Congo River Days
On Tuesday we boated 40km up the Congo River from the mouth, to several tributaries where I have been on previous trips and interviewed villagers about manatees. Accompanying me was Tim B. (the Angola LNG wildlife specialist), Wilson (a translator since I don’t speak Portuguese, Kisolongo or Lingala), Junior (Angola LNG environmental team assistant) and our two boat drivers who have taken me on almost every trip, Eduardo and Perreira. We stopped at the local Navy base, villages of Kibaka, Nzadi Caca and a new village I had not been to before. At Kibaka and Nzadi Caca they still see manatees everyday, throughout the year. They said there has been no targeted hunting since the hunter died last year, but that occasionally manatees are getting caught in fishing nets, and of course they eat them when they do. I can’t fault people for making use of the meat once the manatee has drowned, this area is very poor. We didn’t see any manatees as we traveled several tributaries, but unfortunately we also didn’t really have time to sit and wait for them anywhere.
Eduardo and Perreira, doing one of their many radio check-ins to base.
Back at Nzadi Caca. The village continues to grow as they add more clam shells and then build their houses on top of them.
We interviewed the guys in Nzadi Caca while they skewered clams to sell
Watching the GPS map as we travel the new rivers.
Young guinon that was a pet at the manoic plantation, tied to a tree. Beautiful little monkey, I felt sorry for it.
Nice skink I saw at the manioc plantation. (this one’s for you Tess!)
Tess
November 12, 2009 at 8:57 am🙂 Love the skink! Great photos – cool monkey and gorgeous python shot too.