I WAS working on the Okapi Faunal Reserve, a 1.2-million-hectare forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as the country was being torn apart by civil war. I was collecting botanical data and helping with conservation. The reserve is the only home of the endangered okapi, a shy and beautiful forest giraffe with zebra stripes on its legs. The area is also rich in plant species and home to Pygmy hunter-gatherers, forest inhabitants who depend on the reserve’s resources.
The reserve was also on the front line of the war. Everything was threatened. Amid the chaos, poachers entered the reserve, and rebel soldiers hunted the okapi. With the violence raging around us, my colleagues and I tried to focus on our work.
I’ve had my own experiences with poaching. When I was 12 I would accompany my uncle, a poacher, to hunt elephants, primates and buffalo in the forest, and hippos and crocodiles in the rivers near our home in Bomongo in Equateur province in the north-west of the country. The money earned through poaching allowed me to attend a university, where I discovered my passion for botany and forest ecology. In retrospect, the observations of wildlife I made while poaching in the Congo forests nurtured my enthusiasm for conservation.
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Now I was witnessing how poaching, mining and violence were poised to destroy the okapi reserve. It became a dangerous place to work. Many of my colleagues fled, but I stayed and tried to be optimistic. Eventually the situation became unbearable. Everything I did was met with suspicion by the rebel soldiers. I was under constant surveillance. They demanded I pay them in money, gold, ivory or the mineral coltan – things I didn’t have. Because I couldn’t pay them, and because I was a witness to their atrocities, my life was in danger.
So I escaped and hid in the forest, sleeping on the ground or under rocks. Fortunately as a botanist I knew which wild fruits I could eat. Sometimes I wandered into nearby vegetable gardens to collect sugar cane, sweet potatoes and cassava tubers, which I ate raw because smoke from a fire would have alerted the rebels. I was trying to save my own life, but I was also trying to save our work. I hid as much equipment and data as I could in the forest with me. This included a laptop with a satellite link and a small solar panel, which allowed me to communicate with the outside world through email. I was in contact with several conservation organisations around the world. I also spent time with the local people, helping them hide the okapi from the poachers.
I was in the forest for three months before making my way home. I then went to the US to pursue graduate studies in botany. Now the war has ended I am eager to return to the DRC. The decade of armed conflict has devastated our ecosystems and our wealth of natural resources, so conservation efforts are critical. I hope to build a herbarium to focus on the flora of protected areas as well as other areas that contribute to the country’s biodiversity. When I was hiding out in the forest I felt intimately connected to the land and everything that lives there. It has become like a homeland to me, and my passion for protecting it burns brighter than ever.
