Forest Gold

Our 1500-kilometer Congo River trip took us through a wild land of impenetrable jungle and a journey back in time.

We had hitched passage through the jungle with a Greek trader whose boat was carrying a cargo of beer up the Congo River to Kisangani in the Eastern Congo. We travelled for three weeks deep into the interior of the continent on a river that was so wide that at times you could barely see the opposite shore, and at others so narrow that our boat seemed like it would be swallowed by an unbroken wall of green.  The steady dunk of the engine was the only sound that broke the stillness as we plodded upriver against the current, alone for the most part, except for the sight of an occasional tugboat pulling semi-trailer sized logs of mahogany or ebony in the opposite direction. 

When the channel followed the shoreline, the chatter that came from the leafy canopy above us was a reminder that this was where most of the animals in the forest lived, and that there was a life in the jungle that remained hidden by its tangle of vegetation.

The Congo River and its tributaries were the limbs and life-blood of Central Africa and the only means to transport goods and people through its vast and inaccessible forests. In the small pockets of habitation that we passed along the shore, life continued as it always had unaffected by the influences of the outside world.

Even more isolated were the groups of hunter-gatherers that lived in nomadic settlements deeper in the forest. The Pygmies as they are called, were the first inhabitants of the vast equatorial forest, and their villages could only be reached on foot. Everything they ate and used in their lives came from the bounty of their surroundings  and they believed that they were as much a part of the forest as its plants and animals.

These forager peoples live in self-sustained societies and possess a vast knowledge of the jungle’s complex ecology. They use its plants for food and medicine, fish its waters and skillfully hunt its abundant wildlife. What they don’t consume themselves they trade for cloth, iron implements, and salt.

Among all of the wild plants and fruits of the jungle, honey was the most sought after and men of the tribes were masters at climbing to the roof of the forest and risking their lives for their favorite food. Immune to the stings of the agitated bees they climb fifty meters or more in order to pull the hives from hollow tree trunks. 

They break them up with their bare hands and lower them down in baskets to their companions who wait eagerly for the first bits. They then pick out any bees that follow, bite into the combs, suck out the honey and spit out the wax.

We were limited to what we could carry on our motorcycle not only because of space, but the hot, humid weather would quickly spoil it. The only tinned foods that were available were sardines and miniature cans of tomato paste. Along with rice, they were luxuries in a place where the people lived on what the forest and river provided.

Compared to our life on the trail, the meals that we ate while we were on the barge were a feast. Occasionally the cook, a weather-worn man in a sweat stained undershirt and grimy shorts served fish that he caught from the side of the boat or mixed a little meat with our usual fare of rice and tomato paste.

“Hunger is the best spice,” so I wasn’t finicky and never asked where the meat came from, maybe because I knew that the people of the jungle relished chimpanzee, monkey and anything that flew or crawled and I had seen the crew preparing to dine on a crocodile that was tied up on the deck.