GORILLAS, PYGMIES, AND THE FRENCH
Bangui, Central African Republic. Pygmies are the original Africans. Africa was populated almost exclusively by them for millennia. Then came larger folks like the Bantu who exterminated them, pushed them deep into the rain forests of Central Africa, and enslaved them. There are now only a few groups of Pygmies left, scattered in pockets of the densest jungles, still practicing the original human way of life, hunting and gathering.
There are three kinds of gorillas. The giant hairy kind you see in zoos, and the thuggish human kind who rule over other people as "Big Men." Africa has plenty of both. Then there’s the French gorilla.
It is a widespread illusion that France gave up its colonial empire along with other Western powers such as the Brits, Dutch, and Portuguese from the mid-50s to the mid-70s. In fact, France today possesses the largest colonial empire in the world, by far. Here’s a list:
Pacific Ocean: New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia (Tahiti and the Societies, Tuamotus, Marquesas, Gambiers, and Australs), plus uninhabited Clipperton
Indian Ocean: Réunion, Mayotte, various small islands such as Bassas da India and Tromelin, plus Crozet and Kerguelen
South America: French Guiana
Caribbean: St. Bart’s, St. Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique
North America: St. Pierre et Miquelon (yes, these two islands right off the southwest coast of Newfoundland in Canada belong to France)
Then there is Africa. When the French suffered massively bloody defeats in attempting to retain their colonies of Vietnam and Algeria in the 1950s, their leader, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), decided on a different strategy. France would grant de jure independence to a welter of make-believe countries carved out of their African Empire, but maintain de facto full colonial control over them by setting up local thugs as their "presidents."
This has worked well for close to 50 years. Well for France, but not for the people in Black Francophone Africa, who not only suffer chronic oppression and poverty, but are cut off from the rest of the world and the rest of non-French speaking Africa as well. Almost all business and trade had/has to be done with French companies.
For all of these countries – Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Conakry, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, CAR (Central African Republic) – everything is oriented towards relations and business with France, and away from their African neighbors.
The poster child for the French African gorilla is the CAR. Of all of Africa’s capital cities, this one is at the bottom of the Dark Continent’s barrel. Most of the city’s streets are dirt with more potholes than road, what few streets are paved are more of an asphalt quilt riddled with bumpy pothole patches, most buildings are decrepit, there isn’t one new modern building or establishment of any kind. Outside of Bangui, the eastern two-thirds of the country is lawlessly overrun by bandit gangs, the western third marginally safer.
Ever since its "independence" in 1960, the place has been run by a succession of gorilla dictators, the craziest being Jean-Bedel Bokassa (1921-1996), whose seizure of power in 1965 was sanctioned by a personal visit to Bangui by Charles de Gaulle. In 1977, de Gaulle’s successor Valerie Giscard d’Estaing had France pay the tab for a ludicrously expensive coronation for Bokassa as the Emperor (President-for-Life was no longer good enough) of the renamed Central African Empire. Bokassa had bribed d’Estaing with diamonds.
By 1979, Bokassa’s tyranny culminated in a slaughter of 100 schoolchildren (which he personally conducted; they refused to pay for an expensive school uniform with his picture), so French commandos staged a coup and replaced him with another dictator. Nothing has improved since.
So why am I here? To arrange an astoundingly awesome expedition. There is a hidden pocket of the southwest CAR where it, Cameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville come together. This three-country region is the most uninhabited area in all Sub-Saharan Africa. Save for two small villages of a few hundred, no one lives there except for pygmies and gorillas – tens of thousands of gorillas, outnumbering humans at least 100-1.
This only hints at the extraordinary profusion of wildlife. When you think of elephants in Africa, you think of the bush elephant like in the Serengeti – but there is another subspecies called the forest elephant that you can see hundreds of at a time, if you know just where to go. There are chimps, hippos, crocs, at least eight different kinds of monkeys like putty-nosed monkeys and crowned guenons, baboons, leopards, forest buffalo, an incredible array of birdlife, rare antelopes like the sitatunga and the trophy hunter’s dream, the bongo.
The region is called Dzanga-Ndoki. As it contains Africa’s greatest concentration of bongo, a group of wealthy hunters from South Africa built a luxury lodge on one its rivers. When they suffered in the 2008 collapse, a South African fellow I know bought them out and converted it into a non-hunting eco-lodge. The problem is access. It takes two days driving in a jeep for 250 miles through jungle mud to get there from Bangui. Then two more rough days to get back. Plus you have to stay in Bangui coming and going.
Over a few Ngok beers, we solved the problem. We’ll charter a plane owned by a French mining company that will get us in an hour from Bangui to a village airstrip; from there it’s a short boat ride to the lodge. We even figured out how to avoid staying in Bangui altogether.
There is a non-stop flight on Ethiopian (ET: a good airline that all US diplomats to Africa use) from Washington-Dulles overnight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. That connects to an ET flight non-stop to Bangui, arriving mid-morning. We’ll be met and escorted through customs, then board the waiting charter plane (a Cessna Caravan with a South African pilot). We’ll be at the lodge for lunch, having left the US the previous day.
After six days at the lodge, it’s the reverse: charter to Bangui airport, board the ET flight to Addis and connect to the overnight ET flight to Dulles. That’s nine days from leaving home in the US and back. It’ll be sometime in February or early March of next year. That’s the best time to go, but I’m still making the arrangements.
There’s an American lady I want you to meet, Angela Turkalo, who for 20 years has been studying forest elephants where they congregate at the Dzanga Bai water hole. There’s an American musician I want you to meet, Louis Sarno, who has been living with the BaAka Pygmies for years to study their music and culture. There are the gorilla researchers who are dedicated to habituating specific gorilla families to human contact so they can be studied.
Angela will introduce us to the animals of Dzanga Bai, which contains the mineral salts they crave. She is the world’s leading expert on the forest elephant. The time of year we’re going is also the best for bongo. It’s the only place on earth to see dozens of them at a time.
Louis will introduce us to the BaAka, who will take us on a hunt (nets, bows/arrows, spears) and perform a jingi ceremony with singing, music, drums and dancing.
The researchers will take us gorilla tracking. Being up close and personal with a dozen or more gorillas in the African jungle is an experience you never forget.
Oh, did I mention Goliath Tiger Fish? It’s a total ultimate for sports fishermen. Bring the right gear and we’ll get you hooked up. The river the lodge is on has plenty of them.
I’ll have all the details and info on my Gorillas and Pygmies Expedition shortly, but I wanted to give you a heads up on it now. This is real African adventure. Safe, a wonderful lodge with good food and good wine that’s quick and easy to get to for us, an astounding profusion of wildlife that almost no one has seen in a place even the most experienced Africa travelers know nothing of.
I can only take seven TTPers with me (and my wife – she can’t pass this up). Let Miko know (703-992-4529, [email protected]) if you want to be one of them.
Meanwhile, from Bangui, I hope you enjoyed World Freedom Day yesterday. Not because 11/09 is my birthday (and thanks for all the TTPer well-wishes, I really appreciated them!), but because on that day in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and America won the Cold War. And enjoy a special Veterans Day tomorrow – 11/11/11! We owe our freedom as Americans to our veterans. Let’s hope our voters can rescue what’s left of it a year from now.