Lingala. From Marie-Claire’s expression and bits of French, I could tell that Sally was saying the prices were too high. Briefly, Sally looked angry, but then she laughed and Marie-Claire did the same. I listened to Sally’s new list of numbers, punctuated by franc. Marie-Claire agreed, and afterward Sally explained the interaction to me.
“Because the election held us back, people haven’t been paid in a long time. We’re only around for a month, so they know that this is their chance to make money, and the women in the kitchen want to work. There’s virtually no cash economy in the area. People barter, but conservation brings in money that they can spend at the market.”
It was almost noon when we finally crowded into the Land Cruiser, Michael and I sharing the front seat next to Jean-Pierre, the driver who, like many of those who worked with BCI and Vie Sauvage, lived in the reserve. Sally climbed onto the back of a motorcycle. Michael explained that Congo time required the addition of two or three hours to any plan, that if you didn’t calculate the extra time you’d get caught in the dark on a road, or spend your visit to the rainforest in a state of constant disappointment.
Young men gathered to push-start the Land Cruiser, Jean-Pierre at the wheel, Michael and I crammed thigh-to-thigh next to him. A man in a red T-shirt hurried over and told Sally that we couldn’t leave until we’d seen the local DGM official, that today was Sunday, so he wasn’t working, and we’d have to spend the night. There was strict control on all aspects of travel in the country; before leaving Kinshasa, we had to get permits not only to take photos but to stay in Équateur.
All of the Congolese paused to watch, eyes static, curious but not too hopeful. I got the sense that the entire town was bent on keeping us there, but I also understood that we would probably leave.
Sally told the man that she’d already worked out an agreement to have the official driven by motorcycle to Kokolopori on Monday, but he shook his head. He said that the official must check our papers and passports to make sure that we even had permission to go to the reserve. She pointed out that BCI and Vie Sauvage had created the reserve, so why wouldn’t it be legal?
Willy, Marie-Claire, the women who helped in the kitchen, and all of the lingerers watched, standing where they were about to wave good-bye. The men remained at the rear of the Land Cruiser, hands on the metal, ready to push-start it. In its cargo area, with heaped bags and jerry cans of gas, two young men—along to help with engine problems and repair flats—stared out the side windows without glass, and other villagers, unknown to us, crammed in like stowaways, until now keeping their heads low, looked out.
“Couldn’t the official just come now?” I asked Michael.
“That’d be against the rules. The people here love their rules,” he said and paused. “And they also love breaking them when it suits them.”
In a place this impoverished, I realized, everything was currency, even laws and formalities.
Sally stared at the man a moment longer, as if evaluating how serious all this was. But as I was soon to learn, when the rules were ignored, no one was quite sure what to do.
“Oh come on,” she said, speaking English now, and shouted to us, “Let’s go!”
The men pushed the Land Cruiser. Jean-Pierre popped the clutch, and the tires grabbed at the earth as the engine sputtered and fired. Children scrabbled up the termite hill to get a vantage on our departure, then decided they’d rather be with the children running behind us. Two more young men jumped on our back bumper, clutching the edges of the glassless back window, and our convoy was off, racing along the rutted dirt road as people leaped aside and screamed “Mundele!” and pointed.
The path we were traveling was listed as a national highway, R401, one of the few bright yellow lines on the map of Équateur. There were four working vehicles in this entire area of seven thousand square miles, with a population of at least 250,000 in tiny, scattered villages, and the road was used primarily for walkers and the occasional bicycle or motorcycle. During the rainy season, it was impassible, too soft and slick, treacherous on the inclines.
As he drove, Jean-Pierre told me that his father was Belgian, that for some reason his siblings had been born almost white whereas he was black, though other Congolese saw him as white. He averaged about eighteen miles per hour, slowing for rain-gouged trenches and sandy hollows. Sometimes we rode in ruts where the ground was soft, crossed by gullies so deep that he almost stopped, letting one tire drop in at a time, the Land Cruiser shaking and rattling. Or we skirted drop-offs where the road narrowed, two tires over the edge, the vehicle wildly tilted as the earth scraped the undercarriage. On a few occasions, the hollows were on both sides, and the edges of all four tires hung as he steered, leaning forward, the rest of us staring down the wet inclines into the shadow of the forest.
From time to time, the path opened into a sundrenched village, a dusty yellow clearing smoothed from decades of feet. Jean-Pierre stomped the accelerator so that we soared past flapping chickens, ducks, goats, dogs, and pigs, past dozens of children who ran out shouting, in underwear or torn shirts. Everyone waved, families in doorways, men seated in the shade of their eaves, beneath the open-sided village paillotes, or beneath the patch of roof protecting the talking drum, a five- or six-foot section of thick, hollowed log with slits cut into it, which people strike rhythmically to send messages across long distances. Then we plunged back onto the forest path, branches lashing the Land Cruiser, the young men on the rear bumper ducking.
Two hours into our journey, we passed the fork in the road to Kisangani, the nearest major city and a regional crossroads where the Lingala- and Swahili-speaking parts of the DRC meet—only a ten- or twelve-day walk from here, Jean-Pierre told me. Michael explained to me that I should know the expression kaka awa, “just here,” how the Bongandu, the people of the local Congolese ethnic group, answer all questions regarding time and distance. They delivered the words with the same assurance with which a parent driving a car says “almost there” to a child. To demonstrate this, he switched to French and asked Jean-Pierre how much farther we had to go, to which Jean-Pierre responded without hesitation, “Kaka awa.”
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
