Archive for the ‘Daily Work’ Category
May I take this opportunity to wish everyone a good start of the year. A big thanks to my supporters: * Libby and her husband who continue to support me with $250 a month. * Todd for the $1,000 donated on the 31st of December, which will be used to support the Advance Force Rangers.
Holding a Catfish in Semliki river
Lunch in Ishango on Christmas Day
When you exit the park from Ishango and you want to head west, towards Tshiaberimu for example (the gorilla sector in the north of the park) you need to cross the Semliki River. But there is no bridge. So a Congolese entrepreneur set up this system with three dugout canoes with planks on top and an outboard motor, that you see on the right in this photo.
Then you drive the vehicle on to the planks and start moving across slowly. The cost is $10 per vehicle, one way. We don’t pay because we are Rangers and the entrepreneur lets us cross for free.
This is the view when you get to the other side, safe and sound!
We have Mbuti Pygmie communities living near Mutsora in a place called Mwenda. We passed by to see them the other day. They are also known as the Forest People because they traditionally live in the forest and live from the forest. They are truly amazing people. They are known not only because of how they live but also because they are small in stature.
The Pygmies do not destroy the forest. They live there but only eat and hunt what they need. That is how it should be for all of us but unfortunately the pressures of humans change all of this.
The Pygmies tell us when they have seen people poaching in the park. They are our friends. The other day they showed us a chimpanzee nest. There are chimpanzees here that we would like to start habituating, so I hope to blog about this in the future.
If you want to know more about the Mbuti Pygmies you should read Somba and Rosie’s blog. They work with them on a daily basis and the okapi.
Dear Stratton Elementary, I am still in Ishango protecting the hippos and the elephants. It is a very beautiful place as you can see by the photographs. Kwa Heri, Joseph
Looking out over the river…
Spotting the elephants…
And getting up closer.
Hello Stratton Elementary - I just wanted to let you know I am in Ishango at the moment protecting the hippos. I will send photos soon. Joseph
A follow-up to the post from a couple of weeks ago about the habituated monkey found in Mutwanga.
After sending our Conservateur Communicateur to talk to the Mama who has habituated the monkey, I’m pleased to say that she does have all the relevant permission and papers to look after the monkey.
He’s a very friendly monkey and in good health too. You can see him on the shoulder of one of our men who went to talk to the Mama who looks after it.
While in Mutwanga we saw this Dore monkey sat in one of the trees.
It’s a habituated monkey, looked after by a Mama who lives in the house nearby. You are allowed to have a monkey as a pet as long as you ask permission from the Chef D’Environnement, and when we got back to Mutsora we sent our Conservateur Communicateur to talk to the Mama who looked after the monkey just to make sure she had the relevant permission.
It’s very easy to habituate a monkey, if you regularly leave food out for him then he will keep coming back, and eventually you will be able to feed him from your hand. He lives in the tree next to where the Mama lives and roams freely around this quartier of Mutwanga.
On Monday, Elie reported on the removal of the illegal settlement in the park, and as a consequence of this we had to confiscate the bikes of the people there.
The bikes had to be taken from our base in Mutsora to the Office of Justice in Beni, and above you can see me with Kavusa securing the bikes.
As you can see, there was little room for the Rangers, but somehow everyone always manages to fit and we made our way to Beni.
Once there, we filled in the necessary paperwork at the Court of Justice in Beni, and then the bikes were secured within their grounds.
Afterwards I went to visit my sister who lives in Beni, and was sadened to see that she had managed to burn her hand while cooking.
She said that she lost concentration and spilt some boiling oil. The burns are bad, but they should heal. I just hope that it doesn’t take too long.
Yesterday, in Mutwanga I found a boy from the town with bush meat. In this case, it was the meat of a Colobus Monkey which the boy had trapped within the park.
It is forbidden to eat Colobus, and so we had to confiscate all the meat that he had in the bag to verify that it was all colobus meat, and to start an investigation. We also found out which part of the forest the boy had trapped the monkey and so will increase our patrols of that area.
Nothing will happen to the boy. It is the military who use him to trap monkeys, he doesn’t do it by his own choice, and so we let him free.
Hello Stratton Elementary… Here in Mutsora we do not have electricity so we use generators if we really need to. Other than that we use flash lights and oil lamps. This was today at the park station - I am with my friend Mwaka. This means Year in Swahili, one of the languages we speak here. We are trying to repair two generators… we succeeded in repairing one but unfortunately not the other. Here you need to be able to repair things as you cannot replace them easily. There are no shops nearby that sell this kind of equipment!
Struggling!
And still struggling… but we finally made it with one! |
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