul in his mou mou.
Two guys with uniforms and guns were also there. One with a bit of grey and class, the other looked 16 and liked to do Rambo poses with his AK47. They readily agreed to let us walk around and take photos and footage as long as they could their mugs in the picture. We crossed the length of the village, gathering an entourage as we went, until we reached the wall of the lumber yard. I was filming as much as I could but soon word came that I had to dtop as it was private property. I did my best to keep spirits high amongst the crowd as final "paperwork" and shopping was attended to, anxious that they not get sullen and demand what the hell we were doing and money.
In the end we pulled out safely and once on the river, Michael did a piece to camera on the spread of illegal logging, of the incursions it made into bonobo habitat, and of the demand it generated for bushmeat. Children in the village were waving goodbye to us, while workmen in the lumber yard shook their fists.
At night, tarp down, reclining on my mattress, engine humming, the feeling of surging stable motion through the elements, I imagined I was flying Business Class 747 to Bonoboland....until I saw the million puncture wounds around my ankles where local critters have gone to town. The Chinese say the nerves in your feet link directly to all sorts of other places in your body, so I sometimes wonder what effect this will have elsewhere...
The river is so high now, it is almost like floating at a bonobo's-eye view of the world, level with the lower canopy. We are not floating in a river, we are floating in a forest.
