Thursday 24 November 2005

Packed our bags and headed back to the boat, down the village path and then through the jungle. Probably about a 10km walk. Fortunately, we had half the village employed as porters. Normally you wouldn't think people would be tripping over themselves to carry heavy objects long distances, but cash is so scarce here that any opportunity is leapt upon. It is as if they are living in a permanent Great Depression. I felt guilty not carrying a single thing while children carried my stuff for probably less than 25 cents. But 25 cents was the only money they were likely to see for a very long time.

Arrived at the river around 3pm and settled in. We would sleep there, then leave at first light to get through the difficult upper reaches of the river.
I dived into the river and let the swift flow take me a short distance until I hooked my hand around a protruding branch. I just lay on my back like that in the cool water, with my head tilted back at the sky and my feet dragged forward by the current. Incipient storm clouds raced across the sky, jagged layers of gray, and high high up tiny birds darted and hunted and I wondered why insects would fly so high. Couldn't tell if the rushing noise in my head was my blood or the river but it cleared my thoughts while the river held me aloft in its embrace. Thought how wonderful this place was, how wonderful I felt, how I would be leaving but how I wanted to come back. Thought again of the bonobos. How they had regarded me impassively. How they had thrown sticks and howled at Paul today. How the African researchers had said there is a newfound awareness of bonobo territoriality. How I didn't go and see them when I had more opportunities to do so because of this sense of intrusion. Yet how I wanted to see them again and, moreover bring others to see them, if only to raise money and awareness to protect them. I understood now why hunter-gatherer cultures have rituals and ceremonies to placate and reconcile with the animals they depend upon. Lying in the river, I realised I needed the shaman's help and vowed to talk to him when I returned.

Friday 25 November 2007,

Charles’ helpers untied the twined mooring vines and we set off. The river was racing, cluttered with trees fallen when the wet season rains weakened their root structures.
No river banks, just branches and mangroves and serrated reeds. Everyone could see the jutting branch but noone could do anything about it. Like an iceberg, the innocuous looking exposed branch had a substantial tree submerged beneath it. Like the Titanic, we had too much momentum to swerve away. It cleaved down the middle of the two boats, with much cracking, creaking and shaking, til eventually it had us snagged good and proper. Unlike the Titanic, that was the worst of it. Almost. The prow of the boat bumped into the riverside, waking up a hive of slumbering wasps, who were definitely not morning insects. They homed in like smart bombs on the exposed skin of our crew, who hopped about slapping and launching cloudy fusillades of insecticide spray that only seemed to drive the endless friends of the waspy dead into vengeful wrath. But Charles and his crew took it all in their stride and soon we were on our way again, the swift pace downriver in the morning light, a marked contrast to the painful crawl in the night when we arrived.

Good to be back on the river again. After mentally editing out the drone of the outboard motor, I am left blessed with swathes of soothing green around me, the rain of most of Africa distilled and gurgling and giggling below me, and the vast shifting sky of sun and clouds and mist and dawns and sunsets above me.
Like before, I lie back in my bed and take it all in. However, I am still haunted by bonobos, if that is the right word. Her eyes, looking back over her shoulder directly at me, still resonate in my mind. I don’t know what they are telling meacknowledgement? Puzzlement? Go away? Probably nothing in particular, but I still see them. I sometimes flatter myself to think she is probably in the canopy now, absentmindedly stripping a branch of leaves and trying to figure out my strange blue eyes. At any rate, I’ve got some issues to sort out. Apparently last night I screamed for about 3 seconds in my sleep. Don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Colobus monkeys tracked alongside us for awhile, slightly querulous-looking despite being garbed in the most resplendent of shaggy black and white coats. Chimps eat them. Starting to think bonobos might, too.

Iridescent kingfishers. Black Kites soaring river thermals.
The boat skids across the sunken treetops, shuddering as branches scrape along the hull.
We’ve got one less boat this time, and three less hitchhikers. Nina is on board again to cook, while Charles has his helpers- Meda and someone else. We are also taking Valentin. She is about 20 and heading to Kinshasa to study nursing. She already has a diploma in teaching. It’s good to promote further education in the village, especially among women. The specific development needs of women are so evident and compelling that I sometimes find myself sounding a bit like Stan in the Monty Python Life of Brian (“What is it with you and women, Stan?, “I want to be one. From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta….”). What is it with you and women, Martin?

Along the path to the river yesterday, many villagers came out to say goodbye. At one bend, I met four or five young men, 18 or 19. One said to me in Lingala that his name was also Martin and he shyly offered me an egg in expectant reciprocation, though I really had no place or use for an egg. His friend surprised me with English, albeit strained- “His name…Martin, too. He says you are brothers. He says please help him…because he has”, then the most heartbreaking pause, stutter and sigh, “...n-n-nnothing.”
It sums it all up, really, doesn’t it? I would start a stampede if I started handing out money so therefore carried none, but I definitely will do all I can to help these people, for their own sake, for my own sake and for the sake of the bonobos.

I don’t think I quite explained just how beautiful the bonobos are. They have a presence, a dignity, a gravitas, that you expect in gorillas. A powerful posture, eyes that are languid, intelligent and contemplatative. Hard to describe their face- placid? Stern? Open? Impassive? Most definitely striking, with dark smooth skin, expressive mouths, and a flop of characteristic middle-parted hair. There is no mistaking the regal bearing of Raphael and Suzie, the alpha male and female respectively, nor their powerful build and carriage. The bulk of one older feller’s mass had descended from his shoulders and chest to settle comfortably around his middle.

 

Vivisectionists may coldly say they are not as heavy as chimpanzees, and they may have a reputation for affection, but nothing about them at all suggests effete weakness. They are big and broad and strong, muscle on muscle. Both the males and females project power and authority. These are not simpering sex apes. But they do have an unmistakable elegance. Their movements are deliberate. They unfurl their arms and legs, draping themselves over forest angles, and then you see the longest and most graceful hands- from finger to palm, as long as my forearm. If need be, they can hang effortlessly from their very fingertips. Their feet are mirrors of their hands and they lazily pluck shoots and leaves and fruit with them. They can make love hanging upside down by their feet, 50m above the ground. Need I say more?
Makes you ache that you cannot move with such freedom in an environment so wonderful. Makes you curse the poverty of your two-dimensional world.
They seem completely at home in the environment and, what’s more, they very clearly look like they know it.

Fishing camp- (Photo- Martin Bendeler)

The moonless night was so dark that boatman Charles ordered torches off so as not to interfere with his spotlighting of corners, bends and obstacles. I closed my eyes for awhile and when I opened them I saw we were bearing down directly on riverside foliage and everybody was shouting, “Slow down! Slowly!”. But this was a controlled collision. Charles could smell a storm on the wind and wanted to lash the boat and tarps down before it hit. Again, there was another fisherman’s camp here, but we were hunkered down in the boat and didn’t say hello. But the storm took its time in coming, just a faint flicker and tremble on the horizon, and the fishermen started singing. Over a metallic tapping rhythm they harmonized something beautiful, with calls and repeats, falsettos, and even a bit of toasting. I lay in the boat and cursed the incapacitation of my PDA for I would have loved to have recorded it, but after about 15 minutes I thought “F*ck it”, stepped into my trousers and clambered over sleeping bodies, past Nina and Valentin doing the washing up, under the tarp, scuttled up the steep undergrowth on the vertical riverbank to the flicker of firelight through the banana leaf door of the fishermen’s hut. The singing ceased and four faces, all hearthlight and shadows, turned up to look at me in surprise. It could have been a young father with three sons, or just four friends, but they were lying on simple bamboo bed frames, tapping their fishing knives and keeping out the storm and the night with their singing and their fire, above which they were smoking fish. The youngest look about 9, though malnutrition could have given a 13 year old such an oversized head and skinny body. He sang with an easy authority for one so young. Two older boys reclined on a cot, somewhat entwined in a comradely fashion. On a log, on the far side of the fire, a man old enough to have a moustache provided bass and over-dub rap/toasting/chuckling.

They indicated for me to clap along and I did my best, despite my incurable unco ordination. The music was unmistakably African, though every now again I would pick up a “Hallelujah”, “Amen”, “Adam”, “Eve”, “Jesus”, “Three days risen” and detected the legacy of sneaky Jesuits. But later I also picked up the lingala words for “Bad Woman” and “Big Troubles” and realized I was getting first gospel and then the blues. And there was also a definite jazz sensibility to it, too, with the lead being thrown with a nod from one person to the other, while everybody else provided structure and embellishments, and callbacks. Back in the boat, we had almost thought we were listening to a professional choir. But with no television, radio, or even neighbours, every smattering of fishers on this river probably passed their time enjoying and honing their songs and stories. Wonderfully easy to get lost in the Mandelbrot embers, the rhythm and the camaraderie.

After an indeterminate period of time, one of the guys reached out to prod the fire and I touched his arm to show him the little wad of money I had left on the a log. Our eyes met in acknowledgement and I left through the banana leaf door to the waiting darkness and boat. Their singing didn’t stop. In fact, now they were singing for us rather than just themselves, their raised voices bridging the darkness, the storm, the thunder, to us in the boat. I don’t think I have had a more beautiful lullaby since I was a baby….

Next page