Three hours and two kaka awa later, he finally announced that we had crossed the boundary into the reserve. The forest was denser, its trees huge, crowding the path, which was even narrower and more degraded. The rainwater gullies were so large that Jean-Pierre opted to take us through them instead of on the remaining road, a narrow ledge several feet higher.
When we pulled into Yetee, the village where BCI kept one of its main camps in the Kokolopori Reserve, children and adults surrounded the vehicle. The camp was near the village, against the forest. Men were striking sticks together, singing as we got out. Michael began dancing with them, and they hooted in appreciation.
Someone took my arm and told me in French that it was impolite not to dance, so I joined the mass of people. They all had their knees bent, their butts stuck out, bobbing and swaying, shuffling side to side as they sang. Sally and Michael’s names were distinct among the words.
The two motorcycles arrived with the rest of the BCI and Vie Sauvage personnel. The singing grew stronger as people began shouting, “Mama Sally!” They swarmed her, and she danced with them as our supplies were unloaded by dozens of hands and swept into a mud hut.
I didn’t manage to retain all the names, as the reserve’s staff were introduced in rapid succession, alongside those I had already met: local conservationists and BCI employees. After the singing had gone on for half an hour, we retreated inside to inspect our mud hut, which was built on a slope, tables and chairs tilted. There were four bedrooms, two on each end, and a center dining room with wooden chairs. The temperature inside was distinctly cooler, the earthen walls moist. Beyond the windows, the sunlight appeared white, erasing everything but the steady chanting.
We began unpacking as men with machetes gathered outside and cut up bamboo and tree branches, crossing the pieces and tying the edges with vine to make shelves and tables for us. By the time the sun’s disk neared the forest, they had furnished the house. BCI and Vie Sauvage had several camps in different villages throughout the reserve and tried to alternate where they worked, so as not to create jealousy or rivalry. The simple presence of conservationists meant that scores of local people were hired to repair camp houses, as the mud crumbled a little with each wet season. Already points of light had appeared in the relatively new palm thatch, insects rustling inside the leaves, lizards hunting them, occasionally bringing down showers of dust.
As in Djolu, people came to ask what supplies we’d brought. Jean-Pierre arrived with his four-year-old daughter, a pretty girl who kept glancing up at us curiously. He told us that she had a fever and asked if we’d brought medicine. None of us were doctors, but the fever was low, and she had only a slight cough. We shared what we could find in our supplies, Advil and vitamin powder. One of the reserve’s trackers came next, a tall, rawboned man, moving woodenly, ducking his head shyly when he looked at us. The previous night, he’d stepped barefoot on the cut stump of a sapling and gashed his heel. Sally washed it with peroxide and bandaged it.
Sick or injured people would come by often in our first days, telling us that there was no more medicine at the reserve clinic. Sally assured them that it was in the boat with the rest of BCI’s field staff, and in the meantime, we shared what we had on hand.
Even the DGM official from Djolu, an aging man with hooded eyes and a small black beard, who arrived the next day by motorcycle, showed up with an injury that needed treatment. He had come to collect the fees that BCI paid to operate legally in the region. He unfolded a plastic grocery bag and produced all the forms relating to BCI’s previous visits. One was so old and worn that he handled it like tissue paper, evoking the love of ceremony here. Gently, he opened it and laid it on the wooden table in the paillote as if it were a relic, the document’s remaining ink pale blue, the folds in the paper worn through.
Sally paid a year’s fee of one hundred dollars to operate in the region, and Michael called for lotoko, the local moonshine used in ceremonies or to show respect. One of the eco-guards brought a beer bottle with a folded palm leaf for a plug. As soon as Michael removed the leaf, a smell like rubbing alcohol permeated the air. He poured three fingers’ worth into a plastic cup, and the official took a drink.
“Other NGOs, they come in here and they do their projects,” the official said, “but they do them for themselves. They do their projects, and when they finish, they leave, and that’s it.” He waved his hand dismissively. “But BCI has given us a lot. You have made people’s lives better. You are a part of us.”
I was surprised to hear the official speak so dismissively about other NGOs. Even Michael and Sally appeared shocked. That was when the official told us about his injury, that on his way here, his son had lost control of the motorcycle on a sandy stretch and they’d fallen. He showed us the long burn on his ankle from the muffler, the skin darkened and papery.
As he drank, Michael and Sally went inside to get the medical kit.
The official looked at me and, still speaking French, said, “Is it true they do not even have children?”
“No, they don’t,” I said.
He shook his head, eyes still and serious, as if he couldn’t imagine anything worse.
“They just work, helping people,” he asked, softly, “instead of having children?”
I turned my palms up, not sure how to answer.
He nodded once, solemnly, and stared off, appearing sad for them. Nearly every man I’d met in the rural DRC had at least five children.
Sally and Michael returned with the medical kit and hydrogen peroxide. Together, they bandaged the official’s ankle as he studied them, maybe trying to make sense of why they would do what they do.
But already, on our first day in Kokolopori, before his arrival, when Sally and Michael were still unpacking and the people kept coming and asking for medicine, I began to feel—to sense in my body in a way that had nothing to do with thinking—why they had chosen this life. There was no puzzle in the poignancy of human need, the way men and women showed their injuries and asked for help, requiring disinfectant or antibiotic ointment or a large Band-Aid, medical supplies that most North Americans had in their homes. It was not easy to see through the illusion that many of us harbor about helping others: that we must wait for scientists or doctors or governments. Aspiring to an ideal—to a grand vision of change—is often the enemy in such cases. We forget simple needs and how much each of us can do even with our limited resources.
The last person to ask for help was a young man named Mbangi Lofoso, a team leader for the bonobo trackers. He said that his daughter was sick, her arms and legs straight and rigid, her hands clenched, unable to open. She hadn’t eaten in days now. Michael told him that he should take her to the reserve’s clinic immediately, just seven miles away, in the next village over within Kokolopori, but Mbangi explained that he just wanted purified water for her, that he was already working with a traditional healer. Even later, when Sally and Michael offered to drive him and his daughter there, he refused. He looked hardly more than twenty, the skin of his face smooth, a hollow scar at the side of his throat, just to the right of his Adam’s apple.
Afterward, Michael showed me the small river near the camp. We descended a steep path through the trees. A log bridged the water, and two children squatted on it, fishing for minnows. Hundreds of white and violet butterflies covered the smooth wood, pulsing their wings. Dozens more of them pressed together, fluttering in place. I had never seen butterflies like these: a few with white tails, others turquoise or tiger-striped. One had brown wings when they were closed, but the insides were baby blue, visible only when it flew.
As we walked onto the log, they fluttered up from in front of our feet, clouding around us, landing again as soon as we had passed.
If bonobo research and conservation have taken a firm hold in this part of Équateur, it is because of the Bongandu, one of several tribes that inhabit Équateur Province. Japanese primatologist Takayoshi Kano explored