GorillaSound

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 27 2009 | By: gorillasound

Traveling to Congo is not easy, especially if you are going to live for at least one year in the tropical rain forest. You need to bring the tent for you and your assistant (and all the related accessories), all your clothes and medicines, and generator (if you need to use computer and gps). As you know all the air companies reduced the kilograms allowed from 2 bags of 32 kg to 2 of 23 kg. This 18 kg made a big difference during the preparation of our trip. I had to send 50 kg via cargo, since generators (even if new and completely empty) are “dangerous” objects that cannot travel with passengers. Thus, a part from the tickets, extra luggage and bags sent via cargo increased the expenses of a significant amount!

Finally, February 22nd I took the flight from New York to Paris. I arrived in Paris the day after and I was supposed to meet Aylin, my assistant, on the plane. Unfortunately my plane had an hour of delay and I missed the other plane to Brazzaville. I was extremely worried especially for Aylin because it was her first time in Congo, actually her first time in Africa, and she didn’t know where to go.

After fighting for hours with Air France, I called the Wildlife Conservation Society office in Brazaville to be sure that they were going to pick Aylin up and help her at the airport. Then I left the airport and went to a hotel nearby. I couldn’t sleep, even if I was exhausted, because my mind was really busy!

The day after, as soon as I received an email from Aylin saying that everything was fine, I decided to stop thinking what went wrong, I took the train and visited Paris. It’s a lovely city and was 15 years since last time I went there. Relaxed from the walk (even if I was freezing with only summer clothes) I came back to the airport and finally took the plane to Brazzaville.
As soon as I get off from the plane the humid and warm air of Brazzaville embraced me again and I felt exactingly happy, I was again here!

We will stay in Brazzaville for few other days, organizing the last things before taking the small plane to Pokola, a small town in the North-East of the country. From there, with the indispensable help of WCS we will get by car to Bomassa. Bomassa is the heart quarter of WCS Nouabale Ndoki Park. It is located on the Shanga river, and if you are lucky from the nice veranda you can observe hippopotamus and crocodiles, and if you are not lucky during the night (when going to the bathroom for example) you can meet an elephant taking a walk just in the middle of the camp (kitchen, office, lab,etc.). It’s in Bomassa that all anti-poaching activities for the National Park and all the logistics of the research sites in the areas, including Mondika, are organized.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 22 2009 | By: gorillasound

Unfortunately, no term has emerged to replace Pygmy, a derogatory term used by the Colons that emphasize the short stature, and at which are associated some negative attributes. So, I will use for the remainder of this post the term Aka or Forest People, using the famous book title of Turnbull, one of the first anthropologists to conduct ethnographic work with one of the distinct populations living in Central Africa in the 1950s. Forest people is also the translation they gave me in sango when I asked the meaning of Bahaka.

There are at least 10 linguistically distinct populations in central Africa and they are unevenly distributed in the Congo basin.
The most studied are the Mbuti, Efe, Baka and Aka. Genetically, the eastern Mbuti pygmies are extremely divergent from other human populations, suggesting they are an ancient indigenous lineage.

I worked with several Aka men who worked as trackers at Mondika, for more than 1 year when I went to do fieldwork to study western lowland gorillas behavior in the same site I’m returning to. The habituation of these animals is very difficult, long and without the help of the Aka it would be impossible. They are the only able to read the forest and follow minimal traces that magically lead them to find the group.

Aka throughout the CAR and PRC have trading relationships with several ethnically and linguistically distinct farming-hunting-fishing populations. A consequence of that they lost their original language, with the exception of specific forest terms. The languages they speak nowadays are idiosyncratic versions of an ancient Bantu languages.

There are at least five significant social units of the AKA: the family, the camp, the clan, the band, and the regional community.
Seasonal camp movements vary according to a variety of social and ecological factors. The Aka know hundreds of forest plants and animals, but subsist primarily on few plants, insects, honey from eight species of bees, and game. They clearly identify forest zones that are rich in particular plant or animal species (the best zone for caterpillar, honey, roots and payo nuts collecting, specific locations for duiker, pig, elephant and bongo hunting). It wasn’t rare that when we were in the forest , the trackers were speaking about a particular location were they hear bees or see honey (even 20 m up in a tree!!!!!)….and, the majority of the cases the day after, that honey disapeared! Aka hunt large game, primarily pig, buffalo and elephant, and duikers with the net (primarily the blue duiker), monkeys with the crossbow, and small mammals with snares and net traps.

Bahaka at Mondika saved litterally my life several times (from elephants, snakes, etc.). I learned a lot from them about their forest (ndima), the names of the plants gorillas eat, the sounds gorillas make when eating different fruits, the smell they produce. We talked about almost everything about our lifes, cultures and belives. I will present them as well as the other workers at Mondika as soon as I get there! I’m so happy to have the chance to spend another year with them, working and learning from them day after day in the forest!!

There are several books on Bahaka music, some of them speaks about guys of the same village from which most of the trackers at Mondika come from. Few of them have had the chance to play in France and other localities. Their music is extremely fantastic, check it out!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 20 2009 | By: gorillasound

Western gorillas eat several fruit species during the year. They feed on a variety of terrestrial herbaceous vegetations, many leaves, seeds, many different fruits from plants, tree, arbusts, acquatic plants, termites, and some ants species. When fruits are avalable they can eat the same fruit over and over. I will give you more specific information on their diet when I will be following them everyday. Most of the aggression happens during feeding. Here is a registration of a fight between two females screaming (they stop when the male arrives).

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Anyway…tomorrow is the big day, finally I will flight to Brazzaville, arriving there February 23rd, I can’t wait. The weather should be dry. This in true for the north part of the country at least. I will discover how it is in Brazzaville soon. I have to pick up at the airport two bags I sent via cargo. They should arrived one day before me…Then from there I have to find the way to take an airplane to Ouesso, a northern city six hours of pirogue-motor raid from our first destination Bomassa, with 5 bags (1 with a generator)!!!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 17 2009 | By: gorillasound

Mondika Station is a 60km2 area located on the boundary between Republic of Congo and Central Africa Republic in one of the areas identified as of exceptional priority for ape conservation. The site is rich in biodiversity (9-10 genera and 12-14 species) including both the western gorilla and Central African chimpanzee species.

The camp is closed to the river “Mondika”. This is the bridge we have to cross each day to meet the gorillas.

I will show you the camp as soon as we get there!

In the meantime this is the sound of a night in the forest (2007).

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 15 2009 | By: gorillasound

Western gorilla lives in the lowland forest of west central Africa. They form groups composed of one male and several females with their infants. We know less about western gorillas than any other gorilla species. Recently researchers discovered that they are more frugivorous and travel further than Karisoke mountain gorillas. Both males and females seem to leave the group where they born in when reaching sexual maturity (but more data are needed to confirm their dispersal pattern). Females are normally not related, and have been observed to change group and join other males (and their groups) at any age several times during their life. Thus, males compete for females and have developed complex displays (the famous chest beat of gorilla males) to show their strength, and rarely end in physical fights. Encounters with other males (lone or with group) are not rare when you follow gorillas every day. You can detect that something is wrong from the behavior of the male becoming more vigilant…and then you hear a chest beat from far away and Kingo sometimes decide to show up and chest beat back (sometimes they are going on for ages), while other times he ignores the other and continue feeding as anything was happening. Here is the registration audio of one of those moments when Kingo displayed his strength (2007).

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Most of the time the group just feeds, sleep and travel quietly in the forest. This is a registration taken when the group was resting, the male gave is most common vocalization and on the background there is Kusu playing with is play-male Ekendi, wrestling while the others take a nap!

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 09 2009 | By: gorillasound

Dear all,

Thank you for your comments and support to our project.  Thank you Pam and Pablo to be our first donators!

We are still getting ready for our flight on February 22, destination Brazzaville, Republic of Congo! Few things are still missing (microphones, malaria prophylaxis, 1 tent), but the excitement is growing; I can’t wait to see again the gorillas and all the people that works there. I will present them to you very shortly!

In few comments people asked if it was possible to hear some of the gorilla vocalizations! Of course, yes! Give me just few days to become more expert of the blog, …I have to say that I’m not very good with technology! I want also to apologize to those of you that see strange codes between the pictures (I could see them when I use Internet explorer but they are not there when I use Mozilla). I will fix it shortly.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 07 2009 | By: gorillasound

Kingo is the silverback (the adult male), and his name comes from his particular deep “voice”.

One month ago, Kingo lost the oldest females of his group: her name was Beatrice. Beatrice was the most gentile lady of the family. Big size and

red head!

Younger than Beatrice is Mama. She is the blackest and highest ranking female.

Her son is Kusu, his name means termites in Sango (local language). Mama always loved termites!

Just recently, the oldest daughter of Kingo I’ve ever met, George (she was thought to be a male at the beginning!) left her natal group. She was very curious, as all the youngsters!

At the same time another female left the group, her name is Ugly. She was so named because of the shape of her eyebrow and temperament.

The most jealous Kingo female is Mekome. She is always close to him!

Not casually, her son is called Ekendi, meaning jealousy.

 
Two new females are now part of the group, but I don’t have pictures of them since they were not yet present when I was at Mondika. We will meet them when we arrive there!

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